Man, that kid made fucking up look cool
Cavanaugh Park / Something Corporate
Later, it seems crazy that she owes everything to Polly.
So strange to think that if Polly had never dated her brother, never came to their house on a long weekend, never come out to the back porch to smoke and found Piper sitting there with a book on her knees, none of it would have happened. Piper would have probably just continued to attend boring old Edison High School, and her entire life would have probably been different.
Except Polly does start dating Danny, and she does come home to visit for the weekend of New Years' Eve, and she does sneak outside with a pack of cigarettes in her coat pocket - it's also strange to think that she probably got those cigarettes from Alex, except Piper didn't know yet that Alex existed, which feels like the strangest thing of all.
"Oh, hey," Polly grins at her, waves her cigarette pack. "Want one?"
"No." Just that, blurted out and nervous, sounding like a goody two shoes who would never smoke a cigarette. To be fair, that's exactly what Piper is, but she doesn't want Polly to think that. She's been staying with the Chapmans for two days, but they haven't talked much.
Polly is the same age as Piper, but she seems older, even before the cigarette. Maybe because she's dating Danny, and Piper's used to thinking of her brother and his friends as much older, even though they're only a grade apart. But maybe it's just the boarding school thing; she's here, after all, spending a holiday with her significant other instead of her own family. That seems like a grown up thing to do, somehow.
"What're you reading?"
"Um…" Piper tilts the cover for her to see. "The Great Gatsby."
"Oh, nice. We did that in Lit. It was fun."
"Really?"
"Yeah, we had a Gatsby style party at the end of the unit. Got to raid the theatre dept for 20's clothes."
"That sounds cool," Piper tells her, meaning it. As far as she knows, everyone in her class is printing SparkNotes off the internet. Even though it's Honors English.
"Yeah." Polly tilts her head at her. "You're a freshmen, too, right?" Piper nods. "How come you don't go to Litch?"
"Oh, I dunno…" She trails off, voice vague, already embarrassed by the question. "Dad went to Overbrook, so it was basically always decided that Danny and Cal will go there. But no one went to Litchfield, so they didn't really push it."
"Gotcha," Polly replies, but Piper can tell from the look on her face that she thinks it's weird. And maybe it is, now that Piper's thinking about it. The schools are across a lake from each other, brother/sister boarding schools who do plenty of social events together, and Litchfield has just has as prestigious of an academic reputation.
They had asked her, to be fair. Back in eighth grade, an application packet had come in the mail, and her father had asked if she had any interest in going. But Piper had never really thought about it before, not even when her brother had moved away at the beginning of the year, and at thirteen, the idea of giving up her friends and starting over had seemed like the end of the world.
But now she's almost fifteen, a semester into high school, and a little change doesn't sound all that bad.
The thing is, ninth grade hasn't exactly been everything Piper had hoped it would be. With one semester down, she's already as bored as she was in middle school. Besides, with Katie obsessed with her cheerleading friends and Olivia only ever wanting to hang out with her boyfriend, it's really only Piper and Gina and Rachel. Those two exchanged BFF necklaces back in, like, second grade and still wear them almost every day. So it makes sense that they're used to sleeping over at each other's house just them, and don't always think to invite other people.
And anyway. They're part of what's boring. She remembers when she and her friends - all five of them - used to have so much fun, even just last summer: night swimming in her pool before falling into five sleeping bags laid out like the spokes of a wheel on the basement carpet, giggling into the night, taking magazine quizzes out loud or playing Uno or making up nonsensical stories one word at a time.
Now all anyone wants to talk about is boys and make up and other girls at school, usually in a mean way. And Piper knows they think she's a nerd; they always act like it's some cute little quirk that she likes to read all the time, but she gets the feeling sometimes that Rachel-and-Gina talk about her, too, maybe the same way they do the weird girl in the cafeteria, the one who always goes back to the line to talk to the lunch lady.
"You should apply for next year," Polly says, blowing cigarette smoke in a huge fat clump. "Danny says you're a total brain, you should get in easy."
"He said that?" Piper asks, surprised; it's not like her brother to compliment her.
"Sure. Said you read all the time." She smiles and nods at Piper's book. "Clearly he was right."
"Yeah…" Piper smiles, too, because Polly doesn't sound like she's making fun of her for it. "Maybe I will. Apply, I mean. My school sucks."
"I mean, Litch sucks sometimes, too. The uniforms and the study hours and everything. But there's still so much more freedom, you know? I'm totally dreading having to go home and live with my parents again this summer."
The words seduce her slowly, their appeal becoming more and more evident as the day goes on, finally peaking at the family's New Years Day dinner as she watches her parents put on their act for relatives (and Polly). Then Cal rolls his eyes at her from across the table as their mother lauds some accomplishment of Danny's, and Piper realizes with a stab of panic that in a year and a half Cal will be gone off to Overbrook, too, leaving her alone and free of allies in their parents' house.
She looks up the application online that night.
Her school friends don't seem sad when Piper tells them she's going away to Litchfield Academy next year. They're only shocked and appalled at the prospect of an all-girls boarding school.
"Why would you want to do that?"
"That's completely boring!"
On Litchfield's website, there's an entire section with the heading "Why All-Girls?" Apparently there all kinds of reasons, and studies to back them up: most of them are about the environment fostering more confidence and fewer limitations, allowing girls to see every leadership opportunity as open to them, or skewing the learning style specifically toward females, but there's also a paragraph about putting academics over socialization: concentrating on work instead of "flirting" or "applying lip gloss".
But Piper doesn't say any of that, obviously.
She just makes a face like the question is dumb, and tells them, "My brother's school is right across the lake." She knows that will shut them up - most of them, Gina especially, had crushes on Danny back in middle school. "And we do social events with them all the time. And we can go to their football games and everything." She smiles, modest. "There are even two formal dances every year, and you don't have to wait until you're an upperclassmen to go."
This grants her a respectful, envious silence; Piper's friends are currently deep in some major prom envy.
After a moment though, Olivia wrinkles her nose and breaks the silence. "But you have to wear uniforms."
Polly visits twice over the summer, and even though she and Danny are usually locked downstairs in the basement or off somewhere in his new car, she manages to find stray moments to talk excitedly to Piper about school, giving her the run down on teachers and class selection and the campus.
Once, on Polly's second visit, she and Piper end up trouncing Cal and Danny in a tennis match, and when it's over Polly grins at her. "You're good. We could use you at Litch."
"You're on the team?"
"Yeah, everyone has to play a sport, you didn't see that? Just like everyone has to pick an arts concentration…I do drama, by the way. Ms. Rogers is the shit." She takes a long gulp from a water bottle, then asks, "Do you play any other sports?"
"No. Just tennis." Piper had been ranked sixth on her high school team, pretty good for a freshmen.
Polly taps Piper's racket with hers. "Cool, then it's perfect. Maybe we can even be a doubles team."
Piper smiles. "That'd be awesome."
With only ten or so conversations between them, she and Polly haven't exactly had a chance to become close friends, but it makes Piper feels better that she'll know someone at school, a tiny head start in the daunting task of rebuilding her social life from nothing.
She wears her uniform for move in day, even though Danny never does, but there's a Welcome (or Welcome Back) Assembly that night and Piper decides it's best to be prepared.
Specifically, she wears the formal version, which isn't required for class, only official assemblies: blue and white checked skirt, white button up, skinny blue tie, and navy blue blazer. However, Piper quickly realizes this is the least practical outfit for unpacking a car at the beginning of August. Her dorm, Kerman House, is a Georgian style building with three floors plus a basement, and no elevator. Her room is only on the second floor, but she's sweating on the very first trip, weighed down with a duffel bag full of books and dragging a rolling Coach suitcase up the stairs behind her.
Polly had told Piper most girls keep their same rooms and roommates year to year, so she would likely be placed with another new sophomore - unless the number of transfer students are uneven, and then there's always a chance she could get stuck with a freshmen.
Piper fervently hopes that isn't the case; she's a little nervous about having a roommate, the first time she'll ever share a room with someone beyond single night sleepovers, but mostly she's hoping it will be an easy way to make at least one immediate friend.
