sessions with a kleptomaniac: Expect something to be stolen. It’s not like Cleo could go far; they were all stuck on the same mountain. She’d calmly and politely ask for her pen back at their next session, even though she kind of wanted to sneak into Cleo’s room and steal it back. But starting a stealing war with a klepto probably wasn’t a good move. Klepto lesson number two.
As Devon tucked her notebook into her backpack, she couldn’t shake the thought: Hutch got someone pregnant. And Cleo was right. Sure, Devon could run to his defense. But who she defending, exactly?
DINNER WAS WRAPPING UP. Plates and glasses clanged from the back of kitchen. A tray of limp Sloppy Joes and mushy peas waited at the end of the serving line for the last stragglers of the evening. Devon grabbed a Sloppy Joe but left the peas alone. A Keaton rule: If something looked bad, it tasted worse. After all, Presley had just been reminded of that the tough way.
As Devon moved to the salad bar, she spotted Mr. Robins at a table chatting away with Ms. Ascher, the French teacher and girls soccer coach. Devon kept her head down. Hopefully Mr. Robins wouldn’t feel the need to chat. Jicama. Cherry tomatoes. Romaine lettuce from the student vegetable garden. That always made her smile. Leave it to California boarding schools to not only have students willingly eat their vegetables, but grow them too.
“Devon?” Mr. Robins called.
Shit. “Oh, Mr. Robins, hey. Didn’t see you there.” Devon poured dressing on her salad. He stood and strode toward her. Keep moving.
“How are the sessions going?” he asked. Funny: For the first time, Devon noticed that he wasn’t actually as tall as she had thought. He probably wasn’t taller than five feet nine inches. She wondered if he had a girlfriend somewhere or if he was just a thirty something single guy stuck on this hill with a group of hormonal teenagers. What adult would choose that lifestyle?
“Um, great. We’re still meeting tomorrow to discuss everything, right?” Devon looked around. Most of the tables nearby were empty, but still, she didn’t want to talk about this stuff in such a public place.
“Right, right. Tomorrow’s still on. Just wanted to see how you were holding up.”
“It’s great. I’m great. I’ll fill you in at our meeting.”
With that, Devon made a beeline for the back of the Dining Hall. No quicker way to get flagged as a narc than to talk about this therapy stuff in the middle of freaking dinner. She put her tray down at an unoccupied table two tables away from the Corner Table—the preferred home base of freshman troublemakers. The kids who sat here were out of the teacher’s sightline so they could throw food, make towers with cups, or spit balls to stick to the ceiling. True to form, a few freshman boys were shooting sunflower seeds at each other through their straws. Two girls sat with them, clearly bored.
Devon almost smiled to herself. She remembered those days when tentative friendships were formed—not with roommates or classmates, but accidentally, during the in-between times on campus. After dinners, lounging on lawns before study hours, late nights in the kitchen.…
“No, I’m telling you. That stuff is totally easy to OD on,” a freshman boy with spiky blond hair was telling his friends. “My uncle lived in the building next to Heath Ledger’s place. He said accidental overdoses happen more often than you would think.”
“Whatever,” one of the girls with a fishtail braid said back. “I heard he was taking Oxy like every day. Total addict.” Devon’s ears perked up.
“I heard he wrote a suicide note in blood,” another boy said.
“That’s totally not true. I heard he made a YouTube video right before,” said Fishtail.
Nice: a game of one-upsmanship about how Hutch killed himself. But not surprising. Every freshman aspired to be a Keaton expert.
“Makes you miss a home-cooked meal, huh?” a voice said behind Devon.
Maya. She dropped her tray at Devon’s table. Maya was a fellow junior: half Vietnamese and with her almond shaped eyes and petite frame Devon always thought she looked like a really pretty doll. Devon could easily imagine her in a pink tutu, spinning to music in a little girl’s jewelry box.
“I’m sure there are jails with more edible food.” Devon scooped up her Sloppy Joe; most of it plopped back down onto her plate as she took her first bite. Maya had a big glass of iced tea, jammed