The Eliot Girls Read Online Free Page B

side farthest from the door. “I want this desk,” she said.
    Ruth crouched down beside her. “It’s yours.” She started to get up, then, but a thought dawned on her. “Want to engrave your initials?” She drew her new Montblanc ballpoint pen from her briefcase.
    Audrey shook her head, scandalized.
    â€œCome on, Auds. Show a little daring. You’re A.B. The first two letters of the alphabet. No one will ever guess.”
    Audrey laughed and took a step back, disowning participation, as Ruth applied the pen to the wood. The desks were antique, joined in a line of six, and they had recently received a shiny new coat of thick varnish. Ruth chipped at the wood, barely managing to draw a short diagonal line, before measured footsteps sounded in the hallway.
    As students now dashed this way and that, Audrey considered how sure she had been, so many years ago, that she would fit in here. She had been destined an Eliot girl well before becoming an Eliot girl. Now life was going on everywhere around her, but she was shut out of it. She could locate no entry point, and although she had never been more anonymous, she had never felt more conspicuous. Every glance felt like an attack.
    Audrey forced herself to keep moving, to seem to have a purpose. On the second floor, she headed for the bathroom and found it empty. Facing her reflection in the long wall of mirrors, she closed her eyes and opened them again. She had imagined herself disappearing into the crowd, but it was becoming obvious that even the coveted uniform couldn’t stimulate such a swift and sly metamorphosis. The clinical brightness of the bathroom did no kindness to her face. Her eyes were shadowed and bloodshot from nights of fitful sleep, her wavy hair was frizzy, her cheeks were still flushed from the walk. Anxiety had fixed her in a state of permanent, wide-eyed vacancy, as though she spent her life on the brink of unwanted revelations, perpetual astonishment her only mode.
    Audrey blinked at the strange girl staring back at her. In the past month, she had grown somewhat used to looking in the mirror and failing to recognize herself. In August, vexed by every facet of her appearance, she had cut her hair. Although Audrey was forever being told she resembled her father, her long, unruly hair had been one attribute she shared with her mother, and chopping it off had been just one in a series of attempts to differentiate herself from Ruth. The change had been meant to help her grasp some new, defining image, but all it had accomplished was to make her feel more alien in her skin. She thought that feeling less like herself would help set the tone for this new chapter in her life; it would catapult her into the role she was preparing to play. But she missed being able to hide behind the plenty of her old hair. Too much was her face now laid bare. Her features, she was sure, took up an excess of space against too pale a backdrop: her olive eyes overly large, her lips inelegantly full.
    She was still frowning at her reflection when the door swung open and two girls burst into the room, shattering its hermetic serenity. One girl doubled over, laughing noiselessly with her mouth wide open, while the other was alternately seized by laughter and hyperventilation. They opened the door again and the taller girl threw what looked like a mashed orange wedge down the hall.
    â€œOh, you are in some deep, deep merde ! I almost pity you. I really do!” she yelled, still barely able to hold herself up under the force of her paroxysmal laughter. The orange was whipped back at her; she grabbed it and reared back like a professional pitcher and returned it down the hall.
    Again the orange was hurled back by a distantly cackling phantom, and again it fell with a damp thud at the yeller’s feet. This time, she stepped gingerly over it and let the bathroom door swing shut behind her.
    The two girls turned at once to Audrey in the spirit of