“Michael Hanover, my man, what is up today?” I knocked fists with him. Some guys like a more complicated greeting, like two back slaps and a finger grip, but Mike was a one knock to the knuckles sort of guy. I’d tried a more detailed greet one time and the poor guy looked so confused I’d just pretended we were giving each other high fives.
“Hey, Bo. No fights lately?”
“Got one this Thursday at the Casino.”
Looking like a kid whose toy was snatched from him, Mike moaned, “Nothing closer?” The Casino was a forty-five-minute drive from here. It didn’t seem all that far away to me, but Central kids liked to stick close to campus. Maybe they thought they’d turn into pumpkins or something.
“Nah, I’m trying to be a good boy. Apparently Central admin doesn’t like it to be known that its students are engaging in brutality against others, even if it is mutually agreed-upon brutality.”
Mike nodded his agreement, although I wasn’t sure if he was agreeing with Central admin’s uptight staff or agreeing we should be able to beat the shit out of each other without interference.
“So, Mike, I have Bio 101 this semester.” I got straight to the point.
“Dude, why?”
“I wouldn’t reveal this to everyone, Mike, but I have a weak stomach,” I lied.
Mike’s eyes grew huge, as if I’d shared some deep dark secret even though the untruth was obvious. If I had a weak stomach I’d have chosen geology as my science elective over biology. Mike traded in confidences like Mal and I gathered favors. Everyone had their own currency. For Mike, you had to share one to gain one and the easiest way to trade with Mike was to just make shit up so long as you didn’t care that the rest of the campus knew about it by the end of the day.
“Are you asking me how to get out of Bio labs?” Mike asked, nearly breathless with this new gossip he’d broadcast to the next dozen people he came into contact with.
“No, I don’t mind the labs. I want to know more about my lab partner.”
Mike looked relieved. “That’s a good thing, man, because I couldn’t get you out of the lab. Who’s your lab partner?”
“AnnMarie West.”
At the sound of her name Mike’s eyebrows shot into his forehead. “Typhoid Mary?”
“Typhoid Mary?” I repeated dumbly.
“Yeah.” His eyes were bright with excitement and he leaned over the counter, motioning me closer. I tilted my head forward but didn’t move. I only got that close to another person if it was a woman and she was going to stick her tongue in my mouth. “You’re new, so you weren’t here last year when she slept with the entire lacrosse team. She gets around a lot. A lot.” Mike repeated the last part as if I hadn’t understood his insinuation the first time.
I bit down on my tongue hard, hoping the pain would prevent me from punching Mike in his smug little mouth. Few girls ever banged an entire team. They usually slept with one or maybe three and that was enough for people to label her a groupie. Noah and I’d seen it happen in high school to a girl I’d slept with. We spent one night together, and the next day talk was she’d slept with the entire football team. Noah and I had tried to put out the fire the best we could, but the whispers persisted when we weren’t around. Pack attention didn’t shift until the girl transferred schools.
I waited to hear the rest of the rumor, measure the extent of the damage for myself. At my encouragement Mike spilled the rest.
“I heard she’s a recruiting perk. Like when they bring new recruits on campus, they get a visit from AnnMarie.” He wiggled his eyebrows so I understood “visit” was a euphemism for some type of sexual service. I guess Mike thought everyone was stuck in third grade, like him. “They call her Typhoid Mary because she slept around so much you could get a disease just standing next to her.”
“I don’t think STIs work that way.”
“Right,” Mike said, not understanding. “Um, but that’s her nickname.”
“Seems like it would be a bad recruiting perk to have a new student come in contact with someone who’s so disease-infected.” I pointed out the obvious contradiction in his rumor but, like the handshake, it only confused him. Mike looked at me as if I’d asked him to find the square root of some four-digit number.
Some guys felt their reputation was enhanced by bragging about the number of women they slept with. You could always divide that number by about ten to get to the accurate one. It also never made much sense to me to brag about sleeping with a girl deemed easy. Where was the challenge if the girl would sleep with anyone? The sex conquest currency was irrational.