It’s easy to make friends at Miss Porter’s School for Girls. Most of the young ladies here are good eggs.
My new best friend is Matilda, she insists everyone call her Tilly. She’s from New York City and knows all about the world. She’s the most confident fourteen-year-old I’ve ever met, and she looks, just a tinge, down on everyone else at school. Tilly carries herself with an air of mild disdain.
She is fun, sharp, and a solid friend. She’s also a snob, but insists that she isn’t.
“I’m a champagne socialist,” she declares one day. “But it’s a secret. People are so scared of Communists these days.” She rolls her eyes.
“So, in public, you’re a… Democrat?”
“An East Coast elitist Democrat,” she clarifies, flicking the ash from her French cigarette out the window of the room.
Tilly doesn’t always make sense to me, but she does to herself, and that, she assures me, with eyes looking down from up high, is all that matters.
When I show her a photograph of the boy back home she goes,”meh.” She says he’s cute but looks like a barn dweller.
“That’s harsh,” I say, perturbed.
“Well, he does! No fault of mine.” She shrugs.
“You can do so much better than that. Look at you! You look like a movie star.”
“I do?” I hide my face in embarrassment, but secretly I want to hear more.
“Sure you do, honey.” She winks and heads off to smoke with Cornelia behind the library, and maybe take some books out.
“Wanna come?”
“No, thank you. I’m good.” I wave them off and get back to reading.
***
The boy back home writes me lovely but sad letters.
They’ve moved. His grades are slipping. He says it’s because his heart is broken and he’ll probably die from it before he finishes high school, now that I have gone and left him all alone.
I write him back and tell him to pull himself together, in a gentle way, of course. He has to do this for himself. But I also write that life isn’t the same without him, and I can’t wait to see him soon. I don’t tell him I’m having as much fun as I am.
When Tilly sees his letters, she calls him Li’l Abner and calls me Daisy Mae, then she laughs and tells Cornelia I’ve got a little hillbilly redneck boyfriend in Tennessee.
Much to Tilly’s dismay, Cornelia says it sounds exciting, and that she once got a funny feeling looking at a Li’l Abner comic strip. She licks her lips and throws herself across my bed with a groan.
Tilly rolls her eyes. “That girl only has one thing on her mind,” she mutters.
“Those Southern, simple-minded folks,” Cornelia adds. “There’s just something about them.”
I tell them they’re ridiculous, and that I reject their judgement of people based on class and geography, that they’re no better than anyone else.
“But we are.” Tilly snaps, fixing her hair in the mirror.
“Okay, Li’l Jesus.” Cornelia laughs as they leave the room. “You polish your halo, and we’ll leave you to do your preaching to an audience of none.”
They turn around with their hands clasped in mock prayer before closing the door. I hear them running down the hall, laughing and calling me a “sad banana.”
***
In class we talk about NATO, the new State of Israel in Palestine, the Chinese Revolution, and the Soviet Union. We shudder to think what it must be like to live under Communism and not be free.
Tilly says it’s a sign of great passion to live and die for a cause, but soon decides that Communism isn’t for her once she hears about all the things they don’t have access to, and the lack of American customer service in the shops. Gah.
In quiet moments, I wonder if freedom for Americans is mostly about being able to buy shiny new toys. It seems like the primary thing to them. I am not being judgemental; I’m not immune to it. I admit this affliction is slipping into my bloodstream too. I wonder if that freedom isn’t just another form of prison, one of greed.
When I bring it up in class, everyone laughs and mocks me, and Cornelia tells me never to do that again when we break for lunch.
“You can’t say stuff like that in America,” she tells me. “It’s sacrilege.”
***
I miss the boy. I miss our afternoons doing homework together. I miss Miss Mary. I miss the ease of lazy days in the South, and not having as much coursework as at Miss Porter’s.
But I’m also having more fun here than I ever did at school before. So there’s that.
Between my new friends, tennis, and the more demanding classes, my days are full and my head is crowded with all sorts of useful things.
Slowly, the boy slides into the back of my mind, but when I do think of him it hurts like hell.
My novel GREAT ARE THE MYTHS will be serialised (one chapter each day) over the summer of 2026. If you would rather listen to the audiobook, the full story is available for free on all the usual platforms. Info and links HERE
My World of Interiors 