As her voice gets rough, more tears fall from my eyes and I wipe my face again, this time on the rough sleeve of the jacket I’ve forgotten to take off.
“What do I do if someone comes for you?” I ask.
I’m thinking of her father. In my mind, Mr. Strotsberry looks like Ronald Reagan but has a temper like Hulk Hogan, and whether I am right or wrong about either, I do not want to have to see him or talk to him.
“You better bring me back down here,” she says. “My father doesn’t know about Keisha.”
In this, I know she’s talking about the relationship, not the friendship.
“Okay.”
She nods and leaves, shutting the door quietly. I panic that we haven’t said goodbye properly, but her stuff is here. She’ll be back for her things. I’ll have my chance, I tell myself.
Then again, knowing my roommate—my ex-roommate—her request to take the plate and knife back and my agreement to do so is going to be the extent of our parting, the mission assigned and accepted, a substitute for the tight, disconsolate embrace I have in mind.
In Strots’s absence, I look at the now-barren side of the room. The end of the year seems decades away, and I have no idea how I’m going to do this alone. We’ve known each other only six weeks, but in so many ways, she’s been my partner in a wilderness we’ve had to protect ourselves against. Now I am without any backup whatsoever.
The prospect of going solo fills me with a cold dread that is not relieved as I consider what my mother said. Yes, I can always go home—but if I leave like this, Greta has beaten me. I’ll be giving her the trophy in her game against me, my capitulating exit something she can inscribe with her name. As I consider my choices, Strots’s initial advice remains as excellent as ever.
I must not give Greta what she wants, and from now on, I’m denying her the prize of me not just for myself, but for Strots—
Through the window Strots opened, I hear a car pulling into the parking area. I lean over the corner of my desk and look down. It is long and black, a limousine, and a driver is getting out from behind the wheel. He’s wearing a uniform, like something out of a Dynasty episode. I have a thought that my mother would love this sight. Like the lawn, it’s everything she admires about Ambrose.
My heart pounds so hard I cough.
The driver doesn’t make it down to the rear door in time. Then again, the limo’s flank seems of football-field length. From the back, a man dressed in a dark blue pinstriped suit emerges. He is facing away from me, toward the wild foliage and the river. He is tall and his hair is the same color as Strots’s.
There’s a shout from above my window. The man turns and looks up. His face has all the same angles that Strots’s does, her features passed through a transforming filter of masculinity and middle age. And he is nothing like Hulk Hogan in his obvious anger. He is ice cold, not red hot.
He nods curtly and points at the ground in front of him.
A minute later, Strots emerges down in the parking area. The driver gets back behind the wheel and closes his door. I do a quick check of the faculty cars. They’re in their proper places, Nick Hollis’s, the married couple from the third floor’s, and Ms. Crenshaw’s. I pray that no one has to go out for a gallon of milk right now. My roommate looks humiliated, and I don’t want anyone to get close enough to hear whatever words are exchanged. The visual is more than enough for all the eyes that are no doubt staring out of the rear of our dorm.
Mr. Strotsberry does most of the talking and Strots, for all of her athletic strength, seems to get smaller, even as she remains the same height and weight. I want to go down and demand that her father hear me out. I want to tell him his daughter is my only friend, my one champion, a source of kindness in a place that so often feels hostile. If she gets kicked out, the wrong side wins.
But I cannot move. I witness the whole thing, a bird’s-eye view of an argument that is almost exclusively one-sided. When it’s done, Strots turns away and disappears into the dorm. I expect the limo to wait for her to bring down her things. It doesn’t. Immediately after her father reenters its dark confines, the black Lincoln oils away, making wide, ocean-liner turns that nearly score the front grille of Nick Hollis’s Porsche and the back corner of Ms. Crenshaw’s beater.
Strots comes into our room moments later. Her eyes are red-rimmed and her cheeks are pale. “Well, there we are.”
The door is still open behind her, and as she avoids my eyes, I know she doesn’t want to get emotional and she needs the threat of her vulnerability showing to others to help strengthen her self-control.
“Why is he leaving?” I ask. “Is he making you take the bus home?”
Or perhaps forcing her to walk back to Boston?
Strots stands over her packed duffel as if she doesn’t know what to do with it. As if she’s never seen one before. “I’m staying.”
“Wait—what! You are?” I jump up at the same time my voice soars into a lilt. “They’re letting you stay?”
“My father told them that if they expel me on hearsay, he’s pulling everything. The sports center, the endowment, the scholarships. At the end of the day, it’s her word against mine. Personally, I think it’s a cost/benefit thing. There’s not as much money on the Stanhope side of things, not anymore.”
I clasp my hands in front of my chest, like I’m in prayer. “But what about the phone room?”
“I’m on probation for that. The shit Greta pulled with your essay made it easier for them.”
Apparently, Mr. Pasture was wrong. There is a justification for violence at St. Ambrose, and it’s money.
As Strots falls silent, I expect more of a happy reaction. I expect any reaction at all. She just stares at her packed clothes.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“It’s hard to let someone down just by being alive.” Strots shakes her head. “Especially when it’s your father.”
I think about how many times I’ve made my mother come to a psychiatric hospital—once even in the back of an ambulance. I am unsurprised at her father’s prejudice, but also very, very sorry.
However, because my survival is at stake, I feel the need to pin down what affects me the most. “You’re staying in school, though.”
“He doesn’t want me back home, so… yeah. I am.”
As the words drift, a familiar scent of perfume wafts into the room. We both turn our heads to the open door. Out in the hall, Greta emerges from her frilly lair, fresh as a daisy, her hair curled at the ends, her Calvin Klein outfit worthy of an ad on a billboard in Times Square.
When she sees us, she focuses only on Strots. Then she looks at the duffel with satisfaction. “That’s a little much just for an away game, isn’t it.”
Strots only stares at her.
I walk over and stand between my roommate and Greta. “It didn’t work. She’s not leaving.”
I want to spray-paint the words on the wall above the bitch’s bed so that the neon drips onto her monogrammed fucking duvet cover and ruins it.
“Well, then, we’re not done,” she says softly. “Are we.”
There is a long pause and I search Greta’s face for any kind of hint about how she’ll escalate things. She is like a marble statue, however, nothing but a faithful representation of her features. I tell myself she must be seething inside.