“Well, you’re a regular Albert Einstein. Eccentric, simply dressed, but with better hair.”
I smiled gratefully.
“Now that we’ve let your crazy out of the box, let’s get this room together. I’ll just hang up this one. Is it even enough for you?”
I looked again at the evergreen tree and the poppy. Neither was perfectly symmetrical, but the balance was there. The evergreen erred to the left, while the poppy erred to the right. This happens in nature all the time, and Adam Ranks understood it and had replicated it perfectly. At that moment it felt like he was speaking directly to me. Honestly, it gave me the creeps.
“I’m going to get going,” Tiki announced after about an hour of unpacking. “My boyfriend, Howard, lives in a single across campus, so I’ll probably be spending a lot of nights there.”
“You have a boyfriend already? We’ve been here eight hours.”
Tiki laughed. “No, we’ve been together since high school. I was a sophomore and Howard was a junior when we first started dating. He’s the reason I came here, really. I wanted to go to Brown to study art—I’m no aerospace geek. But they have an Art, Culture and Technology major here that’s pretty cool. And my parents are thrilled because they think I’ll become all buttoned up and eventually get a real job. Which I won’t. I mean, please. But I think distance is tough on a relationship. And this thing with Howard is pretty serious, maybe the real deal. I think.” There was something about the way the light left her face as she said this. It was like she wasn’t buying her own story.
“I’ve never done the long-distance thing.” Hello, or even the normal boyfriend thing, besides this summer. “But my boyfriend is moving to New York. We’re going to try to visit each other and make it work.” I could hear the laughter of the thousands of people before me who had said the exact same thing, only to have the whole relationship unravel during the first week of school. But it was different with John and me. We were sort of handpicked for each other. We’d figure it out.
“Where is he in school?”
“He’s out of school; he’s older.” Her eyebrows popped up, and I laughed. “No, not like Clint Eastwood older—he’s just twenty-one, but he started college early and finished in a couple of years, so this is his second year with the FBI.”
“That’s hot, but what’s with the big rush?”
“I don’t know. It’s just the way he is. He has a lot to prove. He’s a little worried about me running off to New York every weekend and missing college like he did. But I think I can do both. We’ll just have to see how it goes.”
I wasn’t going to get all gooey and explain to her what it was like between John and me. How he saved my life and gave up his dream job and knew me completely and embraced my craziness. When we were lying on the beach in Malibu just days before, it actually felt impossible that there would ever be a time when we wouldn’t be together. “Get your education,” he’d said. “It’s important for you and probably for the whole world. We’ll make the distance work. And when we’re apart, you can cure cancer and figure out what to do with all the world’s garbage. When you finish school, we can find a way to be in the same place, like normal people. I’m not going anywhere. Ever.”
Ever?
As in the second part of
forever?
I mean, I still had the tags on my eighteenth birthday presents. He said
ever.
It seems crazy, but I was all in, maybe so far in that I wasn’t sure how I was going to extract myself well enough to dig in to college. I’d be
that girl,
the one with the out-of-town boyfriend who skipped all the parties and scheduled her week around escaping for the weekend. I’d end up thirty years old with six kids, big hips, and bad style, wondering where all my potential went.
Maybe not. But it does happen.
July and August had been that magic space of time that you can only carve out during a summer vacation, like a break between two realities where all you have to do is be together. Weeks go by in a blur of sandy kisses, long swims, and reluctant good-nights. There’s never enough time, and that Labor Day deadline makes everything so much more intense. I wondered if we’d ever be able to get back there in another setting, or if it would be impossible to replicate, like the way your hair looks when it dries in the sun.
In Massachusetts, everything seemed different. The architecture was different; the faces were different; the light was different. Even the bumper stickers were different. The future was long, and the possibilities for distraction were endless. I had no idea how big the world was or how much more trouble I could get myself into, but I definitely had a feeling this long-distance thing wasn’t going to be easy.
