Do it, I will her. DO IT. You always do—
Ms. Crenshaw, with her two jangling bags, and her sloppy purse, and her flat, stringy, damp hair, keeps right on going.
She doesn’t stop to put up the window. She’s late. She’s distracted. Either she hasn’t seen the gap or she’s decided that on a night like tonight, with everything else that’s going on, she doesn’t care about protecting Nick Hollis’s vintage leather bucket seats.
Or perhaps her unrequited love has finally run its course.
She goes into the dorm.
I close my eyes and sag against the tree trunk. My mood sinks abruptly, sure as if a plug has been released and all of me is funneling out the soles of my sneakers. The black despair I feel is not just about Greta and Strots and Nick Hollis. It’s everything about me, from the blood flood in my dorm room to the no-win in Mr. Pasture’s office.
But I can’t tailspin in this familiar trap. I’ve left my only leverage on the passenger seat of Nick’s car. If he finds the panties there, he’ll get rid of them, and I’ll be left with nothing.
I step out from behind my cover. As I cross over to the cars, I am—
The dorm’s basement door opens wide, and it is pushed with such force that the heavy weight slaps against the brick.
I freeze right in the middle of the grass, halfway from the tree to the parking area.
Ms. Crenshaw marches through the rain, muttering curses and tossing her damp hair. Her bags are not with her and neither is her purse. She must have dropped them somewhere inside.
Her head is down and I pray it stays that way because part of me is in the light, my right leg extended into the illumination that falls on the scruffy ground cover.
She goes around the rear end of the Porsche to the passenger side. With her back to me, she yanks the door as if it’s the last thing on earth she wants to do and she leans into the car to crank the handle that operates the window—
Now she is frozen, too, the pair of us unmoving in the gentle, cold rain.
She bends down even farther and then slowly straightens, a splash of pink in her hand. She is no longer frustrated. She is no longer aware of the rain.
Ms. Crenshaw turns the panties over in her hand.
And reads the name tag.
After a moment that lasts the entirety of my life span, Ms. Crenshaw turns away from the Porsche and walks back to the dorm.
Just as she disappears into the basement, there is a silencing of the voices up above in the parlor. The meeting about conduct and behavior expectations has commenced. A moment later, the lights come on in Ms. Crenshaw’s first-floor apartment. I see her go into her kitchen, put her purse and the groceries on the counter, and then just stand there, staring down at something.
I imagine it’s the panties.
When something drips onto my nose, I realize that I have been in the same step-forward position long enough for the rain to have saturated the hood of my jacket, and its cotton fibers have begun out of necessity to release some of their aquatic burdens.
I look back to the Porsche.
I may have put down the window a crack, but Ms. Crenshaw has left the whole door open. It strikes me that the poor car is bearing the brunt of transgressions it played little active role in, assuming Nick Hollis didn’t have sex with Greta in its interior—something I’m not sure is physically possible, even though Greta is thin as a dancer and no doubt just as flexible.
Owing to her age, and all.
It is upon this analysis of collateral automotive damage that I tiptoe over to the Porsche. There isn’t time to mop up the water in the seat, which is, I see now, very accurately termed a “bucket.” I also don’t have a towel on me, and besides, it would be best that I’m not seen anywhere near the car.
Pulling my sleeve over my hand, I shut the door.
Oh, Greta, I think to myself as I jog off. The dominoes have finally fought back.
chapter TWENTY-FIVE
I can’t fall asleep that night so I’m still awake when Strots finally sneaks down to our room after curfew. As she closes the door, I sit up in bed. In the dim glow from the security lights, she’s a shadow that moves quietly.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey,” she whispers back to me in the dark. “You didn’t go to the meeting.”
“No.”
I was too busy planting evidence so a geometry teacher could draw lines and rays in her head and ruin the life of a future English professor. Or acclaimed novelist. Or whatever he wants to be.
Wanted, I correct in my head. And what is Sandra going to say about it all? Dear God, the man’s life is over and it’s my fault—
No, I remind myself, he chose the risk of exposure the moment he crossed that line. He probably just assumed that because everything has always been easy street for him, his golden-child good luck would continue no matter his actions.
And yet I still feel bad. Probably because he seemed so sincere when he was trying to help me.
“What happened?” I mumble.
“With the meeting? Nothing. Although shit got awkward when I walked in, which meant it was worth me going.”
Strots changes inside her closet. She always does this, but not because she’s embarrassed over her nudity. It’s all about function, and since she hangs up most of her clothes on pegs in there, she can swap into her version of pj’s with the alacrity of a magician’s assistant between acts.
Tell her, I say to myself as I listen to the shuffle of clothes going off and on my roommate. Tell her what you did.
Even though I’m uneasy about what will happen to Nick Hollis, it’s hard to be an anonymous hero, a Superman who works the back channels to avenge her roommate’s honor and redress her own torment. Red capes fly off the shoulders of saviors for a reason and it’s not to hide the light of good deeds under a bushel. Or a veil of humble secrecy.
Still, I stay silent on my side of Metropolis. Unlike Greta, I have no experience with engineering outcomes, especially not those involving underwear and Porsches and math teachers. Abruptly, I think of Ms. Crenshaw’s overearnest, flurried nature, and wish I had any other messenger. But I had to work with what I had.
“G’night, Taylor.”
I glance across the black and gray landscape of our room. In her bed, Strots is facing away from me, the curves of her shoulder and hip draped in bedding that’s not monogrammed. I think about the other girls here, of their clothes and their jewelry, their purses and perfumes. And yet Strots’s family is the one building the new sports center.
“Are you in love with Keisha?” I ask.
The instant the words leave my mouth, I want to snatch them back.
“Yeah,” Strots says. “And she loves me, too. Totally.”
“Be careful with her.”
Strots rolls over and looks at me. “What the hell are you talking about.”
“Not like that.” I think of Greta, standing outside her room earlier, completely unbowed. “I don’t want her to have to deal with Greta like we are, is all.”
There’s a long silence. “If she does anything to Keisha, I’ll fucking kill her.”
With that, Strots turns away again, and soon thereafter she’s doing that percolating thing she does when she snores. How I envy her ability to shut herself off even in the midst of the chaos we’re in. On my side of the room, that is just not possible.