She favored wild florals paired with a seemingly endless parade of eyeglasses that she wore on glittery strings around her neck and that Alex had yet to see her use. Today she’d opted for a brocade coat embroidered with poinsettias that made her look like the world’s youngest eccentric grandma. When Alex had raised her brows, Mercy had just said, “I like loud.”
They entered the Jonathan Edwards common room, warm air closing over them in a gust. Winter light slatted over the leather couches in watery squares—all of it a coy, falsely humble prelude to the soaring rafters and stone alcoves of the dining hall.
Beside her, Mercy laughed. “I only see you smile like that when we’re going to eat.”
It was true. If Beinecke was Darlington’s temple, then the dining hall was where Alex worshipped daily. At the squat in Van Nuys, they’d lived on Taco Bell and Subway when they were flush, cereal—sometimes dry, sometimes soaked in soda if she got desperate—when they were broke. She’d steal a bag of hot dog buns whenever they were invited to barbecues at Eitan’s place so they had something to put peanut butter on, and once she’d tried to eat Loki’s dry kibble, but her teeth couldn’t manage it. Even when she’d lived with her mom, it had been all frozen food, boil-in-a-bag rice dishes, then weird shakes and nutrition bars after Mira got suckered into selling Herbalife. Alex had brought protein pudding mix to school for weeks.
The idea that there could be hot food just waiting for her three times a day was still shocking. But it made no difference what she ate or how much of it; it was as if her body, starved for so long, was ravenous now. Every hour her stomach would growl, chiming like the Harkness bells. Alex always took two sandwiches with her for the day and a stack of chocolate chip cookies wrapped in a napkin. The supply of food in her backpack was like a security blanket. If this all ended, if it all got taken away, she wouldn’t go hungry for at least a couple of days.
“It’s a good thing you work out so much,” Mercy noted as Alex shoveled granola into her mouth. Except, of course, she didn’t and eventually her metabolism would stop cooperating, but she just didn’t care. “Do you think it’s too much to wear a skirt to Omega Meltdown tomorrow night?”
“You’re still committed to this frat thing?” Omega Meltdown was part of Mercy’s Five Party Plan to get her and Alex to be more social.
“Some of us don’t have a hot cousin to take us interesting places, so until I’m offered a higher caliber of party, yes. This isn’t high school. We don’t have to be the losers waiting to get invited out. I’ve wasted too many good outfits on you.”
“Okay, I’ll wear a skirt if you wear a skirt,” Alex said. “Also … I’m going to need to borrow a skirt.” No one dressed up for frat parties, but if Mercy wanted to look cute for a bunch of guys in hazmat suits, then that was what they would do. “You should wear those boots you have with all the laces. I’m going back for seconds.”
The basso belladonna kicked in just as she was stacking peanut butter pancakes onto her tray, and she drew in a sharp breath as she came wide awake. It felt a little like someone cracking an ice-cold egg on the nape of your neck. Of course, it was at that moment that Professor Belbalm waved her over from her table below the leaded windows in the corner of the dining room, her sleek white hair gleaming like a seal’s head breaching a wave.
“Fuck,” Alex said under her breath, and then cringed when Belbalm’s mouth quirked as if she’d heard her.
“Gimme a minute,” she told Mercy, and set down her tray at their table.
Marguerite Belbalm was French but spoke flawless English. Her hair was snow white and fell in a smooth, severe bob that looked like it had been carved from bone and set carefully on her head like a helmet, so little did it move. She wore asymmetrical black garments that hung in supremely chic folds, and she had a stillness that made Alex twitch. Alex had been in awe of her from the first glimpse of her slender, immaculate form at the Jonathan Edwards orientation, since the first whiff of her peppery perfume. She was a women’s studies professor, the