Jack picked up a piece of limp, broken vine and cradled it. “What in the world could have done this? It’s like the float was hit by a bulldozer.”
“Wrong question. You mean who could have done this.” In the crowd of stunned faces, Heather’s alone was mercenary. Heads turned in her direction.
Courtney put her hands on her hips, her slim elbows making razor-sharp angles, even under the bulk of her coat. “We all know exactly who did it. It was those freaks from Chapman Hall. Led by twin weasels Trevor Daly and Charles Smith. They want to win so badly they decided to take out the competition.”
There was a murmur of agreement. Trevor and Charles were loudmouths and well known for pulling pranks only they thought were funny. Like stealing girls’ underwear out of the laundry room and stringing it up on tree branches.
“Hey, now,” Mint said, shoving his hands in the pockets of his peacoat. “Trevor and Charles are rushing Phi Delt.” He offered this like it was a talisman of protection against accusations, an endorsement that couldn’t be argued with. Phi Delt was, after all, the best frat on campus. It was where everyone knew Mint would end up. They were rushing Frankie and Jack, too, but that was mostly because they came with Mint, like a package deal.
“How did Trevor and Charles even know where to find our float?” It had been my idea to hide it behind the grad student apartments, tucked on the edge of campus, where undergrads rarely ventured—an idea I’d been proud of until this moment.
Frankie rubbed a hand across his reddening face. “I might have…mentioned something during beer pong…about blowing things up and grad students yelling at us…”
A chorus of groans and What the fuck, Frankies echoed around our small group. And that was definitive proof the situation was dire, because normally the whole dorm loved our resident football star.
“Frankie, you and your big mouth.” Jack blew out a frustrated breath. “One secret, man. I dare you to keep one secret in your whole entire life. Do it, and I’ll die of shock.”
“Do you see?” Heather was transitioning into her favorite mode: high theatrics. I could picture her striding across a stage, lifting a sword, bellowing Now we are at war to a rapt audience. “They knew we were the dorm to beat, and they knew where to find our float. This is sabotage.”
One of the guys who lived a few doors down from Mint and Coop had drifted to the back of the float. Now he started laughing, pointing at the crumpled castle wall. “Mint, you gotta see this. They left you a message.”
We moved en masse to look. Drawn across the back of the float in lurid red paint, lines marred by drip marks, was a stick-figure boy cradled in the lap of a stick-figure woman. They were surrounded by crude dollar signs. The boy had a dialogue bubble protruding from his mouth: My mommy bought me this float. Underneath the stick figure, in ragged letters, were the words and all my friends, followed by East House cheats. Love, Chapman.
“How do we know that’s supposed to be Mint?” Caro whispered.
“Please,” Heather scoffed. “Of course it’s Mint.”
I chanced a look at him. Even though we were friends now, looking at him hadn’t stopped feeling dangerous, like each time I was skimming too close to the sun. But he wasn’t looking anywhere except at the painting, even with Courtney standing so close behind him, her shoulder brushing his every time he moved. It seemed Mint and Courtney were an inevitable pairing—like to like—so I tried to ignore the way their closeness rubbed at me, stirring old, bitter feelings.
But something was wrong with Mint. In the two months I’d spent watching him, I’d never seen his face look like this, with tracks of scarlet blooming down his cheeks and neck. His skin looked painful, hot to the touch. His eyes darted around, taking in the snickers and soft laughter.
Coop rested a hand on Mint’s shoulder. “You’ve been immortalized. And here I thought it’d be your name on a building or something.” His mouth quirked. “The likeness is chilling, you have to admit. I told you to double down on leg days. Those calves are looking a little thin, man.”
Mint wrenched his shoulder away. “Get the fuck off me.”
His anger was a lightning strike, completely unexpected. Coop took a half step back and raised both hands in surrender. “Okay, easy.” Behind Mint’s back, he found my eyes, and a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.
It was a message for me alone, a look to make a private space between us. He was always doing that. It didn’t matter if we were at a party, packed wall to wall; or if I was leaving a lecture hall, adrift in a sea of people, only to spot him reading on a bench; or if we were having lunch and he was the last to arrive, setting his tray at the opposite end of the table. He always found me, and for that first, single moment when our eyes met, we existed in a separate place. A private room he’d built to tell me something I could never parse before the moment was over.