The St. Ambrose School for Girls(117)
When Strots just stares up at me in numb shock, I tighten my hold on the front of her sweatshirt again and grit out the words. “Isn’t it fucking awful how it ended for them both, Strots. It’s a real fucking tragedy. Say it.”
My eyes bore into hers, and in my mind, I am breaching the hard-cap confines of her skull and going into her brain, rewiring things.
“That isn’t what happened,” Strots says weakly.
“Reality isn’t what happens,” I shoot back at her. “Reality is what our brains tell us is true. It’s all just in our minds. So you are going to start telling yourself right fucking now that—”
“That’s not what—”
“—he was a philanderer who liked young girls and was just going to keep finding them wherever he was. She was a bitch who played games with people and got what was coming to her. Nick Hollis killed Greta Stanhope because she got pregnant and tried to blackmail him. Then he hanged himself in his room because he knew he was going to jail. You are going to fucking repeat this every waking minute and through all your sleeping dreams until it is the singular truth that drowns out all others. Do you understand me? That is what you are going to tell yourself, starting right fucking now, and your mind is going to believe it because you’re going to train it like a fucking dog.”
“It doesn’t solve anything,” she says.
“Neither does you jumping out that window. You and I don’t belong now, but maybe…” I clear my own throat. “Maybe it gets better. In the future. Maybe things change for people like you and me.”
“You don’t know that.”
“And neither will you if you die tonight over something you didn’t fucking do—”
“I did do it—”
“No, you didn’t—”
“What’s going on here?”
I wrench around to the door. Keisha is standing just inside our room, her eyes bugged, her arm shaking as she holds the doorknob.
“Shut that fucking door,” I snap at her. “Right now.”
She recoils. Then she steps inside and closes things up, too shocked to do anything else.
I point my finger at her like it’s a gun, my voice low and threatening. “It’s such a shame what happened between Nick and Greta. Can you believe he killed her. And then hanged himself this afternoon. It’s really a tragedy. Isn’t it.”
Keisha’s wide eyes go to Strots. Then they return to me.
I am prepared to beat the facts into the girl if I have to. To protect my roommate, from herself, from the world, I am prepared to do whatever it takes.
Except I don’t need to start throwing punches, as it turns out.
After a long moment, Keisha slowly nods. Then she crosses her arms over her chest, lifts her chin, and gives me a steady stare.
“Yeah, Nick Hollis killed Greta Stanhope and hanged himself,” she says evenly. “Real fucking mess, but at least it’s over now. And we don’t ever have to think about it again.”
I look down at Strots. “Isn’t that right.” When my roommate doesn’t respond, I say, “Ellen, isn’t that right.”
Strots’s eyes start to water. A tear escapes out of the corner of one of them. Then she looks across our dorm room at the girl she loves.
“I’m sorry, Keisha,” she says hoarsely. “I am so sorry.”
chapter THIRTY-SEVEN
It’s a week later before I’m able to go to Wycliffe for lunch. Over the intervening seven days, I survive on the soda, Little Debbie snack cakes, and chips that I buy every afternoon at four p.m. at the gas station down in town. I use the money I earned over Columbus Day weekend to feed myself these junk food staples. And I keep to this schedule because it’s difficult to go back right after classes and settle down in my room. I need the cold air and the walk, so I buy only enough to get me through one twenty-four-hour period at a time.
But woman—or girl, as the case is—cannot live on that diet forever. For one, real food has started to call my name. For another, I feel like I’m wasting cash and I’ve been poor for too long to be comfortable with such extravagance.
Although I have had another windfall of money. After Nick Hollis was found in his apartment, my mom came to see me again. She was really worried about my mental health, more so than usual, that is, and it was a relief to reassure her I was honestly doing okay. That I was taking my medicine regularly and managing myself well. That, in spite of everything happening around me, I was staying level. Before she drove back home, she gave me two twenty-dollar bills. One was old and soft as a facial cloth. The other was brand spanking new, still stiff and smelling of ink.
I am going to save her money, along with, as of today, the rest of my wages. I’m determined to return home with both those mismatched twenties. Maybe I can take her out to dinner or something with them.
The nicest thing about seeing her, more than the cash or the news that she broke up with her most recent boyfriend, was that when she told me she’d see me in a month to take me home for Thanksgiving break, I found myself looking forward to the vacation. I’m going to be buoyant as I wait for her at the curb with one of my two suitcases. Probably the blue one.
Black’s kind of depressing.
And you know, as I leave Palmer Hall after class and cut across the lawn, crunching through colored leaves with a clear sky overhead, I decide I’d really like a hamburger. I’m hoping they’re available on the cafeteria line. If not, pizza. Or a turkey sandwich.