She'd gotten the name of her roommate in the packet that had arrived a few weeks ago, but Alex Vause's Facebook account was almost completely private. Her profile picture, the only thing Piper could see, featured four different girls with their arms slung around each other, so she had way to tell which was one was her future roommate. On the plus side, none of them looked younger than Piper. Probably another sophomore transfer.
But when she puts her new key into the door, half of the room appears to be very lived in.
There's no one inside, but even if Alex Vause had arrived early this morning, as soon as the dorms officially opened, it seems unlikely that she would have decorated so much already.
It makes Piper's side of the room look clinically blank, like a patient room at some rehab center: a single twin bed, lofted about three feet off the ground, with a smooth wooden desk and single chair positioned at the foot of it, plus a matching dresser. The walls are dull white plaster, a drab mirror to the wall on Alex Vause's side, which have been plastered with posters of bands Piper's only vaguely heard of: Tegan and Sara, Sleater-Kinney, Marina and the Diamonds.
Piper throws her suitcase on the bed while her mother drops a hamper full of sheets and pillows, her dad setting down the two plastic cartons full of books. Though her mom does take a moment to sniff disapprovingly at the somewhat messy other side of her room, her parents move quickly outside again, heading back to the car. They'd dropped Danny off first and are obviously ready to get the unloading part of the day over with.
But Piper lingers for a moment, peeling off her blazer and setting on the bed. The hallways are full of other girls and parents moving in, and she hadn't seen anyone else in uniform. Carefully rolling up the sleeves of her shirt, Piper takes in the rest of her roommates' side.
Every inch of the desk and dresser's surface is covered in stacks of books and, occasionally, DVDs, many of which have a yellow "Used" sticker wrapped around the spine. It's rendered the desk a completely unworkable space. The comforter is deep red with black trim, sloppily made, a laptop open on the bed, which is lofted as high as Piper's, a mini-fridge tucked into the space beneath it. On top of the fridge is a power strip, chargers and laptop cords dangling from almost every outlet.
"Hey, Dad says to come help," Cal says from the doorway, dropping what's easily the smallest bag they'd packed. "He's about to bring up your shelf or whatever." He glances over at the other side of the bedroom and widens his eyes. "Damn, your roommate seems way cooler than you."
"Shut up," she says with no real menace, shoving him a little as she pushes past.
"Did you see her yet?" Cal asks eagerly, falling into step with Piper.
"No." She's glad to have him to talk to walking down the hallway. A few other students are giving her curious glances, maybe just because it's easy to recognize someone new (the current sophomore class is only 48 students), but she's feeling self conscious in the uniform.
They clear the rest of the car trunk in one more trip, but the bags and and cartons everywhere make the room much too crowded for four people.
She'd kind of like to go ahead and get the goodbye part over with - she'll deal with her own slowly descending stress better on her own, but her mom insists on putting the sheets and comforter on Piper's new bed, while her father quickly reassembles the short, three tiered bookshelf she'd brought from home and fits it snuggly under her lofted bed. Piper stands uselessly beside her brother while they do all this, scanning her own walls and worrying that she doesn't have anything to decorate.
The whole day has been an endless stream of questions and last minute reminders, many of which took place during a three hour car ride Piper couldn't escape from, and as a result she's spent most of it thrilled for her family's impending exit from her day to day life.
But when it actually happens, it feels too sudden, too soon. She's not ready, and panic hardens in her gut when her father puts two hands on her shoulders, giving her a dramatic last look before pulling her into a hug. "We'll miss you, baby. But I'm proud of you."
"Thanks, Daddy," she whispers, crushed against his shoulder and feeling five years old again, afraid to be left at kindergarten all day long.
But she doesn't want to cry, so she grinds her teeth together and smiles without opening her lips when he lets go. She hugs her mom, and it's over faster, punctuated with a crisp peck on the cheek. Finally Cal, with prompting, hugs her quickly, which is weird because they almost never do that.
His real goodbye comes fives minutes after they left, her iPhone buzzing with a text.
CAL
[you realize I'm basically an only child now. just me, Bill and Carol. kinda h8 you]
She smiles and quickly texts back.
PIPER
[Sorry about that. You know you'll be here in a year.]
CAL
[At the all girls school?! Fuck yes!]
Cal punctuates the text with an emoji that, coupled with the statement above, manages to looking shockingly pervy considering it's just a cartoon smiley face.
Piper laughs out loud, but her throat still feels kind of tight.
Most of the doors throughout the hallway are propped open, and she can hear the occasional squeal of a frenzied reunion, or a bluntly shouted name, but Piper walks over and closes her own door, too overwhelmed at the moment to make a good impression in case anyone decides to mingle.
The admittedly small space of the room between the two beds is currently crowded with Piper's stuff, so she sets about unpacking, trying to set every bag with clothes on her bed.
It's probably the least pressing thing, but Piper can't help it, she starts in on the books first. Not everything she brought will fit on her shelf, so there's a lot of decision making involved.
Harry Potter takes up almost half of the first shelf, and she fills the rest pretty easily with her other favorites. The second shelf provokes more debate; once she lines up her narrow set of Jane Austen, she starts debating between young adult novels and short story anthologies and classic literature. It's not the best motivation, but she wants to display the books that make her look smart, but cool: like someone with good taste.
Glancing at the closed door, Piper stands up and walks to her roommates desk, rotating one of the piles of books so she can read the titles.
She doesn't recognize everything, but enough to know there isn't a particularly narrow selection here: a Gillian Flynn book stacked on top of William Faulkner, a collection of poetry sandwiched by a copy of Peter Pan and Tina Fey's memoir.
"Hey."
It's a greeting, not an accusation, but Piper whips around guiltily anyway.
The girl in the doorway grins when she sees her, not seeming bothered that Piper was creeping through her stuff. She's got white earbuds in, snaking up from her pocket, but plucks one out to talk to Piper. "Wow, you went formal right off the bat, huh?"
In all the agonizing book related choices, Piper had forgotten about her stupid uniform. Her cheeks heat instantly. Alex Vause is wearing a thin black tank top and jeans with gaping holes in the knees, rolled up a few inches above what appear to be…bowling shoes?
"I thought we had to wear them for the assembly."
"Well, yeah, but you got like five hours." To Piper's surprise, Alex reaches over and tugs teasingly at the knot of Piper's tie. "Release yourself from the chokehold of Litchfield oppression."
For some reason, this makes her face feel even hotter. She loosens the tie and tugs it over her head. "I, uh, take it you don't like the uniforms."
"Nah, they're alright, I'm just fucking around. So." She folds her arms, mock stern, but her eyes are distinctly amused. "We're already at the snooping level of roommate-hood? Impressive, considering we haven't even formally exchanged names."
"Sorry." God, talk about a ridiculous first impression. "I was just organizing my bookshelf, and, uh…" She trails off, unable to think of a normal way to explain that she wanted to see what books might be considered lame enough to be hidden under the bed, but luckily Alex's gaze move to Piper's unpacked cartons of books, which seems to distract her.
"Jesus. We'll never have to go to the library again." She crosses the room, bracing her hands on her knees to get a better look at what's already on the shelf.
"Maybe we should exchange names before you snoop," Piper says, pleased when it makes Alex laugh.
"I'd say this is only fair, but fine. Alex Vause." She holds out her hand, a parody of formality.
Piper smiles and shakes it. It's an awkward gesture but somehow doesn't feel like it. "Piper Chapman."
"Ah, right, the name from my packet. You're not how I pictured. Thought there'd be eleven of you, playing music. And you'd be followed by a dozen drummers drumming." Piper stares at her. "Twelve Days of Christmas? Sorry, obscure reference, I know."
Piper laughs, taking a second to just observe her new roommate. There's a tattoo on her right arm (later, Piper spots another on her shoulder blade). Alex has winged eyeliner and black glasses and bowling shoes, and Piper likes her already.
"Are your parents still here?"
"Just left. Yours?"
"My mom had to work, so I took a Greyhound last night. Not supposed to let anyone in the dorms yet, but Red made an exception."
"Red?"
