“So Typhoid Mary is your lab partner? Dude, you’re going to see so much action this semester.” Mike smiled at me as if we were sharing some kind of great joke.
“I’m not even on the lacrosse team,” I said.
“I don’t think you have to be on the lacrosse team,” Mike reassured me.
“This girl not play your game?” Mike’s gossip wasn’t usually so barbed.
“I tried her out, but she’s too stuck up for me. I’m not an athlete, I guess,” he admitted. “But you shouldn’t have a problem getting into her pants.”
“Why’d you want to hook up with a girl who’s got the Health Clinic on speed dial?”
Mike cocked his head. “Wow, I really dodged a bullet there.”
Irrational. Bug fucking nuts. Nothing I was saying was getting through, so I gave up. “You see her around the library much?”
“Not really. She hangs out with another chick, tiny girl, braids, and some theater people. They don’t come into the library much. I probably should have reserved my game for after class or at the commons.”
I tilted my head back and exhaled heavily. No, dickhead, she would have turned you down no matter what. That girl could smell rotten from a mile away after being exposed to so much of it, which was probably why she never talked to me in class last semester. But there was no educating Mike. She’d turned him down, so her bad reputation was fair game. He’d probably console himself with the thought that he was lucky to have gotten turned down by a skank. “Thanks for the info, man,” I said.
“No problem, Bo,” Mike said cheerfully, totally unaware I wanted to drag him over the counter and beat him bloody.
“Grace and Noah around?” I needed to move on from Mike and this topic.
“Ah, yeah, in the stacks.” Mike pointed to the center of the library, which held old and uncirculated books. It was a dank, dusty, low-lit place with rows of metal shelves. Perfect for on-campus making out.
I’d used it a few times since Noah showed me where he and Grace “studied.” I always made a big show of banging on the shelves when I entered. I was pretty sure Grace and Noah did very little studying in there. Every time I’d seen them in their nook they were disheveled, and Grace’s lips looked like they’d been chewed on by a big, bad dog.
It was fun breaking up their nookie time.
AM
A PAPER WAS WAVING FROM my car window when I got to my apartment building, which was situated a block off the eastern end of campus. The scrap looked like a pinned butterfly with two edges fluttering in the wind on either side of the windshield wiper. It could have been a flyer, an invitation to see a band downtown, or a coupon. It could have been anything innocuous or innocent, but I knew it wasn’t.
Dread was a cold feeling. It swept over a body like a blanket of ice and immobilized you. I forced my hand up to the windshield and pulled it off. I already knew what it would say, or at least some variation.
Saw your “dad” over break. Does he know what a slut you are?
I crumpled the note in my gloved fist, thinking that if Clay Howard III was standing in front of me right now I’d have no problem driving a pen directly into his eye—no matter what Bo Randolph said I was or wasn’t capable of. I wanted to throw the page away but didn’t. Instead, I carried it upstairs to put it with the other notes from Clay. I wasn’t sure why I kept them, other than to remind myself that staying off Clay Howard III’s radar and off Central’s campus was the best thing I could do for the next two years.
And that I didn’t date Central College guys. Ever. Not even ones that looked like Bo Randolph.
That was one of my immutable life rules, along with no wearing of white pants during that time of the month and no reading Stephen King before going to sleep.
“I have terrible news,” Ellie announced as she walked into the apartment. I was making us sandwiches and soup, the meal of poor college students and old ladies, the note tucked safely away in my drawer.
“Mayo?” I held up the jar and Ellie nodded. She pulled out a bar stool and propped her elbows on the counter to watch my culinary efforts. I gestured with my mayo-laden knife for her to respond. “What’s the drama?” I piled meat, lettuce, and tomato between the bread slices.
“There’s a very cute freshman who could be my lab partner.” She groaned and put her head on top of the counter.
Ellie was a math major and smarter than 99 percent of the students at Central, including me, but she looked like a cheerleader, her dark, coarse hair pulled up into two low ponytails. She also had the habit of sleeping with her study partners. Her last boyfriend, Tim, was our economics tutor. We had set up the tutoring session, not because we were failing, but because we wanted to get As. Unfortunately, after their sex life petered out around midterms, Ellie lost interest, and I ended up attending the remaining awkward sessions trying to duck Tim’s inquiries about the missing part of our once merry triad.