She is not coming at me.
She’s going to Strots, who’s still fighting to get at her, and I measure Keisha’s strong arms. I pray that she can keep holding on because if my roommate gets loose, there’s not going to be a second chance for a rescue. She’s going to drag Margaret Stanhope across to the table I hit, and she is going to use the edge of it to snap that girl’s head off at the top of her spine. After that, she’s going to hang up the phone with the same steady hand she uses to make her bed every morning, that which was messy taken care of.
I can see it happening, clear as day. Yet none of the still-imminent threat seems to register on Greta. Her head must be hurting, her throat must be on fire, her lip must be throbbing, but none of that seems to matter, either.
She stops right in front of Strots, and puts her finger in my roommate’s face. In a low voice, she says, “You shouldn’t have done that. You should have just left it alone.”
As she speaks, a single, bright red drop of blood falls from her lower lip and lands on the front of her bright white shirt.
She turns away. The crowd parts for her. Francesca and Stacia look at each other, and then run after their leader.
I look at Strots, who finally looks at me. My roommate just shakes her head once, like she doesn’t want me to say anything.
With a shaking hand, I am the one who hangs up the dislodged receiver, cutting off the high-pitched, urgent beeping that fills the tense silence like a scream.
There’s going to be no setting what just happened to rights.
Ever.
chapter TWENTY-ONE
It’s the next day. It’s nearly twenty-four hours exactly from the moment I returned to the dorm after chemistry lab and found that my essay had been Xeroxed and put in all the mailboxes. Twenty-four hours from when I tried to take back the copies that had yet to be read, as if that would create some kind of magical reversal of it all. Twenty-four hours from when Strots nearly killed Greta in the middle of the phone room, in front of half of Tellmer.
I am alone in Strots’s and my room, sitting on my bed, my back against the wall, my legs stretched out perpendicularly. I check the clock that rests on the windowsill, even though its numbers can provide no insight into the wheels that have been set in motion, no prediction as to what’s going to happen next.
The truth about teenagers is that we have more privacy than the adults around us know. The vast majority of our daily and nightly interactions with our peers, and with others, are outside of the earshot and the eyesight of our elders. We’re independently functioning entities under an umbrella of supervision that cannot possibly monitor every nanosecond of our lives, and this zone of secrecy tends to be protected by everyone in our age group. Tattletales, whether they sit at the cool table or are losers like me, are ostracized fast, and the adage about loose lips and ships is never more true than when you are fifteen.
All of that being as it is, there are times—rarely, and usually around circumstances that are dramatic and dangerous—when the collective discretion of youth shatters and grown-up intervention is sought. It’s the equivalent of an adult calling 911 after they’re assaulted or their home is broken into: An event has arisen that we are not capable of dealing with on our own, and we must seek help from people who have the legal authority, and often the medical or psychological training, to render aid, guidance, and the opportunity to redress the situation.
Strots and I did not sleep last night. We just sat here in this room, on our separate beds, staring into space. The only thing she asked me was whether I needed to call my mom. I said no. The only thing I asked her was if she was all right. She said no. Other than that, we were silent, and that was because we were waiting for the consequences to come knock on our door. Until such time as they did, there was nothing to discuss.
I knew what had been done to me and by whom. She knew what she had done and to whom. It was the future that mattered to both of us, that scared both of us, and for some portion of the dark hours, I harbored a secret hope that Greta would do nothing, given her complicity in what had occurred with my essay. But I saw the fearless look in her eyes when she spoke to Strots. Clearly, she’s hidden her tracks well. And the Brunettes are not going to break ranks and betray her.
Strots is in trouble.
Dawn’s arrival bathed our grim vigil in golden light, and sure enough, our residential advisor came to us first thing in the morning. Although I’d been avoiding him since Saturday, I looked Nick Hollis right in the face, the imperative about what was going to happen to my roommate wiping away even my heartbreak and baseless sense of betrayal at what he’d done and to whom.
He’d been serious, and he’d shut the door. He’d stated to us in a low voice that the administration had become aware of a “goings-on”—his exact verbiage—in the phone room and that both of us were going to be expected to tell our sides of things. He then asked Strots to leave so that he could talk to me alone. I didn’t want Strots to go, but I could tell she was ready to check in with Keisha anyway. After her departure, our residential advisor’s mask of professional reserve melted away. As Nick’s compassion came out, it offered a pool to immerse myself in, a way to be cleansed of my mourning of our non-relationship, but I resolved to stay strong. I’d been in the process of working through my grief and I wasn’t interested in a regression that would require reintroduction to my disillusions. The path out of what we’d had, such as it was, was proving hard enough to tread just once.
He asked me if I wanted to see my mother. I said no, as I had to Strots. He asked me if I wanted to take the day off from classes. I said no. He asked if I’d like to speak to Dr. Warten. I said no.
I knew I was being a pain in the ass. But I didn’t want to give anything to him, and that meant that any idea posited by him, even if it was in my best interests, was going to be shot down. His final offering was presented as an alternative to the rest: He wanted to know if I wanted to come hang out in his suite and watch TV or read.
The offer took me back to Saturday night, and I had a brief diversion into the land of wishing my lack of clean shirts had not required a trip down to the laundry so I could find someone else’s panties in his jeans.
“I need to go to class.”
Our residential advisor nodded. Then he asked, “Are you going to be okay?”
I’d be much more okay if you weren’t sleeping with Margaret Stanhope, I’d thought as I forced my shoulders into a shrug.
“They already think I’m weird,” I said. “Now they have a concrete reason why. It really makes no difference to me.”
This was a bald-faced lie. It makes all the difference in the world to me.
But at least there’s a corollary to this catastrophe that is a help. Nick Hollis will not wonder why my affect has changed around him. He will attribute the shift in my patterns to this crisis, and I am tired enough, and overwhelmed enough, to use anything as a shield.
“You’re so strong,” he said to me. “And I’m always here if you need me.”
At this point, I’d wanted to ask how his wife was. Traveling again? Or asking questions about—what was her name again?
Mollyjansen. Like it’s one word.