Chapter 63: First Day
"I heard you used to play guitar," Lily said, stacking the last of the containers. "How'd you end up running a food truck?"
"A guitar player who doesn't want to be a chef isn't much of a boxer," Andrew said.
She laughed — genuinely, the kind that surprised her on the way out. Then she caught him looking at her with the expression he used when he was about to say something she wouldn't like, and straightened up.
"Don't," she said.
"I didn't say anything."
"You were about to."
"I was about to say you're moving slow on the cooler inventory."
She turned back to the cooler with the dignity of someone declining to engage.
He watched her work and thought about the last time he'd seen her — the version that had been performing something at Central Perk, the carefully constructed presentation of a girl who'd decided visibility was dangerous and had built a persona around being noticed for the wrong things so nobody looked for the right ones. That version had lasted about two months in the real world before the real world had declined to cooperate.
He'd heard the story third-hand through Gunther, who'd heard it from the manager: Lily had just stopped showing up one day in January. No call, no text. Her section sat empty for a morning shift before anyone started asking questions.
Her father had come in that afternoon. Middle-aged, the bearing of someone who'd been disappointed and had decided to remain available anyway. Lily had been with him, red-eyed, the makeup entirely gone, looking about fourteen, which was close to what she was.
She'd apologized to the manager, to Gunther, to the two other waitresses whose tables she'd left uncovered. She'd meant all of it — Andrew could tell the difference, and this was the real kind.
Then she'd seen him standing by the pastry case with his coffee, and her expression had moved through about six stages in under a second, landing on something that combined genuine gratitude with genuine fury, and she'd crossed the room and bitten him on the nose.
Not hard enough to break skin. Hard enough to be a statement.
He'd worn a bandage for a week. He felt he'd deserved it.
"I still can't believe you told people about that," Lily said, without turning around.
"I told one person."
"You told Joey."
"Joey counts as half a person in terms of information security."
She made a sound that was almost a laugh and kept working.
He drove the truck to its lot at eleven-fifteen, and Lily rode along because she'd said her hotel was close and it was cold and there was no reason not to. She sat in the passenger seat with her hands in her coat pockets, looking out at the streets in the particular way of someone who was still getting used to being somewhere on her own terms.
"You're going to Hartwell tomorrow," he said. It wasn't a question — he'd put it together from the timing and what he knew about her situation.
She turned. "How did you know about Hartwell?"
"My tenant got in too. Christie. She's in the same year."
Lily was quiet for a moment, processing this. "Small city."
"You keep saying that."
"It keeps being true." She looked back out the window. "I made the top thousand on the exam. Forty percent tuition reduction." She said it in the tone of someone who had practiced saying it neutrally and mostly succeeded. "It's not the top hundred."
"It's not the top hundred," Andrew agreed. "It's also not nothing, from a standing start in six months."
She didn't respond to this, which meant she'd accepted it.
He pulled up to the hotel — a mid-range place on 71st, the kind that was clean and anonymous and didn't ask questions, which was what you needed when you were sixteen and figuring out the interim. She got out and then stood at the passenger window.
"What time tomorrow?" she said.
"Eight-fifteen. Be outside."
She nodded once, the crisp nod of someone confirming operational details, and went inside.
[Observation (Proficient): 66/100]
The apartment was dark when he got in, which was expected. What was not expected was Christie on the couch in the living room, sitting in the specific upright way of someone who had been sitting for a while and was not going to admit it.
He turned on the light. She blinked.
"You should be asleep," he said.
"I have insomnia."
"You have first-day nerves, which is different." He put his keys on the counter. "Go lie down."
"I am lying down."
"On a bed."
She pulled her knees up and looked at the television, which was off. "The dorms have four people per room. I've never shared a room with anyone."
"I know."
"What if they're—"
"They'll be whatever they are and you'll figure it out." He got a glass of water from the kitchen and set it on the coffee table in front of her. "Christie. You placed in the top five hundred on the entrance exam on your first attempt. You've been in New York for less than a year. You're going to be fine."
She looked at the water glass. "You don't know that."
"I know you're the most stubborn person I've met, and that's the quality that actually matters in a new room with new people."
She didn't say anything to this, which from Christie meant she was holding it.
"If you can't get up at seven-thirty," he said, heading to his room, "I'll get you up anyway. We're picking up someone else on the way."
"Who?"
"Girl named Lily. She's in your year." He stopped at his door. "You'll like her. Or you won't. Either way it'll be interesting."
He went to shower.
When he came back through for water twenty minutes later, Christie had moved to her room. The living room light was off. The water glass was half empty.
He checked the panel before sleep.
[Cooking (Expert): 3/100][Boxing (Proficient): 94/100][Observation (Proficient): 66/100][Martial Arts (Proficient): 89/100]
Boxing was stalled. He knew why — Bolton had said it plainly weeks ago, and the panel confirmed it every session. The last six points weren't going to come from the gym. He needed live competition at a level the gym couldn't provide, and he'd been putting off the decision about what to do about that.
He'd make a decision about it soon.
He set the alarm for seven and went to sleep.
Seven-thirty.
Christie was at the kitchen table in her Hartwell uniform — navy blazer, white shirt, dark pants, the whole thing pressed with the precision of someone who had been up for a while managing her nerves through productive activity. She was eating cereal and reading something, and she looked up when Andrew came in with the expression of someone who had decided overnight to be fine about this.
He made coffee. Said nothing about the fact that she'd clearly been awake since six.
At eight they went downstairs. Lily was already outside the hotel, which was two blocks from the building — Andrew had picked the route to pass it. She was in the same uniform, hair pulled back, the kind of practical readiness that came from having learned early that showing up prepared was the first and easiest thing you could control.
She saw Christie and did a quick assessment that Christie returned with equal efficiency.
Andrew watched two people who were very good at reading situations read each other.
"Lily," he said. "Christie. Christie, Lily."
"Hey," Lily said.
"Hey," Christie said.
They fell into step on either side of him heading toward the subway, and after about half a block Lily said to Christie, "How'd you do on the math section?" and Christie said "Eighty-nine percent, you?" and Lily said "Seventy-seven, I almost didn't make top thousand" and Christie said "The geometry subsection is harder than it looks" and Lily said "It really is" and then they were talking and Andrew was slightly behind them and unnecessary, which was exactly right.
[Observation (Proficient): 67/100]
He bought a coffee from a cart on Broadway, drank it on the subway platform, and watched two teenagers navigate the specific social transaction of deciding whether to be friends, which they were apparently going to do, and felt something that was quiet and uncomplicated and good.
Hartwell Academy occupied a limestone building on East 79th — five stories, wrought iron fence, the kind of institutional presence that had been there long enough to stop announcing itself. There were other students arriving, the particular first-day mix of performed confidence and barely managed anxiety that existed at every school on every first day everywhere.
Christie stopped at the gate. Looked at the building.
Andrew stopped beside her.
"It's just a building," he said.
"I know."
"The building doesn't know anything about you yet."
She looked at him. "That's either reassuring or alarming."
"Pick one and go in."
She picked up her bag. Straightened the blazer, which didn't need straightening. Lily appeared at her elbow — she'd been waiting, Andrew realized, giving Christie the moment without making it a thing.
"You ready?" Lily said.
Christie considered the question with appropriate seriousness.
"Yeah," she said.
They went through the gate.
Andrew stood on the sidewalk and watched them go — Christie with the compressed determination of someone who had decided, Lily with the loose confidence of someone who had already survived worse — until they were through the door and gone.
He finished his coffee.
Then he turned toward the subway and started thinking about Ross.
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