People We Meet on Vacation

THE FIRST NIGHT of orientation at the University of Chicago, I spot him. He’s dressed in khaki pants and a U of Chicago T-shirt, despite having been at this school for all of ten hours. He looks nothing like the sort of artistic intelligentsia I imagined befriending when I chose a school in the city. But I’m here alone (my new roommate, it turns out, followed her older sister and some friends to college, and she ducked out of O-Week events ASAP), and he’s alone too, so I walk up to him, tip my drink toward his shirt, and say, “So, do you go to University of Chicago?”

He stares at me blankly.

I stammer out that it was a joke.

He stammers something about spilling on his shirt and a last-minute outfit change. His cheeks go pink, and mine do too, from secondhand embarrassment.

And then his eyes dip down me, sizing me up, and his face changes. I’m wearing a neon orange and pink floral jumpsuit from the early seventies, and he reacts to this fact as if I’m also holding a poster that says FUCK KHAKIS on it.

I ask him where he’s from, because I’m not sure what else to say to a stranger with whom I have no shared context apart from a few hours of confusing campus tours, a couple of the same boring panels on life in the city, and the fact that we hate each other’s clothes.

“Ohio,” he answers, “a town called West Linfield.”

“No shit!” I say, stunned. “I’m from East Linfield.”

And he brightens a little, like this is good news, and I’m not sure why, because having the fact of the Linfields in common is sort of like having had the same cold: not the worst thing in the world, but nothing to high-five over.

“I’m Poppy,” I tell him.

“Alex,” he says, and shakes my hand.

When you imagine a new best friend for yourself, you never name him Alex. You also probably don’t imagine him dressing like some kind of teenage librarian, or barely looking you in the eyes, or always speaking just a little bit under his breath.

I decide that if I’d looked at him for five more minutes before crossing the globe-light-strewn lawn to talk, I would’ve been able to guess both his name and that he was from West Linfield, because these two facts match with his khakis and U of Chicago shirt.

I’m sure that the longer we talk, the more violently boring he’ll become, but we’re here, and we’re alone, so why not be sure?

“So what are you here for?” I ask.Upstodatee from Novel(D)ra/m/a.O(r)g

His brow furrows. “Here for?”

“Yeah, you know,” I say, “like, I’m here to meet a wealthy oil baron in need of a much younger second wife.”

That blank stare again.

“What are you studying?” I clarify.

“Oh,” he says. “I’m not sure. Prelaw, maybe. Or literature. What about you?”

“Not sure yet.” I lift my plastic cup. “I mostly came for the punch. And to not live in southern Ohio.”

Over the next painful fifteen minutes, I learn he’s here on academic scholarships, and he learns that I’m here on loans. I tell him that I’m the youngest of three, and the only girl. He tells me he’s the oldest of four boys. He asks if I’ve seen the gym yet, to which my genuine reaction is “Why?” and we both go back to shifting awkwardly on our feet in silence.

He is tall, quiet, and eager to see the library.

I’m short, loud, and hoping someone comes by and invites us to a real party.

By the time we part ways, I’m fairly confident we’ll never speak again.

Apparently, he feels the same way.

Instead of goodbye or see you around or should we swap numbers, he just says, “Good luck with freshman year, Poppy.”