Page 3 of The Make-Up Test
Allison almost squealed. This wasexactlywhat she’d been hoping for. The chance to be mentored by the department’s most renowned pre–eighteenth century specialist, right from the start of her graduate school career. Maybe if they got along, Professor Frances would choose Allison as her research assistant, invite her on her trips to Europe to examine original copies of some of the oldest works of literature, co-writepapers with her. It could all set Allison on track to achieve everything she’d dreamed of from the minute her father laughed at her acceptance to Brown four years ago and asked her how she thought she and her mom were going to pay for it on a waitress’s wage. (Sometimes Allison wished her parents had gotten divorced long before her freshman year in college, but without her father’s endless negativity motivating her, she might not have been standing here now on the precipice of all her dreams. Lemons, meet lemonade.)
Professor Frances’s eyes cut from Allison to Colin, whom Allison had momentarily forgotten existed. She smiled as she spoke eleven words that landed like a bomb on Allison’s whole world.
“I’m looking forward to working with both of you this semester.”
Chapter 2
Both of you.
Twenty-four hours later, the words still clung to Allison’s insides like she used to imagine swallowed chewing gum did when she was a kid.
Not only would she have to see her ex-boyfriend across the roomevery weekin all three of her grad classes, but now, as TAs in the same course, she’d have to work with him. That meant being polite and professional, and not ignoring him, no matter how much she might want to.
It was a disaster. A tragedy. A misfortune of Dickensian levels.
Groaning, Allison closed her eyes and tipped her face toward the sun. She’d been hoping that taking her reading outside for the afternoon would help her mood, but she was no closer to being able to concentrate. Just sweatier. Swiping at her damp forehead, she shut the cover of Derrida’sOf Grammatologyand shoved it across the glass table.
“Since when do we abuse books?” Sophie’s voice mixed with the creak of the back door as she joined Allison outside. She’d had a dentist appointment that morning, and for Sophie Andrade, any appointment was an excuse for a day off, especially if it was Friday.
“We don’t. Except this one.” To prove her point, Allison used the end of her pen to push Derrida over the edge of the table. The book hit the ground with a satisfyingthump.
The noise sent Monty, Allison’s seven-month-old Corgi, wriggling like a blender on full blast under Sophie’s arm. She’d barely placed him down before he was zooming around the tight circumference of the deck, his nails clicking and clacking against the wooden slats.
“I found that beast trying to use my aunt’s pin cushion as a tennis ball.” By day, Sophie did data entry, but by night, she was designing her own line of plus-sized clothing, so her room always looked like a crafts store had exploded in it. It was a veritable cornucopia of temptation for a mischievous dog, and Monty had no self-control.
“The one shaped like a tomato?”
“Yup.”
Allison sighed. “That’s all I need after this week. The ASPCA taking my dog away because he was eating pins.”
“I promise, no pins were consumed.” Sophie settled into the lounger next to Allison and popped her oversized sunglasses over her face. In her black-and-white-striped romper, she looked ready for a day at the beach. “But didn’t youjuststart class? Things can’t be that bad already?”
Allison frowned. “Grad school is intense.” Sophie hadn’t really been around enough lately to observe this.
When they’d moved from their on-campus apartment to this small rental house the day after graduation, Allison had thought it would be like undergrad 2.0. Movie nights and game nights and staying up too late drinking leftover alcohol from parties. Laughing until they couldn’t breathe. Everything the same, only better, because there were no more rules and no more homework (for Sophie, at least) to weigh them down.
Instead, there were bills, and chores, and six-in-the-morning alarms. And Sophie had all these new friends at work and designers she’d made contact with filling up whatever free time she had left.Allison couldn’t recall the last time they’d chatted for more than ten minutes.
She scuffed the heel of her sandal against the deck. “There’s so much reading to do. And so much your professors already expect you to know. It’s like starting a language at the most advanced level. And on top of that, I got assigned my TA position, so now I’m going to have to prep my own recitations, too.”
Recitations were smaller discussion sections of ten to fifteen students, which basically meant that Allison had to lead two classes on her own. Never mind that she had to do all of this with Colin hovering everywhere like some kind of malevolent ghost. But she couldn’t say that to Sophie. Not yet. She still hadn’t figured out how to tell her that Colin was at Claymore.
In her best friend’s mind, Allison would always be that girl who went moony every time Colin gifted her a book she’d mentioned wanting to read, every time he sobbed at a movie’s happy ending. The girl who, for a time, had insisted that Colin was her “lobster.”
Though they’d dated for less than a year, being in college, with only a few hours of their days structured by classes, had allowed Allison and Colin to spend an incredible amount of time together at Brown. Sharing meals and beds and bad days as well as the good ones, witnessing each other’s bed head and hangover breath and midnight paper-drafting panic attacks; it had all felt so intimate. And Colin was older and charming and funny, and, sometimes he’d shed his proverbial smart-guy armor, permitting Allison small glimpses of the many other sides to him: the cat lover, the guy afraid of moths and other winged insects (tiny attack planes, he called them), the one who loved his mother and his grandfather so fiercely he might explode from the very force of those feelings.
In the face of all that, no wonder she’d failed to see the worst parts of him, even as Sophie had tried valiantly to point them out.
This was why telling her best friend about Colin’s reappearanceneeded to be carefully planned. It would require time and chocolate and a good sangria. Probably a preset script. None of which Allison had at the moment.
Sophie’s eyes widened. “I thought TAing was just showing up for lectures and grading some papers or whatever? You have to run your own class?”
“Yup. I guess Professor Frances likes her graduate students to get a feel for teaching early on, so we do more than most.”
Sophie grimaced. “You must know the books, though, right? It’s you. You’ve read everything in existence.”
Allison slid the syllabus for British Literature’s Greatest Hits out of her notebook and scanned the reading list as if it might have changed since the last time she checked it half an hour ago.Beowulf.Chaucer. Malory’sLe Morte d’Arthurand a handful of other Arthurian romances.The Faerie Queene.Shakespeare.Gulliver’s Travels.She was familiar with everything but a few John Donne poems. (After one attempt at understanding “The Flea,” Allison had known she was done with Donne.)
