1. Cora Doesn''t Know What to Do with Herself CORA DOESN''T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH HERSELF August 1999 Cora Belle arrived at college determined to conquer her fears once and for all. There were many: spiders; thick soups with unidentifiable ingredients; failure; getting lost, both physically and metaphorically; being late; being early; being alone; getting cancer. Love. Her plan was simple: She would completely transform herself into someone who was brave, confident, chill, and knew how to pull off a smoky eye. She would use her time at Hamlin to put herself together like a puzzle, take all the fledgling identities, fragments of personality and haphazard aspirations, and assemble them into a coherent version of herself, ready for the daunting task of adulthood. Also, improve her posture while she was at it. She was not off to a good start.
On any front. Standing with slumped shoulders in the long, snaking line in the Hamlin University bookstore, Cora faced a more urgent concern: trying not to burst into tears in front of hundreds of other students who''d set about procuring mountains of textbooks in the early hours of a hot, bright late-August morning. She looked around with wild eyes and barely concealed panic--what was she even doing in this place? Never mind that Cora had actively participated in all the steps to get here: printing out applications, taking the SATs, writing essay after essay about riveting topics like "a time you''ve faced a challenge," and tearing at the big white envelope from Hamlin Admissions when it arrived. Not to mention carefully packing sweaters and CDs, a stack of pristine Moleskine notebooks, and the stuffed Snoopy she''d had since she was a baby, currently stashed in the freshly unpacked duffel under the bed in her dorm room. Hidden, but close. Had Cora ever been away from home before, she might have known to steel herself for the homesickness that consumed her as soon as her father grabbed her by both shoulders last night, trained his wide brown eyes on her, and said, "Well, I''d best be going now, Cora. You''re going to be good, you hear? I know you know that even if you don''t fully believe it yet." But she was bowled over by the unfamiliar feeling when Wes hugged her goodbye and had the audacity to drive away.
After watching the lights of her father''s Acura until they faded from sight, Cora scurried up four flights of stairs (thereby avoiding the packed elevators) to her single room, the one she''d scored on account of exaggerated allergies, even though it was the prospect of living with a complete stranger that made her break out in hives. In the privacy of her closet-size dorm room, she sobbed into a pillow as quietly as possible waiting for the tears to stop, or the sun to rise, whichever came first. It was a close race. By 7:00 a.m., before anyone else in the dorm seemed to have stirred, Cora slunk to the communal hall bathroom, where she patted cold water on her puffy eyes and brushed the teeth that four long years of braces had wrestled into place. She smiled into the mirror for a full thirty seconds because she''d read somewhere that it could change your mood even if it was fake. Cora attempted this strategy again now, grinning maniacally at no one and everyone in the packed bookstore that was brimming with the giddy energy of fresh starts, new adventures, and infinite possibilities.
It was really quite oppressive. Especially when you factored in the body heat. There was a second there where Cora thought she might be okay; she even relaxed a little, shook out her tight shoulders, looked at a flyer on the wall inviting new students to "Come Kick It at Kippen Field" for a meet-and-greet picnic, and thought, Maybe? And then, just as she shuffled a few feet forward in line, an image came to her: her father, at home a hundred miles or so up I-95, opening the Washington Post and vigorously shaking it out, then folding the pages just right and going to read to her as he always did before realizing that she wasn''t sitting across from him eating Frosted Flakes. Cora had been so focused on missing him, she hadn''t stopped to consider how much he would miss her . Who would remind him to grab his travel coffee mug that he never failed to forget every single morning? Her eyes welled to dangerous levels as she thought of that stupid steel mug. And the sound of her father humming while he sorted the mail. The green shag carpet in her bedroom. The row of World Book encyclopedias on the shelf above her desk where her pencil holder, stapler, and framed baby picture were lined up in precise order.
