Lakewood(9)

“Those fuckers didn’t use enough vocabulary in discussion. All they ever say they do is video games. And if not video games, they say boku wa anime o mite. Anime o mite. Fuck.”

“Have you slept?”

Tanya shook her head and turned away from Lena as if she might start crying. Lena knew if Tanya wasn’t so stressed out, she would have noticed how relieved Lena looked. She probably also would have asked a bunch of questions, picked and pulled at Lena’s story.

“Let’s have dinner,” Lena offered. “I’ll speak in English and you can only respond to me in Japanese.”

“Fine. But you have to speak to me like I’m a very dumb second grader, okay?”

“If you do a good job, maybe you can have some ice cream.”

Orientation was at a facility 40 miles west of the college. In her car, Lena searched the address on her phone’s GPS app, but all it found was a home address a mile down the road. The street view showed a pasture that housed what looked like yaks, their fur brown and shaggy, all permanently bent over to eat long blades of grass. She shrugged. There was nothing to do now but trust they hadn’t given her the wrong address.

She turned off the interstate onto a long gravel road. There were no houses for miles. Horses grazing. What would be cornfields in only a few months’ time. She rolled down her window despite the morning chill and listened. Gravel spit off her car’s chassis, some cows and birds called greetings to one another. Please let everything go well today, Lena wished upon each animal call. She rolled up her window again when the air became manure-rank.

At the address they’d given Lena was a place she could have driven past easily and assumed that it was an unusually placed high school. It was a large, brick building with three levels. A high wooden fence surrounded it. Parts near the building’s entrance looked as if they could use some care. Across the street was a gravel parking lot, part of it still a big puddle from yesterday’s rain. All five cars were black, and parked meticulously with the same distance, about two feet, between them. Lena’s heart was beating fast. She told herself it was because she’d had too much coffee. When she pulled her suitcase behind her, its wheels kicked up some mud onto the back of her pants. Lena sighed, picked it up, and lugged it across the street.

An animal cried, raucous like a dropped violin.

As Lena pushed open the front door, she made sure to smile, assuming someone would be waiting for her. No people, just a coatrack and two signs. The first one asked her to please leave her suitcase, cell phone, and coat here. The other was a sign that read ORIENTATION with an arrow pointing left. Her loafers were wet, which felt like another sign that everything was going to go poorly. Other than some mud from her shoes, the entrance floor looked freshly waxed, the walls smudge-free and bright white. Lena texted her mom one last time, promised to call her tonight, then slipped her phone in her coat pocket. She left everything as they requested and walked down the hall.

Her shoes squeaked, each step sounded like a surprise fart. It was embarrassing and funny. Lena told herself what she always did in these situations: you hate it now, but in a few weeks, you’ll find it hilarious when you’re telling Tanya or Deziree. She paused. There was no one she could tell about this without lying.

A whiteboard with WELCOME TO ORIENTATION! written in bubble letters was next to the only open door.

Inside, there were two white men and a white woman sitting at a long table. The woman made eye contact, smiled, and mouthed, “Welcome.” Lena squared her shoulders and went in. She scanned the room and noticed a sign with her full name—LENA ANTONIA JOHNSON—by a small round table in front. She said Hi and put her bag on the table. No one responded. There were no spots for other participants. Next to the door was a table with a box of bagels and a stack of small paper plates. She couldn’t tell if they were purposefully ignoring her or if her voice had come out too small. A video projector was sticking out of the ceiling. A cup of coffee was waiting at the table marked for her.

“Oh, hi,” one of the men said. He stood up from the table and walked over. “I’m Tim, and we are just so, so excited to meet you.”

His hand was large and moist, and it clasped hers as if he thought handshakes were a competition.

“Nice to meet you,” she said. It came out like a question.

“You’ve gotta be starving. Eat. Eat.” Tim waved her over to the table. She wasn’t hungry but took a bagel anyway. Her back was to the people at the table, who were silent. It felt as if they were all staring. Lena resisted the impulse to turn and see if they were. She grabbed a container of cream cheese, some jam. This was fine. On the way back to her seat, they were all looking at papers in front of them. But all three of their motions were exaggerated: The man who hadn’t spoken yet made a deep, attention-grabbing hmmmm, the woman rifled through hers as if looking for a specific line, and Tim stared at his own papers as if he was trying to solve a puzzle.

Lena sat down and took a big bite of the bagel. As she chewed, the woman came over and tapped her shoulder.

“Did you turn in your cell phone?”

Lena covered her mouth. “Yes.”

“I’m sorry, but I still need to do this. Please stand.”

The woman patted Lena down. She was saying things about confidentiality and safety, but Lena couldn’t focus on the woman’s words. She was thinking about the woman’s fingers, the palms of her hands, and why she thought that Lena would stow her phone in her butt, in her hair, in her vagina. The men didn’t look away when Lena made eye contact with them. The woman pressed in on Lena’s stomach and between her breasts.