“What the—?” I know she knows it’s me; what I don’t know is why she’s running. No, scratch that—I know why she’s running. I don’t know why she’s here.
I hurry around the corner, but with the exception of a street lined with parked cars, the block is empty. Downtown Burnham closes up pretty early, just a couple of bars and restaurants staying open to cater to the people who venture off campus. I know she can’t have gone far, so I jog down the block and peer between the vehicles, but there’s no Andi. Fortunately there’s a trail of stray feathers to guide me.
“Andi,” I call, stepping into the alley between a bank and a bakery. It’s weakly lit by streetlights on either end, ominous shadows criss-crossing between dumpsters and recycle bins. The air of gloom is alleviated by the embarrassed chicken ten feet in.
She’s leaning against the brick wall, balanced on her bare foot as she tries to unbuckle the second twinkling shoe. She’s not frantic anymore, she’s resigned, the way a person in a chicken suit and Mardi Gras beads might be. I see her chest rise and fall as she inhales, mustering up the courage to face me.
I stop a few feet away, peering at her in the shadows.
“And—” I begin.
“Stop saying my name,” she interrupts. There’s no real venom in the words, but they’re forceful all the same.
I look around, but we’re alone. “Why? Who’s—” I shake my head. That’s not the real question. The real question is “What are you doing here?”
She exhales and looks heavenward, as though answers will come. “I go here,” she admits.
I suppose it should seem obvious, given the circumstances, but still my mouth falls open. “What?”
“I go to Burnham,” she says.
“You—I—Here? Now?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re...” I take in the chicken suit. “On the volleyball team?”
“Yeah. I got a partial scholarship. I arrived this morning.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
She bites her lip and looks away, which answers all the ego-unbruising questions I’d have, like, “So you just learned about the scholarship last night? This was all a huge surprise to you, too? You didn’t tell me because you don’t have my cell number? Nobody told me because...” But there are no answers because there are no questions. I’ve been called willfully oblivious before, but I can’t pretend not to understand now. Andi didn’t tell me she was coming to Burnham because she didn’t want to.
“I didn’t know you were coming home.” She sighs guiltily and reaches for my arm like she might pet a stray dog, but I move away before she can touch me.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
She drops her hand. “It means it’s a big school and we hadn’t spoken in two years and I didn’t think we’d bump into each other.”
My eyes nearly bulge out of my head. There are so many things wrong with that sentence that I can’t decide where to begin. “We didn’t speak for two years because you refused to speak to me!” I exclaim. I want so badly to demand answers about that, but the stubborn clench of her jaw makes me hold back. “And what about Christmas? Or next summer? Even if you avoided me all year here, you didn’t think maybe we’d bump into each other then, since we live three feet apart? Were you planning to lie about your whole fucking life?”
“You don’t ask me about my life!” she shouts back.
For a second I just stare at her. “What?”
“You don’t ask me about my life,” she repeats, a little less heatedly, like she regrets the words.
I bristle. I may have been accused of being self-centered in the past, but I don’t think this situation is entirely—or at all—my fault. “Well, I can’t ask you about your life when you’re not talking to me.”
She plucks a stray feather off her cheek and hurls it onto the ground as strongly as one can hurl a feather. “I applied to six schools,” she says, studying the wall behind me. “This is the only one that offered a scholarship. I didn’t want to come because you—” She looks at me. “I didn’t want it to seem like I was following you here. I’ve always lived in your shadow and... Remember on Grim when you said you wanted to come here and start living your life?”
My stomach twists as I remember those words and their implication. The thought of Andi “living life” the way I lived mine is strangely upsetting. “I just—”
“That’s what I want,” she interrupts quickly. “I want to be here and be somebody new, not just the tagalong.”
