Boundless (Unearthly, #3)(4)

“Well, you are a total slacker,” Angela points out.

“So true.”

“What about your roommate?” Christian asks Angela. Poor defenseless thing, he adds silently, which makes me snicker.

“I have two roommates—lucky, lucky me,” says Angela. “They’re total blondes.”

“Hey!” I object to her tone on the subject of blondes.

“And they’re complete fuzzies. One’s a communications major—whatever that means—and one is undecided.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being undecided.” I glance at Christian, a tad embarrassed about my undecidedness.

“I’m undecided,” he says. Angela and I stare at him, shocked. “What, I can’t be undecided?”

“I assumed you’d be a business major,” Angela says.

“Why?”

“Because you look really stellar in a suit and tie,” she says with false sweetness. “You’re pretty. You should play to your strengths.”

He refuses to rise to the bait. “Business is Walter’s thing. Not mine.”

“So what is your thing?” Angela asks.

“Like I said, I haven’t decided.” He gazes at me intently, the gold flecks in his green eyes catching the light, and I feel heat move into my cheeks.

“Where is Walter, anyway?” I ask to change the subject.

“With Billy.” He turns and points at the designated parent section of the quad, where, sure enough, Walter and Billy look like they’re deep in conversation.

“They’re a cute couple,” I say, watching Billy as she laughs and puts her hand on Walter’s arm. “Of course I was surprised when Billy called me this summer to tell me that she and Walter were getting married. I did not see that coming.”

“Wait, Billy and Walter are getting married?” Angela exclaims. “When?”

“They got married,” Christian clarifies. “July. At the meadow. It was pretty sudden.”

“I didn’t even know they liked each other,” I say before Angela can deliver the joke I know she’s cooking up about how Christian and I are now some kind of weird brother and sister, since his legal guardian has married my legal guardian.

“Oh, they like each other,” Christian says. “They’re trying to be discreet, for my sake, I guess. But Walter can’t stop thinking about her. Loudly. And in various states of undress, if you know what I mean.”

“Ugh. Don’t tell me. I’m going to have to scrub my brain with the little bit I saw in her head this week. Is there a bearskin rug at your house?”

“I think you just ruined my living room for me,” he says with a groan, but he doesn’t mean it. He’s happy about the Billy-Walter situation. He thinks it’s good for Walter. Keeps his mind off things.

What things? I ask.

Later, he says. I’ll tell you all about it. Later.

Angela lets out an exasperated sigh. “Oh my God, you guys. You are totally doing it again.”

After the orientation speeches, them telling us how proud we should be of ourselves, what high hopes they have for our futures, the amazing opportunities we’ll have while we’re at “the Farm,” as they call Stanford, we’re all supposed to head back to our dorms and get acquainted with one another.

This is the point when they tell the parents to go home.

Angela’s mom, Anna, who’s been her intensely quiet self, sitting in the backseat of my car reading her Bible for the entire thousand-mile trip, suddenly bursts into tears. Angela is mortified, red-cheeked as she escorts her sobbing mother out to the parking lot, but I think it’s nice. I wish my mom were here to cry over me.

Billy gives me another one of those encouraging shoulder squeezes. “Knock ’em dead, kid,” she says simply, and then she’s gone, too.

I pick a comfy sofa in the lounge and pretend to study the patterns on the carpet while the rest of the students are saying their own tearful good-byes. After a while a guy with short, dyed-blond hair comes in and sits across from me, sets a hefty stack of folders on the coffee table. He smiles, reaches out to shake my hand. “I’m Pierce.”

“Clara Gardner.”

He nods. “I think I’ve seen your name on a couple of lists. You’re in B wing, right?”

“Third floor.”

“I’m the fee here in Roble,” he says.

I stare at him blankly.

“P-H-E,” he explains. “It stands for peer health educator. Kind of like the doctor of the dorm. I’m where you go for a Band-Aid.”

“Oh, right.”

He’s looking at my face in a way that makes me wonder if I have food on it.

“What? Do I have the words clueless freshman tattooed across my forehead?” I ask.

He smiles, shakes his head. “You don’t look scared.”

“Excuse me?”

“Freshmen usually seem pretty terrified, first week on campus. They wander around like lost little puppies. Not you, though. You look like you’ve got things all under control.”

“Oh. Thanks,” I say. “But I hate to tell you, it’s an act. Inside I’m a nervous wreck.”

I’m not, actually. I guess next to fallen angels, funerals, and forest fires, Stanford feels like a pretty safe place. Everything’s familiar here: the California smells of exhaust and eucalyptus trees and carefully landscaped roses in the air, palm trees, the Caltrain noise in the distance, the same old varieties of plants that I grew up with outside the windows.