Odd Girl Out. Ann Bannon

of the fire escape. She though of Beth: Beth beside her watching her, whispering to her, reaching out to touch her.

      The stillness grew and lengthened and Laura lay in it alone with her thoughts. Far away on the campus the clock on the Student Union steeple pulsed twelve times through the waiting night. Laura pulled her covers tight under her chin and tried to sleep. She was just drifting off when she heard someone stop by her bed and she opened her heavy eyes and saw Beth outlined by the night light.

      “Still awake?” she whispered.

      “I’m sorry. I’m dropping off now.” Laura felt guilty; caught with her eyes open when they should have been shut; caught peeking at nothing; caught thinking of Beth.

      “Just wanted to make sure you were all right.”

      “Oh, yes, thank you.”

      “Shhh!” hissed someone from a neighboring bed.

      “Sorry!” Beth hissed back, and then turned to Laura again.

      “Okay, go to sleep now,” she said, and she gave Laura’s arm a pat.

      “I will,” Laura whispered.

       Two

      At six forty-five, Laura heard a soft voice whispering, “Time to get up, Laura.” She sat up immediately in her bed as if pulled by a wire, and looked over to see an unusually pretty face staring up at her.

      “Thank you,” she said.

      The face smiled and whispered, “Wow, are you easy to wake up!” and moved away.

      Laura had a good morning. She spent a lot of it wondering about her strange desire for a good-night kiss from Beth, and hoping Beth hadn’t understood her sudden aborted gesture. At lunchtime she sat with everybody in the big sunny dining room, talking while she ate. She glanced over at Beth, who sat two tables away from her, and found Beth returning the look. Laura answered her smile and turned, in confusion, to prospecting for nuggets of hamburger in her chili.

      After lunch they studied together for a while. Laura sat down with her book in a large green butterfly chair in the corner and struggled to get comfortable. She was still trying to conform to the incomprehensible chair when Emily ran in from the washroom, grabbed her coat and a notebook, and ran out again. Seconds later she was back.

      “Hey Beth, if Bud calls tell him I’ll see him at Maxie’s at four.”

      Beth pulled her reading glasses down to the end of her nose and looked over them. “Right,” she said.

      “Thanks.” And Emily was gone.

      Beth stared after her, shaking her head and smiling a little.

      “What?” said Laura.

      “I just don’t get it. Or rather, I get it but I don’t like it. He’s too crazy for her. Emmy needs a steadying influence.” She winked at Laura and turned back to her book.

      Laura began to glance furtively at her, half expecting her to be looking back, and she was rather disappointed when Beth kept her nose in the book. After a while Laura gazed openly at her, resentful of the book that claimed all Beth’s attention. And then she forgot the book and thought only of Beth….

      The two girls walked to their afternoon class together. It was a brisk day, snappy and sunny and invigorating. Beth walked with long, smooth strides. She liked to walk and she walked well, as if she were really enjoying her legs; enjoying the rhythmic cooperation between legs and lungs, crisp weather, space and speed. She had a lusty health that almost intimidated Laura, who was breathless with trying to keep up. And breathless, too, with pleasure at walking beside Beth.

      They arrived in class five minutes late, and the instructor had already started his lecture. He interrupted himself to note, while gazing out the window with a wry smile, “Glad you could make it, Miss Cullison.”

      Beth, slipping out of her coat, looked up at him with a grin. They were friendly enemies, she and the teacher; they liked to catch each other slipping up somewhere.

      “I see,” he added, “you’re leading the innocent astray.”

      Laura blushed in confusion. It scared her to see someone flirt with authority as Beth did: she expected to see the hallowed rules and traditions crash down on Beth and crush her, and when they didn’t she was as surprised as she was relieved. To Laura, the things Beth said and did were daring in the extreme. To Beth, who knew herself and people better, it was just a half-hearted revolt; a small-scale protest that was more in fun than in earnest. She didn’t want to be an out-and-out character any more than she wanted to be one of the herd, so Beth beat herself a path between the two. Laura was happy, when she saw the letter was from her father, that Beth and Emily weren’t in the room. Her divorced parents were a faraway sorrow she tried to pretend out of existence. She opened the letter slowly.

      “Glad to hear you like your new home,” she read. “I understand Alpha Beta is a pretty good sorority.”

      Yes, father. Pretty good. If you say so. She hated the way her father phrased things.

      “Anyway,” the letter went on, “they had a good house when I was in school. Your roommates sound like nice girls, especially the Cullison girl. That’s the kind of friendship you should cultivate, Laura, with people who can really do you some good. This girl sounds like a real go-getter—president of the Student Union and etc. That’s quite an honor for a girl, isn’t it? She can probably do a lot for you—get you into the right activities and so forth. I’d treat her well, if I were you.”

      Laura sighed with exasperation over her father’s ideas of friendship; if it weren’t useful somehow it just wasn’t friendship, only a waste of time.

      “By the way,” he continued, “Cliff Ayers’s son Charlie is in school down there. I’d like you to give him a call—he’d like to hear from you, I’m sure.”

      Sure, thought Laura with resentment. He’d like to hear from Marilyn Monroe. But who’s Laura Landon? He won’t even remember the name.

      “Cliff says Charlie looks just like him, which means there’s probably a line of girls ahead of you.”

      Is that supposed to encourage me? Laura wondered bitterly. If Charlie Ayers wants to hear from me, which I doubt, he can call me himself.

      “I understand that your mother has found herself a nice apartment. You will spend half the holidays with her and half with me, of course. I must say, Laura, you took the divorce pretty well, though of course I expected you to.”

      Laura crushed the letter with angry hands and threw it into the wastebasket by the desk. Then she put her head down and wept, until she heard Beth and Emily coming down the hall. They found her dusting the already spotless coffee table and smiling at the job.

      Beth looked at her oddly for a moment and then picked up a manila envelope and hurried out of the room. She would be at a committee meeting all evening long and left Laura and Emily to study in an embarrassed silence. Both of them wished rather uncomfortably that Beth would come back and mediate for them. After a while the dearth of words between them began to pall and they were both suddenly conscious that they would be roommates together for the rest of the year. It seemed an interminable length of time.

      Emily could usually chatter easily with people. She was natural with them and they responded naturally to her. But every word and gesture of Laura’s seemed to her to be rehearsed, calculated to please, and it threw Emmy completely. She got the feeling that she could smash a bottle over Laura’s head and Laura would say, very calmly, “Thank you.”

      There was plenty of room for Laura on the couch beside Emily, but she wouldn’t sit there, simply because Emily got there first. She sat down in the butterfly chair with a sigh. It defied her, as usual, and her narrow skirt made the problem worse. She shifted