Chapter Five
AM
DESPITE OUR BIG TALK OF partying all week, Ellie and I stayed in and watched movies when the weekend rolled around. While we watched actresses drum songs on the bottoms of cups, I shored up my anti-Bo defenses. I made a new list of excuses why I shouldn’t be crushing on him and ran through them each morning. None of them were very good, but that wasn’t the point. If I could make it through this semester without tearing my clothes off in biology class, the little white lies I told myself would be worth it. When Monday rolled around, I intentionally arrived late to class and sat in the back. I didn’t remember much of the lecture, as I spent the whole time staring at Bo’s head and wishing I was sitting right next to him. Bo turned around once and found me in the first pass. We stared at each other for what felt like an eon but was probably seconds. I couldn’t read his emotions but I knew what I was feeling. Regret.
On Tuesday, I met up with Ellie back at the apartment after classes were over. When I came through the door, she shot me a pleading glance.
“What’s up with the puppy eyes?” I peered at Ellie, who was standing with her hands clasped in front of her next to the paisley sofa we’d bought from a garage sale on the west side. It was so hideous—blue with red floral paisley designs all over looking like grotesque snails—that we both agreed it had circled around to awesome. Plus, it was super comfortable. We theorized the person who’d bought it was colorblind and sat on it and felt as if he was lying in marshmallows. Then he fell in love and his new partner made him throw it out. At least that’s the story that Ellie and I made up.
“I need to ask you for a huge favor.” Ellie looked pitiful and hopeful at the same time. Like I would ever say no to her. Ellie had been my rock since we were kids. Half my courage in sticking it out here at Central came from knowing she was standing right beside me.
“Sure, buttercup. What do you need?” I flopped down on the sofa, tossing my phone on the coffee table.
“Willyougotodinneroncampustoday?” Ellie spilled out her request so fast that it was like one long word. I thought she was joking at first because Ellie knew I never ate meals on campus. Not since about midterms of my freshman year. Not since the unspoken words and low murmured whispers turned to actions. But when she didn’t laugh or give me a verbal cue that it was just a prank, I turned to look at her.
She gave me a pained, wry smile. “It was a stupid idea.” Unlocking her hands, Ellie came to rest on her side of the diseased-looking marshmallow.
“Tell me about it,” I said quietly. The invitation was all she needed. Turning to me, Ellie hitched one leg up on the sofa. As I looked at her glowing face and her sparkling eyes, I knew I was going to be eating on campus tonight.
“I’m totally in lust with that guy, Ryan, that I told you about from my Rocks for Jocks class. I need to know more about him,” Ellie babbled. “I’m pretty sure he’s a freshman. Maybe on the baseball team? I mean, I assume he’s a jock because why else is he taking that course?”
“So he’s eating where tonight?”
“Oh, um, I overheard him say he was meeting ‘the guys’ at the Quad Commons Café.” She blushed and said, “I don’t know what it is about him that I find so adorable, but he’s all dorky cuteness.”
“We need to do a little covert stalking is what you’re saying,” I finished for her.
She nodded. “I know I’m asking for something big here.”
“Nah.” I shrugged. “I’ve been thinking that my self-imposed exile is kind of dumb. How am I supposed to crush on Bo Randolph if I avoid campus?”
“You really want to go?” Ellie looked skeptical.
“And miss the opportunity to stalk this guy with you?” I grabbed her hand. “Tell me more.”
As Ellie described his mini Mohawk and retro cool eyeglasses, I mentally assured myself that everyone had moved on from my sex life. There had to be other scandals, other bits of gossip that people were exchanging. By the time Ellie had finished giving me an exhaustive rundown of this guy’s entire physical appearance from his eyebrow piercing to his dark wash jeans and plaid button-down shirt, I’d convinced myself that I had nothing at all to fear. What could anyone say that they hadn’t already said? Clay Howard’s threats were probably hollow. He couldn’t be on campus all the time, and the likelihood of running into him in the QC Café was very low.
Still, I spent an inordinate amount of time later that day wondering if my jeans were too tight or my T-shirt showed too much cleavage. In a fit of uncertainty, I changed into a pair of loose fitting khakis and a white button-down shirt and left the room to find Ellie inserting earrings in front of the hall closet dresser. Ellie looked me over and almost stabbed herself through the cheek with the earring post.
“Are you going to work as a clerk in a shoe store?” Ellie asked with a heavy amount of disdain.
I looked down at my clothes. “Too bland?”
“Girl, even the people at the Dockers store would be embarrassed to be seen in that outfit.” Ellie frowned. She was right. Ordinarily I had no problems picking out the right outfit, including for class, but for some reason tonight I was a mass of nerves and indecision.
“We don’t have to go,” Ellie said in a rush, measuring my anxiety by the hideousness of my outfit. She met my gaze in the mirror and her eyes softened in sympathy. That look sent a steel rod up my spine.
I hated pity more than I hated the gossip. Maybe she gave me that look on purpose, to help me find my courage. I turned on my foot and went into the bedroom, where I picked up a pair of discarded skinny jeans and a loose silky top. I pulled on a pair of heavy socks and a battered pair of riding boots. My heavy felt, navy-blue peacoat completed the outfit. I looked a lot less like Dockers layaway and more like hip young person. I felt better, too.
The past year had taught me that sometimes the best defense in the world was a stony glare and the right attire. Going into the lion’s den dressed like I was dressed for church was bound to create even worse talk than looking like a prostitute. The latter they expected, the former said I was trying too hard. The vultures never liked anything more than cutting down people who set themselves up.
I picked up my phone and ID card and headed out to meet Ellie. She was putting on the last touches of makeup. The au natural look required as much effort as the heavily made-up look. Guys never knew the difference, but the cosmetic industry didn’t have fifty shades of natural and blush lipstick because girls could run around with bee-stung lips just by biting them heavily. Biting led to chapped lips and teeth marks.
