Prep: A Novel by Curtis Sittenfeld Page A

practice. When Ms. Barrett told us to split into pairs and toss a ball, I watched as the girls around me turned to each other, murmuring and nodding. It had become a ritual in sports and in class—the time when everybody divided, and I had no one to divide with. Then the coach or teacher would say, “Is anyone not paired up?” and I and one or two other students would meekly raise our hands.
    “Hey,” said a voice behind me. I turned and saw Conchita. “Want to be partners?”
    I hesitated.
    “Take ten minutes,” Ms. Barrett called out. “Just get the feel of throwing and catching.”
    “Let’s go over there.” Conchita pointed to a corner of the field a few feet from where the woods began. Though I hadn’t yet responded to her offer, it was clear to both of us I wasn’t going to receive another one. “By the way,” she said, “I’m Conchita.”
    “I’m Lee.”
    “I’ve never played lacrosse before,” she said cheerfully. I’d never played, either—in fact, I had purchased my stick less than an hour before, in the school store, and it smelled like leather and new metal—but I said nothing.
    Though Conchita and I had never spoken, I already knew who she was. In fact, I’m sure everyone at Ault knew who she was, mostly because of how she dressed. She was a skinny girl with a large pile of short black puffy hair and dark skin, and I’d first noticed her in the dining hall several months back, in purple clogs, a pair of tights with horizontal purple and red stripes, purple culottes (they might have been knickers—I wasn’t certain), and a red blouse with a huge ruffly collar. The final accessory was a purple beret, which she’d set at a jaunty angle. I had thought at the time that she resembled a member of a theater troupe specializing in elementary school visits. For lacrosse practice, Conchita looked slightly more conservative—she was wearing a chartreuse tank top, white shorts, and chartreuse knee socks, which she’d actually pulled up to her knees. Apparently a hat enthusiast, she sported an Ault baseball cap with a still-stiff brim; the cap made me wonder if, after all, she was trying to fit in rather than to stand out.
    As we walked, Conchita sneezed three times in a row. I considered saying
Bless you
to her, then didn’t.
    She pulled a tissue from the pocket of her shorts and blew her nose loudly. “Allergies,” she said. It was early April then, just after spring break, a perfect afternoon of cobalt sky and bright sun. “You name it, I’m allergic to it.”
    I didn’t try to name anything.
    “Grass,” Conchita said. “Pollen, chlorine, mushrooms.”
    “Mushrooms?”
    “If I eat one, I break out in hives for up to a week.”
    “That sucks,” I said, and I could hear in my own voice not a meanness, exactly, but a lack of deference.
    We positioned ourselves ten yards apart. Conchita set the ball, a rubbery white globe like the egg of some exotic creature, in the webbing of her stick and thrust the stick forward. The ball landed in the grass several feet to my left. “Don’t say you weren’t warned,” she said.
    I scooped up the ball and propelled it back; it landed even farther from her than her shot had from me.
    “I take it you’re a Dylan fan,” Conchita said.
    “Huh?”
    “Your shirt.”
    I looked down. I was wearing an old T-shirt of my father’s, pale blue with the words
The Times They Are A-Changin’
across the front in white letters. I had no idea where he’d gotten it, but he’d worn it to jog in, and when I’d left for Ault I’d taken it with me; it was very soft and, for a few weeks, it had smelled like home.
    “You realize that’s one of his most famous songs, right?” Conchita said.
    “Yeah,” I said. “Right.” At Ault, there was so much I didn’t know. Most of it had to do with money (what a debutante was, how you pronounced Greenwich, Connecticut) or with sex (that a pearl necklace wasn’t always a piece of jewelry), but sometimes it had to