“You’re not—”
“Not if nobody knows we’re...” She trails off as though there’s no term in existence that could describe what we are. Were. And maybe more than the knowledge that she’d come here with the ridiculous notion of avoiding me all year, the idea that she can’t even call us friends makes everything inside of me ache. I thought we’d patched things up on Grim and I’d come back to Burnham feeling like a weight had been lifted. Now it feels like that was all a big joke, like the weight was just lifted in order to be dropped on my head at the worst possible moment.
“We were friends,” I finish for her.
She doesn’t miss the use of the past tense. “We’re complicated, Kellan.”
“Well, I think you’ve clarified everything now. Though if you want to go unnoticed, dressing up like a stripper chicken is probably not the best way to do it.”
“I’m just trying to fit in.”
I shrug like I don’t care and try to keep the anger out of my voice so she doesn’t know how much this burns. “If I see you again, I promise to ignore you.”
“Kell, we don’t—”
“Just walk back to the bar. I’ll follow at a distance to make sure you get there safe. And if anyone asks, I’ll tell them we’ve never met.”
Andi swipes a hand across her eyes but doesn’t argue. She’s not an idiot, despite the chicken costume, and no amount of pretending will convince her I’m not mad. We’ve been in enough fights to know the signs.
She carries the shoes and walks gingerly out of the alley. When we reach the corner we can hear the sounds of rowdy, drunken voices and the heavy thud of dance music emanating from the bar. She glances at me over her shoulder. “Bye, Kell.”
But I’m already walking away.
chapter three
I don’t see Andi again that week, and by Friday I’m more than ready for a party. Alpha Sigma Phi’s Epic Annual Welcome Party deserves its name and serves as a pretty thorough introduction to who’s who in sports at Burnham, and a who’s who of who’s into athletes at Burnham. After Andi’s rejection, I could certainly use the ego boost.
The night is warm so I opt for jeans and my Burnham Cross Country T-shirt, drinking a beer and playing video games to relax myself before starting the walk over. Dusk settles in quickly this time of year and the fifteen-minute trip is peaceful, the quiet interrupted only by the sound of moths banging into streetlamps. As I reach the perimeter of the Frat Farm I can hear the muted thump of dance music and voices, and two blocks later it’s almost deafening.
Every Alpha Sigma Phi party involves the walkway to the front door being lined with tiki torches, because the uncle of one of the brothers owns a party store and gave the fraternity a discount if they bought in bulk. Ten thousand torches later, we’re set for life. Flames flicker and people flow up the sidewalk toward the house. Most of the guys wear Burnham’s orange and blue colors while the girls opted for sundresses and heels.
“McVey!” comes a familiar shout. I turn to see Dane shouldering his way through the bottleneck at the front door, clutching two red plastic cups in his hand. Unlike most of the guys here who’ve opted for casual dress, Dane almost always wears a tie over an untucked dress shirt, and tonight he’s added a furry purple top hat to his outfit. He’s a tall, thin black guy who pitches relief for the Burnham Bears, our top-ranked baseball team. He’s the most responsible guy in the house, partly because his dad is a professor on campus and would kill him if he
got caught doing half the things we do.
“It’s about time, man!” He hugs me with one arm while pushing a beer into my hand with the other. “When’d you get back?”
“Last weekend.” I down half the warm drink in one swallow.
“What? Where’ve you been?”
“Just busy.” Busy being stalked by former wrestlers and getting rejected by a chicken I thought was my friend.
If Dane notes my sullenness, he doesn’t remark on it. “You still off campus?”
“Same place as last year.”
“Have you heard about the robberies?”
“What? No.”
“You have to pay attention, man, if you’re living alone. Houses have been getting broken into. This place got burgled last week, but we didn’t have anything worth stealing so they just took some torches, which was actually kind of a relief.”
“What’s a relief?” Crosbie interrupts, slinging an arm around Dane’s shoulder and causing half his beer to slosh onto the grass. Nora’s under his other arm dodging the spray. “Knowing that we get one last night to party without shame before we buckle down and act like all-stars that get invited to the illustrious Burnham Sports Banquet?”
