These Girls Read online

  Renee glanced at her watch and decided she had just enough time to run to the bathroom, then fill up her coffee mug in the kitchen. She wouldn’t be able to leave her desk for even a moment once the clock struck eleven. At least she’d brought in lunch today so she could eat at her desk, although a tuna salad with low-fat mayo and a Baggie of baby carrots hardly seemed like a consolation prize.

  As she hurried down the hallway, a tantalizing smell filled the air, and she inhaled deeply. The food editor must be cooking again. They were planning the February issue, which meant Valentine’s Day, which meant her kryptonite: chocolate. It seemed designed specifically to erode Renee’s willpower, and now she’d be chained to her desk for hours while the aroma assaulted her. Why, oh why was it all so complicated? She knew what she needed to do to lose weight: eat less and exercise more. And yet she couldn’t. She couldn’t seem to do it.

  It wasn’t possible.

  Brian Anthony, one of the guys from her college dorm, was walking down the street directly toward her. Cate’s breath caught in her throat. Was it actually him? She recognized the big, beaked nose, the shock of brown hair that fell over his forehead and into his eyes. He came closer, and she ducked her head. If only she’d worn sunglasses today, or a hat . . . She wanted to spin around, but she knew the movement could attract his attention. She was powerless to do anything but walk directly toward one of the last people in the world she wanted to encounter. Don’t let him see me, she prayed.

  She knew the odds existed that she’d bump into someone from college. It was surprising it hadn’t happened before now. So many people moved to New York, and even in a city this huge, she seemed to run into people from her past with surprising regularity. Just last month, as she stepped off the subway, she’d realized an old high school classmate had been standing a few feet behind her during the entire ride. Cate had just managed to get in a shouted hello before the doors shut.

  But she didn’t have anything to hide from her high school days. She’d played the flute, gotten mostly As sprinkled with a few Bs, written articles for the school paper on the new salad bar in the cafeteria and the bake sale to benefit the local animal shelter.

  Breathe, she reminded herself now. Keep walking. No sudden movements. Avert your eyes.

  Where were the crowds that Manhattan prided itself on? She needed someone to duck behind for camouflage, but this stretch of sidewalk was nearly empty.

  Cate had always known her most deeply held secret could ensnare her at any time—had expected it to trap her. One of the staff writers at Gloss was an Ohio State alum—fortunately, she’d graduated a decade before Cate had attended—and every time the colleague said something like “Go, Buckeyes! Did you see the game yesterday?” Cate cringed, wondering if her face revealed her turbulent emotions.

  Would today be the day? Cate wondered. Would everyone finally learn that she’d never finished college—that she’d slunk away, weighted down by gossip and disgrace?

  It had started with a book about murder. Cate was visiting her psychology professor during his office hours. The door was shut, and they were alone in the little space he shared with another teacher. There had never been a hint of anything improper between her and Professor Jones. He was a thin, gangly guy, in his early thirties, with a little cowlick near his part and hazel eyes that darkened whenever he spoke enthusiastically, which he did quite a bit. He loved teaching, and he was good at it.

  As they talked about the research paper she needed to turn in—she was having trouble pinpointing a topic—her eyes wandered over his bookshelf, and there, tucked in among the thick, imposing psychology journals, like a daisy in a field of dried-out grass, was a title she recognized: In Cold Blood. Professor Jones turned to see what she was looking at.

  “You like Truman Capote?” he asked.

  “I haven’t read all of his books, but this one . . .” Cate shook her head. “It’s magical. I mean, the true story behind it is awful, but the way Capote reconstructed the murder of that family and everything that happened afterward . . . It read like a novel; I couldn’t put it down. I’ve always wondered how he did it.”

  Professor Jones leaned back in his chair, lacing his fingers behind his head, and she noticed he had a little-boy quality about him. His elbows and knees were bony, and in his old jeans and Ohio sweatshirt, he looked a decade younger than his actual age. He could’ve been a grad student, except, of course, that he wasn’t.

  “One of the murderers had an incredible memory. He could recite whole conversations. He remembered details that anyone else would have overlooked. The guy’s IQ must’ve been through the roof.”

  Cate nodded. “If he was such a smart guy, he must have had choices . . . So why did he do it?”

  Professor Jones smiled then—a wide, open smile—and leaned forward. “You could write about it,” he said. “There’s the subject of your paper.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Why not? The whole point of learning is to make it enjoyable. Take on a subject you feel passionate about. Make it come alive for me in your paper. Tell the story of how and why this man became one of the most famous murderers of all time.”

  “I’d love that,” Cate said.

  “Then my work here is done,” Professor Jones said, grinning at her again.

  He had perfectly straight teeth and a smattering of freckles across his nose. Her eyes flitted, almost against her will, to his ring finger. It was bare.