"Headmistress Reznikov. We call her Red, you'll see why, but never say it to her face. Anyway. She's a hardass, but I'm friends with Nicky, so the special treatment occasionally rubs off." Before Piper can ask who Nicky is, or why she gets special treatment, Alex gives her this long, scrutinizing look that makes Piper feel overly aware of her own skin and asks, "You're a sophomore, right?"
"Yeah."
"Thank God. Was worried they'd stick me with a freshmen."
"So…who was your roommate before?"
Without missing a beat Alex tells her, "Last semester it was no one. The semester before that I had my randomly assigned freshmen roommate, but she begged to be moved." Piper's expression must register unease, because Alex says, "Don't worry, I drove her out on purpose. It wasn't just my natural habits that were impossible to live with."
"That's comforting," Piper says, just dry enough that Alex smirks.
"You need help unpacking anything?"
"I can get it, really. Thanks though."
So Alex sits on her bed and watches while Piper hurriedly finishes her bookshelf, then sets about hanging her clothes in the small closet. As she works, she and Alex exchange basic information: hometowns, sport of choice (Alex plays soccer), and Fine Arts path (both of them are in drama, though Alex is much less enthused about the teacher than Polly was).
Piper's almost done arranging her jewelry tree and makeup case on top of the dresser when there's a knock at the door. Without getting up from her bed, Alex yells, "Come in."
Two girls tentatively enter the room, closing the door behind them. They glance at Piper but don't introduce themselves, just look expectantly at Alex as one asks, "Is it too soon, or…?"
"Never," Alex says amiably, hopping off her bed. "What do you need?"
The girls exchange looks. "Two joints?"
Piper turns around, startled, giving the scene her full attention.
"Coming right up." Alex starts opening her desk drawer, nodding across the room as she does. "Tara, Mel, this is Piper. She's new."
"Hey, nice to meet you."
"Welcome to Litch."
Piper nods back at them, too distracted to properly be introduced. Did they really say -
But Alex is pulling out a box of tampons, and Piper's extremely confused, but then she pinches the top of the plastic wrapping into an opening and tilts it, two perfectly rolled joints falling into her palm.
She hands them over, and one of the girls passes her a stack of bills. Alex pockets it and nods. "See ya later."
"Thanks."
Then they're gone, without Piper even figuring out which one is Tara and which one is Mel.
"So about that," Alex says conversationally when the door is closed again. "I've sort of got a whole operation going here."
It dawns uneasily on Piper that she may have, through no fault of her own, been assigned a room with a member of, as her mother would say, the Wrong Crowd. "Is this why your old roommate asked to leave?"
"No." Alex's face turns a little harder, a little more distant, with the word. "This was the only thing she fucking liked about me, actually." She exhales. "Look, it's all on my side, you're never gonna get blamed for anything. But it's really all good. Almost everyone buys stuff."
"Stuff? Like what else?"
"Weed. Cigarettes. I even take booze orders." She starts to smile a little again. "Basically I overcharge the rich kids for stuff they don't know how to get….and don't know what it should actually cost. But as my roommate, you pay face value."
Piper frowns a little at that. She'd assumed that Alex - that everyone here - was a rich kid.
"I, uh. Don't really smoke. Or drink."
"Yeah, most people don't before they come here. But then they figure out it's easier to hide from dorm counselors than parents. Especially Fisher. You met her yet?"
"I think she checked me in. Susan?"
"Right. She's clueless. We did one of those Dirty Santa things for the whole floor last year, and at least a third of the gifts were novelty flasks and she didn't notice. Someone even got a tie flask. Same color as the official one. Bet it makes assemblies way more interesting."
Alex grins, her eyes glinting, and it's like it blinds Piper to any of the warning signs. Alex Vause sells drugs from their room and drove her roommate away, but she seems funny and smart and Piper's filled with an almost frantic desire to make Alex want to be her friend.
Alex is aware she's gone into full charm mode, all snark and smirking, her usual schtick around pretty girls, pretending that it's enough to simply make them laugh.
And her roommate is frazzlingly pretty, in a way Alex's perfunctory scan of Facebook and Instagram hadn't prepared her for. Piper Chapman's smile in photographs is fine, whatever, but the real life, unposed version is a kind of wonder.
So Alex keeps working for it; sometimes she even gets a laugh, which is like hitting the jackpot, and this could get dangerous really fast.
Her friends' group message is exploding on her phone, mainly Nicky demanding she come down to the basement lounge with everyone else, but Alex finally texts back that she'll just meet them for dinner.
NICKY
[4:33 pm | Whats your deal Vause? Is the new roomie so hot you don't care about seeing us?]
[4:37 pm: JFC VAUSE ARE YOU FUCKING HER ALREADY?]
Alex texts back the middle finger emoji and then puts the phone on Do Not Disturb.
"In an hour or so we can go over to the dining hall for food…I'll introduce you to everyone. And by everyone I mean the three people I can stand to be around more than its required."
Piper smiles, but it's hesitant, like she's not sure whether Alex is kidding.
"Though you might want to change out of that before we go," Alex says, nodding at Piper's uniform (she'd actually grabbed her tie earlier…talk about being fucking obvious). "Everyone tends to avoid the uniforms until the last possible required minute."
Alex doesn't tell people this, but she actually likes the uniforms. Not so much for style reasons, just the general policy. The year before she started at Litchfield, in middle school, she'd still been getting made fun of for her clothes with their patches and duct tape covered rips and off brand names.
Here, everyone dresses the same for class and official activities, then, for most people, makes it a point of rebellion to wear the most casual, bummy clothes possible when free dress is allowed.
There's a knock on the door, and Alex supresses a groan. There's a good chance it's Nicky, likely tugging Janae and Poussey along, here to gawk at Piper and give Alex shit.
But when she opens the door it's Polly Harper, nodding awkwardly at her. "Hey."
"Oh, hey. Come on in." Alex gives her a businesslike nod, because there's no way Polly's here for anything but business.
Behind her, Polly says in a surprised voice, "Oh, hey, dude."
Alex glances over at her, questioning, but Polly's looking at Piper.
"Hi."
"I was just about to text you…Danny told me you're in this dorm."
"How'd he know my room number?"
"Oh, no, I didn't know you'd be…I'm actually here for, uh…"
Polly gestures at Alex, and there's a moment of general awkward confusion before Alex asks, "You guys know each other?" She doesn't quite succeed in keeping the displeasure out her voice.
"She's my boyfriend's sister," Polly answers before Piper can, which strikes Alex as somewhat dismissive, but then Polly smiles genuinely at Piper and adds, "Plus I'm the whole reason she's here."
"You made a compelling case," Piper says, smiling back.
Alex turns around to hide an eyeroll, speaking to Polly, "So what do you need?"
"Oh. Two packs, I guess? The usual."
Alex smirks, not so nicely. "Jesus, couldn't even sneak cigarettes back in your luggage?"
"My parents caught me smoking last week," Polly tells her, defensive. "They've been super paranoid."
Alex swings open her closet and starts digging in the pocket of a hoodie. She smacks two packs of cigarettes down on Polly's waiting palm then holds out her own hand for cash.
The transaction done, Polly gives her a perfunctory thanks and returns her attention to Piper. "I gotta go finish unpacking, but find me in the dining hall if you want, okay?"
Alex shoots a scowl at Polly's retreating back, not happy with this development. All she fucking needs is her new roommate getting an instant talking to from Polly Harper and her friends - i.e. Jessica.
"So. Holly dates your brother?"
"Polly," Piper corrects, but she sounds almost amused. Which is encouraging. "Yeah, he's a junior at Overbrook. She's visited a few times."
Alex gives a neutral nod.
"First time we talked she was smoking on our back porch. Guess she got those from you?"
"Yeah, did you notice she barely even inhales? I think she just likes the aesthetic…half her Instagram is smoke with black and white filters. So artsy."
Piper laughs, and Alex feels her smile let loose, satisfied that they at least don't seem close enough that Piper seems put out by Alex making fun of Polly.
Checking her phone, Alex sees the group message has continued on without her paying attention, mainly Nicky's increasingly crude guesses about what she's up to right now. She's also got a few separate texts from students asking if she's open for business yet. Alex smirks, pleased with herself. She'd thought things might be slow for awhile at the beginning of the year, other students having come prepared with their own stash, but of course they hadn't felt the need. The customer base here is perfect - as long as most of these girls can pay for something with money, they don't question the price. They're not used to anything being too expensive.
