Tom Wolfe - I Am Charlotte Simmons

“Yes! Come on!”

“They’re not even gonna notice us,” said Bettina. She turned to Mimi. “What do we wear?”

Charlotte broke in. “Have you ever been to one before?”

“Obviously! Yes, of course,” said Mimi. “They’re like totally cool. Upperclassmen are way hotter than freshmen. They don’t look like they just got off the school bus.”

“Was everyone really drunk?” said Charlotte.

“Where are you from? What do you think? No, they drank apple juice the whole time.”

That left Charlotte speechless. She knew she should act cool about it; in fact, she looked anxious.

“Come on!” said Mimi.

“Well, maybe,” said Charlotte. “I mean if we’re all gonna go.”

“I’ll lend you my makeup case,” said Bettina. She was brimming with enthusiasm for the adventure ahead.

“Hey, can I borrow that red halter top of yours?” said Mimi.

“Yeah sure,” said Bettina.

“Do you think it would be flattering?”

“Yeah, it looks good on anyone.”

“What should I wear?” said Charlotte.

“Black pants,” said Bettina. “And a bright-colored top. That way you’ll stand out.”

“I don’t want to stand out. I’d rather look like I was supposed to be there.”

“Then wear all black,” said Mimi.

“I don’t know…” said Charlotte. “I was looking at a magazine, and that’s what they wear in New York. I’m not from New York.”

“Help yourself to my closet,” said Bettina.

“I don’t think anything will fit me,” said Charlotte. “I’m gonna have to run down the hall to my room.”

“Well—don’t take all night,” said Bettina.

In 516, all the lights were on, but Beverly was not there, not that Charlotte had thought for a second she would be. Her heart was hammering so hard that when she opened her mouth, an odd chafing sound rose from her chest with each beat, as if her heart were rubbing against her sternum. Beverly’s side of the room was as much of a mess as Bettina’s room. A pair of Beverly’s jeans were on the floor at the foot of her bed. It was as if they had dropped straight off her hips and telescoped at her feet. A round, crushed, prefaded denim pie on the floor was what they looked like. Diesels, needless to say. Charlotte’s side of the room was a model of neatness by Little Yard standards. For a start, she didn’t have enough clothes to be lazy or absentminded enough to leave some of them lying around mashed up like that. For another thing, when you grew up in a five-by-eight-foot bedroom, most of which was taken up by the bed, leaving stuff on the floor and stepping through it was more trouble than keeping it neat—not that Momma had ever left her any choice. Charlotte’s eyes remained fixed on the abandoned blue jeans, but they no longer registered. Crashing a fraternity party—and what did she think they drank, apple juice? She was breathing too fast, and her underarms and her face were abloom with heat. Somehow she had just committed herself to a dreadful test that wasn’t worth taking in the first place. Well, that was crazy, wasn’t it? One of the things that made Charlotte Simmons Charlotte Simmons was the fact that she had never let herself be bent by peer pressure. Nobody could commit her to doing anything. But Mimi was already fed up with her doubts and fears, and if she didn’t go, then there would just be Mimi and Bettina, and maybe it would remain that way, and she would have no friends. She had had only one real friend at Alleghany High, Laurie—four years at the same school, and one friend. What was it—this implacable remoteness, this inability to surrender herself to the warmth and comradely feelings of others? Could being an academic star, being applauded over and over again as a prodigy, take the place of all that? She shuddered with a feeling she couldn’t have put a name to. It was the congenital human fear of isolation.

She was no star here at Dupont, not so far. Nothing had altered her inexpressible conviction that she would be the most brilliant student at this famous university—but how was anyone supposed to know about it, even if she was? At Alleghany High, there was a steady flow of recognition in one form or another. If you skipped a grade in a certain subject, if you were receiving special advanced instruction, if you were chosen to represent the school in some sort of academic competition, if you made nothing but A pluses, everybody knew about it. Here, if you were so brilliant, who would know and who would care, especially if you were a freshman? At this exalted institution, what was that compared to success as a girl? What should she wear? She didn’t have any black pants, and she didn’t have any black top, even if that was what she had been dying to put on. Her blue jeans—they weren’t even a conceivable choice. She looked again at Beverly’s, lying in a clump there on the floor, faded and worn out to near perfection…She’d never even miss them. But suppose somehow she did! Besides, they were bound to be too long. Desperately she scanned the room…Mimi and Bettina were probably already drumming their fingers. Unable to come up with anything better, she put on her print dress, the same one she had worn under the kelly-green gown at commencement. It wasn’t the right thing, but at least it showed off her legs—although not enough…Ohgod. In a frenzy she took off the dress and raised the hem a good two and a half inches, using safety pins…By now they’d be ready to kill her…She looked at herself in Beverly’s door mirror. A bit primitive, the hem job, but lots of leg…Anything else?…On top of Beverly’s bureau there was Beverly’s makeup case and her vanity mirror. Charlotte snapped on the mirror lights. The face she saw, lit up that way, looked like somebody else’s, but somebody else not bad at all. She put her hand on the makeup case. She took her hand away. She’d rather die than have Beverly somehow figure out that she had used her makeup. Besides, she wasn’t sure exactly how you were supposed to use the things in that forbidden container. She left the room frantic, a little soldier about to plunge, feebly equipped, into a dangerous battle for no other reason than to keep up with some girls she knew.

Sure enough, down the hall in Bettina’s room Bettina and Mimi had severely tested patience written all over their faces. Mimi was wearing her jeans and Bettina’s Chinese red halter top, and Bettina had on jeans and a tight T-shirt, the expensive, dressy kind. But above all, there was the makeup. Both girls’ eyes were set in the shadows of the night, just the way Beverly’s always were when she went out. Both girls were fair-haired, but their eyebrows and eyelashes were now black.

Mimi looked Charlotte up and down and said, “I’m glad you don’t want to stand out.”

“Is it terrible?” said Charlotte. How inadequate she was! “Is it all wrong?”

“It’s fine,” Mimi said. “You look great. Let’s go.”

“But you’re both wearing jeans.”

“Sooner or later you’ll need to get some jeans. But not tonight. Tonight you look great.”

“Yeah, you totally do,” said Bettina. “You’ve got the body for it. I think we ought to get going.”

“It looks awful, doesn’t it?” said Charlotte. “Listen, I’m gonna—”

“Gonna what?” said Mimi. It was more of a challenge than a question.

“Oh—I’m just gonna go like this, I guess.”

Soon they were walking in the dark along Ladding Walk, which was in the very oldest part of the campus. The Walk was an extravagantly wide promenade paved with stone and lined with huge ancient trees and late-nineteenth-century mansions, built close together, now used mainly for administrative offices, and, at some juncture, if Bettina had it right, the Saint Ray fraternity house. The light from the ornate old streetlamps overhead succeeded mainly in casting the trees and the buildings into monstrous, indecipherable shadows. Such a heavy stillness enveloped the place, it was hard to believe that they were going to come upon a big fraternity party in this vicinity.