isn’t it? The perfect combination of man and nature.”
Yes, Michael thought, a perfect combination.
Just as they were about to enter St. Peter’s Dormitory, Michael noticed a group of boys in the distance in a rush, either coming or going to a class. He felt a familiar tingle in his stomach as he watched them race by, their white long-sleeved shirts turned up at the sleeves, pieces of cloth untucked from their navy blue pants, their gold and navy blue ties flying in the wind. And their hair, soft, unruly, free. He forced himself to glance away from them and saw that Mr. Hawksbury was staring at him.
“Don’t worry. Your father ordered you several uniforms. They should be hanging in your closet.”
When he walked into the dormitory, Michael felt a bit of melancholy waft over him. It was just as beautiful as it was on the outside and he was so grateful that he was in this building and not at Two W, but the only reason he was here was because his mother killed herself. Why was she so desperate? Why was she so afraid to live? His eyes burned a bit and he blinked away the tears. No, not here, not ever again, because tears weren’t going to change anything.
“This is your room.” They were on the second floor in front of a door just off the stairs. Before Mr. Hawksbry could knock, the door opened and standing there was a boy roughly Michael’s age wearing a neater version of the school uniform. “Ciaran Eaves,” the headmaster said, “may I introduce you to your new dorm mate, Michael Howard, from America.”
“Welcome to the Double A, mate,” Ciaran said, extending his hand.
“Thank you.” Michael grabbed his hand and was grateful that the tingling in his stomach didn’t return. He was also hopeful that the only thing the Double A had in common with the Two W was a similar abbreviation.
The headmaster did a quick survey of the room to ensure that Michael’s bags had been delivered and his uniforms were indeed hanging in his closet. Once satisfied, he took two pieces of paper out of his jacket pocket, giving one to each boy. “Michael, this is your class schedule. Today, Ciaran will show you around, but tomorrow you’ll be on your own. Most of our professors detest tardiness. It might be in your best interest to draw a map so you don’t get lost on your first day.” Michael could tell this was the headmaster’s attempt at a joke, but he felt the slow coil of terror rise from the pit of his stomach. After Mr. Hawksbry left and the boys were alone, the feeling remained.
Happily, Michael noted this feeling was different from the other rumbling. Standing here alone with Ciaran, it was not curiosity and desire that were awakening deep within him, but rather, unfortunately, fear. It was as if one of the stones from the building had just fallen onto his skull. I’m in a new school, in a foreign country that I haven’t been in since I was a toddler, sharing a room with a complete stranger, Michael reminded himself. This is absolutely nerve-racking. Luckily, Ciaran was a calming presence.
Although they were the same age, Ciaran carried himself with more maturity than Michael. Not only did he look like the tall, lean English lad who populates a Jane Austen novel, he sounded like one too; his accent was clipped but his tone friendly. Even the pronunciation of his name, Keer-in, accent on the first syllable, sounded as if it came from the pages of a nineteenth-century story. He simply evoked the reserve of a young man who had spent his life in a boarding school where etiquette and poise were held in high regard. “Nebraska must suddenly seem very far away,” Ciaran remarked.
Michael looked confused. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.” And suddenly the fear was gone and they were just two boys laughing instead of strangers forced to share the same room.
“This is where I spend most of my time.” Ciaran pointed to St. Albert’s Library for math and science. “I’m on the premed track, at least for now.”
“You’ve already decided that you want to be a doctor?” Michael remarked. “Impressive.”
Ciaran wished everyone shared his supportive point of view. “My mum calls it narrow-minded. She’d prefer I follow in her footsteps and become a barrister.” Ciaran shrugged. “Who knows?”
“I think it’s good that you have direction; you have a head start over most of us,” Michael said, knowing he wasn’t sure what career path he wanted to follow. “Have you decided on what kind of doctor you’d like to be?”
A red robin flew by them, chirping loudly. “Hematologist,” Ciaran said.