Piper changes from the uniform into a casual, summery dress before she and Alex head to the dining hall. It's a short walk, but Alex points out a few buildings on the way, a library and a few other dorms and, in the slight distance, the main academic hall.
It's a small campus, the cluster of dorms on one end and the Fine Arts Center and auditorium on the other, and Alex says it's only a fifteen minute walk, "twenty if you're Nicky, you'll meet her, she's slow as fuck", from one end to the other. The lake starts behind the auditorium, and from there a few main buildings of the boys' school are visible.
A few people nod and say hi to Alex when they walk past, but no one seems inclined to stop and chat until they get into the dining hall and the three girls at a corner table start shouting her name before they even go for food.
Alex rolls her eyes at Piper, but she's smiling fondly and eagerly leads her over to the table. Piper watches while she hugs each of the three girls - though one of them seems more interested in scrutinizing Piper, elbowing Alex with a smirk that Piper doesn't like; it seems like an inside joke is happening at her expense.
"Piper, this is Nicky, Janae, and Poussey. Guys: Piper Chapman. Be nice."
After a quick round of greetings, Piper follows Alex to the other end of the cafeteria, Alex pointing out the various food stations. Piper's unspeakably grateful that Alex seems to slipped automatically into her tour guide with no qualms about it. She'd been expecting a roommate who was new, and therefore just as clueless as she is, but this makes her feel much better.
They split up to different food stations, and when Piper finishes Alex is still in line, so she makes herself linger at the table for drinks, not ready to head back to Alex's friends on her own.
"Hey, Piper! C'mere."
She turns around and sees Polly nearby, at a table with four other girls, so Piper walks over but doesn't sit. "Hey."
Polly smiles reassuringly at her, then says to her friends, "Guys, this is Danny's sister I was telling you about. Pipe, this is Jessica, Bailey, Madison, and Sarah."
"Nice to meet you."
"Sarah and Jessica are on the tennis team, too…I told them you'd probably join."
"Oh, yeah, cool. When does that start?"
"Second week of classes. You want to sit?"
"Thanks, but Alex was gonna introduce me to some people."
The blonde girl next to Polly, Piper thinks she was the Jessica in the quickly rattled off list, raises an eyebrow. "Vause?"
Polly gives her a significant look. "That's her roommate."
Jessica winces, then looks at Piper sympathetically. "Sorry, that's kind of my fault."
Before Piper can ask what that means, someone's elbow nudges against hers. She glances back to see Alex, tray in hand, warily eyeing Polly's table. "You ready?"
Piper nods, just wanting out of the awkward situation. She smiles at Polly. "See ya later."
Just as she and Alex turn around, though, Jessica calls after them, too loud, "Hey, Piper, just a tip: don't change clothes in front of her."
Piper reflexively glances sideways at Alex. She tightens her jaw, eyes narrow and blazing, and retorts over her shoulder, "Like I ever wanted to fucking look at you."
But she looks flushed and upset, and Piper's not sure what to say.
She thinks she knows what that Jessica girl was implying, but isn't sure if it's true or if she's just the kind of person who thinks that's a mean thing to say about someone. But Jessica was obviously Alex's old roommate, and Alex said she drove her out on purpose, but -
"Jesus, Vause," Nicky says loudly when she and Piper sit down at the table. "What's going on with your face?"
"She got Wedged," Janae says, nodding toward Polly's table.
"Ah, good, the Wicked Bitch of the East Coast," Poussey says.
Piper frowns, confused. "Wedged?
"As in Jessica Wedge," Nicky says. Alex isn't really looking at her. "You're in her old bed. Although…" She smirks. "New kid roommate, Vause, better watch out. They'll imprint on you, like a baby duck."
At that, Alex looks at Piper to roll her eyes, the tension draining a little from her face, and the strength of Piper's relief is surprising. "Ignore her, she's full of shit."
"You a freshmen, Piper?"
"Sophomore."
"Damn," Nicky makes a face. "I was hoping for an in with the freshmen class. Gotta do a sapphic survey. Our year is tragically lacking."
Nicky and Janae are apparently roommates, living on the floor below Alex and Piper, while Poussey's on their hall, rooming with a girl named Suzanne who the others call Crazy Eyes and say her parents practically bought a new building for her to get in (though she's apparently really amazing in drama). They all walk back together to change for the welcome assembly, but once Piper and Alex are alone Alex grabs her uniform off a hanger and heads for the bathroom down the hall.
Piper changes quickly in their room, and then just stands there feeling awkward until Alex finally reenters in her skirt and button down. She's carrying her other clothes, shoes included, and just to have something to say Piper nods at them, "Are those bowling shoes?"
"Yeah." Alex half-smiles. "I worked at an alley over the summer. Stole them as an employee bonus." Her smile drops and she sighs sharply, suddenly determined. "Okay, so here it is. Jessica Wedge was my roommate at the beginning of freshmen year. She's a dumbass, but her parents are board members, so whatever. That means she somehow knew coming in who's on scholarship, which isn't supposed to be public knowledge. She obviously wasn't thrilled to be rooming with me, but it probably wouldn't have looked good for them to ask her to be reassigned.
"But you know how it is when everyone's new at a place…nobody knew each other, so there was this whole scramble to see who was going to be friends and who was going to be popular or whatever. And I kind of got a head start because I had weed…powerful ice breaker, especially to a bunch of sheltered fourteen year olds suddenly let loose. So I was cool for maybe two weeks, and that meant even Jessica was trying to be friends. Which, fine, better to get along with your roommate, right? But then she makes some offhanded homophobic comment to me…her cousin thinks anyone who'd live at an all girls school 'must be a dyke'."
Alex's voice turns mocking, imitating Jessica. "As if, right? Totally disgusting. She goes on and on about it since we were such good friends, except she didn't know I was gay."
Piper nods, careful to keep her face expressionless. "So…what happened? She found out?"
"Yeah, she found out. Because I started shoving it in her face. Talked about how hot girls were all the time. Put up some posters…I ordered a huge The L Word poster from Amazon. I've never even seen the show. Just wanted the room to be as gay as possible."
Piper laughs; Alex looks undeniably pleased with herself. It's the kind of careless recklessness Piper wishes she had, the ability to provoke and push without caring about someone thinking badly of you. "That's kind of badass."
Alex shoots her a surprised smile. "Glad you think so. So obviously it freaked her out. She started demanding to be moved…not even to Fisher, she went straight to Red with this shit. So they let her change rooms, I guess cause her family's so fucking important but she, like…she told everyone - literally, everyone - that I'm a lesbian and I made her super uncomfortable to live with or whatever. It was all bullshit, just…" She draws a breath, meets Piper's eyes. "If you hear anything like that, from Polly or whoever, that's why. But I was an asshole to Jessica on purpose. You don't have to worry about me making anything weird."
"I'm not," Piper says, almost immediately, which maybe isn't very shrewd of her. She has no substantial reason to trust Alex's story over the one Jessica apparently tells, except for the fact that Piper knows she likes Alex.
And even that's strange in a way; Piper's not usually so quick to like people, mostly because she's too busy worrying they won't like her.
"I mean, I'm straight, but I don't give a shit if you're gay, Alex. I promise." The curse word sounds stiff and forced, but the rest is entirely sincere.
Alex's smile is small and grateful. "Good. Then The L Word poster stays under the bed."
Piper grins. "I mean, hang it if you want to."
"That's okay, I've started to think of it as a declaration of war."
"Could always go on my side. I'm worried my walls are gonna be too blank."
Opening her smile up completely, Alex replies, "It's yours if you want it. But there's usually a poster sell downtown within the next few weeks, close to the college. We can take one of the weekend buses and go, that's where I got most of these."
Alex is knotting the tie around her neck with quick, habitual motions - Piper had spent two hours last week in front of a youtube tutorial, learning how to do it, and she isn't anywhere near that fast.
