Curtis Sittenfeld

Prep

For my parents, Paul and Betsy Sittenfeld;

my sisters, Tiernan and Josephine;

and my brother, P.G.

1. Thieves

FRESHMAN FALL

I think that everything, or at least the part of everything that happened to me, started with the Roman architecture mix-up. Ancient History was my first class of the day, occurring after morning chapel and roll call, which was not actually roll call but a series of announcements that took place in an enormous room with twenty-foot-high Palladian windows, rows and rows of desks with hinged tops that you lifted to store your books inside, and mahogany panels on the walls-one for each class since Ault’s founding in 1882-engraved with the name of every person who had graduated from the school. The two senior prefects led roll call, standing at a desk on a platform and calling on the people who’d signed up ahead of time to make announcements. My own desk, assigned alphabetically, was near the platform, and because I didn’t talk to my classmates who sat around me, I spent the lull before roll call listening to the prefects’ exchanges with teachers or other students or each other. The prefects’ names were Henry Thorpe and Gates Medkowski. It was my fourth week at the school, and I didn’t know much about Ault, but I did know that Gates was the first girl in Ault’s history to have been elected prefect.

The teachers’ announcements were straightforward and succinct: Please remember that your adviser request forms are due by noon on Thursday. The students’ announcements were lengthy-the longer roll call was, the shorter first period would be-and filled with double entendres: Boys’ soccer is practicing on Coates Field today, which, if you don’t know where it is, is behind the headmaster’s house, and if you still don’t know where it is, ask Fred. Where are you, Fred? You wanna raise your hand, man? There’s Fred, everyone see Fred? Okay, so Coates Field. And remember-bring your balls.

When the announcements were finished, Henry or Gates pressed a button on the side of the desk, like a doorbell, there was a ringing throughout the schoolhouse, and we all shuffled off to class. In Ancient History, we were making presentations on different topics, and I was one of the students presenting that day. From a library book, I had copied pictures of the Colosseum, the Pantheon, and the Baths of Diocletian, then glued the pictures onto a piece of poster board and outlined the edges with green and yellow markers. The night before, I’d stood in front of the mirror in the dorm bathroom practicing what I’d say, but then someone had come in, and I’d pretended I was washing my hands and left.

I was third; right before me was Jamie Lorison. Mrs. Van der Hoef had set a lectern in the front of the classroom, and Jamie stood behind it, clutching index cards. “It is a tribute to the genius of Roman architects,” he began, “that many of the buildings they designed more than two thousand years ago still exist today for modern peoples to visit and enjoy.”

My heart lurched. The genius of Roman architects was my topic, not Jamie’s. I had difficulty listening as he continued, though certain familiar phrases emerged: the aqueducts, which were built to transport water… the Colosseum, originally called the Flavian Amphitheater…

Mrs. Van der Hoef was standing to my left, and I leaned toward her and whispered, “Excuse me.”

She seemed not to have heard me.

“Mrs. Van der Hoef?” Then-later, this gesture seemed particularly humiliating-I reached out to touch her forearm. She was wearing a maroon silk dress with a collar and a skinny maroon belt, and I only brushed my fingers against the silk, but she drew back as if I’d pinched her. She glared at me, shook her head, and took several steps away.

“I’d like to pass around some pictures,” I heard Jamie say. He lifted a stack of books from the floor. When he opened them, I saw colored pictures of the same buildings I had copied in black-and-white and stuck to poster board.

Then his presentation ended. Until that day, I had never felt anything about Jamie Lorison, who was red-haired and skinny and breathed loudly, but as I watched him take his seat, a mild, contented expression on his face, I loathed him.

“Lee Fiora, I believe you’re next,” Mrs. Van der Hoef said.

“See, the thing is,” I began, “maybe there’s a problem.”

I could feel my classmates looking at me with growing interest. Ault prided itself on, among other things, its teacher-student ratio, and there were only twelve of us in the class. When all their eyes were on me at once, however, that did not seem like such a small number.

“I just can’t go,” I finally said.

“I beg your pardon?” Mrs. Van der Hoef was in her late fifties, a tall, thin woman with a bony nose. I’d heard that she was the widow of a famous archaeologist, not that any archaeologists were famous to me.

“See, my presentation is-or it was going to be-I thought I was supposed to talk about-but maybe, now that Jamie-”

“You’re not making sense, Miss Fiora,” Mrs. Van der Hoef said. “You need to speak clearly.”

“If I go, I’ll be saying the same thing as Jamie.”

“But you’re presenting on a different topic.”

“Actually, I’m talking about architecture, too.”

She walked to her desk and ran her finger down a piece of paper. I had been looking at her while we spoke, and now that she had turned away, I didn’t know what to do with my eyes. My classmates were still watching me. During the school year so far, I’d spoken in classes only when I was called on, which was not often; the other kids at Ault were enthusiastic about participating. Back in my junior high in South Bend, Indiana, many classes had felt like one-on-one discussions between the teacher and me, while the rest of the students daydreamed or doodled. Here, the fact that I did the reading didn’t distinguish me. In fact, nothing distinguished me. And now, in my most lengthy discourse to date, I was revealing myself to be strange and stupid.

“You’re not presenting on architecture,” Mrs. Van der Hoef said. “You’re presenting on athletics.”

“Athletics?” I repeated. There was no way I’d have volunteered for such a topic.

She thrust the sheet of paper at me, and there was my name, Lee Fiora-Athletics, in her writing, just below James Lorison-Architecture. We’d signed up for topics by raising our hands in class; clearly, she had misunderstood me.

“I could do athletics,” I said uncertainly. “Tomorrow I could do them.”

“Are you suggesting that the students presenting tomorrow have their time reduced on your behalf?”

“No, no, of course not. But maybe a different day, or maybe-I could do it whenever. Just not today. All I’d be able to talk about today is architecture.”

“Then you’ll be talking about architecture. Please use the lectern.”

I stared at her. “But Jamie just went.”

“Miss Fiora, you are wasting class time.”

As I stood and gathered my notebook and poster board, I thought about how coming to Ault had been an enormous error. I would never have friends; the best I’d be able to hope for from my classmates would be pity. It had already been obvious to me that I was different from them, but I’d imagined that I could lie low for a while, getting a sense of them, then reinvent myself in their image. Now I’d been uncovered.

I gripped either side of the lectern and looked down at my notes. “One of the most famous examples of Roman architecture is the Colosseum,” I began. “Historians believe that the Colosseum was called the Colosseum because of a large statue of the Colossus of Nero which was located nearby.” I looked up from my notes. The faces of my classmates were neither kind nor unkind, sympathetic nor unsympathetic, engaged nor bored.