Principles of Love by Emily Franklin Page A

up.
    “You okay up there?” he bellows. I yell an affirmative, but feel like I’m bonkers just the same.
    My footsteps echo in the night-empty corridors. Just being in the building after dark feels illegal and makes me excited and edgy. What if there weren’t any other people in the seminar and Robinson became my private tutor? And what if space aliens landed and abducted my brain — oops, apparently that already happened. I open the ridiculously heavy AV door and go inside to the screening room.
    Already there are eight, maybe ten people — mostly underclassmen like myself, mostly girls and film freaks. Harriet Walters give me a feminist salute and waves me over. I sit next to her down towards the front and compliment her newly silver-fringed hair.
    “Very Debbie Harry,” I say.
    “Cool,” she says. I drum the beat to Heart of Glass on my knees, picking at the mustard drops on my shirt hem.
    Enter Robinson (no, not my plea for virginity-loss, though it could be — more a stage direction). He comes in from the emergency exit (or as Prince or Led Zep would say, in through the out door ) and pushes up the sleeves on his wooly sweater. He’s got that guy in autumn look down — with worn-in jeans and an oversized knitted sweater (probably listed in the catalogue with a color name like storm cloud or Atlantic grey ). The kind of top that’s made for girlfriends (not Friend-Girls) to steal.
    Robinson gives his intro about the translation process of making a novel into a film, and gives some examples of success ( The Godfather , The Age of Innocence , Lord of the Rings ) and, in his opinion, some failures ( The Remains of the Day , I Capture the Castle ). I’m right there with him, listening and even forgetting that he’s the best-looking, most magnetizing person I’ve encountered thus far until he — in the middle of deconstructing a clip from Gone with the Wind (a battle scene, lots of rotting bodies in a field) — slips his sweater off, balls it up, and chucks it to me with a wink. All thoughts of film, literature, and coherency are momentarily out the proverbial window. I hold the item of clothing in my lap like it’s a gift from an on-stage rock star, then feel pathetic and discard it. Then I think that’s rude, so I pick it up and drape it carefully on the seat next to me. Would he care if I took it? I picture myself somewhere — some cobblestone street in London, some cityscape in New York, wearing the sweater while holding his hand.
    And it is of course at this very moment that the door swings open and down the steps trots field hockey girl. I wave to her but she’s past my aisle already, past all the rows of seats, right up to the front. She doesn’t stop until she reaches Robinson and with mercury-style fluidity, puts her arms around him and they kiss. Deeply. And then a peck to seal the deal.
    Field hockey girl is —
    “Hi, sorry,” Robinson pseudo-blushes. “I’m sure you all know Lila Lawrence, my girlfriend.” We sure do. Now.
    Then, as I’m sitting with a sweater I’m sure Lila’s been naked in, she comes and plants herself in the chair next to me. She takes Robinson’s sweater, drapes it over her shoulders twin-set style and says, “Thanks for saving me a seat.”
    Reading and underlining my Howard Zinn text for history class, I’m taking advantage of a free period and relishing what is sure to be one of the final warm days of fall. Soon, the leaves will drop and so will the temperature, banishing us to indoor studying. Right now though, the scene in front of me is perfect prep school, with guys draped over their sophomore girlfriends, heads in laps, fingers in hair. Couples sunbathe back onto their backpacks. Pro-SPFers shield their faces with books and marked-up papers, and I sit observing all this. Not apart in a bad way, just slightly distanced. I count how many senior-sophomore couples there are and come up with eleven.
    “Fourteen,” Cordelia corrects me when she slings her