Nora rolls her eyes. We learned mid-July that Crosbie and I would be getting invited to the December banquet and he’s been finding ways to work it into conversation ever since.
“Hey, losers!” someone shouts from the steps. “The party’s inside! Get your asses up here!”
We turn to see Choo, the school’s only Asian basketball player, looming over the other partygoers. At 6’6” he towers over everybody and loves it. He hadn’t lived on campus last year but figured he was missing out on too much fun so he moved into the fraternity to make up for lost time.
We weave our way through the throng of people clustered in the yard and into the even tighter crowd in the house. The furniture has been removed to make room for more bodies, and pounding music has the walls trembling. Every square inch is packed with people, most dancing or trying to dance, and definitely trying to drink their weight in free beer.
“Thank your uncle for the torches!” I shout at Choo as he refills everybody’s cup and passes new ones to Crosbie and Nora.
“You need any for your place?” he asks. “I can get you a deal if you buy in multiples of ten thousand!”
“Not right now!”
A gaggle of girls shows up with empty cups and he ignores us to attend to them.
“Kell,” Dane says. “If you need any torches, just call me. We’ve got seven thousand left and it’s a major fire hazard.”
I’m jostled from behind and turn to see the culprit, a tiny brunette with lots of hair and huge brown eyes. For a second she just stares up at me, then she covers her mouth as she giggles.
“I’m so sorry!” she shouts. “Someone pushed me!”
I look past her, but the person is gone. “Don’t worry about it!” I shout back. “My beer’s fine!” I hold up my cup. “Do you need a drink?”
“Yeah,” she answers. “Desperately!”
I smile and turn back to Choo, who’s already passing one over.
She sips her beer and gazes up at me. “My hero.” Everything about her is everything I like. Glittery eye makeup, a little dress, nice cleavage, deadly heels. The opposite of Andi. “I’m Jackie!” she hollers over the music, sticking out a hand with each nail painted a different shade of pink.
I reach out to shake it. “I’m Kellan!”
“I know! Do you want to dance?”
I look back at Crosbie and Nora, who are openly observing. I’d dodged their questions about the chicken incident though I know they’re still confused, so I act like I’m totally over it and turn back to Jackie. “Sure,” I say, keeping our hands linked as I lead her into the crowd. We do our best to dance without spilling our drinks, which mostly means drinking really fast and dancing really close. She smells like apples. Applejacks, I think. Jackie smells like apples. Remember that. Applejacks. Her name is Jackie.
“McVey!” someone calls when the song switches over. “Come play!”
“What are we playing?”
“Come find out!”
“You in, Jackie?” I ask, enunciating her name very carefully.
Her brow furrows in confusion, then she grins. “Why not?”
I tug her after me as I shoulder my way through the pulsing crowd. The game is being played in what’s supposed to be a formal dining room but is really just an extension of the living area with a couple of couches jammed up against the walls. There’s a closet that used to be a pantry, the door open to reveal a few empty shelves spotlighted by a bare bulb hanging overhead. I know this game. Every fourteen year old does.
“All right, folks!” shouts a beefy blond guy I don’t know. “It’s time for Seven Minutes in Heaven! If you don’t know the rules, raise your hand.”
One scrawny guy nervously lifts his arm.
“You!” the host declares. “Get out!”
Everybody laughs as the kid hurries away.
“That was mean,” Jackie whispers.
I squeeze her shoulder. “He’ll be okay. Do you want to play? You don’t have to.”
She blinks up at me. Her eyelashes are approximately nine inches long and I wonder how anyone will get their face close enough to kiss her. “I want to,” she assures me.
For some reason it feels hard to smile. “Good,” I make myself say. “Me too.” I drain my beer and contemplate the empty cup. Then I look around the room. New pledges are identified by white T-shirts with I’M A VIRGIN stamped across the front in sparkly pink letters. “Hey,” I say, sticking my cup in the nearest pledge’s hand. “Get me a refill.”
