After he’d closed the door, I spent some time staring out the window. I realized then, and continue to realize now, that I’d have asked for his help with this back before Saturday night. I would have used him as a resource to deal with the fallout of my essay being distributed so widely without my permission or foreknowledge, something that, considering my mother’s illicit use of it to get me into Ambrose, seems to be the damn thing’s destiny.
So I went to my classes and could not concentrate. I took notes I had no idea I’d written. I answered questions I was not aware of being called on to address. I paid particular attention, while coming and going from my dorm, and during my classes and at lunch, to how many girls looked at me and then pretended not to have done so.
And now, I’m here. Waiting. I have no idea whether Strots made it to class, and I worry that she’s being held for moral deviancy in a barred cell down at the police station. As the seat of law in Greensboro is located next to the library, behind the CVS, I’m of half a mind to walk into town and see if Margie and Roni can help with her bail. But I worry that I’ll miss my roommate arriving back here.
Meanwhile, I have seen and heard nothing of Greta. Her door was closed when I left, and closed when I dropped off my backpack before lunch. It was still closed when I returned here about twenty minutes ago. Has she gone off campus? Is she in the infirmary? Did she die because of some rare complication as a result of having almost been strangled while the back of her head was banged into the floor ten times?
I think of my mortician fantasy. I think of Strots’s offer to hurt her. I am glad no one from administration can read minds.
I did catch sight of Francesca and Stacia at one point in the day. They were at lunch, leaning in toward the center of their pretty girls’ round table, talking in an intense fashion to the others who were dressed in the colors of sorbet and paying rapt attention to a critical update.
I’m certain Greta has gone to the administration and reported the attack. And she’s done this despite the fact that she got those essays into the mailboxes, and without regard to her history of pranking me. For anyone else, I’d say it’s a bold move to play victim in a situation in which you’ve worn the mantle of a charging bull, but Greta strikes me as the kind who can manufacture tears when the need arises. Besides, as it relates to me, her hands have always been clean, no traces of what she’s done left behind, her supposed guilt resting only on inferences and conjecture on my part, accurate though I am convinced my conclusions are.
For example, when it comes to the essay? I have no idea how she got ahold of my involuntary manifesto, but as with the geometry memo, I suspect Francesca of being in on the photocopying because of the Ambrose Weekly connection and also because of the ashamed look on her face as she came down those stairs in Greta’s wake, dressed in white like the orderlies I hated so much.
Will Francesca crack under questioning? I wonder. Will she break ranks and be truthful about her best friend? Surely, she’ll be asked for some sort of testimony—
The door opens and I jerk up. It’s Strots.
“Oh, thank God,” I say as she closes us in and drops her book bag at her feet. “What happened? Are you okay?”
Strots leans back against the panels and crosses her arms over her chest. She becomes utterly still, as if she’s not even breathing, and I know from the look on her face that she’s not actually in the room with me. The static mask of her features bears only a passing relationship to my roommate’s normal countenance, everything three-dimensional becoming two because of her critical distraction. She’s somewhere else.
She is scaring me.
As my fear hits properly, she shakes herself and her eyes come to meet mine. There is no light in her stare. It’s as if she’s died.
“You just need to be honest with them,” she says in a hollow voice.
“What?” I try to swallow, but my throat is too tight. “And who is them?”
“I don’t want you to lie for me.”
“Who did you talk to?”
“The dean of students.”
“Of course I’ll be honest. I’ll tell them Greta somehow found my essay and she gave it to Francesca and told her to copy it. Then they put it in the mailboxes when everyone was in class—oh, and Stacia has to be in on it, too. Maybe she was lookout when they—”
“It’s too late for that.” Strots rubs her eyes, but not because she’s crying. “None of that matters.”
I recoil. “Of course it does.”
When she says nothing, I shuffle off the bed and go over to her. “We can’t let her get away with this. She’s taken too much from both of us. Now’s our chance.”
My roommate still doesn’t respond, and I begin to get energized in a way I have not been. Maybe ever. “We just need to tell the administration what happened—”
“It’s not going to go down like that.”
“Yes, it is. It has to. I’m smart. I’ll find a way to prove to them it was her. I’ll make this right!”
“I gotta go talk to Keisha,” Strots murmurs. “I just… I gotta go talk to her. They’re coming for you, by the way. Right now.”
“Strots, I’m going to tell the truth. About everything Greta’s done to me. All of it. Then they’ll understand why you did what you did.”
“Do you really think it’s that simple or that that’s an excuse they’re going to buy?”
“Greta’s won too many times,” I say. “She can’t get away with this.”
Strots stares into my face. “None of it is your fault. Just remember that. I don’t want you to blame yourself and do something stupid, okay?”
“It’s not either of our faults, Strots. All of it’s on Greta, and it’s time people know what kind of person she is.”
Strots reaches out and puts a hand on my shoulder. “Promise. After the dust settles, promise me you won’t do something stupid.”
My body goes still. As we stare into each other’s eyes, I find myself thinking of all the times I’ve lied to protect my internal reality, attempting, and often succeeding, to derail my mother, my doctor, the nurses, from what’s really going on inside my head. Phil the Pharmacist. Our residential advisor. The divide between adult and teenager has always made the falsifying easier, a fact that I was unaware of until right this moment.
Meeting Strots’s steady regard, I find myself wavering away from the kind of smooth lie I’ve used on my elders. I’ve never before had a peer confront me like this, as someone my age who cares deeply for me and worries about my future. Strots really is my first true friend. And for this reason, the consequences, if I can’t make this vow and stick to it, seem very real, more real than even the ruination I’d bring to my own mother. After all, we as children aren’t responsible for the well-being of adults—the system is set up to be the other way around. Friends are not the same as the adults we love, however. I know I cannot let Strots down.
“I promise,” I say.
Strots nods, gives my shoulder a squeeze, and then leaves.
After her departure, I stay where I stood in front of her. A toilet flushes on the other side of our wall. I hear distant voices.