Rosa turned around. "Sarah, hi!" The two women embraced like a couple of schoolgirls while James, Alan and Mark looked on in bemused silence. "I've been meaning to come by your room," Rosa said when she and Sarah finally disentangled. "It's just been so busy lately!"
"God, aren't we all!" Sarah said. "Join us for lunch?"
"Oh, Sarah, you know I eat at the Corner Table!" Rosa said, pulling her ID out of her purse. "Of course, you're always welcome there."
"There's always a place for you at the Corner Table," Mark intoned dramatically.
"There's always people hugging at the Corner Table," Alan added.
Rosa gave them both a dirty look, and for good measure she glared at Sarah for a moment, before handing her ID to the card checker and proceeding into the dining hall without another word. James was relieved that she seemed to have noticed he hadn't joined in on the shaming of the Corner Table -- the misfits of a college that already was full of misfits -- and just for a wonderful moment he wondered if Rosa was the one Sarah had been referring to. But just as quickly he admonished himself, it couldn't be. Despite her affiliation with the Corner Table, Rosa was very pretty and confident and she had that style all her own that worked against all odds -- he'd managed to notice all that from afar even as he'd never met her -- and she could have a real hunk if that's what she wanted. She wouldn't bother with a shy guy like him. But at least he'd been spared her anger.
And Sarah's. "Guys, look," she said, standing in the doorway to block their way. "I know Rosa's kind of weird and I know she hangs out with those weirdos at the Corner Table. But she's my best friend, and I won't stand for her being insulted like that, all right?"
"Sorry, Sarah," James said.
"It's not you who should be apologizing, James." She gave the other two an expectant look, and got nothing but smirks in return. "Whatever," she said, and handed her ID to the checker.
Rosa was used to scorn from Sarah's friends. She'd been putting up with it since freshman year, when they were roommates and Sarah had gravitated towards the jocks and she towards the hippies. Even then, Rosa had sensed she could have avoided all that if she'd steered clear of the Corner Table. But even then, the Corner Table had been the one and only niche on campus where she'd felt fully accepted for the quirky young woman she was. So she'd put up with the snickering and the stupid comments and jokes, in exchange for the warm welcome from the one group of ragtag misfits that got her.
Today, as she carried her tray back to the Corner Table, she wondered if the results of the confrontation with Sarah's friends were visible on her face. They must have been, for Moose took one look at her and stood up and opened his arms. "Hi, Rosa," he said. "What's wrong?" Rosa cheered up as she saw he'd finally switched his shoes: black on the left and white on the right today.
Rosa set her tray down and let her friend enfold her in his arms. "Hi, Moose," she said. "Just the usual, friend of a friend stuff."
"Need say no more," said Moose, whom no one but the professors ever called by his real name, Henry.
"Just had a taste of that myself," said Patricia, who was just finishing her lunch. "It's like they think we're coming for them if they don't repel us or something."
"Well gee, haven't you heard how funny we smell lately?" asked Keith, known far and wide as the biggest computer geek on campus. As Rosa let go of Moose and sat down beside him, she once again opted not to tell Keith that it actually wouldn't hurt for him to shower a bit more often.
"What are they afraid of?" wondered Paul, a sharp dresser like Rosa.
"Yeah, it's not like we're going to their beer blasts and tearing our clothes off or anything," added Paul's boyfriend, Nick, of whom Rosa was still a touch jealous.
Moose burst out laughing. "What if we did do that?"
"Yeah, I'm sure the whole school wants to see us naked, Moose," Patricia said. "Can you imagine?"
"That's just my point!" Moose said. "They think we're a bunch of freaks anyway, what if we gave 'em just what they want? You want to point and laugh at us? Here we are, vulnerable as can be. You got the guts to do the same? You all just know not a one of them does!"
Rosa was expecting her friends to laugh, but then she found she was not laughing. Neither, to her surprise, were any of the others. Someone had to break the silence, so she did. "You're not all seriously considering this, are you?"
"There'll be parties or movies in every lounge tonight, you know that," Nick said. It was Friday.
Pregnant pause. This time it was Patricia who spoke up. "Oh, all right, I'm game if the rest of you are."
