The Girls of No Return by Erin Saldin

constant was more pleasurable. Mail Call. Margaret would stand on a table near the front of the Mess Hall after dinner, calling out names and pitching our letters at us before we had time to take them from her. I think she enjoyed this task as much as teaching. When that tiny woman called your name in her husky voice, it was like a starling had accidentally flown into the Mess Hall and landed on the table, roaring like a lion.
    Finally, there were names for things I didn’t know — or, to be more precise, things I thought I knew turned out to have different names. For instance, they called the lake Bob. Don’t ask me why. “Gonna go sit by Bob,” someone would say, or “Bob looks like hell this morning.” I thought Bob was one of the part-time groundskeepers, the only men to grace Alice Marshall with their presence. I almost asked, and then was glad I hadn’t when I finally figured it out.
    So I started, slowly, to understand the language of this surreal place. Bob. Things. Morning Ex. And the group of girls who I kept seeing around the grounds, the ones who looked like runway models, or at least less emaciated, angrier versions of tabloid celebrities? They were called the I-bankers.
    On Tuesday morning, about four days after my arrival, I was walking behind Boone when we passed a group of manicured and pressed girls hugging a slightly less attractive, younger girl, who nonetheless appeared to be wearing the same leather Pumas as the rest of them.
    â€œAnother merger for the I-bankers,” Boone said, shaking her head.
    I glanced behind me. There was no one else around. She must have been talking to me. Even so, I had to admit that I had no idea what she was talking about.
    â€œWhat?” I asked, but she didn’t say anything else, and I didn’t press it.
    I decided to suck it up and ask Jules about it later that day, as we walked through the trees to yet another mystery class.
    â€œWhat’s up with the ‘I-bankers’?” I asked, in what I thought was a nicely offhanded way. It was the first time I’d initiated a conversation with any of my cabinmates, and I wanted to get the tone right. Nonchalant and cool. “I mean, you know, Who and Why?”
    Jules beamed at me, clearly delighted that I’d finally spoken to her of my own accord. “Oh, that’s Boone’s word,” she said. “It pretty much sums up all of those girls who come from New York. Most of their mommies and daddies are investment bankers anyway, so it makes sense.”
    â€œDo they mind?”
    â€œMind what? Being called what they are? It’s fitting.” Jules shrugged. “And besides, what are they going to do? Take it up with Boone? I don’t think so. Boone’s been here longer than any of us. She personally ‘welcomed’ each and every one of them to school.” She winked. “With a little help, of course.”
    â€œOh.” I touched my hair. “So it’s always something.”
    â€œYeah, it’s always something,” Jules said. “But it’s different for every girl.” She wrinkled her nose. “For instance. The I-bankers just got little things, you know, because they’re in different cabins. Mice in their sleeping bags, replacing the two-hundred-dollar makeup in their luggage with little jars of honey and mud . . . easy stuff that still drove them crazy. But the girls in our cabin? Different story.”
    â€œLike?” I wanted to stop asking her questions — I knew she’d probably take this as a sign that we were BFFs or some shit — but I had to know.
    â€œGwen packed too much — she brought, like, eight wardrobes’ worth of black shirts. We were on campfire duty a couple of times that week, and Boone would bury two or three of Gwen’s T-shirts underneath the kindling while she was building the fire.” Jules smiled sadly. “Gwen was upset, you know, but what