Tap & Gown by Diana Peterfreund Page B

campus, I thought about what a shame it was that Michelle had been in Strathmore, had taken a semester off, had moved off campus, had locked herself away in the labs. She Page 58

    was someone I could have been friends with, had I gotten to know her earlier than a month and a half before commencement. Then again, I had just started dating a guy a month and a half before commencement.
    But Jamie was different. He was a knight, he was in my society. We’d have plenty of time together, even after graduation.
    Too bad I couldn’t tap Michelle.
    1*At least, the confessor assumes that was the general gist behind a “snow”-themed initiation. After all, it was in May.
    2*All times are Diggers-time.
    3*The confessor is being somewhat less than fair, here, given as atmospheric change and greenhouse gas buildup is a serious issue that deserves attention from everyone, not just Geology majors. And no, she was not coerced into saying that.
    Dark water, thick as syrup, closed over my head. I thrashed and thrashed, but my legs seemed to be bound to some great weight that pulled me ever downward. I couldn’t get free, I couldn’t get air, I couldn’t stop it from happening.
    “Amy! Shhh, it’s a dream.”
    I woke covered in a thin sheen of sweat and blinked up into Jamie’s concerned eyes. He was leaning on one elbow, his bare shoulders bathed in moonlight, his face half in shadow. “Drowning again?”
    “Yes.” I slipped from between the sheets and yanked Jamie’s borrowed T-shirt down over the top of my thighs as I padded into his bathroom to splash some cold water on my face.
    “Do you notice you only have those dreams here?” He followed me and leaned against the door. I Page 59

    stared, bleary-eyed, at his reflection in the mirror. “Concerned” had a tendency to look like “angry” on Jamie. It always took me a minute to recalibrate my understanding when I saw him like this. It was too easy to imagine he was mad at me.
    “No, I have them at home, too,” I said, and then slurped a few handfuls of water from the sink. “Just not when you’re there.”
    “We should fix that.”
    We got back into bed, and I pulled the covers up to my waist. Boys are like little heat engines. I hardly ever need to use a blanket when I sleep with one.
    And that was all we’d been doing. Sleeping. Well, that and some seriously heavy make-out sessions.
    “Petting,” my mother would probably call it.
    Somehow, without ever discussing it, we’d realized that a late night study-session-turned-sleepover was not the most momentous occasion during which to go all the way. At least, I think that was the reason. It just never seemed right to have first-time sex with Jamie on the couch of his apartment, our textbooks strewn across the coffee table or the floor. It never seemed good enough to do it after he’d brushed his teeth and pulled me into his arms in his bed (full-sized, but still using the dorm-room comforter designed to fit a single bed). It never seemed natural to do it in my bedroom in Prescott College, with Lydia and Josh only a thin wall away.
    I wasn’t sure when the correct time would be, though. It wasn’t as if we could afford a weekend away at a hotel or some romantic upstate bed-and-breakfast. I didn’t have the time; Jamie didn’t have the money. Besides, I’d never felt the need to make an occasion out of the first time in any of my other relationships. Dorm rooms were always just fine. You’re talking to the girl who lost her virginity at an after-prom party in the bedroom of the kid sister of the party-giver.
    Of course, that relationship hadn’t worked out. None of them had. So maybe it was time to change things up.
    “Sleepy?” Jamie’s voice floated across the pillows in the darkness.
    “No.”
    “ Not sleepy?” His hand brushed against my torso, an invitation.
    I took a deep breath. “Darren called me last week.”
    Jamie’s hand stilled on my skin. “Oh?”
    “His father apparently made him.