Previously, 63-year-old solo traveler Ari arrived at a Prague hostel after celebrating at a local PrideFest. While reflecting on her career as a film location scout, she planned her upcoming archive research into her great aunt’s erased history. Read Chapter 14.
The Orme School, Arizona – October, 1982
The morning bell clanged from outside the cafeteria, across the dirt barnyard, through Girls Camp’s great lawn, and into Colleen’s ears.
“What the bloody hell?” Colleen jolted awake as Ayumi laughed, a bright, happy sound.
“I can’t believe even after a month that you’re not used to the schedule yet. Mandatory breakfast at 7:00 with attendance, 8:00 chores, then classes, volleyball, dinner in dress clothes, study hall for ninety minutes, then free time for an hour, and bed at 10:15. It’s all about structure.”
Ayumi was from Yokohama, Japan. She had come to Orme on a full academic scholarship and intended to return to Japan having mastered English, calculus, and whatever else the American desert had to offer. Her side of the room was arranged with a precision that made Colleen’s Louis Vuitton chaos look like a tumbled Jenga. She was also, Colleen discovered within the first week, the funniest person she had ever met. Ayumi delivered observations about American boarding school life with deadpan accuracy.
“Colleen,” Ayumi asked, “why do you keep wearing high-fashion linen to look cute when you’re covered in desert dust every time you come back to the room? Explain the logic to me.”
Colleen had laughed until her stomach hurt. She hadn’t known how much she had needed a chuckle until it happened. Ayumi had a way of showing Colleen the ridiculousness of her mother’s insistence to be one way while the environment required something different.
Her first semester at boarding school was a struggle, but Colleen slowly found joy in the daily rigor. Back home, her mom had been just as strict, but Colleen had been the target. In contrast, the school’s structure wasn’t targeted at her; it pushed everyone to excel. Strangely, there was comfort in the rhythm. The rigidity applied to everyone equally, which turned out to feel entirely different. Just like the morning bell that woke them all at once; strict in its ringing, but comforting in the fact that everyone rose together.
She also loved her volleyball team. They had strength training and practice every day. Her ultrathin frame was developing some nice shape. And she could finally devour the potatoes! She certainly didn’t miss the glaring parental eyes of her mother tracking her every calorie at the family-style meals in the school’s cafeteria. She could finally eat and be herself; not the socialite daughter her mother eagerly needed her to be.
Colleen adored hearing her fellow students’ languages from around the world as she ambled past the original one-room adobe school to the library to study, or to the chemistry lab across the football field. The walk back from the gym through the cottonwood trees excited her the most.
On her way, she could get a glimpse of Connor working his soccer skills after football practice. His Irish flag sweatband held back his floppy red hair, which was still short enough for school regulations. Of course, he sported a variety of soccer jerseys from Europe proclaiming the best football teams in the world. They’d interacted a few times in Spanish class, but he always seemed to avoid her in real life.
Colleen kicked a stray soccer ball on her trail back toward Connor with a surprisingly clean stroke. He trapped the pass with his chest and jogged up to her.
“Not a bad strike. So how’s Up Elliott?”
She couldn’t believe he was actually, really, talking to her.
