lot of my mom’s friends are quilters, and they made me a quilt before I came to school. Have you seen it? It’s pretty. I sleep with it at night and then I hang it up on my wall during the day so I can see it.”
I nodded, feeling through my backpack for my meal card. I knew she had heard every word of my conversation with Clyde. At first, when she didn’t bring him up, I thought she was being tactful. But the more she talked, the more it seemed that she just wasn’t all that interested. She was still talking about the quilt, about its lace trim, and the way her mother’s quilting friends had used her baby clothes to spell out her name. I tried to focus on what she was saying; I tried not to hear the ticking of my watch. I was going to fail the chemistry test anyway. I might as well be kind. I looked down and saw that Tim’s note, with the little drawing of the rabbit, had fallen to the floor. I picked it up and set it back on my desk.
The phone rang just as we were walking out. It was the dorm-issued landline, which I never used. The receiver felt heavy in my hand.
“Veronica?” I recognized, almost right away, the voice of Gordon Goodman, residence hall director—though he usually sounded friendlier than he did just now.
“Did you forget our meeting? Your performance review?”
I looked at my calendar. There it was, two days before the chemistry test, both of them listed in red ink so I wouldn’t forget. I rested my forehead against the wall. I was still screwing up. I couldn’t stop. It was like a free fall.
He said he would be waiting downstairs.
Marley took the news in stride, but I still felt bad. Running down the hall, I called over my shoulder that I was sorry, and that if she wanted to wait, we could go to dinner when I came back.
Gordon Goodman’s office was just off the lobby, with an interior window that allowed him to see the front desk and the front doors. But now he had the blinds pulled down, and there was nothing to see, nowhere for me to look, except back at his disappointed face. Gordon was the one who had hired me. He’d interviewed me himself.
“I’m worried at this point.” He leaned back in his squeaking chair. “It’s December. The semester will be over in a couple of weeks. And you haven’t done one program for your floor yet.” He scratched his gray beard, grimacing. “And there have been complaints that you’re never around. Or never available, at least.”
I nodded, chewing as quietly as I could on my fortune cookie. He offered fortune cookies to everyone who came into his office. Today, my fortune read, Wise men learn more from fools, than fools from the wise.
“I’m sorry,” I said, swallowing. “I know I’ve got to do a better job. I’ve been really busy with school.”
He tapped his fingers on his desk, frowning. The bowl that held the fortune cookies was handmade, the edges wavy, the base striped black and green. One of Gordon’s daughters, now grown, was a potter somewhere in Texas. He had pottery all over his office, mostly glazed bowls and cups, but also a tissue box, and a couple of book-ends.
He leaned his elbows on his desk. “You’re pre-med, right?”
I nodded and smiled. I waited for him to smile back. Usually, when I told people, especially older people, especially older men, that I was premed, I was met with instant respect and approval. Gordon continued to frown.
“I’m certainly sympathetic.” He glanced at his bookshelves, which covered two entire walls of his office, floor to ceiling. Although the pottery coalition had made serious headway, the shelves mostly belonged to books—fiction, nonfiction, dictionaries and encyclopedias, textbooks from every subject. “I was in law school. I remember the pressure.”
“You went to law school?” I was eager to change the subject.
He nodded. His gaze moved around the room.
“Then why—” I stopped. I didn’t want to be rude. I supposed it wasn’t a bad job, being a hall director. I had never seen him wear anything besides a sweatshirt and jeans, or a T-shirt and shorts, depending on the weather and whether or not he was out on his morning jog. That, I supposed, was a benefit of the job: every day was casual Friday. He had his own apartment in the dorm, with