It's almost funny, Alex in the uniform. The tattoo on her right forearm is peeking out from under the button down sleeve until she shrugs into her blazer. It maybe shouldn't look right, the stiff school uniform on this girl who sells drugs out of tampon boxes and hangs posters like declarations of war, but it only makes her seem even more formidable; Alex exudes a magnetic sort of power.
Piper thinks she wouldn't mind learning how to do that.
Alex reaches out and flicks Piper's tie on her way to door, giving her a warm, teasing grin. "Let's go, baby duck."
The Welcome Assembly gives Piper her first real glimpse of Headmistress Reznikov, aka Red, aka Mom, but apparently it's only Nicky her refers to her as that last one.
It's nearly an hour long and absurdly dull, but Piper likes sitting there with Alex and the others, amazed she's managed to avoid even a single where do I sit who do I talk to moment here. Alex has led her into their little cluster of friends as though it was simply a given, like they've been waiting for Piper to make the group complete.
After the assembly, she walks with the others back to the dorm basement, the only room in the building with a television. There's also a cluster of couches, a pool table, a ping pong table, a closet full of board and card games, and an old piano. A small kitchen is set just off the large lounge area, apparently stocked with the all important microwave and toaster oven.
There are groups of girls already settling around the basement, the couches fully occupied, but Janae and Nicky, at the front of the group, don't even stop to survey the room, leading them instead to a door that opens to the back of the dormitory. Piper can see the fenced in tennis courts and three different playing fields down the hills behind Kerman House, but they go past them and toward a cluster of woods, talking the whole way.
"You made a good call starting sophomore year," Janae says to Piper suddenly. "Missed out on all those dumbass icebreaker questions they make freshmen do."
Poussey clutches her chest, mock wounded. "You'da given up a whole year of our friendship just to avoid icebreakers?"
"You remember those damn questions? How the fuck am I supposed to get to know anyone talkin' about what kinda animal I think I'd be?"
Alex swats Janae's arm. "You'd be a fucking cheetah, easy question. Then you got to brag about your track medals like it's all part of the game."
"Fine, but that wasn't even the worst one. What was it, like…would you rather be brilliant or attractive? Bitch, why can't I be both!"
They all crack up, Piper included, and then Nicky says, "Maybe we should ask Chapman the questions. She shouldn't have to miss out on us getting to know her."
"You already gave me the animal," Piper reminds Nicky, feeling a small thrill at the quickness of her own response. "Baby duck, remember?"
They laugh and it feels really good, like she's proving she belongs. She glances at Alex, checks that she's smiling.
They walk just a short ways into the woods before coming to an old, half rotted tree trunk with a smattering of rusty lawn furniture surrounding it, and Alex produces a joint from the front pocket of her button down, hidden by her blazer. Piper hadn't even seen her add that.
The sight of the weed provokes sighs of contentment and relief. Alex sits next to Piper on the tree trunk, and Piper watches closely while she inhales deeply and holds it for a long moment before finally breathing out a thin trail of smoke. She offers it to Piper. "Wanna try?"
Even though they are living in two hours between a required assembly and a strict Dorm Curfew, Piper is feeling a welcome, pulsing sense of freedom. There is no singular adult who needs to know precisely where she is right now, or who might later ask what she was doing.
So she takes the joint between bold fingers and sticks it between her lips. Alex grins in proud approval as she inhales carefully, trying not to cough. She thinks Danny probably does stuff like this all the time.
The night still holds the heavy warmth of fading summertime, and soon they've all ditched their blazers and rolled up their sleeves, aiming smoke toward the star speckled sky to keep the smell off their uniforms. The others all look roguishly cool, and at some point Piper loosens her tie and happily imagines she looks the same.
"The first night can feel kind of strange," Alex says to Piper once they're both in bed and she's flicked off the reading lamp clipped to the edge of her bed. "But you get used to it really quick."
She doesn't say that this is strange for her, too, but in a really good way. She'd gotten used to the quiet last year, had gotten used to spreading her stuff across the whole room, Janae and Poussey and Nicky using the empty bed as a couch during study hours.
But she likes having Piper to talk to, especially like this, trading words through the dark between their beds.
"Yeah…" Piper answers, her voice lazy and thin, right on the edge of sleep. "When my brother's home for break, my grandmother always says it must be good to sleep in his own bed again, but he says his bed at school feels more normal now."
Alex thinks about that for a second. "I guess that's true. I wouldn't ever say that to my mom, though."
She hears the faint rustling of sheets across the room, like Piper's turning to face her even though it's too dark to make out more than an outline. "You miss her when you're here?"
"Yeah," Alex answers. "A lot, actually." A lot, as in, sometimes Alex doesn't understand how she can love it here and still miss her mom that much. It feels like one should cancel out the other. "But it's good for both of us that I'm here."
"How come?"
"She works all the time, so I was alone at home more often than she was there. But that meant she felt like she had to spend all her free time with me, and she doesn't have a ton of that anyway. Now at least she goes out with friends sometimes. She even gets to have dates."
"I bet she still really misses you."
"Yeah…we text a lot though."
There's a pause, and then Piper says, "My dad works a lot, too. Travels for work all the time…" She hesitates, and in the silence Alex is thinking that Piper's dad's work is probably very different from her mother's multiple jobs, but then Piper says, "Actually that's probably not just about work so much as having affairs."
Alex turns on her side, too. "You're sure?"
"Yeah. Well, I mean, I'm sure it's happened before. I saw him with another woman when I was in sixth grade."
"That sucks."
"Yeah…I've never told anybody that. Besides my mom and my grandmother, right after."
"Damn, good for you. What'd your mom say?"
"Basically nothing. We've never talked about it again. I don't know, I don't really understand her. Don't think we'd ever have anything to text about."
Alex remembers meeting Nicky last year, listening to her constant bitching about her mother, and how slowly that snide derision had constructed the real story of neglect. Alex hadn't been able to stop a secret rush of relief - Nicky is probably richer even than the kids in middle school who tortured Alex constantly, but it hadn't meant her life was perfect, and ultimately, Alex would rather have her mom than Nicky's money or house or clothes.
But hearing Piper talk about her parents just makes Alex feel sad for her.
"What about your brother?"
"Danny's okay, he's always been way cooler than me, and he knows it…but my younger brother Cal's pretty hilarious. He'll start Overbrook next year."
"That's cool."
She waits a minute or so, snesing the natural end of conversation, then says softly, just in case Piper already fell asleep. "Goodnight."
"Night, Alex," comes fast and soft from across the room.
Alex turns onto her stomach, pressing a smile into her pillow.
Text Message, Monday, 7:43 am
MOM
[morning babe. hope u have a good first day back! miss u already.]
ALEX
[Thanks. Miss you too.]
MOM
[hows the new roommate?]
ALEX
[Kinda great, actually. I like her a lot.]
MOM
[thats awesome Al. never liked u being the only one living alone.]
[I wanna hear all about her when u call me.]
[aka u better call fuckin SOON.]
ALEX
[Will do. Love you, Mom.]
MOM
[Love u2 baby. 3]
ALEX
[the band?]
MOM
[lol]
[dont be a smartass]
The five of them compare class schedules at breakfast - well, Alex and Piper and Janae do, forcibly taking Poussey and Nicky's to peruse. Those two don't seem to have adjusted out of their summer schedule of sleeping late.
The sophomore class is small but so is the average Litchfield class size; still, you're almost guaranteed to have at least a few classes with everyone. The first thing Alex checks is her schedule against Piper's, and they have four out of the seven together.
Including English Lit, the first class of the day, which turns out to be an incredibly fortunate gift. Piper's erred understandably on the quiet side around the others, but seems unaffected by shyness in classes, English especially.
One of their summer reading assignments, amid the novels, was How to Read Literature like a Professor, about literary patterns and symbolism. That's what they start out with, and Piper's usually the first person with her hand in the air, rattling off multiple books with examples of just about every trope they discuss, and she seems to have read everything anyone else mentions to.
Alex is both amused and impressed listening to Piper's excited, overly detailed answers, and she shouldn't be surprised considering her well stocked bookshelf back in the room. They're sitting in desks beside each other in the typical semi-circle, and at one point Alex nudges her foot against Piper's ankle and teasingly mouths, "Show off."
