“Heather!” Lisa cries. “How can you—?”
“Because it’s true. She didn’t really know us either, or most of her residents, since the majority of the students on her floor are upperclassmen, so most of them haven’t even checked in yet. They won’t get here until next weekend. Classes don’t start until after Labor Day.”
Jasmine’s floor is one of the highest in the building, which means it’s one of the most desirable (this is why the prince was assigned to a suite just above it).
“Most of the rooms on the upper floors were chosen in last year’s room selection lottery by upperclassmen before you—or Jasmine—ever even got here,” I go on, “which means only a few of the rooms on Jasmine’s floor were left to assign to incoming freshmen and transfer students. Since orientation week is only for new students, first year and transfer, most of the upperclassmen don’t choose to arrive until the weekend before classes begin.”
“True,” Lisa says hesitantly.
“So this is sad, but not as sad as if it happened in the middle of the year. The only people on her floor right now, really, are Kaileigh and Ameera and those other girls. You’ll pull someone in off the RA wait list to replace Jasmine, and the majority of kids won’t even know there was a death in the building, because it happened before they got here.”
“Heather!” Lisa says with a gasp.
“I said it was sad. I didn’t say it was fair. We have to be practical about it.”
“This job has hardened you,” Lisa says, not unkindly. “What if Jasmine died of what I have? What if I gave it to her? What if it’s some kind of deadly—”
“She didn’t,” I say flatly. “I already checked her trash can and toilet. There’s no vomit. And Howard Chen has what you have too, and he’s not dead.”
“Oh, great.” This is Lisa’s first student death—although we’d come close before—and the stress in her voice is almost palpable. “Wait. I just thought of something. The prince. You don’t think there’s a connection, do you, between Jasmine dying and the prince?”
“I don’t see how there could be,” I say.
“He clearly knows her residents.”
“I know, but no one said anything about Jasmine not answering her door to go to Nobu, just Ameera.”
But the coincidence—a VIR about whom there’d been death threats, and then a death in the room on the floor below his? It was going to be too big for some people (particularly the media) to ignore, and Lisa knew it.
“Okay,” Lisa says firmly. “That’s it. I’m coming up there right now.”
That’s when I hear a deep voice—familiar and resonant—through Lisa’s phone.
“You aren’t going anywhere except where Heather said, home, to bed.”
“Cooper?” Lisa sounds startled. “Oh my God, you’re still here?”
My thought, exactly.
“Of course I’m still here,” he says. “I’m supposed to be having lunch with my bride-to-be, remember?”
“Oh, Cooper,” Lisa cries. “Of course. I’m so sorry—”
“You’re going to be sorrier,” I hear him say, “if you don’t take care of yourself now, and get sicker later.”
“But,” I hear Lisa protest weakly.
“No ‘buts,’ ” Cooper says. “You’re going back to bed even if I have to carry you there.”
“You can’t lift me,” I hear Lisa say, but there’s uncertainty in her voice.
“What are you talking about?” Cooper sounds offended. “I carry Heather to bed every night. How do you think I maintain this buff physique?”
Lisa probably would have laughed if the situation hadn’t been so bleak.
I, on the other hand, frown. Cooper does have a buff physique, but he doesn’t carry me to bed every night. There’d just been that one night when I’d had a few too many grapefruit and vodkas and we’d started horsing around—
“Okay, okay,” I hear Lisa say. “I’m going. But first let me—”
“Oh my God, go home before my fiancé has to sling you over his shoulder King Kong style,” I practically shout into the phone.
Lisa gives in, says good-bye, and hangs up. I hang up too, but only to go and sit on the bed opposite Jasmine’s to make another phone call, careful not to touch anything, or shed any of my DNA, or look in the direction of the dead girl lying opposite me.
All RAs are assigned a single room, but these contain enough furniture for a double, since Fischer Hall lacks storage space. What the RA chooses to do with his or her extra furniture isn’t any of our concern, so long as it’s back in the room by the time he or she has moved out.
Jasmine had chosen to use both of her beds, one as a couch for visitors to lounge on, and the other for sleeping. I’m sitting on the one she’d reserved for visitors. The other bed is the one on which Jasmine lies, very, very dead.
“Gavin?” I say, when the person on the other end of the phone picks up.
“Hey, Heather,” he says. He sounds a lot more subdued than when we’d spoken earlier. “Sarah told me. Bummer.”
Only Gavin would call a girl dying in the prime of her life a “bummer.”
“Yes,” I say. “It is, indeed, a bummer. Have the police shown up yet?”
“No. I heard there’s a subway fire over at the Christopher Street station. You know they never show up for a dead body if there are live people they have a chance of saving. You guys shouldn’t have said Jasmine’s dead. You should have said she’s dying. Then they’d come faster.”
I sigh at the truth of this. “Is Sarah there?”
“She’s here,” he says, not sounding too thrilled about it. “She’s, like, crying all over the magazines I was saving to read later.”
“Gavin,” I say. “You’re not supposed to read other people’s magazines. You’re supposed to put them in the mailboxes of the people to whom they are addressed.”
“I know,” Gavin says. “But there’s been another death in the building, and the new issue of Entertainment Weekly just arrived. I need something to calm my nerves.”