Page 22 of A Mastery of Monsters

The weekend passes in a blur of frosh activities that Corey forces me to attend, including painting what looked like an auto worker’s uniform, getting shaving cream in my hair, and learning a choreographed dance that we have to perform at random intervals.

All of which is supposedly fun. While still doing grueling training sessions with Margot alongside my daily morning run.

By the time the first day of class rolls around on Tuesday, I’m almost glad. Almost.

I’m late for my first, second, and third classes of the day.

Unlike in high school, where I kept perfect attendance.

Here, I’m in lecture halls that can easily hold hundreds of students, so walking in late doesn’t carry the same weight.

I sit in the back with my laptop, staring as they go through the syllabus while people beside me watch videos or play on their phones.

Under Henry’s strong suggestion, which I received via Margot, I decided to be a psychology major.

I hoped this was so he could affect my grades to make sure I didn’t fail, but Margot assured me it was to make it easier for him to find me tutors or potentially get me a paid TA position in the future.

I wondered if it was another way for him to keep me under his thumb and make sure I wasn’t endangering his reputation.

It doesn’t matter. All I have to do is study well enough to pass, and psychology is at least straightforward.

You memorize facts, and you spit them out.

I can do that. It’s the same with the society basics that Corey has gone over with me, dates and names.

Everything else she said that I needed to know, I’d already learned conversationally via her, Margot, or Virgil.

It’s not like the old August was going to study anything she wanted to either.

Mom wanted a doctor and Dad a professor, and she won, so I was looking down the barrel of maybe a decade of school and intense competition.

If anything, Henry’s forced major is kinder.

And as a first year, the only requirement for the major is to take PSYC100.

The rest can be electives. I could take classes I’m interested in.

Instead, I sign up for the courses that seem the easiest to pass.

Actually being engaged in my studies would make me try to do well instead of coasting.

Study harder. Excel, even. And one day I would turn around and find myself staring into the mirror at the old August. Doing what Mom and Dad wanted again.

Being a “perfect” student. And then, how long until everything else reverted too?

Back to trying to impress the “perfect” people who were supposed to be my friends. Back to chasing the “perfect” body.

It was better to avoid it completely. After all, I’m not supposed to be here in the first place. All this is temporary. And it’s not like I had any idea of what I’d prefer to do instead. I never thought about it because it was never an option.

When my final class ends, I leave Humphrey Hall with the other rush of students.

It’s technically September, but the weather is still operating on summer heat as if fall is more a dream than a reality.

The sun beats down on me, and I shield my eyes with my hands because I refuse to be like the rest of the freshmen, who are either wearing designer shades or the free ones that dozens of brands threw at us during the first week in a desperate attempt to entice new customers.

All I want to do is go back to my room and sleep.

Instead, I hike my bag onto my shoulder and head toward the bookstore.

I’m still not used to navigating campus, and after ten minutes of being confused, I give up and use Google Maps.

I pass by Summerhill, my eyes lingering on the building.

In a little over a month, I’ll be called back there to find out if I made the first cut after training.

Though I won’t even get to the training phase if I can’t pass the preliminaries today.

Why would they make it the first day of class? It’s like they’re trying to overwhelm us.

I walk through one of the back alleyways, following my phone’s instructions. Though alleyway isn’t quite the right word. Between a lot of the buildings are these separate paths and roads, some of them large enough to fit multiple car lanes, and others only big enough for a footpath.

I spend five minutes walking around the same gray stone building before I realize that the entrance to the bookstore is inexplicably not at the actual front of the building facing the main street but at the back that faces nothing. Which I guess is why the map wanted me to go the back way.

The store is packed full of students with textbooks in their arms and others looking at the shelves and racks of Queen’s branded merchandise—hoodies, sweaters, mugs, key chains, and more. I’m about to turn when I see a familiar white girl.

Rachel notices me at the same moment that I notice her.

If it were just the two of us, we could have moved on.