“What’s that?” Michael replied.
“Blood disorders.”
“Really? That’s specific.”
“Hence the reason my mum thinks I’m narrow-minded.”
Ciaran must have heard something in Michael’s silence. “I’m sorry, mate. Here I am prattling on about my mum and, well …”
“That’s okay,” Michael assured him and it really was. He wasn’t silent because he was thinking of his mother again; he was silent because he was thinking that in a few short months these grounds were going to be familiar to him. These buildings, his schedule, the bends in the grass, soon they would all be his routine.
Glancing at Michael’s class schedule, Ciaran led them to St. Joshua’s Library, which housed the liberal arts collection. “St. Joshua is the patron saint of literature and reading. Looks like you’ll be spending a great deal of time in here.” The building looked just the same as all the others with the exception that it was lined in white roses. Flowers of all kinds grew near the other buildings, but none of them seemed to be growing as deliberately as these, in such formal rows. “No one can really figure it out,” Ciaran offered. “They pop up every year, from what we’re told. Quite beautiful actually. They go untouched except for the night of the annual Archangel Festival when some of the blokes pluck them to use as a cheap corsage.”
Ciaran explained that the Archangel Festival takes place in early November to celebrate Archangel Day and is one of the few times that Double A and St. Anne’s officially commingle. “St. Anne’s is the girls school in a gated community on the other side of the campus,” Ciaran said, bending down to more closely inspect one of the roses. “You know, if you go for that sort of thing.”
Did Michael hear that right? If you go for that sort of thing? He was pretty sure he was referring to girls and not gated communities, but not sure enough of himself to ask for clarification. Instead, he made a mental note: He and Ciaran may have different intellectual pursuits, but they might have other interests in common after all.
At dinner that night in the main dining room of St. Martha’s, one of the two common halls where students from all the dorms could meet, he discovered he had practically nothing in common with Fritz Ulrich. Fritz was one of Ciaran’s friends who lived down the hall from him in St. Peter’s. Fritz was exotic-looking, the result of a mixed heritage. His father was German, but his mother was from Ethiopia, which meant he was very tall and muscular with fine, dark brown hair, skin the color of espresso, and eyes the color of light russet. He was loud, opinionated, and pompous, everything Michael was not. He also found Americans very boring. “So do I,” Michael said nervously. While his comment made Ciaran and Penry Poltke, Fritz’s dorm mate, laugh, it failed to amuse Fritz.
“And that,” Fritz declared, “is a perfect example of why.”
After Fritz left the table to join a crowd of boys who were equally as loud as he was, Penry, a genial, redheaded kid from Wales, informed Michael, “Don’t worry ’bout Fritz none. He looks bloody dangerous, but he’s harmless.” That comment stayed with Michael while he and Ciaran were walking back to St. Peter’s, not because it made Michael think of Fritz, but because it made him think of his mother. In her letter she told him that things aren’t always as they seem. And neither are people.
At the entrance to their dorm, Michael told Ciaran, “I think I’m going to do a walk-through of my classes before I turn in.”
“Good idea. If you’re not back in an hour I’ll send out the cavalry. “
There were only a few exterior lights sprinkled throughout the campus, but there was a full moon, so there was enough moonlight to help Michael navigate the unfamiliar territory. Just as he was at the halfway point of his run-through, his father called.
“Hello!”
Vaughan was calling from his factory in Istanbul, the larger of his two factories in Turkey, so the cell phone reception was patchy at best. “Hullo, Michael, how was your day?”
“Good,” Michael said, then realized that he should elaborate. He brought his father up to date and said he was looking forward to his first full day of classes tomorrow.
“That’s my boy! I knew you wouldn’t mind going directly to school,” Vaughan shouted, but the rest was indecipherable. Michael wasn’t sure if his father could hear him, but he shouted “thank you” into the phone and he meant it. After he lost the connection, Michael realized that this was probably the longest conversation he had ever