The pumpkin-shaped cookie jar in the kitchen that held stray dollar bills and spare keys. The list went on and on, and with each item (her towering piles of Seventeen magazines!), Cora was ratcheted up to an increasingly wretched state. She glanced frantically around searching for an escape, if not from the bookstore itself than somehow from the anxious vice grip of her mind, and that''s when she saw him. Standing a few feet away, having materialized out of nowhere, was one of the most striking people Cora had ever seen. He stood out partly because he was so tall (at least six two) and partly because he was one of the only other brown faces around, but mainly because he was so. hot. Cora''s extensive vocabulary was a source of pride but her addled brain couldn''t come up with a more eloquent adjective to describe this stranger. She watched as he leaned over and dragged a sharp blade along the top of a large box at his feet.
For whatever reason, this action played out in her mind in slow motion, such that she could see the subtle quivering of his forearm muscle as it flexed and released. When he stood back up, she zeroed in on the gold name tag attached to his bookstore uniform, a bright green polo: Lincoln Ames. Cora whispered it a few times under her breath. "Lincoln Ames. Lincoln Ames. Lincoln Ames." She hadn''t before considered that a name could be attractive. But it was, along with so much else about him.
First, his skin. For this, she was able to summon just the right SAT word: luminous . Cora had only heard that term applied to women and only in makeup commercials, but it was the perfect description. It was like someone had taken an ideal human form and poured the silkiest, smoothest dark chocolate over it. Everything about him was long; each of his limbs stretched an extra inch beyond the factory model. His eyes were as jet black and shiny as piano keys. But it was his lips that nearly did her in. Full, pillowy, and smooth in a way that called to mind clouds and mangoes.
These lips were responsible for sending Cora stumbling into the person in front of her, who''d been aggressively nodding his head along to whatever was playing on the Discman clipped to his jeans. Guys like this, like Lincoln Ames, didn''t exist in Cora''s world outside John Singleton movies or the imaginary crushes she''d conjured that were all some version of a young James Earl Jones she once saw in one of the vintage Ebony magazines her father collected. Never in the flesh. It was as if she were in an elevator that had dropped too fast. There was a sudden, overwhelming wooziness and a warm heaviness deep within her, almost like vertigo but not quite. What she was experiencing was, of course, attraction, but Cora Belle was so unfamiliar with the concept and sensation, it registered mainly as confusion. She lost herself to the mesmerizing distraction of watching Lincoln stack stuffed teddy bears emblazoned with the Hamlin Huskies logo into a structurally sound pyramid, breaking his focus only to give coworkers fist bumps when they passed or greet customers like this was his store and he was welcoming people to his own personal back-to-school party. His whole affect--so upbeat, so affable--was the opposite of Cora''s, which made her even more self-conscious to be the pathetic guest bringing down the vibe of the entire affair.
But then she remembered that exactly no one, including Lincoln, was paying attention to her. In moments like this, Cora relished the fact that she typically felt invisible in most situations; it meant she could observe Lincoln in peace. Until. She felt the hands of someone on her. One of the two girls standing in line behind her reached out and touched her hair, causing Cora to startle and jump much more dramatically than the situation called for and in a way that drew too many eyes. Before spotting Lincoln, Cora had been eavesdropping on the girls'' overanimated chatter, though they hadn''t been so much conversing as squawking at each other like a pair of high-pitched birds; they exchanged the most basic biographical details as if each one was an astonishing twist of fate and destiny. "You''re from New Jersey? No way! My parents have a house in Cape May." "Wait! You have an older brother? I have an older brother! We''re three years apart too--crazy!" Based on these incredible commonalities, they were on their way to becoming best friends by the time they got to the front of the line.
One already had complaints about her new roommate ("You would not believe how loudly she breathes "), which made Cora all the more grateful for her single. Cora reflexively swatted at the girl who''d touched her, the shorter one with a mane of shaggy curls swept up in a giant bedazzled butterfly clip. "Whoa, jeez, sorry, I was just. you still have the tag on your sweatshirt, you know?" "Oh, I forgot to cut it off, I guess." Cora assumed her dad had done it for her before he handed her the brand-new Huskies swea.