Page 25 of Given Our History

“Isn’t that a little soon?” Bel asks. “That’s less than two months to plan, send out invites…”

“November is already swamped for me, and I need to have something to show the advisory committee by December,” I say. Plus, the sooner I get this knocked out, the sooner I can focus on everything else—putting together the rest of my dossier, coordinating the guest speaker from Edinburgh, submitting to journals. When there are no further objections, I press on. “So we see about securing the Alumni House, and then what about asking the Alumni Association to mention something in those emails they send out?”

“That could work,” Bel agrees. “We could also post an event on Facebook. I feel like most of our donors would be in the Facebook age group, wouldn’t they?”

I make a note. We iron out a few additional details—finding someone willing to cater for a reasonable price presents a challenge, so we agree that we’ll ask around and see whether we can unearth any connections before reconvening in two weeks. We also touch briefly on the dress code, and while Teddy nods along with my suggestion of business casual, Bel emphatically shoots me down. “No one has ever, in the history of galas, been like ‘Wow, you know what I really want to wear tonight? That pair of khakis I bought off the clearance rack at Kohl’s.’”

“Thank you, Anna Wintour,” I mutter, scratching out the idea with my pen. “What do you suggest?”

Bel splays her hands and leans into the table like she’s about to divulge a juicy secret. “A costume party.”

Teddy and I exchange a dubious look.

“Think about it,” she says. “It’s the weekend before Halloween. All these donors on the invite list, half of them haven’t been to a proper Halloween party since they were kids. Give people an excuse to wear a costume, and they’ll show.” When I don’t look entirely convinced, she adds, emphatically, “I promise.”

“All right,” I say. “But we need to make sure we keep it secular, you know, avoid ostracizing anyone who doesn’t celebrate.”

“We could call it a fall festival,” Teddy suggests.

I tap my lips with the end of my pen, thinking.

“I’ll create a Facebook event,” Bel says excitedly, already tapping away on her phone. I can’t help wondering whether she’s the one who’s looking for an excuse to wear a costume. “Get a feel for how much interest we can generate.”

Afterward, Teddy goes up to the bar to pay the tab while I collect my bag and stow the notepad. “Thank you for being here,” I say to Bel. “Really. It means a lot.”

In the middle of reapplying her ChapStick, she shoots me a smile. “Hey, that’s what friends are for.” She rubs her lips together, popping the cap back on. She casts a glance over at the bar, where Teddy appears to be caught in an awkward encounter with a drunk student while he waits for the bartender to cash us out. “You mentioned that you know each other from camp,” Bel says slowly, “but is there something—” She cuts herself short but raises her eyebrows, expectant. Like I’m supposed to fill in the blank. There’s a couple seconds’ delay before I catch her meaning.

“No,” I say. “Nothing like that.”

She purses her full lips. “You want my honest opinion, or my work opinion?”

“You already know what I’m going to say.”

“Maybe you’ve gotten used to telling yourself that it’s nothing, and maybe you’ve started to believe it, and if that’s the case then I assume you have your reasons.” She stands on tiptoe to hoist her oversized tote off the high-top table. “But for what it’s worth,” she says pointedly, “I don’t believe you.”

CHAPTER10

SIXTEEN YEARS AGO

Less than two weeks after camp had ended, a bubble envelope from Pennsylvania arrived at my parents’ house, wedged inside the mailbox alongside a credit card offer and an AT&T bill. I was so excited that I tore it open right there at the curb, extracting a clear plastic CD case with a folded piece of plain printer paper inserted in the cover. He’d written on it in thick blue Sharpie, Teddy’s Mix, and doodled a pair of headphones.

I spent the whole afternoon lying in the hammock beneath the oak tree, my CD player on my lap as I cycled through every track, replaying them to try to understand the lyrics. It was filled with all sorts of music: Taking Back Sunday and Arctic Monkeys and MGMT. A lot of it was moody and weird and some of it was angry. It was way different than the stuff I’d grown accustomed to listening to, but I didn’t hate it.

After I’d listened all the way through a couple times and the sun was already sinking somewhere out beyond the bay, I climbed out of the hammock and went inside to ask my dad for permission to use the computer. Mom was still on my case about using the phone too much, so the first thing I’d done after arriving home from camp was create a Myspace profile. I’d called Teddy that same week to tell him to do the same.

“My parents still have dial-up,” he’d said, “so I might not be able to check it whenever they’re using the phone and stuff, but I’ll try.”

There was really no reason for either of my parents to have a home office, but we had a spare bedroom and few guests, so the room overlooking the backyard had been converted into a computer room. There was still a twin bed in the corner, but it was buried beneath donation bags and piles of old clothes. My parents had bought the computer years ago, when I was still pretty little, because my mom had insisted that they needed to make sure I was technologically literate. Mostly, it had involved them forcing me to play educational games like JumpStart Typing, but I’d also stashed a few cereal box games that I used to play when they weren’t looking.

It took a few minutes for the computer to boot up, but once it did, I went to check Teddy’s profile—he hadn’t customized it at all yet, his default picture still set to the generic no photo graphic. It didn’t look like he was online, but I sent him a message anyway.

From: Clare Bear ♥

Date: October 14, 7:52 P.M.

Subject: THANK YOU!!

Body: Thank you for sending the CD!! I listened to the whole thing already. Some of the songs you put on there are kind of intense, but I did like one of the ones you put at the end, once I got past the shouting and all the stuff about stakes to the heart. I think it was track ten.