  Cate hadn’t dated much in college. She’d always felt older than her years, and beer bongs and smoky parties and crowded football games held no appeal. She longed for a glass of good wine and a real conversation, not a guy who’d take her to the movies and try to cop a feel before the opening credits finished rolling. Still, she’d felt like she was missing out on some level. She watched her roommates head off to fraternity formals and come home with smudged lipstick and tequila on their breath and she’d wonder what was wrong with her, and why she couldn’t find a guy she truly liked. Once she’d even assessed her roommate Chandra, a woman with golden brown skin and the lithe body of a dancer, wondering if she could be gay. Chandra was sliding off her Levi’s, and Cate’s eyes skimmed down her perfect legs. Nope, she’d decided quickly, feeling embarrassed as Chandra turned to meet her gaze with a questioning look. Not gay. Just . . . not interested.

  “I think you’ll learn he had some childhood traits that are linked to murderers,” Professor Jones was saying. “He was a bed wetter. And his family—Well, I don’t want to tell you too much. I want you to learn about him for yourself.”

  “I can’t wait,” Cate blurted out the words.

  “Here, borrow this,” Professor Jones said, reaching up for his well-worn copy of the book.

  She looked down at it in her hands, suddenly feeling shy, as if he had given her something far more intimate than a book. “Thanks.”

  She got up to leave, and, as she opened the door, he called her name. She turned back to look at him, and he was smiling again.

  “It’s one of my favorite books, too.”

  Nothing happened between them for weeks. It was her senior year, and nostalgia combined with eagerness seemed to suffuse the campus. Cate’s friends were simultaneously trying to hold on to the last, golden days of college and peering into the future with equal parts fear and anticipation of what it might hold. They were making plans to move to new cities, typing up résumés, partying louder and harder, and letting study habits slip, squeezing every last bit out of college . . .

  Yet for Cate, time seemed to stand languidly, shimmeringly still. She had class with Professor Jones—Timothy—on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings at ten, and those were the only times she felt truly alive. She existed in a dreamy state, where days slipped by like beads on a string, and she often sat on her bed, staring at the sky as it turned from blue to gray to black. But in the auditorium-style lecture hall, she was electrified as she watched Timothy, wondering what it would feel like to kiss him. She got to his classes earl
y and sat in the center of the third row, hoping his eyes would naturally land upon her while he talked. She bought a new lip gloss in a shade of cinnamon and blew-dry her hair every morning. Her body felt hot, even though the winter hadn’t fully released its grasp on Ohio and the days were chilly, and she couldn’t bear to put on a coat.

  Timothy had been the one to teach her that people could feel a stare, sometimes even when someone was looking at the backs of their heads. “It’s a gift from our ancestors from long ago,” he’d told the class. “Back when we were prey. Sensing a creature watching you could mean the difference between life and death.”

  Could he feel her watching him? She literally couldn’t take her eyes off of him.

  When Professor Jones finally kissed her, it took her by surprise for only a second, and then she realized she’d known where this had been heading from the moment he put his beloved book into her hands.

  “I shouldn’t be doing this,” he’d groaned as he pressed her up against the wall of his office. He’d locked the door, but his office mate could come back with her key at any moment. Cate unbuttoned his shirt, desperate to finally feel his skin against hers. “You’re a student—” he’d started to say, but Cate had cut him off by slipping her tongue into his mouth. Her own eagerness had surprised her; before, boys had pursued her while she walked coolly away, but now she was the aggressor, the one who slipped off her skirt and sat back on his desk and spread apart her legs.

  “Come here,” she’d said in a voice huskier than usual, and Timothy had shut his eyes tight and moved his lips—she didn’t hear the word he muttered and it was forever lost in the space between them—before obeying.

  What none of the college boys had delivered, what she’d looked for in her roommate and at crowded frat parties, she found on that wooden desk littered with term papers and pencils. She lost her virginity to Professor Jones in the same space where he graded her exams, and when he realized it, there’d been tears in his eyes.

  “It’s okay,” she’d said, cradling his cheeks in her hands. Tenderness had swept through her as she comforted him.

  “Cate,” he’d murmured, making her name sound like a prayer. She’d never felt such pure happiness.

  She couldn’t get enough of him. It was as though she’d hoarded all the lust and yearning she’d seen other girls freely exhibit, and now, with Timothy’s kiss, it had exploded. She snuck over to his apartment late at night, wearing nothing underneath a raincoat, like the call girl in a movie she’d once watched. She paced the hallway outside his office, waiting for other students to leave so she could slip inside and lean against his desk again. She was drunk on—on what? Some heady combination of lust and obsession that felt dangerously like love.

  They snuck out to dinners together, driving in Timothy’s old red VW Bug far away from campus, where no one would catch them. She spent the night in his apartment and wore one of his soft oxford shirts with the sleeves rolled up the next morning as they cooked omelets and drank the hot, strong coffee he made in a French press. They talked about books and watched the old black-and-white movies Timothy loved, and she introduced him to the music of Charlie Byrd.

  “I can’t believe you don’t know his music,” she teased. “Aren’t you supposed to be the old man in this relationship?”

