“You forget there’s a witness here, teacher,” she says. “A student that you had an inappropriate and intimate relationship with. That’s a breach of your contract. Section three. And you’re in violation of the no fighting rule, also with a student. Go back to the dorms and clean yourself up, Jer. You have as much to lose as he does.”
“Jesus, Memory.” He lifts his shirt and wipes his bleeding chin. “Everyone said you’re easy, but I had no idea you were such a bitch.”
I struggle out of Memory’s grasp, but she beats me to it. The slap against his face echoes over the empty quad. “Go,” she snarls. “Before I make you wish you’d never come to this place.”
He backs away and strides off to the admin building, but it’s a bluff. All the office lights are off; there’s no one in for him to tattle to.
“Are you okay?” Memory asks. I nod while gentle hands assess my face, fingers wiping blood from my lip. “We need to get you cleaned up.”
“Memory...”
“Don’t. Not now. Come on.” She threads her fingers through mine and leads us down the sidewalk. My face is going to hurt like a bastard tomorrow, but right now, I’m walking as high off the ground as she is.
20.
Mercury
The girls’ dorm lobby is empty but for the resident monitor, playing ping pong with a guy in a wrist brace and two visual art majors clutching their portfolios. Ethan turns his face as the paint-daubed pair walk by, and I give them the get-lost eyeball when they cast curious glances. They do.
“Where would I find a first aid kit?” I call to the girl with the paddle. “I need a Band-Aid.”
She doesn’t look up from her game. “Bottom drawer of the desk. Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” I tell her. “Just a scratch.”
I grab the eye wash from the metal box, and antibiotic ointment, suture bandages and gauze. Ethan examines the inner lid, where a capped syringe is held by sterile tape. “Is that like what Julian has?” he asks, taking the stuff from my hands and shoving it back in the case. He tucks the container under his arm, and glances back out the door we came in. No one is approaching the steps to the dorm.
I nod, watching the table tennis players. She’s about to serve. “Thanks,” I call, and when she bounces the ball, I tug Ethan’s hand. “C’mon.”
He reaches above my head and pivots the convex mirror away from the hallway leading to my room. We pass no one in the corridor.
“Where’s Faye?” he asks, turning a slow circle around our room, and I have to smile at the look on his face, gawking at the kaleidoscope of fashion scarves and fetish necklaces, nail polish and potpourri.
“She hasn’t been here,” I say. Nothing has changed since I left the room. No wrinkles in the cover on the bed, nothing shifted on her desk. “Probably still at the library.” I grab a Coke from the little fridge, and exchange it for the kit in his hands. He presses the can against his mouth, unopened, a makeshift icepack. I unwrap the gauze and swab at the splits in his skin, starting on his knuckles. “You want to wait for her here? She’ll be back before midnight. I don’t really feel like having a run-in with Jeremy again.”
“If I stay, I won’t be able to leave. Does the RA do a room check?” He traps my fingers with his own as I smear a bit of ointment on his fist. “And will Faye mind?”
“No,” I say. “And no.” I reach up to mop the blood off his cheek. He’s holding his breath, and I follow his gaze to my open shirt buttons and the eyeful of me. I click my tongue at him and shove him backward, until he sits on my bed. He’s huge and rough and out of place and perfect. I don’t do up the buttons on my blouse; he’d won a fist fight for me after all.
“Enough,” Ethan says, wincing. “Stings like a mother.”
“Shhh.” I ignore him and blot the cut below his eye with cotton balls soaked in saline. I’m close enough to him that I smell him, salt sweat and hot boy. I blow on his cheek when he shies from the burn, and goose bumps rise on his skin. He holds bone still, watching my face.
“This might need stitches,” I tell him. “Do we need to get you to the infirmary?”
He glances at the mirror hanging on the back of the door. He’s not in bad shape, but there’s no way he’s going to be able to pass this off as ‘falling down some stairs’. I rummage in the first aid kit, dumping out the various paper-wrapped, single-use portions of medical supplies. He pulls away when I place a suture bandage under his eye. “I’m okay,” he mumbles around the cold can against his lip. “That’s prolly vhere Jeremy ivs.”
“Thank you.” I add another strip. “For defending me. Again.”
He snorts, tries to hold a smile. “That was as much about me and Jeremy as it was about you. He’s been riding my ass since I got here. It’s like he’s made it his personal mission to try to get me in trouble.”
I clean up the trash and dirty cotton balls and throw them in the garbage can by my desk, then unclasp my sandals, dropping them one at a time on the floor, and sit on the bed next to him, my knees pulled to my chest. “My brother told me to stay away from the guy drama. He was right, of course. This is going to get you in trouble. You’re not going to be able to hide those wounds.”
“I don’t plan on trying. It was only a matter of time before I got busted for something.” He looks away from me. “Jeremy wasn’t lying about my file. I’m one step out of an adult term. Any violation will get me sent back. This place was the last chance my case worker could come up with—” His hand slides to his pocket, brows twisted with some unvoiced thought.
I groan, and scrub at my face with my hands. “There must be something we can do. I can say you fended off an anonymous attacker. Or not so anonymous. Maybe Jeremy can take the fall for it.”
“They won’t take the word of a convict over a grad of the program, Cherry.”