“Ah, okay,” he stammers, getting up from the old couch and leaving the room.
The host explains that we’ll determine roles by spinning a bottle. The closest girl to the right of the spin is player one, the closest guy to the right of the next spin is player two. To make things interesting there’s a giant foam die with various items of clothing pictured on each side—tops, pants, socks, bra, underwear and pants again. When the players are chosen they each roll the die and remove whatever clothing item they land on. Then they move into the closet.
I’d played this game my first week here and gotten to third base with a fellow freshman whose name I don’t recall. She was the first girl I kissed when I got to Burnham and I used everything I’d learned with Andi when I got into that closet. For weeks I channeled whatever heartbreak I was nursing into random hookups, and after a while there was no more need for games—my reputation preceded me, parties were plentiful, and so were girls looking for the same uncomplicated good times. It was only during the incident last year that I’d really had to face just how many “good times” I’d had. The number was high, but that wasn’t what bothered me—it was how much time I’d spent working toward something that really didn’t matter. When I see Crosbie and Nora together, all that time is an investment in some sort of future. When they go to classes, they’re working toward a degree. I’m just treading water, and I don’t even know what for.
Jackie gnaws on her lip as the bottle spins, exhaling her relief when it lands on a red-headed girl on the opposite side of the circle. The girl gets to her feet, smiling nervously. A second spin selects a guy near me and his buddies whistle as he stands. Two rolls of the die later, they’ve both lost their shirts and are off to the closet while the host sets his watch.
A small commotion in the living room catches my eye and I peer over the crowd to see what it is. A new group of female arrivals is garnering attention. They’re not wearing Burnham T-shirts or chicken feathers, but I recognize the volleyball team captain from the bar. My heartbeat ratchets up a notch and I tell myself to calm down. Andi hates parties, so though I know I won’t spot her, I scan the group as best I can. And for a blessed minute, I don’t see anything. Then the crowd parts and there she is, red cup in hand, swaying to the music.
My stomach clenches.
“I’ll be right back,” I say to Jackie, just as the host announces two minutes remaining in “heaven.”
I push through the throng, trying to go unnoticed as I edge my way close enough to confirm that it’s actually her, living life. And it is. She wears a plain white tank top, long black skirt and red lipstick. She even left her hair hanging loose halfway down her back, something she never does. Never did, anyway. She looks beautiful.
I don’t know what my next move is, but the decision is made for me when Choo emerges from the dining room. “McVey!” he shouts. “Get in here! We’re spinning the bottle and I’m pretty sure it’s going to land on you!”
A cheer goes up from the other participants and I twist around to see Andi staring at me. Despite everything that happened the other night I want to go to her, say something, do something, but that’s not what she wants. So instead of smiling or acknowledging her, I do exactly as I promised and return to the dining room like she’s not here at all.
The pledge is waiting with my beer. I take the cup, swallow the contents in one huge gulp, and wipe my mouth on my forearm. The room laughs, the bottle spins, and the host deliberately stops when it’s pointing at me.
“What a surprise!” he declares. “We’ve got a winner!” More cheers and laughter, then a second spin. I don’t see Jackie until she elbows her way in front of the girl the bottle lands on.
“It’s me!” she cries. “Where’s the dice?”
“Dice is plural,” says a voice in my ear. “Die is singular.”
All the hairs on my arm stand up when Andi speaks. “Do I know you?”
Her response is drowned out as the host gleefully shouts “Bra!” when the die lands.
Jackie giggles as she reaches under her top, eventually pulling out a lacy white bra. Someone tosses the die my direction and, deliberately ignoring Andi, I blow on it for luck then give it a dramatic roll. I should feel excited or at least smug that she’s seeing me move on with someone who actually wants to be associated with me, but instead I just feel anxious and let out a discreetly relieved breath when the die lands on socks.
Undeclared (Burnham College #2) Page 4
