Principles of Love Read Online Free

my dad’s attempt at getting me a new friend.
    I let her in while I’m washing my face. Dressed in low-slung khakis, tiny tee-shirt and flip-flops, Cordelia’s the essence of preppy casual.
    “I’ve been here forever,” she says. “Born here — not in this room, but down the street. Never lived anywhere else but campus.” She looks at me. “Not that I’m going to name my first kid Hadley Hall or something, but I do like it here.”
    I nod, rummaging through my as-yet-unpacked bags for a clean shirt.
    “Dress sexy,” Cordelia puts on a voice, “Today’s the Welcome Picnic after all. I’m totally kidding, of course. No one gives a shit how you dress — that’s the plus side of boarding life.” I layer a tee-shirt over my tank top and then strip it off, grabbing a faded blue zip-up sweatshirt instead.
    “All set?” I say, hinting we should leave my room though I have no idea where we’ll go.
    Cordelia stands up and stretches, eyeing my sweatshirt. “Ooh looks like a cast-off. Do tell.” I stare at her. “Cast-off, you know as in used to be your boyfriend’s clothing but now yours.”
    We walk through the living room and the kitchen, and I peer into my dad’s empty study. On his desk, papers are already heaped into mini-skyscraper towers, folders piled up, and the photograph of me as a sticky-faced kid holding a lollypop graces the middle of the mess.
    “Yes,” I say to Cordelia once we’re outside. “This is a cast-off.” I tie the shirt around my waist and explain the bland nature of my freshman year unromance with Paul Paulson.
    “What were his parents thinking?” she asks when she hears his name. “I mean vulgar poets like Bukowski and clichéd Shakepearean fodder not included, don’t they know they were dooming him?”
    “I know — it’s worse — just like his name, everything about him was the same. Day in, day out. He called every night at seven exactly, sent me notes twice a week, emailed and IM’d on Wednesdays and Fridays.”
    “Jesus, were you dating or playing secretary?” Cordelia leads us down the back trail through the shady woods in back of the gym. “Boring.”
    He was so boring that once when we were kissing, I thought of all the synonyms for boring: uninteresting, tedious, dull, lackluster, dreary, mind-numbing, monotonous, humdrum, uninspiring. Not words I’d like to associate with romantic aspirations of lust, love, desire, flirtation, or connection.
    The smallest girls’ dorm, Fruckner (common campus slang according to Cordelia=frucked her. Commonly accepted question “did you two fruck?”), sits perched on the edge of campus. Cordelia brings me inside and I meet a gaggle of girls readying for the picnic. Without make-up and in old jeans, comfy sweaters, and mere slicks of lip gloss, they all look beautiful, and I wonder if I stick out. Maybe a bit. Maybe it’s just in my psyche. I need a sign to warn visitors or just myself, beware of own brain .
    One girl, Sienna, marks something in her magazine and Jessica speaks up, “I’d go with answer B — definitely.”
    “Me, too,” says another.
    I look to see what they’re doing — it’s a glossy magazine quiz titled “ Are you happy? ” And I can’t help but feel that if you need to take a test to find out, you probably aren’t.
    “We’ll see you guys later!” Cordelia says. I smile and nod, following her outside and back onto the dorm path that connects one side of campus to the other. We walk in silence for a while and Cordelia says, “There are lots of different types of people here, Love — some brains, some Lip Glossers, some alternas, some preppy kids who are the fifth Hadley Hall generation — but the boundary lines are blurry.”
    I wait for her to say more. She doesn’t. She’s given me some basics, I guess, and I have to fill in the blanks.
    I stop to tie my sneaker. Through a clearing in the brush, I can see Whitcomb, one of the boys’ dorms. I haven’t had a chance yet to commit to