But unfortunately, her mom is with her. I’m not even surprised that Ms. Hanes overstayed past move-in day when normal parents know to go home and instead planted herself like a fungus all the way to the first day of class.

“August?! Is that you?” she exclaims, coming toward me.

Rachel is forced to follow. She’s ditched her signature high ponytail for a bob that is maybe an attempt at a wolf cut. She manages a tight smile. I don’t bother.

Her mom is oblivious. She’s a Queen’s alum, wearing a faded leather jacket with her graduation year stitched on her arm. My parents hadn’t gotten the jackets because they were too expensive. “I almost didn’t recognize you!” she says. “You look so different.”

“Yeah. I’m fat now.”

The smile slides off her face, and the corners of her mouth hang limp.

I grin in response. To her, fat is a bad word. For me, I’ve stated a fact, one that she was already dancing around with her “you look so different” comment. No one but me has the right to make fun little observations about my body, but everyone else is so eager to do it.

“I thought you weren’t going to Queen’s anymore?” Rachel asks, sparing her mom any further struggle.

“I changed my mind.”

This is the girl I used to spend all my time with.

Countless days at her house and school and choir, which she forced me to join over dance.

We stayed put in Toronto the longest of all Mom’s job-related moves, and so even though me and Rachel had only known each other since tenth grade, she was my oldest friend.

We were going to be roommates at Queen’s.

Then Mom disappeared, and I became less interested in the upkeep of being friends with Rachel.

I didn’t stop myself from saying the “wrong” things.

I didn’t dress or do my hair the way I was supposed to anymore.

And she tried to help me, of course she did.

Suggested that I stop being “weird” and made comments about what I was choosing to eat for lunch—like, didn’t I want to try this new workout routine with her?

Just to tone up before first year. And eventually she stopped inviting me over, or meeting me after classes, or sitting with me at lunch.

When the deadline for roommate sign-ups came and I told her I wasn’t going to Queen’s anymore, the relief on her face was palpable. That is, until I said I’d be moving to Kingston, so we’d probably see each other. She promised we’d still text and that we’d meet for coffee once she got on campus.

Neither of those things ever happened.

Ms. Hanes recovers enough to say, “Well, I guess you girls will see each other around, then.”

“We won’t.” It’s the quiet part out loud, which makes both Rachel and her mom shift their gazes around the space. Like something will jump out and save them from the conversation.

My former bestie tugs on her mom’s sleeve. “Let’s check out the hoodies.”

Ms. Hanes gives me a small wave and pained smile as she and her daughter retreat. They don’t even wait to get out of earshot before Rachel says, “Why would you go up to her? We haven’t talked in months.”

Her mom starts to say something about grief and kindness, which I take as my cue to go into the basement, whose bookshelves are organized by subject. I do my best to push the entire interaction out of my mind.

I walk to the psychology section and fumble with my phone, trying to find the books I’m supposed to get.

Henry via Margot gave me a credit card to use for them and other school supplies, noting that statements would be checked, and it would be taken away if abused.

This would have been my wet dream early last year.

Going to Queen’s with everything paid for and involved with a group that held real-life influence, even if they were also cultlike.

Not because I wanted those things but because it was what I knew everyone would want for me. What they would be impressed by.

Jules should be here, and I shouldn’t.

“And here I thought you weren’t a student,” says a feminine voice.

I turn to a girl who I vaguely recognize.

She has her hair styled in passion twists piled on top of her head and she has a gold nose ring.

She catches me trying to place her and says, “I’m Riley.

Part of the Queen’s Black Student Society.

You work at the Tim’s in the ARC, right?

But I distinctly remember you saying that you didn’t go here. ”

Right. Her. “Well, now I do.” I don’t owe this random girl updates on my life.

She smiles and hands me a flyer. “Great. Well, we’re having a freshman mixer soon, and we’d love for you to come. There will be food and drinks, nonalcoholic obviously. You can meet some people and get to know what we’re about.”

I take the flyer in the hopes that maybe this will get her to leave me alone.

“Psychology, that’s what you’re majoring in?” she asks.