T
IKI LEFT FOR THE NIGHT AT
around eight. I wondered if she was the one who’d end up being
that girl
and miss out on everything because of her boyfriend. She and Howard were going to hang out in his room and watch a movie. Twelve percent of me thought that was the lamest thing ever; the remaining 88 percent was totally jealous.
My plan was to stay in my room with the door locked. Tiki was the only person I’d talked to, and I wasn’t sure I was up for repeating the whole “Hi, I’m Digit. The reason I have this crazy name is because I’m crazy. How ’bout you?” routine. But at around eight thirty there was loud music in the hallway outside my door. And then lots of voices and friendly shouting. I tried to think of what to do, pacing back and forth (this was barely one step in either direction). Was I going to swing open my door and find myself in the middle of a big party? There would be no sizing it up before I was fully involved. I looked through the peephole and saw complete darkness broken by a rhythmically flashing white light.
The banging on my door jolted me back to reality. It was urgent, emergency banging, and I had no choice but to open up. Standing there was a boy, six feet five, with a crew cut and a huge smile. “Wassup!!!!!” He dragged me by the hand into the hallway and started dancing with me, spinning me around in such a way that hid the fact that I was way too nervous to actually dance. Someone had covered the fluorescent hall lights in black paper and had placed a strobe light along the wall, making us all seem like we were moving in slow motion. I wondered who was behind this. Did someone actually have the foresight to bring a strobe light to college? Was it this big wild extrovert in front of me, who seemed intent on dragging everyone out of their rooms-slash-shells?
I have to admit that halfway through the first song I was having fun. It was too loud to talk, so I was spared the “You’re name’s what?” conversation. And the many, many flaws in my dancing style were masked by the lights flashing on and off. All anyone saw of me was a series of freeze frames. I was a flip book. It is impossible to tell that someone has no rhythm in a flip book. Someone handed me a warm beer and I nodded thank you, still dancing and spilling half on the floor.
There was a couple making out against my door, and I had the hardest time not staring at them. I mean, we just got here. How do people figure that stuff out so fast and so publicly? Meanwhile, the big guy was getting a little friendlier all the time. First just spinning me around by the hand, then putting his other hand around my waist, then breathing the breath of a beer-chugging dragon into my face. I had to move on. “Spin me,” I mouthed, with the enthusiasm of a dance-show contestant. As soon as he spun me out, I let go of his hand to gracefully sashay over to the next group.
Okay, by “gracefully sashay,” I mean I completely slid across the floor and into the partially open door of another dorm room. (Note to self:
When dancing on floors that are covered in spilled beer, opt for a rubber-soled shoe.
) I saw the big guy laughing at a distance and then become quickly distracted by another strobe light–protected dancing girl.
I was on the floor, a little sticky but safe. Two girls and a guy were behind me in the cramped room and somehow didn’t notice my entrance. They were huddled together, silent except for a faint buzzing sound. After a few seconds there was a crash, followed by their enthusiastic cheers. I got up and completely dusted myself off before they noticed me.
“Who are you?” A heavily pierced girl in a camouflage T-shirt, plaid pajama bottoms, and combat boots made a face like maybe I hadn’t showered.
“I’m Digit. I sort of fell into your door and—”
“Digit?”
Here we go.
“Yeah, I’m good at math. What’s your name?” I extended my hand to end the questioning.
The pierced girl said, “I’m Clarke. I mean, my name’s Isabella Clarke, but I’m not exactly an Isabella, am I?” I looked her over and had to agree. An Isabella wouldn’t have chosen the color Grim Reaper for her hair.
The other girl stepped in. “Hi. I’m Manuella.” She was a Brazilian girl with long brown hair and severe black-rimmed glasses. “It’s hard to say, so people call me Ella.”
The guy said, “My name’s Scott. Because that’s what my parents named me. What’s wrong with you people? Does everybody’s name have to come with a book report?” Scott’s clothing would have worked as a Steve Jobs Halloween costume: black mock turtleneck, blue jeans, wire-rimmed glasses.
