At lunch time, Bain was listened sympathetically to everything and then told her to get over it, find some nice young man who wasn’t Dean Wesson and get on with her life. Meaghan had to concede that it seemed like a solid plan, especially after the entire dining room seemed to give them the cold shoulder. Maybe she was imagining it but when they’d tried to take two empty chairs at one of the tables filled with their year mates, they’d been coldly informed that those were taken. They’d had to go sit at an empty table near the kitchens. From where they sat they could still see those two empty chairs, seeming to mock their lofty dreams. The other people at the table also seemed to be casting nasty glances at them now and then. Or maybe that was just Meaghan’s imagination. Dean of course was not in the dining hall. Meaghan didn’t think she’d ever seen him here. That was probably why she hadn’t recognized him that first day. She was fervently wishing he’d found another garage to go to when she walked up to her locker and found ‘wh*re’ spray painted inside it staining her books with red graffiti. She stared at the mess in shock and then looked around at oblivious students walking past her like nothing had happened. She thought about reporting this but then the thought of explaining the background to the story was just too exhausting. She resolved to keep her head down and just keep going. She was the scholarship kid; no way could she afford to get in trouble.
“Castles in the air…terminated,” she murmured as she headed for her Phys. Ed. class.
*****
Meaghan was valedictorian of her graduating class and she was pleased about it but she also knew it wasn’t a hundred per cent because of her excellent grades. Many other kids also had equivalent grades but she was the scholarship student and therefore somehow this gave her a handicap that was the ace that pulled her ahead of her classmates. She was fine with it but she knew that there was an undercurrent of resentment among some members of her year – who felt that perhaps given different circumstances Dean Wesson might have been more deserving of the honor. Most of these classmates had been in an ongoing cold war with Meaghan pretty much her entire high school career ever since Dean picked her up in his Lamborghini but she had to acknowledge that his grades were deserving. The school had just taken a hit about their admission policies and diversity issues and so she knew there was a bit of politics involved in the choice. Still she had her acceptance letter from Yale in her pocket and she qualified for financial aid as she was able to prove that her household earned less than $60,000 a year. She had also already secured employment at the Yale library beginning at the start of her first semester. Furthermore, Dean and his clique were all Harvard men so there was no chance of continuing this insane situation into college. As far as she was concerned Dalton was already in her rear view.