The girls are smoking, and they’re tapping their ashes into the water, which, as always, makes me angry. When they’re done with their cigarettes, they’ll flick the filthy filters into the current as well, and I imagine if they were drinking beer, the bottles would be sunk in the pool. If they were eating chips, the bags would follow suit. So, too, would candy wrappers, sandwich sleeves, and the dead batteries of their Walkmans. They have no concept of nature, no respect for the animals and the aquatic life for whom this river is sustenance, not a moving trash can.
“—stop sulking anytime you want,” Greta says. “I mean, you won. What do you have to get bitched about.”
Stacia speaks up. “Everything’s fine. The air’s cleared. We’re here together and that’s all that matters.”
Someone get that girl a Nobel Peace Prize, I think to myself.
“Right, Francesca?” she prompts.
Francesca shrugs and strokes her hair with her free hand. “Sure. Whatever.”
In the darkness, the bruise around her eye is not very noticeable. Or maybe she’s put concealer over the discoloration.
“You’re such a drama queen.” As Greta exhales, she lets her head fall back, the plume of smoke sent to the night sky, as if she is determined to litter up into space as well. “But I forgive you.”
“Thanks.”
Greta doesn’t seem to notice the snarkiness. Or more likely, she doesn’t care. “So let’s talk about the dance,” she says. “Are you asking Daniel?”
“You know I’m not.” Francesca taps her cigarette like her forefinger is a hammer. “You know I can’t. Mark will be there.”
“It’ll be fun if they see each other.”
“For who.”
“Me.”
These are the boys they always talk about. Daniel, Mark, Todd, and Jonathon. I know all kinds of things about their other halves, except for physical descriptions, but something tells me they’re the Labrador retrievers of boys, well-bred, well-mannered, and athletic. And blond.
The jury’s out on whether they have webbed paws for retrieving water fowl.
“What about Todd,” Stacia asks. “Is he coming?”
Greta casts her filter into the river, the stub’s lit end giving off sparks until its embers are extinguished by the plunge. “I haven’t asked him.”
“You haven’t asked him?” Francesca’s head snaps around. “I thought you were going to.”
“It’s not an open dance. It’s for St. Michael’s students only.”
“You were going to sneak him in.”
“And now I’m not.” Greta flips open the top of a differently shaped pack of cigarettes. Dunhill Reds. How fancy, and not what she usually smokes. “He’s not worth the probation.”
“Wow.” Francesca shakes her head. “That’s a change. He’s really hot.”
“So are a lot of people.”
I close my eyes and rest my burning cheek against the maple’s cool, rough bark. I’m glad they aren’t talking about me, although maybe it’s because Francesca benefited from my stunt—
The snap of a stick behind me brings my head around and my heart to fluttering attention. I think of every horror movie I’ve ever watched: Girl alone in the woods after dark, her blood splashing across a tree trunk, her body collapsing, lifeless, to the killer’s feet. And here it is. A figure cut from the shadows, big and looming.
My mouth opens to scream. At least Greta and Francesca and Stacia are near—
“Shhh, it’s just me.” Strots’s voice is dry, and soft as a breath. “Jesus Christ, paranoid much, Taylor?”
The air that I had sucked into my lungs threatens to explode in a single exhalation, but I catch it in time and ease its release so I don’t make a loud noise.
“What are you doing here?” I whisper.
“I saw you leave. I decided to find out where you were going.”
In the last week, Strots has been spending even less time in our room. Unless I’m tutoring her in geometry, or she’s asleep, she’s upstairs in Keisha’s room with a couple of others who sit at her table at lunch. I miss her, even though it’s not like we ever talk about anything much, and I don’t blame her for bailing on me.
Strots puts a cigarette between her teeth and talks around it. “You don’t seem like an eavesdropper.”
As she brings up her Bic, I hiss, “You can’t light that.”
“Why not? We’re downwind of them, and besides, what are they going to do to me. They’re smoking, too. They’re not going to turn me in.”
As if getting caught with a cigarette is the only thing she needs to be wary of in their company. How I envy her.
I turn back to Greta and the Brunettes. It’s Stacia’s turn at bat. She is confessing that her boyfriend, Jonathon, hasn’t called her for two nights. She further says that she went down to the pay phones in the cellar, the ones by the laundry room that you can call out on, and that she tried to reach him after dinner but was told he wasn’t in his dorm. She doesn’t believe the story, and Greta seems delighted by the insecurity.
“This is it?” Strots says, much closer to me now. “You stand out here in the bugs and listen to them talk about their boyfriends?”
“There aren’t any bugs here.”
“Only because you’re buried under all that funeral draping.” She slaps at something, and as I turn around to shh her, she rolls her eyes. “Relax. We’re fine.”
Strots falls silent, and so do I, as we listen to the voices that the other girls are not trying to hide even though they’re smoking. Then again, the outcrop of rocks is far, far from the dorms. Well, far enough so that if one of the RAs were to look out of their window, they’d see nothing and smell nothing and hear not a syllable of the personal gossip. The same would still be true if one of the RAs were to go out to the shallow parking lot and, for example, check the windows on someone else’s vintage Porsche.
And Greta doesn’t have to worry about any fellow students. Everyone’s too intimidated to turn her in.
For no apparent reason, I decide to tell Strots about Ms. Crenshaw and Hot RA at the game. I’m not sure why I feel compelled to share the details about her desperation and his avoidance techniques. But it’s still on my mind.
“So, guess what happened between—”
I’m speaking softly as I turn my head toward her, but I don’t finish my sentence. I do not make my report. Strots is staring through the V of the tree with an intense look on her face, one that has nothing to do with the conversation around the monogamistic failures of Stacia’s hometown honey. Strots is staring at Greta, her athletic body perfectly still.
I’ve never seen my roommate like this before, but I’ve seen this in others. I saw it today with Ms. Crenshaw when Hot RA was talking to her after the game. I’ve felt a version of it myself when I crossed paths with Nick Hollis for the first time, and every time since.
“She’s such an asshole,” Strots says.
The words are spoken out loud, but I get the impression they are not for me to hear. They’re what is in her mind. They’re what has been in her mind for a while.