Piper has math with Polly just before lunch, and it's the only class she's in without Alex or any of her friends - she's pretty sure most of them are in science together at the time - and after class Polly comes up to her desk and smiles.
"So how's everything going so far?"
"Good." Piper slings her messenger bag over her shoulder and stands up. She has no reason to be distant with Polly, but she can't help wondering what she thought back when Jessica started badmouthing Alex.
But there's nothing edgy in her voice when she says, "You seem to like Alex."
"She's been really nice."
"That's cool. I don't really know her that well. And like, I love Jessica, but she can be dramatic."
That makes Piper feel a little better. "Gotcha."
"And obviously it doesn't matter to me if she's gay or not. I can see how it would be a little awkward living at an all girls school. Like, on my floor, people walk from their rooms to the bathroom basically half naked."
"I don't think it's awkward with her."
"I don't just mean her. Nicky's gay, too, right? I don't know about the other two - "
"Janae has a boyfriend," Piper reports, a little pleased with herself for knowing something Polly doesn't.
"Cool. Like I said, I seriously don't care. Just know you're totally welcome to sit with us, too, whenever. They've all met Danny and love him, so they're super excited you're here."
"Thanks, Polly. I'm definitely looking forward to tennis team and everything."
"Yeah, you'll like Sarah, she's sweet. And Jessica really is cool when you get to know her. You should have lunch with us."
"Actually, I've got a free period after lunch, so Alex wants to show me the coffee shop in town."
"Oh, nice. You're lucky your free period's after lunch, mine's right before the last period of the day. Barely does me any fucking good."
"That sucks."
"Yeah. Anyway. We should hang out later, though…maybe go down to the courts and hit around sometime."
"That'd be awesome. Anytime."
"Cool. I'll text you."
Text Message, Monday 12:02 pm
CAL
[howz dat fancy boarding school lyfe grrrl]
PIPER
[ew stop I don't like that]
CAL
[LOL. Seriously, you liking it?]
PIPER
[A surprising amount actually]
CAL
[NERD]
[I spent the whole car ride home hearing about what a great example you and D are setting, so THANKS FOR EVERYTHING as always]
PIPER
[not that great of an example. guess what I did last night?]
CAL
[read several textbook chapters ahead just to be safe?]
PIPER
[Fuck you, no. I smoked weed]
[maybe i shouldn't be texting that. Delete it just in case.]
[You there?]
CAL
[YOU DID DRUGS?]
[ON THE FIRST NIGHT?]
[AND YOU LEARNED THE F WORD?]
[WHO ARE YOU?]
Text Messages, Monday, 12:17 pm
DANNY
[Hey PB Cal said I should ask you how your first night was?]
PIPER
[don't call me that.]
[it was fine, I don't know what he's talking about.]
DANNY
[did you hang out with Polly? Did something happen?]
PIPER
[NO. I haven't seen her much yet.]
DANNY
[ok w/e. We're probably gonna try to come over there this weekend.]
Text messages, Monday, 12:57 pm
DANNY
[PB, Polly says your roommate is that girl who sells all the contraband]
[see if you can get me and her some free shit for saturday?]
Alex, Piper, and Poussey walk the fifteen minutes off campus to get to a little coffee shop and bakery that's apparently the only decent place in easy walking distance of campus to hang out. When they get there there are already a few students in line, and several more sprawled out on the course and armchairs, probably students whose free period is the one right before lunch.
Nearly everyone in sight in outfitted in the casual version of the Litchfield uniforms: the skirt with a short sleeved, collared white shirt. Most of the students are able to let some personal style leak through with these: Poussey's got big hoop earrings and one wrist jangling with bracelets, while Alex is wearing navy Converse that match the blue on their skirts exactly.
They buy toasted specialty sandwiches and manage to claim a loveseat and one leather chair as a couple of other students pack up their laptops to go. Poussey bites into her food and lets out a dramatic, satisfied moan. "Swear to God, I thought about this bread all summer. Had dreams about it."
"Lunch here is a dangerous precedent to set, but." Alex grins at Piper. "Special occasion."
Poussey huffs out a psh sound. "Dangerous precedent, my ass. I'm coming here every day this semester. Lunch adjacent free period is a gift."
Alex and Poussey's phones buzz simultaneously, and in a move that practically seems coordinated, they look down at their respective screens and laugh. Alex looks up at Piper and explains, "Nicky and Janae are shit talking us."
"They jealous as hell," Poussey says, looking delighted by the news. "See?" She holds out her phone so Piper can see the torrent of angry abuse on the text message thread.
"Oh, you know what, we should add Pipes to the group message," Alex says offhandedly, and Piper's chest warms at both the unthinking nickname and the suggestion.
"You don't have to do that," Piper protests, trying like not to smile.
"Nah, you already in this," Poussey tells her with a grin. "We gotta claim you before Wedge & Company."
"So adding me to your group texts, that constitutes a claim?"
"Sure does."
Laughing, Alex adds, "What, they didn't teach you that in your old civics class?"
"Thank God she's getting a Litchfield education now."
The first week feels both slow and fast: slow because by the end of it Piper feels like she's lived here for much longer, and fast because every minute feels interesting and absorbing. She even likes most of the classes; the teachers are obviously smart, but also informal and often funny.
She plays tennis with Polly on Thursday before dinner, warming up for the start of practices next week. It's fun and not at all awkward; she still likes hanging out with Polly, even though she's less sure about her friend group, and wouldn't ditch Alex even if she was.
There's a bus on Saturdays that goes to and from the school and a shopping center that includes a movie theater and restaurants, as well as a music store that's currently the host to the temporary poster sale Alex has mentioned. They all go, and everyone buys something, but Piper loads up the most and when they get back she and Alex stand on her bed and desk and tape up posters, only a few of which Alex makes fun of.
"I like Pitch Perfect."
"That's not what I'm laughing at."
"Then which one?"
"Guess."
"This is so mean. Pretty in Pink?"
"I wouldn't laugh at John Hughes. Even though Ferris Bueller is the best one."
"Alex."
"Fine, the music ones."
"What's wrong with them?"
"Well, first of all, they're all guys with J names. Second of all - "
"Jason, Joshua, John…not Ed."
" - do you find all your music by walking into Starbucks and Shazamming whatever's playing?"
"You're a snob."
"Don't worry, Pipes. I can help you."
Text Message, Saturday 5:14 pm
DANNY
[PB: you gonna hook us up with some weed tonight or what?]
[I'm bringing friends you should hang out]
PIPER
[Wow, suddenly I'm invited?]
DANNY
[As long as you're cool with a Don't Ask Don't Tell policy with mom and dad.]
[Speaking of which is it true your roommates a lesbian?]
PIPER
[ugh stop]
DANNY
[I mean I don't care I was just gonna say you should flirt if it'll get us some stuff]
"Pooh Bear!"
Piper grimaces as her older brother accosts her from behind, throwing arm around her in what's more chokehold than hug, and practically yelling what was, to everyone except for him, a short lived childhood nickname.
"Don't call me that. Jackass."
"Ooh, one week away and she's learned to curse." He musses up her hair and Piper bats his hand away. Danny has a unique knack for acting like the single year separating their ages is somehow more vast than most 365 day years.
She's sitting at an outdoor patio table with Alex and the others, playing Cards Against Humanity, and her friends are all watching this display of brotherly condescension with gleeful, undisguised amusement.
Behind Danny are Polly, Jessica, and three other guys, but Danny makes no attempts to introduce them, just scans Piper's table and asks, "Which one of you's the roommate?"
Alex flicks a hand in a sardonic wave.
"Sweet, nice to meet you. I'm Piper's big brother."
"I gathered."
"Heard you got a decent stash."
Alex's eyes cool, and flick over to Polly. "Your girlfriend knows the drill."
"There maybe a friends and family discount?"
"Sure. But we're all family here at Litchfield, right, ladies? And you guys are our brother school, so. Technically family discount just means: normal price."
Piper laughs in delight at the way Danny's full charm smile flickers instantly.