  It was what she’d always imagined a relationship would be like—trading sections of the paper on Sunday mornings, going grocery shopping together, waking up in the middle of the night and reaching for each other. She wanted it all: the sex and the routines, the excitement and the mundane details. She began to broach the subject, as slowly and carefully as if she was circling a lost, terrified dog, of what would happen after graduation. She’d just turned twenty-one, he was thirty-three. In a few years, their age difference wouldn’t seem so stark. It could work.

  Six weeks after it started, they were caught.

  She’d gone into his office at the end of the day, around six, when the hallway was mostly deserted and the other professors had all packed up. She leaned against him, arching her back and wrapping her arms around his neck. He groaned and kissed her deeply.

  “Let me just lock the door,” he said.

  He stretched out an arm to hit the latch on the door with Cate still wrapped around him. In another two seconds, they would have been safe.

  The door swung open before his fingers could reach it. Cate felt him freeze before she forced herself to look back.

  It was another student; Cate didn’t know his name, but she recognized him from their 10:00 A.M. psychology class. His wide eyes took in Cate’s arms tangled around Timothy’s neck, her skirt riding up on her legs, and the student backed away without a word.

  “Damn it,” Timothy said. He let go of Cate and ran his hands through his hair.

  “School is over in two months,” she said quickly.

  Timothy didn’t seem to hear her. He began packing up his bag, cramming papers and his grading book into it. “You should go,” he said.

  Cate’s heart was pounding again, this time from fear. She decided he was right; the student might come back. She should leave. But before she left, she promised, “He won’t tell.”

  But even she didn’t believe it.

  By the time Cate walked into Deviant Psychology the next Monday morning, the classroom seemed swollen with whispers and nudges. Was the guy ahead of her smirking at her, or trying to catch the attention of someone just behind her? Cate wrapped her sweater more tightly around herself and sank lower in her seat.

  She sat frozen throughout the class, barely hearing the lecture, her eyes fixed on Timothy again, but this time because he was the only safe spot in the room where she could look. He didn’t glance her way, not once. The notebook open on the desk before her remained blank.

  She called Timothy a dozen times that afternoon and night, but he never answered the phone. And the next day, his office stayed dark and locked. A substitute took over his classes.

  Before the week had ended, a school counselor phoned Cate and asked her to come in. “Professor Jones has told us what happened,” she said. “But we’d like to hear your side of things, too.”

  Her side? The words were a warning; it was as if the counselor was discussing a court case rather than the happiest time of Cate’s life. Cate didn’t want to do it, but then she thought about Timothy. If he was in trouble, maybe she could help him.

  The dean of the school was present, too, although the counselor was the one who conducted the interview. She asked gentle questions about how long the affair had gone on, and who had made the first move.

  “Me!” Cate blurted out. “It’s not his fault! Don’t blame him!”

  But the counselor just wrote something in her notebook and moved on to her next question. When the dean finally spoke up, it was to ask Cate to retake the midsemester final. Cate stared at him and realized he doubted whether she’d earned the As she’d received in the class.

  “Fine,” she finally said, crossing her arms over her chest. She’d do anything for Timothy.

  She sat down at a desk in the psychology classroom, and all she could think about was the empty space in front of the lectern. Where was he now? Would he lose his job? There were essay questions on the exam, and her mind wandered. She should have reviewed some of the older terms; they’d slipped out of her mind like silverfish through her fingers.

  She managed to answer some questions and take a stab at the essay before time ran out. She never found out her score, but she knew she hadn’t aced it.

  Cate’s concentration evaporated. She’d always been able to block out background noises—her roommates joked that she could study in the middle of a Terminator movie, which she actually had, when they’d been blaring it on the television during midterms—but now she couldn’t concentrate at all. She kept calling and e-mailing Timothy, until one day a tersely worded note arrived for her: Please stop trying to reach me. I’m sorry.

  She had to know if he was okay. She couldn’t think, couldn’t
study, couldn’t escape the sensation that everyone on campus knew what she’d done. Tears slid from her eyes as she remembered the way his body had curled around hers while they slept, and how he’d brought her coffee in bed in the mornings. She missed a day of classes, then a week. It became easy to pass the morning at a café, sipping one cup of Earl Grey tea after another—she never wanted to drink coffee again—then napping through the afternoon and wasting away the evenings watching mindless sitcoms.

  She lost six pounds those first two weeks. She’d never needed more than seven hours of sleep a night, but now, even with her naps, she was dozing nine or ten hours at a stretch. A warning e-mail arrived from her Statistics teacher: She’d missed an exam, an important one. The school counselor called her again, leaving a message on the answering machine in her soft voice, asking Cate to come in.

  She knew if she didn’t get it together, it would be worse for Timothy, and that was what finally made her show up at the counselor’s office. Together they worked out a plan. She needed only six credits for graduation. She’d take the rest of the semester off, then knock out those final credits during the first session of summer school. Cate didn’t want to walk across the stage in a blue gown, throwing her cap into the air and cheering. She couldn’t bear the thought of celebrating.