Friends and Strangers - J. Courtney Sullivan Page 0,169

that day, or soon after. Her life would fill up with new names and faces, until the ones she knew here were only memories, and in some cases not even that.

She gave Maria her parents’ address, but never heard from her, which made Sam wonder if Gaby had told Maria the truth once she was gone.

She did try to track Gaby down a few years back. Sam found her photograph on the website of an upscale Salvadoran restaurant where, at the time, Gaby was working as the general manager. Sam thought she looked happy. She sent an email, but got no reply. She had wanted to make it right, whatever that meant after so much time.

Thinking on it now, she vowed to try again.

She began walking across campus. When she passed the president’s house, an old resentment rose up in her, even though the school had a new president now. Four years after Sam graduated, there had been an uproar among students and alumnae when the full story of Shirley Washington’s business dealings emerged in a documentary commemorating the tenth anniversary of the financial crisis.

Sam didn’t know how it was possible that the issue hadn’t been raised until then. The stories were there, for anyone to see, but they had required pointing out, highlighting, by a third party who had no particular interest in seeing Shirley Washington as a hero.

It’s so disappointing, Isabella had written in an email. To come from nothing like she did and get so far, only to become so corrupted.

Sam chose not to reply. It seemed useless to point out that someone who came from nothing had just as much incentive as anyone else—probably more—to let herself be seduced by the system. But it was disappointing. Heartbreaking, really.

The bill Sam received in the mail each month was a reminder of the price she had paid for her education, and was paying still. As were the semiannual solicitations from the development office, which annoyed her, seeing as the money she owed this place was a large part of the reason why she’d probably never own a home or know what it was like to live debt-free. And yet, Sam was grateful for her time here. She thought of those as some of the best years of her life.

She reached the pond now. A student center had been built on its banks, a modern white building that looked all wrong.

Sam kept going. She was headed for the library.

Once inside, she retraced her old path to the carrels downstairs. Sam was stunned to find them gone, replaced by two long, sleek wooden tables and several chairs. She would have hated to work like that, so exposed to everyone else.

Wherever she went, students looked at her, suspicious.

They saw this place as theirs, just as she once had. They didn’t realize they were only borrowing the stately brick buildings and the two-hundred-year-old oak trees, which were older than the college itself.

There were far more black and brown faces among them than there were when she was here. Ten years on, the campus looked more like the world. The college was proud of this; touted it in every fundraising letter. Still, when Sam passed the white tent being set up outside College Hall, the staff looked the same as ever. She searched for Maria and Delmi, unsure whether she hoped to see them or not.

She supposed it was childish, simplistic, but Sam still could not square the discrepancies of lives that overlapped with one another every day. She looked at the people digging up roads and busing dishes and caring for other people’s children—holding up the world—and wondered what they’d rather be doing. She was thirty-one years old, and she couldn’t quite accept that some people would be allowed and encouraged to pursue their passions, while others never would.

But she knew that whether she accepted it or not did nothing to erase the fact of it. Every year it seemed the country moved closer and closer to a place where there would soon be very rich people and very poor people, and very few in between.

Sam walked on. She went through the campus gates. There had long been a legend that any girl who did this before graduation would never marry. Ridiculous, but back then Sam hadn’t taken the chance. She always went around, in case.

She had recently started telling people she wasn’t sure she ever wanted to get married. Each time she said it, she wondered if it was