Jessica steps up and tugs on his arm, not letting go. "C'mon, Dan, I told you I've got enough Grey Goose in my water bottles." At this lingering physical contact, Polly's eyes narrow slightly and she shuffles a little closer to Danny's other side. Under the table, Alex foot presses subtly against Piper's, her lips twitching at the bit of drama.
"Nah, I'll pay. Let's go see what you got."
"You can't come into our dorms," Piper blurts out, irrationally annoyed at both his continued presence and the interruption of the game.
"Not this early, anyway," he says, winking at Polly. Piper rolls her eyes.
"I'll go," Polly says, all smiles again after the bit of flirting. Danny hands her some cash, and Alex gamely gets up, telling the others to wait.
"We're going to the lake tonight, if you want to come," Danny says to Piper after a moment. His girlfriend safely out of earshot, he smiles winningly at Nicky, Poussey and Janae. "You ladies are all welcome, of course."
"It's past the hours," Piper tells him, knowing she sounds prissy but unable to help it.
"Not on our side," one of the other guys says with a snicker.
"Hard pass," Nicky says, not even bothering to look up from her cards.
The only guy who hasn't spoken suddenly leans around Danny to make eye contact with Piper. "I'm Larry, by the way, your brother's - "
"Roommate, right." She awkwardly maneuvers her arm to shake his offered hand. "I've heard a lot about you." Mainly that Larry is supposedly kinda nerdy, but a good dude.
"Same here," Larry says, though Piper kind of doubts that's true.
Polly and Alex come back then, Polly smiling at Danny and discreetly patting her pocket.
"Awesome." He nods at Alex. "Thanks, dude."
"Sure thing, bro," she says, just at the edge of mocking. Beside her, Janae snorts in amusement.
"Let's go," Jessica says impatiently, looping her hand through the crook Larry's arm, seemingly because he's closest.
Polly looks at Piper, lowering her voice a little. "Hey, we're gonna try to sneak over to the unsupervised part of the lake later, after room check, if you wanna come." Her eyes lift briefly to the rest of Piper's friends, and she adds, "All of you."
"I told her," Danny says.
"I think we're good. Thanks though."
"Okay. Text if you change your mind."
Danny messes up her hair again. "See ya, Pooh."
Larry nods at her. "Nice meeting you."
Piper watches them walk away, sensing an anticipatory silence settling between her friends. Finally, Piper sighs. "Just say it already."
"Whoa, calm down, Pooh Bear," Nicky says with a smirk, and they all lose it completely, laughing hard. It takes Piper thirty seconds - and Alex's dancing eyes locking on hers - for her to join in.
Sports start the second week, and just as Polly had told her, everyone's required to do at least one, though only one of the two semesters is an actual intense season.
Poussey plays volleyball. Janae runs track and cross-country, is here on a track scholarship and is apparently the star of not only the school but their entire region. Nicky does the same thing, although apparently on the opposite end of the spectrum: the running sports are apparently a dumping ground for the least skilled athletes, so low ranked on the team that their times never count.
And Alex plays soccer, as goalkeeper, apparently, although as she explains to Piper, the starting goalie is a senior so she usually doesn't get into the game until the second half. "Next year's all me, though."
Soccer's main season is spring, so for the first semester Alex practices a few times a week and only has occasional exhibition games with the schools that are closest, but tennis is a fall sport, so Piper has practice almost every day after class.
It's a stacked sport, apparently highly ranked at regionals - unsurprisingly with a fairly wealthy student body, all growing up with private country club instructors - but Piper ranks eighth in singles and she and Polly manage to crack the Top Six as a doubles team.
The cross country team often runs down by the tennis courts and playing fields, so Piper will sometimes see Janae leading a pack of the frontrunners; she always smacks the fence near Piper's court, letting out an adrenaline fueled whoop of a greeting that makes Piper laugh. Nicky usually jogs by about a half hour later, but she usually seems too run down to do much in the way of acknowledgment.
The best is that she can see the soccer fields from the courts, and it's easy to spot Alex in her neon orange goalie jersey (the other goalie wears green). The first time they both suited up for practices, they'd smirked when they saw each other.
"You look like a highlighter."
"You look like the first stock photo that pops up when you google the phrase country club."
"You also kinda look like you're playing a geek in an 80's movie."
"Wow, going with the four eyes territory? Beneath you, Pipes."
"I didn't say four eyes. This is beyond normal glasses jokes…those look like lab goggles."
"I understand your sport is largely about fashion, but I need these to see."
"Why don't you just get contacts?"
"I hate sticking my finger in my eye."
Piper's first home tennis match, her brother and some of his friends show up to watch, which she can't help but find sweet for about thirty seconds before she remembers her partner is Danny's girlfriend. Volleyball and Cross Country are competing the same day, but Alex shows up after practice on her own, sweaty and flushed with two red circles around her eyes from her ridiculous sports goggles. She's the one Piper keeps checking for, every time she hits a particularly nice shot or aces a serve, trotting back to the baseline holding back a proud smile and making sure Alex was watching. She always is.
Group Text Message, Tuesday, 3:41 pm
POUSSEY
[Piper & Janae - good luck today!]
[I guess you too Nicky]
[for whatever it is you do]
JANAE
[Ya girl don't need luck motherfuckers]
[also HAAA BURN]
PIPER
[You, too!]
[the good luck I mean]
NICKY
[how dare you. I'm feeling an underdog moment. gonna come from behind and beat Watson]
JANAE
[You woulda had to qualify to compete to do that dumbass]
POUSSEY
[hahahaha]
PIPER
[at least her spirit is admirable]
NICKY
[Vause seems quiet, whose game we think she's gonna show up for?]
[anyone wanna venture a guess?]
Private Text Message, 3:44 pm
ALEX
[Fuck off asshole]
NICKY
[OOPS STRUCK A NERVE]
She's just rounding her first full month at Litchfield when the school hosts a screening of Vertigo in the Fine Arts Center. There are movies there most Friday nights, everything from old Hollywood classics to culty films from the 90's, though Piper hasn't been to one yet. But they have no other plans and it's been raining on and off all day anyway, so rather than sit in the overly crowded basement, or hang out in someone's room (the dorm rooms seem to shrink if you put all five of them in the same one), Piper and Alex and the others decide to go, along with, it seems, most of the student population.
There are free bags of popcorn, and Solo cups of diet coke. Poussey and Nicky disappear into the bathroom to spike theirs with rum purchased off Alex. Piper's found out by now that Alex has a fake ID she can usually gets away with (for some reason, that doesn't surprise Piper - it's not that she looks so much older. It's that power she has.). She'll take orders for booze and, every few weekends or so, somehow manages an under the radar ride to a liquor store.
Piper's never seen any Hitchcock films, and she enjoys Vertigo, though two thirds of the way through, rain and the like-clockwork crash of thunder joins the movie's dramatic score. When the movie's over, a teacher's voice she can't quite place comes over the speaker system and says, "Students, be aware it is raining profusely outside, so please be careful heading back to your dormitories."
Profusely turns out to be a massive understatement.
It's a torrential downpour, a biblical, Noah's Arc level rain, so thick and constant it doesn't seem like the rain is falling in separate drops. The thunder makes it sound like the world is caught between two cymbals, and Piper is trying to remember the rule about counting the seconds between thunder and lightning, what it means about how close the storm is.
Except the storm is clearly right the fuck on top of them, and Piper looks instinctively for Alex, who's looking back at her, squinting through the downpour. She takes off her glasses and hooks them over the front of her shirt, then grabs Piper's hand just as Janae takes off running. Alex tugs Piper into following her, Nicky and Poussey somewhere behind them. Alex lets go one they get onto the path, and Piper's hand feels empty.
The crowd from the movie is moving as a throng, so even Janae can't get too far ahead. Piper stops at one point to take off her flip flops, sees several other people doing the same. The brick walkways on campus are unstable on the best days - no one even laughs at people stumbling over loose bricks, aware it could easily happen to any of them.
They've barely been running for a minute and Piper already feels like she's been dunked into a pool. Her phone's in her purse, and she sticks it under her shirt in a mostly futile extra protection. It seems like every few seconds that lightning cracks with actual sound, illuminating the whole world for a heartbeat of a moment in eerie white light, though when Piper looks up she can still pick out the distinct bolt, a spiderweb of electricity cracking the sky.
