Shepard left to find his son, and Larry emerged from the building to watch the arrival scene, which looked chaotic but wasn’t. Having young girls in their midst was an unfamiliar sight, but not an unpleasant one. Several of the boys were noticing the girls around them, though none of the girls appeared to be speaking to each other yet. They had too much else to do as they unloaded the vehicles they’d come in, and argued with their parents about what to put where, and who would carry what.
The mothers of the freshman girls looked frazzled. Most of the fathers had come with them, and were struggling with their heavy trunks, with the occasional teacher lending a hand.
“The dorms will be drowning in hair dryers and curling irons by tonight,” Larry said gloomily, and Nicole smiled at him. She was used to his complaints by now, after their initial meetings about the arrival of girls on campus.
“It won’t kill us, Larry,” she reassured him, as they all noticed a particularly beautiful girl get out of her mother’s car. There was no one else with them, and the girl with long straight blond hair down her back pulled out her trunk and two duffel bags without hesitation, while her mother managed some cartons. The girl seemed unusually poised for her age. She looked older than a senior and more like a college student, Nicole thought. She was strikingly pretty, like a model, and they all saw several heads turn to look at her, faculty and fathers as well as students. She was wearing cut-off jeans, a T-shirt and sneakers, and paid no attention to the admiring stares. She continued talking to her mother. Nicole recognized her from the files she had studied. She was Vivienne Walker, an incoming senior from L.A. Her mother was an attorney and had just moved to New York. Her father was a real estate developer in L.A., and they were getting a divorce. Vivienne had had top grades at her private day school in L.A. She and her mother had visited the school in May and she had been one of the last female students to be accepted, because they were short of senior girls. At best, it was difficult to lure seniors to a change of schools, except due to emergency or family circumstances, which was the case for Vivienne.
Larry watched Vivienne and her mother with a dour expression. She was exactly the kind of student he had been afraid of, a real beauty who would distract her fellow male students, and cause “drama” as he had put it. There was no question, every male in the vicinity had noticed her, the fathers even more than the sons. She looked like Alice in Wonderland all grown up. “That’s exactly what I was talking about,” he said, scowling, and walked back inside to his office as Nicole and Taylor exchanged a smile.
“He’ll get over it,” Taylor said optimistically, as he saw Adrian Stone arrive in a town car with a driver, also up from New York. Adrian was one of their most brilliant students, identified by his classmates as a “geek.” He was very slight and had long brown hair that was always in his face and big sad brown eyes. He was a returning junior, suffered from social anxiety and asthma, and was something of a computer genius, who designed his own programs and applications. He had few friends, if any, kept to himself, studying all the time, or hiding out in the computer lab. His parents, Jack and Liz, were both psychiatrists, and were in the midst of a divorce that had turned Adrian’s life into a living hell. They constantly dragged each other into court, filed court orders against each other, and the court-appointed psychiatrist assigned to the case for Adrian’s benefit had finally recommended to the judge two years before that he be sent away to school to get him out of the middle of their war. In addition, the court had assigned a child advocacy lawyer, pro bono, to defend Adrian against his parents, who used him as a weapon against each other. He had flourished academically, and was a little less shy than he had been when he’d arrived. According to his counselor and teachers he was always afraid to do or say the wrong thing and get someone in trouble, or himself.
His parents almost never came to see him at school, and he always seemed reluctant to go home for vacation, where he lived with each of them on alternating days, an arrangement that he admitted he hated, but the only one both parents would agree to. He was better off at school. The driver of the town car helped him unload his suitcases, a duffel and some boxes, and helped him carry them into his dorm. As always, Adrian was the only student with neither parent there with him on opening day.
Taylor looked pensive as he thought about him, and then noticed a familiar black van appear and park in a remote corner of the parking lot designated for seniors. The windows were tinted too dark to see inside, there were two men in the front seat, a driver and a bodyguard, and Taylor could guess who was in it. As soon as the van stopped, a man with a perfect body jumped out. He was tall with well-developed broad shoulders and was wearing a black T-shirt and jeans, black cowboy boots, a baseball cap, and dark glasses. A tall equally handsome boy got out after him, with the same build as his father, a mane of blond hair, although his father’s was dark, and Taylor knew he had green eyes. A blond woman got out immediately after him, in jeans and a T-shirt as well, a baseball cap and dark glasses too, and they started unloading boxes immediately. The driver and second man helped them unload, but the boy and his parents headed across the parking lot alone, carrying all of his equipment to the table with the room assignments for senior boys. The two men stayed with the van, and no one paid any attention to the boy and his parents, and then suddenly you could see someone in the crowd give a start as they realized who they were. They were quiet and discreet, careful not to draw attention to themselves, as their son waved to friends in the distance.
Nicole Smith looked at Taylor then with a quizzical expression. “Is that…?” She suddenly remembered that one of the senior boys, Chase Morgan, was the son of famous actor Matthew Morgan, and his wife, Merritt Jones, the most acclaimed actress of the last two decades, with two Oscars to her credit and countless nominations. This was his fourth year at Saint Ambrose, and Taylor always said that he had never met two better parents. They were totally focused on their son, kept a low profile and didn’t embarrass him, and never showed off. They came to school for important functions, and visited him when they had a break in their busy schedules. They asked for no special privileges for them or their son, met with his teachers, like anyone else. When Chase broke his leg on a sophomore ski trip to Vermont, his father was there in twelve hours, his mother in twenty-four. They both flew in from locations where they were filming, Matthew in London, and Merritt in Nairobi.
Even more remarkable, they had been separated for most of the past year, after Matthew supposedly had an affair with an actress he was working with, Kristin Harte. It was all over the tabloids. The paparazzi stalked Merritt for months. They were allegedly filing for divorce, but still came to school events together, and kept the whole mess away from their son. They appeared to be pleasant to each other when they were with him, Merritt carried one end of a trunk, and Matthew the other, and they chatted with Chase along the way.
Chase’s best friend on campus was Jamie Watts, Shepard’s son. Jamie found them quickly, and helped them with what they were carrying. The two boys could have been brothers, tall, blond, and handsome, with broad shoulders and narrow waists, and an air of confidence about them. They looked like actors or models, and were accomplished athletes. They were beautiful to look at.