We didn’t talk as we walked toward the commons. Ellie seemed to instinctively understand that I didn’t have much to say. The campus looked magical in the evening light. The snow sparkled where it was illuminated by the lampposts that marched along the sidewalks, intersecting the campus lawns. Central was an old campus, over one hundred years old, and even though it had been modernized, the feel of it was nostalgic. The streetlights were made of wrought iron instead of hard steel. The callboxes looked like old-fashioned telephone booths. Even the sculptures positioned throughout had an old-world charm to them.
Maybe the student body took cues from it. For all the modern, liberal thinking that was preached from the professors’ podiums, the men and women who took classes here had some deep-seated, old-fashioned views. Girls who hooked up a lot were sluts. Guys who did the same were studs. Girls who wore their hair short and their pants long were lesbians. Guys who used too much product and cared too much about their appearance were gay. And those who didn’t conform were weirdos and easy objects of scorn.
During my freshman year, I’d have given anything to be thought of as a weirdo or gay. Being deemed a slut meant that you were fair game to every asshole on campus. They could slap your ass or casually grab your boob during the sober, daylight hours. Once the sun went down and the beer came out, the groping was more obvious. Then it was a full body press, trying to corner you in a dark spot and stick their hand up your skirt. If you said no at any time, you were a bitch or cock tease or cunt. And because no one wanted to admit being turned down by the class bicycle, rumors started anew.
I remember one guy whom I’d never met, never talked to, bragging in the library to a few others in his study group about how he had to force me off his dick so he could get another beer, that I was just so hungry for him. Another guy regaled the group with how he’d poured beer on his penis and then forced me to suck him off. They all laughed when he described, graphically, how he had held my hair in place and how the gagging noises I made only made him harder.
None of it had ever happened, but it didn’t stop me from feeling violated, used, and dirty. It wasn’t one thing that drove me off campus, but a hundred wounds both large and small. I felt that if I spent one minute more than necessary there, I would be nothing more than a dried honeycomb, all the life sucked out of me, exposed and used.
As Ellie and I walked down the sidewalk, no one stared at me. The cement at our feet didn’t crack in half. We were just two students in a big crowd, some moving toward the commons and some away. I felt anonymous for a moment, and I almost stumbled when relief poured through me.
The commons looked the same. It was a squatty brick building, one of the uglier structures on campus, built into the side of the hill. When you approached from the south side, it looked like Bag End, or some other building from the Shire, only without the cute circular doors. On the north side, it was all windows, so that when you were here in the morning you could catch the sunrise through the two-story foyer. Whoever decorated the interior must have used a focus group study from the ’80s. It was full of dark browns and blues with neon light tubes twisted into waves and circles. The café housed in the lower level served up a mix of salad bar fresh foods and mystery plates. You could hear the cacophony of the slap of forks and plates and trays against tables from the balcony that overlooked the seating area.
Ellie and I paused at the railing and looked down. “Do you see him?” I asked quietly. First rule of crush stalking was to ensure that you weren’t obvious. You can’t alert your prey that you’re observing his every move.
Ellie scanned the crowd and checked her watch. “No, but we’re about five minutes early. Should we wait?”
I didn’t want to wait. I wanted to eat and get the hell out. Even though nothing bad had happened, it was early yet. I wanted to ease back onto campus instead of jumping headfirst into an unknown body of water. Who knew how close the rocks were to the surface? I took a deep breath. I was here for Ellie, just as she’d been there for me all those times before. “Sure, let’s walk through the Bookstore for a few,” I suggested.
The commons had a lounge area with pool tables and a quiet study place upstairs, along with rooms that local high schools sometimes rented out to hold a prom. The bottom level was a major arterial vein of the campus. Lots of activity flowed in and out of QC Café and Central Bookstore, a small store where students could come and buy sodas, snacks, and Central attire. Ellie started forward, but I stopped her. I’d walk down those steps first just to prove to myself I could, even if I was trembling inside.
Students passed me by and still nothing. Not a sideways glance, not a smirk, not a whisper behind a hand to a companion. By the time we had reached the Bookstore, I felt nearly serene and not a little chagrined. I should have braved the masses last semester. A summer away from Central had probably dimmed my reputation in everyone’s memory. What a self-important asshole I was, thinking that I was so important that people were still talking about me. I gave a half laugh and Ellie turned to me with a lifted eyebrow. “Sorry,” I said, “just swallowed wrong.”
Ellie nodded and looked toward the door, trying to keep an eye on the crowd streaming through entrance of the café while not being obvious about it. I didn’t know who I was looking for despite her exhaustive description earlier.
A loud group came in, commanding everyone’s attention. It was a group of guys barking loudly to one another, like a flock of geese. At the light in Ellie’s eyes, I knew that her new man was in this group. Showtime.
We waited another ten minutes in the store, pretending to admire the variety of sweatshirts, T-shirts, and sleep pants adorned with one big C on them. When we judged that the boisterous man crew had made their way through the cashier, we went and gathered our food. Salad bar for both of us because that was the only fresh food served in the café, that and deli sandwiches. Anything else and you were just asking for a bout of food poisoning.
Exiting the cash line, I stood with my tray in hand while Ellie surveyed the crowd, trying to find exactly the right table where we could sit and observe and maybe even eavesdrop on the table that held the object of her crush.
She started forward and then stopped and I nearly dumped the contents of my tray on her back. I followed her gaze to a table in the center of the room filled with guys wearing their trucker caps backward, mid-calf socks, and Flow Society shorts even in winter. The lacrosse team. Or laxers, as they liked to call themselves.