Alex looks over at her and grins, and Piper can't help it, she smiles back. Her heart is spinning in circles, her blood humming and electrocuted, and maybe it's just adrenaline but damn, this feels amazing.
But the campus seems too small, and they make it back to their dorm soon, dozens of girls crowding into the small foyer with its outdated furniture and huge rugs over the hardwood floors. Piper squeezes her hair into a ponytail and it spits water like a faucet. She's shivering and laughing out of some dizzy, breathless reflex but she's also obscurely disappointed.
"Pipes!" Alex tugs on her sleeve, a sly smile on her face like she's about to say something other people would find crazy. Alex's eyes are rimmed with smeared makeup, her hair soaked and inky black. She looks like a storm, maybe always, with her lightning eyes and voice like thunder, but now she looks wild and a little startling, and maybe it's a weird thing to think but she's beautiful.
"Let's go back outside," Alex says, just to Piper.
"Yes," she nods her head like it's the best thing anyone's ever said.
They go, pulling Nicky and Poussey and Janae along. Janae is especially reluctant, muttering about wet ground and possible injuries, but even she acquiesces, and the five of them end up pioneering a mass movement, as other girls reemerge into the rain and head down to the playing fields.
There is nothing really to do but just take it all in, all this strangely gorgeous disturbance. Piper wishes there was music, but of course everyone left their phones in stacks on the dorm lounge couch. On the edge of the soccer field, someone starts a trend of mud sliding, but Alex and Piper don't join in. It feels like enough to simply be there, daring to exist in the center of a storm.
It's a group of dorm counselors that eventually usher them all back up the hill to their dorms, rattling off uncertain statistics about lightning deaths.
Piper and Alex go back to their room, bright eyed and giddy and dripping water on the floor. Piper sticks her head close to Alex and shakes out her own hair, spewing water like a dog shaking itself dry. Alex actually squeals, a sound Piper wouldn't have thought her capable of making before tonight, and shoves her off, against the edge of the bed where she leaves a huge spot on her dangling comforter.
Alex opens the mini fridge under her bed and takes out the gray plastic thermos she always carries to soccer practice, taking a huge swig before offering it to Piper. "Drink?"
Piper accepts, taking a big gulp of something too sweet and carbonated that makes her face twist in distaste. "Is that wine?"
Alex laughs at her. "Yeah, but I don't blame you for not being sure. It's the super cheap pink shit. Practically soda."
Piper takes another sip, and it's better this time.
Alex grabs a towel and starts drying her hair. "Showers are probably fucking packed."
"Good point, I'm too cold to wait."
"Keep drinking that, it'll warm you up."
They change to warm, dry clothes in the room, each facing their own wall, backs to each other, still talking.
"Did you see Nora Frost twisted her ankle?"
"Fuck, I know, did you see her trying to get up the stairs?"
"She looked like a shipwreck victim."
"Yes, crawling her way to shore…"
When they turn around, still passing the wine back and forth, Alex swipes her fingers under her eyes, rubbing away some of the black. "Wanna watch a movie or something? I've got DVDs."
"Sure. We could also use my Netflix password."
"Oh, in that case, log it in on my computer. And make sure to press save."
Piper grins and does so, just so Alex will have it, but then she goes over to Alex's modest stacks of movies and starts surveying their choices. Piper laughs at her because they're mostly a little arty and pretentious but then Alex also apparently owns Elf - "you'll thank me at Christmas, asshole."
They watch Seeking a Friend for the End of the World because it's the title that most gets Piper's attention, and they have to refill the thermos halfway through. Even though the movie turns out to be romance instead of just friendship - between Steve Carell and Keira Knightley, can't blame her for not seeing that coming - there's a line at the very end, you're my favorite, favorite thing, that reminds Piper, in her happy and tipsy state of mind, of Alex.
They're sitting on Alex's bed, leaning on pillows they put against the wall, each of their thighs supporting half the laptop, and when the credits roll they move the computer but don't get up, just keep sharing the wine and listening to the storm outside, still going strong.
"Can I ask you something?" Alex says after awhile, her voice slower and thicker than usual. The syllables come out all slippery, and though Piper's seen her smoking and drinking a dozen times by now, this is the first instance she's actually noticed an effect.
"Sure."
"Did you really come here cause Polly told you to?"
"No. I mean. Technically kinda, but that makes it seem like her presence is the reason. We barely knew each other. She just asked me how come I didn't go to Litch since Danny goes to Overbrook, and I was kinda like: why don't I?" Piper's drunk, too, she can tell from her messy syntax.
"Why didn't you?" Piper looks at Alex, uncomprehending, and she clarifies, "Start last year, I mean"
"I don't know. I think I was scared to leave home." She shakes her head, annoyed at how babyish that sounds. "I get scared of too much stuff."
"But. You're sure as hell not scared of thunderstorms."
"True. I actually think I might love thunderstorms. That's something I've learned about myself." Alex laughs, and Piper looks over at her. "What about you?"
"I also love thunderstorms."
"No, I mean. You and Litchfield. You started here as a freshman and you didn't even know anybody. How'd you decide to come?"
Alex tips her head back on the wall, a slight frown on her face. It takes a moment before she answers, "You know I'm on scholarship, right?"
"Yeah."
"Right. Well, that's a big fucking deal. Full academic rides to a school you already have to be a brain to get into…they hardly ever do that. But I had this teacher back in seventh grade, my language arts teacher. She used to work here. She got it in her head that I should go, and spent all year making it seem like I had no choice. She gave me extra books to read and made me keep writing essays and stuff about them, and they had to be good ones. Sent all that shit into admissions. Along with an entrance essay, had to give the whole trailer park kid spiel."
She must see the surprise on Piper's face. "Oh, yeah, we live in a trailer. My mom works two jobs, three at Christmas, but this way I go to a great school without paying, and maybe get into a college without paying, too. But who knows."
Piper's quiet, absorbing that, silently rearranging her understanding of Alex.
Alex adds suddenly, "Hey, Pipes, don't tell Nicky or anyone else about that, okay? I mean, they know I'm on scholarship - Janae is, too, but for sports, so it's different - but there's still a big gap between the trailer park and the way Nichols or you grew up. Rather them think I'm closer to the middle."
Piper nods, eagerly agreeing. "I won't say anything."
She should maybe say something reassuring about how none of their friends will care, that of course the kind of home Alex grew up in doesn't matter, but the delight of being offered this as a secret is too good to sacrifice. She smiles reassuringly at Alex, and the moment feels hushed and glowing - something just between them.
She always catches herself wanting that from Alex, some sense of being special. She is her roommate, of course, and no one else can say that, but it wasn't Alex's choice.
So Piper strings together every instance of being singled out like they're jewels. When Alex makes a point to catch her eye when the whole group is laughing. When Alex makes a joke directed at her on their group text. Every time Alex comes by her tennis match or waits for her after class. Every time she's the one being chosen.
With a fervency that's probably embarrassing, what Piper wants most is to be Alex's favorite, the person she's closest to, the first one she calls or looks for or even just thinks about. Sometimes, when Alex smiles at her, Piper even thinks maybe she is, but it's hard to shake the fact that the others have a headstart.
"I wish I did start last year," she mumbles mournfully, shaking the thermos a little. It's empty again.
"But you wouldn't have been my roommate," Alex reminds her.
"Tha's true."
"And then we probably never would have been friends."
"Yes, we would have."
"I don't know about that."
"Alex. We would have."
"If you say so."
"I do say so."
Piper falls asleep on Alex's bed somehow, wine drunk, her hair knotted up from drying on its own. She's still leaning against the wall, half sitting up, legs dangling off the bed and head tilted like she's perplexed. Alex grins to herself and gently nudges her roommate into a normal human sleeping position, her cheek barely hitting the edge of Alex's pillow.
Briefly, stupidly, Alex thinks about stretching out beside her, forcing herself into the minimal space left on the mattress and sleeping that close.
Instead she stretches out on top of the sheets on Piper's bed. The pillow smells like her, and Alex tells herself that's almost as good.