It also seems to make the competitors even more nervous.
There’s an elaborate sound and light system set up over by the salad bar, and all sorts of students are milling around, chatting and noshing on free soda and chips. I look for couples, trying to single out any boys and girls in close conversation, thinking that if Mark or Todd is going to strike again, there is a bevy of fresh women here for him to choose from.
But all I see are groups of kids, boys and girls, white, African American, Asian, you name it, in baggy jeans and T-shirts, screaming happily at one another, and tossing back Doritos.
Mmmm. Doritos.
Sarah, seated next to Jordan, can’t take her eyes off him. She keeps asking him searching questions about the music industry, the same ones she’d asked me when she’d first met me. Like, had he felt like a sellout when he’d done that Pepsi ad? And hadn’t he felt that performing at the Super Bowl halftime show had been degrading to his calling as a musician? And what about that calling? Did it bother him that he knew how to sing, but not how to play a single instrument? Didn’t that, in a way, mean that he wasn’t a musician at all, but merely a mouthpiece through which Cartwright Records could deliver their message of corporate greed?
By the time the lights go down, and the hall president, Greg, gets up to welcome everyone, I’m feeling a little sorry for Jordan.
Then the first act comes on, a trio of girls lip-synching Christina’s latest, with choreography and everything. With the lights down, I’m able to scan the audience without looking too obvious.
There are a lot of students there. Nearly every seat is filled, and the cafeteria can hold four hundred. Plus there are people lining the back of the room, hooting and applauding and, in general, acting like eighteen-year- olds away from home for the first time. Beside me, Jordan is staring at the Christina wannabes, his clipboard clutched tightly in his hands. For someone who’s been shanghaied into the job, he seems to be taking it way seriously.
Or maybe he’s only acting interested in order to keep Sarah from asking him any more questions.
The first act comes to a hip-grinding stop, and a quartet of boys leaps into the spotlight. Heavy bass begins to shake the cafeteria walls—they’re performing “Bye Bye Bye” by ’N Sync—and I feel pity for Fischer Hall’s neighbors, one of which is an Episcopalian church.
The boys throw themselves into their act. They have the choreography down pat—so much so I practically wet my pants, I’m laughing so hard.
I notice Jordan isn’t laughing at all. He doesn’t seem to understand that the boys are making fun of boy bands. He is carefully scoring them on originality and how well they know the lyrics.
Seriously.
Glancing over my clipboard as I score the boys’ act—I give them mostly fives out of ten, since they don’t have costumes—I notice a tall man wander into the dining hall, his hands buried deep in the pockets of his khakis.
At first I think it’s President Allington. But the president never wears khakis, preferring, as I think I’ve mentioned before, white Dockers. The newcomer is entirely too well-dressed to be the school’s president.
When he moves into a shaft of light that spills from the Coke machine, however, I realize that it’s Christopher Allington, the president’s son. So my confusion is understandable.
It isn’t unusual for Christopher to drop by. I mean, even though he has his own place at the law school dorm, his parents do live upstairs. He’d probably come over to visit them, then stopped in the café to see what all the noise was about.
But when he moves toward a group of students leaning against a far wall and begins chatting casually to them, I start to wonder. What is Christopher doing here, exactly? He’s a law student, not an undergrad.
Pete had told me that when the Allingtons first arrived from the college somewhere in Indiana where President Allington had worked before, there’d been a big hush-up over the fact that Christopher hadn’t scored high enough on his LSATs to get into New York College. Apparently his father had pulled some major strings, and gotten him in anyway.
But then, with an alcoholic mother and a father who wears tank tops in public, the poor kid probably doesn’t have much in the way of gifts from the Allington gene pool anyway, and needed the extra help.
’N Sync pounds to a finish, and then an Elvis impersonator gives it a go. During his rendition of “Viva Las Vegas,” for want of anything better to do, I watch Christopher Allington mingle. He works his way through the crowd until he’s settled himself in a chair behind a whole row of girls. They’re all freshmen—you can tell by their giggly awkwardness. They aren’t quite in the New York College groove yet, as their unpierced faces and undyed hair and Gap clothing prove. One of them, a bit more sophisticated than the rest, turns in her seat and begins talking to Christopher, who leans forward to hear her better. The girl sitting next to her resolutely refuses to join in the conversation, keeping her face forward.
But you can tell she’s eavesdropping like anything.
Elvis finishes to respectable applause, and then Marnie Villa Delgado—yes, Elizabeth Kellogg’s roommate— takes the stage. Everyone gives her an extra hand. I try not to let myself think that the ovation is for having scored herself a single room for the rest of the semester.
Marnie, wearing a long blond wig and a pair of low-ride jeans, bows politely. Then she launches into a song that sounds vaguely familiar. I can’t place it, at first. All I know is that it’s a song I don’t like very much…
And then it hits me. “Sugar Rush.” Marnie is giving her all to the song that had made mine a household name… thirteen years ago. And only if that household contained a pre-adolescent girl.
Jordan, beside me, guffaws. Some of the students who know about my past laugh along with him. Marnie herself even gives me a sly look while she mouths the line, “Don’t tell me stay on my diet/You have simply got to try it.”
I smile and try not to look as uncomfortable as I feel. It helps to look back at Christopher, instead. He’s still chatting up the girls in the row ahead of him. He has finally attracted the attention of the shy girl, who, while not pretty, has a more interesting face than her more vivacious companion. She has turned in her seat and is timidly smiling at Christopher, hugging her knees to her chest and pushing back wayward tendrils of reddish hair.
Up front, Marnie is tossing her blond wig—not to mention her hips—around in a manner that the crowd seems to find hilarious, and which I can only hope is not supposed to be an accurate imitation of me.
And that’s when it hits me—out of the blue—that Christopher Allington could be Mark.
Or Todd.
15
You’re a tornado
Blowing through my heart
You’re a tornado
Can’t finish what you start
You wreck everything
In your path
Think you’ll have
The very last laugh
You’re a tornado
And you’re blowing
Me Away
“Tornado”
Performed by Heather Wells
Composed by Dietz/Ryder
From the album Staking Out Your Heart
Cartwright Records