They made no effort to ingratiate themselves to me any further. They stood shoulder to shoulder, forming a wall against the rest of the room. I wondered what to do. Clarke nodded at the door, as if to give me a suggestion. Scott reached toward the desk for a small remote control and quickly hid it in his pocket. In doing so, he must have accidentally pressed something. A small stuffed penguin marched out from under the bed, and with a frenzied press of a button it stopped.
Clarke let her hands fall at her sides. “You totally did that on purpose.”
Scott was offended. “I did not.”
“It’s a joke how you can’t keep a secret for five minutes. Fine. Show her.” Ella stepped aside and revealed a pile of six fallen beer cans.
The vibe around me felt almost anticipatory, like I was supposed to have some big reaction. All I could think of was, “So you each had two beers?”
“Wow, she
is
good at math.” Clarke rolled her eyes.
“No, look.” Scott pressed a few more buttons, and two long arms grew out of the penguin’s sides. To my true amazement, it proceeded to stack the beer cans into a pyramid. A green light flashed on its head, it backed up, and then shot a dart from its chest to knock the cans down. Again with the cheering.
“That’s amazing. Where did you get it?”
Scott picked it up off the ground like it was a Chihuahua in a pink outfit. “I built her.”
I was pretty impressed. I didn’t know anything about engineering and couldn’t even conceive of where you’d get started on a project like that. Like where would you even buy an On/Off switch? And how would you decide what kind of batteries to use? And what was it about this little penguin that made Scott call it a “her”? I decided not to ask any of these questions. I had a feeling I was in on some weird secret, but how could these three already have a secret?
So instead, this stuff came out, God help me. “I don’t know anybody here besides Tiki. How come you guys seem to know each other so well? I mean, did you meet this morning and happen to find each other? Does that happen to everyone? Or am I just an outsider because I’m from California?”
They responded, rapid-fire:
Clarke: California?
Me: Yep.
Scott: You surf?
Me: No.
Ella: Obsessed with your car?
Me: No, but I collect bumper stickers.
Ella: Fine. Yoga?
Me: No.
Scott: Who’s Tiki? Another long-story name?
Me: My roommate. I assume so.
Clarke: Fake boobs?
Me: Me? No. Probably not Tiki either.
Clarke: His glasses are fake and so are Ella’s. Do you find that as hilarious as I do?
Me: Yes.
Lots of glancing at one another and then, “Okay.”
Clarke sat down on one of the beds, and the other two sat on the bed across from her. I didn’t know where to put myself so I flopped onto the floor, crisscross applesauce, like when I was five. Talk about feeling looked down on.
Clarke got up to shut the door. “So we met in a hackers’ chatroom about six months ago and realized we were all going to be freshmen at MIT. Scott showed Ella and me the prototype for Clementine here, and we bonded over the sheer genius of it. There’s a robotics competition in December, and no freshman team has ever won. I guess mainly because they haven’t been working together for long enough. But we have.” Nods, knowing glances.
“You really can’t tell anyone,” said Ella.
“What? That you guys had met before? Is that against the rules?”
Scott tented his fingers under his chin in such a Steve Jobs way that I sort of thought he was making a joke. “Not that. But we did mess a bit with the school’s residential living system. Just to make sure that we’d all be in the same dorm.”
“Actually, Ella and I are roommates, and we gave Scott the single across the hall. Lucky.”
“So you’re hackers.” I was just trying to make sense of it, to straighten it out in my head. Was it harmless what they were doing? Were they criminals? Was it just super fun and a way to get the dorm-mates you wanted?
Those were not the questions I should have been asking myself. But if I’d known what questions to be asking I probably wouldn’t have needed to ask them.
I hung out with those guys for a long time. I collected so much data on who they were and how hackers operate that I couldn’t wait to be alone to process it all. They showed me some basic hacking techniques, just hacking into their own stuff. They were all so goodhearted, even Clarke with her sort of rough exterior. She whispered to me when I left, “You can hang with us, but do me a favor. No fake glasses.” I laughed thinking of how long I tried not to seem like a nerd when neo-nerd was a carefully cultivated look around here.