I personally don’t understand drinking a hot beverage on a humid summer morning, but I seriously doubt this silver cart makes anything close to a frozen peppermint mocha. Whatever. Suffering through a few sips will be totally worth it for this guy. “Coffee would be great,” I say. “Milk and sugar, please.”
He acts like he’s a waiter writing on a pad. “Milk and sugar, coming up.”
While he returns to the silver truck and my heart skips all over my body, I finally find my orientation packet. “Thank goodness!” I say, and when he returns with two steaming cups, I triumphantly show him the bunch of red papers with the words PHILADELPHIA COLLEGE OF FINE ART printed on them in a big bold font. “Can you tell me how to get here?”
“Oh, sorry!” The boy takes a step back, and suddenly notices the bags of art supplies at my feet. “You’re a summer student?” His eyebrows pop up, like that wasn’t at all what he was expecting. He is now very much awake.
I nod, though I don’t get what he has to be sorry for. “Do you know where the university is? I’m so late.” Then my cell phone rings loud in my bag. It’s a lame beeping version of Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” that Meg downloaded for me as a joke one time when I was in the bathroom. We’ve always laughed at it, but now, in front of this boy, it makes me feel incredibly lame.
I fumble to ignore the call. “My mom,” I tell him. I don’t know why. “She’s checking in on me. I think she’s nervous because I’m in the city all by myself.” And then I laugh, but it sounds so uncomfortable, I close my mouth and decide never to speak again.
“Interesting,” he says, with a teasing sort of grin. “No need to stress. It’s just around the corner on your left.”
He hands over my coffee, and I’m not sure what to do. I’d really love to stay. But I really have to go.
He makes up my mind for me.
“Maybe I’ll see you around sometime,” he says. “After all, you know where I get my coffee in the morning. That’s practically like knowing where I live.”
I point to the intersection. “I guess that makes us neighbors,” I say, and take off, grinning. A cute boy was just interested in me. That never, ever happens in Cherry Grove. People know each other too well there, so much so that surprises never really happen.
As soon as I step into the crosswalk and glance to my right, I see the Philadelphia College of Fine Art, all massive and stone and old like a castle, occupying almost an entire city block. It’s not what I imagined at all. When I had pictured a college, I thought about a big green lawn, kids outside playing Frisbee, a real campus. It’s a bit jarring, seeing it sandwiched between the sleek architecture of the surrounding silvery skyscrapers.
A bunch of signs lead the way through a set of red wooden doors. I have to push on them a couple times before they open into a huge atrium, with a glass ceiling and three levels of catwalks running along the sides.
The noise inside is deafening. High school kids are everywhere, bright flashes of color and personality, meandering from registration table to registration table, filling out permission slips, getting their temporary IDs laminated, picking up the keys to their dorm rooms, and not-so-subtly sizing each other up. Rows and rows of metal folding chairs are set up in the middle of the atrium, facing a low stage and podium. The seats are almost all filled.
A few older kids — students who are actually enrolled in this college, I guess — stare down from the catwalks, underneath a big WELCOME PRE-COLLEGE STUDENTS banner, and laugh at the whole crazy scene.
And it is crazy.
Two boys in striped shirts like Bert and Ernie are hugging and crying. They look like they are mid-good-bye. One boy fishes a red marker out of his pocket and draws a heart inside the other boy’s palm. It makes them both cry harder.
Next to them, a chubby Asian girl with blue-black hair, dressed in a high-neck beige lace dress that looks incredibly out of season for the last week of June, allows her mom to wipe some tomato-y lipstick from the corners of her mouth with a tissue while she taps away on her mini video game player.
A couple of feet ahead, a tall boy with an asymmetrical haircut and swollen acne awkwardly navigates the crowd toting three canvases — one under each arm and one strapped to his back. He swats people with the corners, unintentionally branding them with touches of wet pink paint.
I take small steps backward until I’m pressed against the wall. The place is crawling with the types of people you find huddled in groups of two or three at a typical high school. I don’t see anyone here who looks like me, and that feels strange. There are always people like me around. We are everywhere.
A hand squeezes my shoulder. It’s a slender lady wearing a white lab coat and carrying a clipboard marked STUDENT HEALTH SERVICES. She seems like a regular nurse, except for her orange Afro and the lei of hibiscus tattoos ringing her collarbone. “Sweetie, do you have your schedule and your ID? We’re about to get started.”
I shake my head. “I — my train — ”
“Do you know who your roommate is?”
“No. I mean, I’m a commuter. I’m not staying in the dorms.”
“Breathe. Breathe. Breathe,” she chants in a warm, friendly voice. “Come with me.”
I follow the nurse down through the crowds. She leads me to several tables, helps me get checked in, and fills my arms with even more papers and information. I’m glad she’s taking charge of the situation, because I can’t seem to concentrate on anything. There’s too much to look at.
There are way more kids here than I expected, at least two hundred total. Everyone seems to have at least one creative detail on them, something that shows that they belong here. I’m plain by comparison. It’s embarrassing, how much effort it took for me to wear something that looks exactly like a blank piece of paper. No wonder no one makes eye contact with me.
Though it’s not like the other students are mingling all that much, either. Everyone seems cautious and careful around each other. The only people who are enjoying themselves are the parents. They talk and laugh in little groups, an Aha! look on their faces, like suddenly, in this context, their weird kids make sense.
“Please take a seat, everyone, and we’ll get you off to classes as soon as possible,” a low female voice booms out of a microphone I can’t see from where I’m standing.
“What’s your name?” a boy asks me from behind a table. He’s wearing a T-shirt that says STAFF, and his black hair pokes out like carpet fringe from underneath a plaid yarmulke, covered in crudely sewn yellow lightning bolt patches.
“Emily Thompson.” A flashbulb pops in my face.
He thumbs through a file box. “Okay, here’s your schedule, Emily. And here’s your ID.” He hands me a stack of papers and a warm, plastic square. My eyes are closed in the picture, like I’m sleeping. “Go ahead and find a seat.”
There are not many empty chairs. The ones that are vacant seem uncomfortably sandwiched between people who lean across them to whisper to each other. I get a hollow feeling in my chest. If I had gotten here earlier, maybe I would have met some people already.
Maybe.
I walk toward the back of the atrium and take the very last chair in the row. The section reserved for parents.
A short woman with stringy black hair and burgundy lipstick stands behind the podium on the stage. She beams a smile out into the crowd. Even from this distance, her teeth look gray and dull, like she is definitely a smoker. Of cigars.
“Hello, students. My name is Dr. Tobin, and I am the Program Director of the Pre-College Summer Art Institute. I want to welcome you to Philadelphia and to six weeks filled with personal growth and artistic discovery!” She’s leaning in too close to the microphone, and her deep voice