You Owe Me a Murder(13)
Tasha smiled at the rest of us. “Now, let’s get going.”
It felt as if it should have been the middle of the night, but, stepping outside into the parking lot and the warm sunshine, I was shocked to realize it was barely eleven in the morning. Tasha stashed our luggage in the back of the large van as though it were a giant Tetris puzzle, telling us to hold our carry-ons on our laps.
Tasha fired off details about the city as the van careened through the streets, narrowly missing pedestrians, other cars, and looming red double-decker buses. My eyes darted around, trying to take in everything at once, like a starving person at an all-you-can-eat buffet. At Metford, Tasha had taken charge at the front desk, filling in paperwork, collecting our passports, passing out keys to each of us, and pointing to the wall of cubbyholes on the back wall where we would be able to get mail or messages. I stood over my suitcase, swaying with exhaustion.
“Okay, people, listen up.” Tasha clapped her hands and a few people jolted back to wakefulness. “I know jet lag’s a bitch, but there’s only one way to get over it—?get on schedule.” She glanced at the ancient grandfather clock in the corner of the lobby. “It’s just after twelve now. I’m going to give you two hours to get settled, take a shower, and, if you feel like you must, lie down. There’s a communal bathroom on every floor. Girls on the odd floors, guys on the even. Your key has your room number on it. Get yourselves squared away and we’ll meet downstairs in the library at two for orientation. No excuses.” A few people groaned. Tasha shook her head. “C’mon, now. Stiff upper lip and all that. If you sleep now, you’ll be up all night. You’ll thank me later. Off you go.”
I’d napped for as long as possible, waking with only fifteen minutes to spare for a quick shower and to pull on clean clothes. I didn’t bother to put anything away in my room, not that there was a lot of space. In the brochure it had looked tiny, but in real life it was freakishly dollhouse small. Each room barely fit a desk under the narrow window against the far wall, a twin bed, and a row of hooks running the length of the room with a shelf above for all our clothing. There wasn’t even a closet. The floor was worn brown linoleum tiles. It looked like an attic that you’d find in a Charlotte Bront? novel, one where you kept a crazy relative. I couldn’t help but compare it to my room back home: my queen-size bed, an entire wall of bookcases, a giant bay window where I liked to sit and read, and a thick cream carpet that my mom had picked out stretching across the floor.
Somehow this space seemed to fit me better. It seemed to have potential, like a cocoon I could emerge from in a few weeks, different. Better.
My wet hair dripped down my neck as I stumbled down the stairs. In the library the rest of the group were wolfing down sandwiches from the buffet set up at the back. Connor glanced up as I came in and pulled Miriam closer to his side as if he thought I might try to wriggle between them. I turned coldly away. I surveyed the rest of our group and tried to remember what I could about them from the information session a few weeks ago.
Jazmin was the tall Indian girl. Her features were sharp and angular, as if they could cut someone, and her attitude matched. She struck me as someone who didn’t have a lot of patience for bullshit but had a huge capacity for sarcasm. Kendra was talking to her. Kendra looked like the before picture in every makeover story. Her eyebrows begged for the attention of tweezers and she had the misfortune of possessing a resting bitch face. Or she was terminally in a bad mood; that seemed possible too. The only thing I could remember about her was that she had a perfect grade point average. I knew that because she had told all of us a million times during the information session.
Jamal was constantly in motion, like a toddler with ADHD who had just consumed a bag of Sour Patch Kids. He was also tech obsessed. I suspected he wished for a Batman utility belt so he could keep his gadgets at the ready. As it was, he was weighed down with an Apple Watch, his iPad, a phone, a Fitbit, and a digital camera that looked capable of taking photos from the moon. At that moment I overheard him telling Sophie about the various apps he’d downloaded specifically for the trip and then alphabetized to be easily found.
I smiled shyly at Sophie and she waved back. She was covered by a layer of baby fat—?everything about her was round and soft. Someday she was going to take off her glasses and shake down her hair, and everyone would be shocked at how beautiful she really was. Until then, she dressed as if she were a forty-year-old suburban mom with an addiction to Lands’ End sensible clothing.
Just before I could walk over to her, the guy next to me held out a fork with a thin slice of disturbingly pink meat hanging off the end. I scrambled to remember his name, and then it came back to me: Alex.
“Any guesses what that is?” His nose wrinkled up at the end. He was thin and lanky, like a stick man made three-dimensional. His skin was a light brown, but his eyes were a bright clear blue.
“Um, some kind of olive loaf?” I suggested.
Alex continued to look at the meat uncertainly, his thick dark eyebrows meeting in the center of his forehead. “I’m not just picky, although I am. I’m also allergic.”
“I’ve never heard of an olive allergy,” I admitted.
He looked at me, surprised. “Oh, I’m not allergic to olives. Now, strawberries? Totally different thing. I swell up like a blowfish, get all blotchy.”
“Attractive.”