Higher Education Read Online Free Page B

Virginia remains unfazed, sometimes cooing over a particularly dazzling outfit. I eye them speculatively, wondering if it’s true, as rumor will have it, that the boys are just good friends. Really.
    â€œThere.” Walt drops his fork onto his plate and leans back with another sigh. “Six dollars and forty-two cents.”
    I tear my envious gaze away from Robbie’s superb Italian shoes. “As opposed to six and a half.”
    â€œEvery penny counts, Miranda.”
    â€œAnd a hundred or so makes a dollar.”
    â€œThat’s right.”
    â€œMaybe I should have been a math major.”
    â€œWhy?”
    I blink at him. “Hey, you want my apple for dessert? I’m not going to eat it.”
    â€œNo thanks, Eve.” He grins. “Get it? Eve?”
    Michael touches my shoulder. “Eat something, gal.”
    I look at him. “Don’t you know this is Oxfam night?”
    â€œYep.” He is unmoved.
    â€œDon’t you see? I feel too guilty to eat.”
    A fourth tray is planted on the tabletop, nearly pushing Michael’s tray off the edge into his lap. He steadies the tray with a quick hand. “Hey now.”
    â€œOh, I’m so sorry.” Anne Devereaux sits down, and I smell L’Air du Temps. “It’s such a crowded little table.”
    â€œIsn’t it though?” I stand up. “Luckily, I was just leaving.”
    â€œReally?” Walt says in surprise.
    â€œOh well.” Anne sidles her chair an inch or two toward Michael. “I just love your belt buckle. Is that a cow’s head? I didn’t know cows had horns.”
    â€œBye guys.” I pick up my tray.
    â€œIt’s a steer.” Michael grits his teeth at me and scoots his chair closer to my vacated spot. “Ain’t y’all ever been to a feedlot?”
    On my way to the garbage bins I manage to avoid speaking with another former roommate of mine, Melissa, who used to and for all I know continues to dissolve into baby talk when under stress, an irritating habit that contributed little to the general morale of an already volatile rooming situation. Feigning sudden interest in my sneakers, I am able to sidestep yet another tortuous encounter with Nevill Barth, the house English tutor, who keeps asking me out for coffee so we can talk about Hemingway and poststructuralist criticism over baba au rhum , undeterred by my chilly assurances that I have an antipathy for sweets. Next, executing a subtle pirouette around a little yapping cluster of Eurofags in their handsome black overcoats, I relinquish my tray, and finally stalk toward the exit. Bryan and Carlos are standing by the salad bar, laughing. As I pass by them Carlos calls out: “Hey, surfer girl!” I catch a glimpse of Bryan’s suddenly frigid face and I say “ Qué pasa , guys?” and keep moving.
    Nursing my shinsplints as I walk up the four flights to my room, I tally up the varying sensory offenses of six blaring stereos, one screaming match, two whiffs of pot, and the frenzied clatter of a popcorn-maker. At the door to C-45 I hear an electric typewriter and the Dazz Band. In the living room, Jessica is sitting perfectly straight over her typewriter, the stereo tuned to her favorite funk station.
    â€œHi, honey, I’m home.” I toss my books and jacket onto the couch. “What’s for dinner?”
    She doesn’t turn her head from the keyboard. “What’s another word for repressed ?”
    â€œSuppressed, restrained, constrained, inhibited.” I sprawl on the couch and pick up the Crimson . “Stifled, curbed, subdued. Why do you ask?”
    â€œGuess,” she says sourly.
    â€œYou’re doing the crossword puzzle?”
    â€œVery funny.” She taps a few keys and then sighs hugely. “Hey, d’you think I can get away with implying that Jane Austen was bisexual?”
    â€œWhy not? You live in Adams House.”
    â€œOh,