Shy Rosa had never given any thought at all to such a thing -- that was just the sort of college nonsense she'd always figured was beneath her. But if all her dearest friends were joining in...
Rosa could never forget what she'd read about Claxton in the book her mother had bought her, about what colleges were really like. "A current student says, 'The perfect Claxton College student is the kind of person who could have fit in back in high school but chose not to.'" Rosa hadn't bought it then, and over halfway into her junior year at Claxton, she still didn't buy it. She still had no doubt that guy had really been talking about people who couldn't have fit in back in high school and still weren't honest with themselves about it. Rosa herself, with her shy demeanor and complete lack of sense of what was in fashion with clothes or music or much of anything else, hadn't been in any such denial back in high school. She'd been more than happy to eat lunch with the outcasts: the nerds, the one boy who loved ballet, the only out lesbian in her class, the artistic weirdos...they'd attracted plenty of dirty looks and laughs from the cool kids, but they'd made a wonderfully cohesive band of misfits and she'd never had any regrets about her inability to make nice with the beautiful people.
Little wonder, then, that when she'd gotten to Claxton freshman year, she'd gravitated immediately to the Corner Table. She'd heard that name -- "the Corner Table" -- before she'd even been to lunch at the dining hall on her first whole day on campus, but a senior on her floor had told her and Sarah all about just what it meant. "It's a really open community here, you know, no cliques, but we've got a few weirdos who still just have to act like outcasts even though high school is over. We call them the Corner Table because that's where they sit in the dining hall. We're talking no social skills here, and I think some of them don't even like taking a shower very often."
"Gross," Sarah had said. Rosa had said nothing; she remembered all too well hearing her friends in high school talked about in the same sort of tone by the popular kids she'd always loved to hate.
"I wouldn't worry about them, though," the older woman had told them. "A couple of nice gals like you won't have any problem finding your footing here. Leave the freaks alone and they'll leave you alone."
Rosa had dutifully joined Sarah and the rest of their floor for lunch. But she'd scoped out the Corner Table from a safe distance, and their cohesiveness was palpable from first sight. That night at dinner she'd helped herself to a seat there.
She had never since regretted it. But now, walking back to her room after lunch with her heart doing flip flops, she felt her first-ever twinge of regret. This wasn't who she was! It wasn't who any of her friends were, that's why they were friends in the first place. Of course, if she chickened out, they'd never hold it against her. As Rosa climbed the stairs to her room, she began to practice the explanation she would give when she arrived at Moose's room at the appointed hour.
Guys, I'm sorry, I just can't...please understand...
They would understand, that she knew.
Rosa had the speech all set by the time she got to her door and stood looking through her purse for her keys. Just as she got them out, a pair of freshman guys came out of their room down the hall. "Well, if it isn't the freakiest cowgirl!" one of them snickered.
"Giddyup!" added the other. They laughed and slapped high-fives, and took off down the stairs.
Rosa, who had been on the business end of their teasing before, didn't even look at them as she unlocked her door and stepped inside. As she locked the door and tossed her purse on the bed, once again she felt the righteous indignation that had just gone around the Corner Table.
Yes, she decided, she bloody well would!
After lunch, Sarah went back to James' room and they did one last run-through of the French conversational review. "God, if we'd done this every week," Sarah said as at last she closed her book.
"This exam'd be a snap," James agreed. "Well, there's always next term. You taking French again?"
"Mais oui!"
Sarah said. "Yeah, let's plan on that, once a week. James, thanks, you've been a big help."
"No problem," James said. "And look, I'm sorry about Mark and Alan."
"I told you, it's not you who should be apologizing," Sarah said. "Besides, I really don't know what Rosa sees in those freaks. I mean, yeah, she's a little weird herself, but..."
"Maybe that's why?" James offered. "That you think she's weird, I mean."
"Well, I love her, but she is," Sarah said. "Do you know her, James?"
James shook his head. "One of those people I've seen around campus since freshman year but never met. This place is bigger than it sometimes seems, you know?"
"True," Sarah said, and now she recalled what she'd said before lunch. If he didn't think Rosa was weird, maybe she should...but she didn't. Instead she asked, "Now, feel free to tell me it's none of my business, but may I ask why you always almost don't go to Spring Forward? Or the Snow Ball either, I suppose?"
