Ten for Ten

My Old School

Well, she’d wanted to know how this day could get worse.  What was that old adage, be careful what you wish for?  After an enlightening – and depressing – stop at the bursar’s office, Antonia’s exhaustion was equaled only by her irritation.  She’d tempted fate.  Now it was biting back.

“I’m sorry miss.  But since all freshmen live on campus, there are no cars allowed.”

No one told her that freshmen weren’t allowed cars.  Not even at the bursar’s office, where she found out her father’s check bounced.  Unsurprising, but demoralizing all the same.  So of course all of her worldly belongings were currently sitting in the Packard an extremely helpful campus official was now telling her she couldn’t keep. 

She also hadn’t known how Asian RISD was.  Antonia spoke one language – English – fairly well, and one language – Spanish – pretty poorly.  What she saw around her was a sea of white and yellow faces, with nary a brown or black one in the mix.  Barely articulated hopes of fitting in, never mind finding a like-minded community, were fading fast.

“What am I supposed to do?  I drove here by myself.  And it’s my car!”  Yelling at the man doing his job, however, wasn’t going to make it any better.  “I’m sorry.  It’s just that I don’t know what to do.”

“Is there someone you can call to come pick it up?”  That ludicrous suggestion, however well meant, frustrated her further.  If she’d had someone to call, or a cell phone to call with, wouldn’t she have done it already?  “Or you could arrange to have it garaged somewhere for the duration,” he offered timidly. 

She sighed, thanked the man, and walked back towards the car. 

Obviously she hadn’t done enough research into her dream school.  In retrospect, not touring the campus or applying to any other schools was stupid. 

But it was RISD, her holy grail.  She’d deferred applying to college for eighteen months, using the time to take art and remedial mathematics classes at the local community college.  For the past year and a half, she’d subsisted on ramen noodles and cream cheese tortillas because the money she worked herself raw for was for RISD.

Sure, she could’ve applied to Pratt or even NYU but given her dismal high-school grades and mediocre SAT scores, Antonia figured it would’ve been a waste of everyone’s time.  Who could afford to live in New York City?  And she loved Providence, with its art galleries and coffee shops and generally laid-back feel.

Yet judging from the expensive foreign cars her fellow classmates came in, she wouldn’t be able to afford living at RISD either. 

“Stop feeling sorry for yourself.  It’s what you make of it,” she muttered under her breath.  The words were almost like a mantra.  If she’d stopped to feel bad about every time she didn’t fit in, about always being poorer, dumber and darker than the people around her, she’d have shot herself in the face.

There was also the fact that she hadn’t had any classes yet.  At the end of the day, that’s why she was here.  To paint, to draw, to sculpt, to immerse herself in the only thing she’d ever been good at in her entire life, and find out if she was good enough.

And who knew, maybe her roommate would be fantastic, and make up for her crappy introduction to the school. 

So armed with the latest edition of Duffy’s Modern Automotive Technology, courtesy of Mr. Arnold, who justified the purchase by explaining that “garages in Providence aren’t always as careful as they could be”, her mother’s jewelry, her stepmother Danielle’s diary, a newly empty checking account and nearly fifteen hundred dollars cash, Antonia drove towards the Quad.