Fourth Comings Read Online Free Page B

nickname. Like ‘the Buddha’ or something. And when you walk around campus, other first-years from Outdoor Action will point you out, like, ‘Hey, there goes the Buddha. He’s twenty-three years old and he’s a freshman.’ And everyone will be really interested in the whole Marcus mythology and how you ended up here. Like, ‘Hey, did you know that the Buddha meditates twice a day? And he did this silent meditation where he didn’t speak to anyone for like
years,
including six months on a ranch in Death Valley? And he screwed his way through high school and was like this undiscovered genius, and oh shit, yeah, I almost forgot, he spent time in drug rehab when he was like seventeen, and he’s just like the coolest fucking dude, you know?’”
    I knew I was right. It wouldn’t take much to become a legend here on this preppy little campus in this quaint little town. Columbia is in New York City, a place that isn’t exactly lacking in distinctive characters. While I was there, a guy known as Bathrobe Boy gained notoriety simply because he couldn’t be bothered to get dressed for class. Then there were the Carman Twins, who achieved no small measure of campus popularity simply because—you guessed it—they were genetically identical. And you certainly had a lot more noteworthy and/or notorious aspects of your personal history to get tongues wagging.
    But you were unmoved. You fiddled with the silver ring hanging from the leather string around your neck. You pressed it over your eye and wore it like a monocle as you read the hidden words soldered inside: MY THOUGHTS CREATE MY WORLD. You had made it with your own hands, out of an old quarter.
    Finally you spoke.
    “I’m not a Buddhist. I’m a deist who practices Vipassana meditation.”
    “Buddhist! Deist! Whatever!”
    “Are you drunk?”
    “No,” I said too quickly. “Maybe.”
    You sighed. “I tasted it when we kissed.”
    I felt guilty, knowing that the only alcohol you’ve touched since sobering up at seventeen is that which stubbornly clings to my own tongue. Your observation was apropos of nothing. And, well, everything. And so I responded with another non sequitur.
    “Why Princeton? Why now?”
    I had wanted to ask this question since late last January, when you first told me about your acceptance.
    “It’s one of the best schools in the world. And I’m not too far from my parents, and with my dad…”
    My gaze dropped to the floor, as it always did when you mentioned your dad, which wasn’t often.
    You continued with a shrug of your shoulders. “So why not?”
    “I can think of many reasons why not,” I replied. “It doesn’t make any sense that you’re going here.”
    “I got in. It makes sense.”
    You smoked out most of your brain cells before you were seventeen years old, and yet you still have enough left over to outscore 99 percent of standardized-test takers. (Myself included.) And your, shall we say, untraditional background must have appealed to Princeton’s admissions officers, who have been trying for years to undo the school’s reputation for being a bastion of WASPiness. And they succeeded, according to the headline in one of the local papers: CLASS OF 2010 MOST DIVERSE IN UNIVERSITY HISTORY. And yet if Dude and his friends are a fair representation, it’s a homogenous kind of diversity, which makes you a shoo-in for next year’s catalog. It will be you, a dark-skinned female, an Asian male, and another female blinging a Star of David—a multicultural quartet clutching weighty academic tomes and rocking tiger-themed finery on loan from the bookstore.
    So yes, you were accepted early decision to the number one school in the nation when applications were at an all-time high. You deserve to be there. But, as you know, that’s not what I meant about not making sense.
    “You being here is like an extensive form of performance art. Like you’re going to be
‘Marcus Flutie, twenty-three-year-old Princeton freshman.’
In