by Vera Kurian
The trick to undetected mischief is to have a look on your face like you’re just heading home to do laundry. I looked carefully at Will’s front door, which had two locks on it. I had bought a lock-picking kit online, but the YouTube videos I had watched made it look easier than it really was. I had practiced at home and on one or two of the neighbors’ houses, but was hardly a pro.
To get to the back of the house, I had to walk half a block, then turn into the alley that provided access to the back of the row of attached houses. I walked toward Will’s house while rooting through my bag as if looking for something, maybe a set of keys. I did this a lot when shoplifting—occupying myself with some task so it didn’t seem that I was actually doing some other task, such as stealing. A tension built in me like a spring getting compressed as I got closer to 1530 Marion Street. There were two construction guys at the house next door, cutting bricks with a loud machine. The noise could provide cover, but also—there were two guys standing there. Will’s house had a rotten-looking deck that led to a sliding glass door. Half a dozen moldy bricks led down to an English basement, its windows black. I slowed my walk, pretending I was distracted with my phone, hoping the construction guys wouldn’t notice me.
As I looked up at the house with its dirty yellow siding, the smart part of me said that I should go, that I could get caught. The snake part was pointing out that while there were bars on the first-floor windows, maybe the sliding glass door could be pried open, or if not, there was a pipe that led down from the gutter that looked sturdy enough to climb.
He could be inside, I thought. But no, now wasn’t the time for any kind of confrontation.
I mean, unless it was.
Or he might not even be home.
But maybe I could leave a bear trap in his bed.
The glass door would be hard to get past. But there was that pipe leading up to the roof, and there, a window that looked pretty old. The roof wasn’t that far up. I was decent at climbing, not afraid of heights, and given my general lifestyle, the ability to sneak quietly, to climb, to find my way into places, was a skill I had developed. I had always been the girl who climbed the tree, jumped off the roof into the pool, got back up when she got scraped.
I could already feel my muscles tensing to move forward, but then a noise distracted me. One of the construction guys was catcalling me. I gave him a look of disgust and walked off quickly, almost more annoyed at myself for being careless than I was at him. I get carried away like this sometimes. I know revenge is supposed to be a dish best served cold, but no one ever told me what it was like to wait those last few moments when the dish is on the cart right next to the table, steaming. I wanted Will perfectly in my grasp, squirming. I wanted it to be perfect. I would have to wait.
Besides, the SAE party was tomorrow night, and he would definitely be there, prime and ready to be plucked.
* * *
I headed to the psychology department for my first experiment, my last official homework for the day. When I pried open the heavy wooden double doors of the castle, it was quiet, motes of dust floating in the rays of light coming in from the big windows behind the curving staircase. Something about the building reminded me of a haunted church. I climbed up to the sixth floor, but went to the other side of the building from Dr. Wyman’s office.
The hallway got darker as I walked down it, one of the fluorescent lights blinking intermittently. I found Room 654a, which had a door with a keypad. I entered the code my smartwatch had given me and opened the door. The lights turned on automatically, revealing more of a cubicle than a room. It was sterile, with no decorations other than a blank whiteboard, and the only thing in it was a singular computer and a desk. The watch must have sensed that I was in the room: Please take a seat and the computer will provide you with instructions, it said.
I sat down and woke the computer up by moving the mouse. I had to click through some consent forms before the experiment started.
This experiment is about decision making and money. The money used in this experiment is real. This means if by the end of the experiment you are left with $15 from the activity, you will be given $15 in cash.
Not bad! I clicked to the next page.
A picture of a five-dollar bill filled the top half of the screen.
You are playing with one other person. You each have two choices—share the money, or keep all of it. If you both choose share, you each get half. If you both choose keep all of it, you both get no money. If one player chooses to keep all while the other chooses to share, keep all gets all the money, and share gets none.
Then I was presented with two buttons at the bottom: Share and Keep All. Was this a joke?
A chat box opened on the right side of the screen. I was identified by an icon that said Player A, and a Player B was beneath me. Neither of us said anything.
Begin.
I clicked Keep All.
You have $0, the computer told me. I wrinkled my nose.
Trial two. Keep All.
You have $0. Selfish bastard!
The same thing happened on round three. Player B was typing, ellipses indicating the keyboard was in use. If we want to walk out of here with anything we have to both share.
