“I saw what you did at the game today,” she says to me. “You dropped that ball on purpose.”
“I did.”
“Did the payback feel good?” she asks without looking at me. “After all the shit she’s pulled with you?”
“Yes.”
Strots laughs in a husky way. Then she glances at me. “Good for you.”
Her eyes are incredibly intense, like she’s somewhere deep inside of herself: Even though I’m standing in front of her, I know that she doesn’t see me clearly.
Perhaps that is why she kisses me.
The last thing I expect is for her free hand to take the back of my neck and pull me into her. I’m so shocked that I don’t resist as she puts her lips to mine. I can’t move. I’m frozen, caught between her body and that of the tree that’s been my spying refuge. Her mouth strokes against mine a couple of times, but she stops when I do not respond.
Strots jerks back. Curses under her breath. Steps away.
“Sorry,” she says with a hint of bitterness. “My fault.”
With that, she disappears up the path, a ghost reabsorbed into the night.
I collapse back against the tree. I am shaking.
Greta and the Brunettes leave the river before I’m able to, the girls cutting through the undergrowth and reentering the lawn somewhere downstream.
Eventually, I take the path back to Tellmer’s lights. As I step out from the brush, I look up and see my room. The overhead fixture is on, but Strots isn’t sitting on her bed nor does it seem like she’s moving around in there. I stay for a moment where I am, watching all of the other girls in all of the other rooms.
Did Strots go back to Keisha’s? I can’t tell which room that would be. There are more profiles than visible faces in the windows.
I look at the Porsche and the Camry. I look at the station wagon that’s owned by the married couple. But that’s just to pass the time.
I’m convinced no one in any of the rooms in any of the dorms at Ambrose was kissed by their roommate tonight.
Off in the distance, an air horn sounds. It’s the five-minute warning for us to be inside, on our floors, or risk probation for violating curfew. I rush in through the back door that puts me in the basement by the laundry, and I catch my breath in the scented room. When I come out, Stacia is at one of the two pay phones. She’s dialing with a declarative finger, and when her call is answered, she demands to speak to Jonathon Renault. They better find him quickly if she wants to talk with him. There will be sweeps by the RAs when the next horn sounds. Or at least, Ms. Crenshaw walks around the dorm in a casual fashion. I don’t know whether the duty she performs every night is to catch student violators or if she’s just trolling for a Hot RA sighting.
“Well, where is he,” Stacia snaps into the receiver.
She looks over her shoulder and sees me. Before she can react, I walk away in the opposite direction, as if I have somewhere to go, and I do. I climb the steps out of the basement and then continue to the main staircase, which I take to the second floor. When I get to my room, the door is shut, and for once, I knock. When there’s no answer, I open things a little. The crane lamp on the edge of my desk, a holdover from the last student who slept in the bed I’m now using, is all that’s on in the room now, so I know Strots has just left and turned out that overhead light.
One of Strots’s bureau drawers is slightly open. It’s the one she keeps her boxer shorts in. Her drawers are never left open. Clearly, she took what she needed and departed in a hurry.
I approach her bed cautiously and stand over its neat sheets and duvet, its stacked pillows. She makes the thing every morning, even though she doesn’t have to.
My heart is beating fast even though I suspect she will not be back tonight. Yet, even as my instincts tell me this, my hand shakes as I reach out and lift her pillow. Her cigarettes and her lighter are gone.
She will definitely not be back tonight.
I go over and sit on my bed. I clasp my hands in my lap, as if I’m at a grown-up function, even though there are no grown-ups present and no reason I must be proper about my behavior. Our room, as I look around, seems very empty, even though the furniture count has not changed. There are still two beds, two bureaus, and two desks with two chairs. But one half of it is gone, and the hollow feeling that takes root in the center of my chest reminds me of what happens whenever I think of my father.
I wish Strots hadn’t done what she did down by that tree. Not because she offended me. Not because I think less of her. Not because I’m threatened or scared by her.
I am clinically insane. Like I’m going to judge anybody for being impulsive or at loose ends?
No, I wish she hadn’t because now she’s gone, and gone in a way that even when she’s around me again, she will still not be there. Some things that transpire between people cannot be undone, and I worry that there’s no way to make what happened by the river better, no matter what is said thereafter.
And Strots was my only friend at Ambrose.
chapter TWELVE
The next morning, I awake at seven with a start, sitting up, looking over at Strots’s side of the room. The bed across from mine is untouched, and the drawer where Strots keeps her boxers remains open an inch. There’s no way she could have come and gone without me knowing. I slept fitfully, waiting, hoping that she might return, that we could talk it out.
I get up and go to our door. I open it a crack and look out. Girls are making pilgrimages to the bathroom, towels slung over their shoulders or dragging on the trodden carpet like the blankies of the children they were a decade ago. Strots is nowhere to be seen.
Falling in with the traffic in the hall, I enter the bathroom. Her red bucket is in her cubby, so I know she’s not in one of the running showers. I use the toilet and wash my hands just to make it look like I’m here for the appropriate reasons. I’m also burning time. I want to give Strots an opportunity to come down from wherever she is so that what happened at that tree can be mutually brushed aside, as a drinking binge would be, my mouth like the open throat of a tequila bottle, never to be broached again.
As I dry my hands too thoroughly over one of the trash bins, I decide to be relieved that Strots’s bucket is where it should be. I don’t want her to pack up all her things and relocate off the floor, out of the dorm, even out of Ambrose itself. Somehow it’ll all be my fault, and Keisha will blame me for her best friend leaving. Then I’ll have two people out to get me.
I return to our room. I knock again before I enter, and there’s no answer. Opening the door, I check the drawer of her bureau once more. It’s in the same position. I check under her pillow. Still no cigarettes.
I pivot to her desk. What about her textbooks? What about her homework? She can’t go to class in boxer shorts and a T-shirt and no bra, with nothing but shower shoes on her feet, and no work to hand in or notebooks or textbooks.
Although if anyone could get away with that, it would be Strots.
I go over and sit on my bed, tucking my legs up and linking my arms around them. My sleeping uniform consists of baggy boys’ pajama bottoms and soft, well-washed, long-sleeved shirts. The idea of changing out of these comfortables and into the dark armor I wear around campus exhausts me, and as I wait for my roommate, I become utterly overwhelmed at the prospect of gathering my books and heading to class.