Do they actually give money? I typed.
Yes. I like money.
So whoever I was playing with had done this before. Were they one of the other six, or just a random research subject?
Round four began. I clicked Keep All.
You have $0.
You said you would share! they wrote.
You said you would, too.
Liar.
The fifth round was no better.
Do a cost benefit analysis here, they wrote. We’re wasting time not getting anything. If we cooperate we each get money.
But if we don’t, I get all of it, I thought.
Stupid Player B—I didn’t get any money from that experiment.
7
Day 52
“Pleeeease!” I pleaded with Yessica. She had her arms folded across her chest, one hip stuck out, objecting to the idea of going to a frat party. “It’s a quintessential part of college life—you have to go at least once before you write an article about the poison that is Greek life for some alt lit mag,” I reasoned. She pressed her lips together and nodded, then we both laughed. A few other people on our floor were going, Billy the Crew and his roommate Jed or Ted leading the horde.
I picked through several outfits on my bed. I didn’t want to attract too much attention, but then again there may be certain beautiful boys there. It was August, so I opted for jean shorts that were short, but not what’s-wrong-with-you short, and my scoop-neck silver top. I put on my silver necklace with a little lobster charm and messed with my hair. Yessica was one of those girls who could pop on a simple black jersey dress and look ready to go. (Her lashes, it turned out, were real.)
Our group exited the dorm and headed up the street. We turned toward the SAE house and I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I could already see the people streaming into and out of the house, partyers all over the lawn. Music blasted from a speaker perched in the third-floor window and a bonfire burned in the yard. I wasn’t even sure if the bonfire was allowed. Then again, neither was underage drinking, but the university police looked the other way as long as nothing got too crazy. Their view was that getting into minor trouble on campus was better than getting into major trouble off campus.
Yessica wiggled an eyebrow at me as we squished through the front door. Two boys were playing beer pong in the “dining room,” and everyone seemed to be shouting louder than they needed to. In the living room people danced in the cramped space surrounding a leather couch and a coffee table speckled with beer cans, Solo cups, and an occasional bong. Some guy with greasy bangs was sitting on the edge of the coffee table, blowing vapor everywhere while he pontificated about the pr
otests that were scattered across the country, often converging upon DC. “This country is descending into chaos!”
Billy the Crew led us to the kitchen where one sad little pledge had been forced to man the keg all night. He said hi, handing me a foamy beer. “Let’s do a lap,” I shouted into Yessica’s ear.
“Looking for anyone in particular?” she asked sweetly.
Well, who should make fun of who, because half a lap in, a guy in a Dodgers T-shirt bumped into her, then they started talking about baseball. I let them be and continued scanning the crowd. I saw one guy so drunk that he stumbled in place, dazed. I saw two girls having a fight and several couples making out. My prospects lit up when I saw Cordy now seated on the leather couch with a bunch of other people, taking a huge hit off a water bong. He waved vigorously when he saw me. “You made it!”
I said something noncommittal and observed him take another hit. He was out of it—drunk and high at the same time. He must have been talking to the girl beside him, but she had turned away, leaving him sitting awkwardly alone. He scooted over, patting the leather beside him. I squished in and smiled. “Is your roommate coming?” I asked.
He blinked slowly. “Will? He’s here somewhere.” He made a vague gesture—his head was bobbing. Then he seemed surprised suddenly by how close I was to him, which was strange considering that I was pressed against his side. “You’re pretty cute—anyone ever tell you that?”
“Is he an awful person?”
“Will, yeah, he can be a douche.”
“Do you ever just want to fuck him up?”
“Totally,” he said, picking up the bong again.
I decided I liked Cordy.
I heard laugher suddenly and looked over my shoulder. A group of the SAE brothers were standing around—I guess the more senior ones because Derek and Charles were there. Charles was wearing a nicely fitted white button-down, which I approved of, and a pin that said Portmont for President. There was a girl hanging on him—literally, hanging onto his arm, laughing up at him. God. So desperate. Another girl was immediately to her left making cow eyes at him. He wasn’t necessarily not flirting back. I was just about to get up and do something about it when a blonde girl slipped across the clog of people and Charles put his arm out, tucking her into his side. The other girls fluttered away like injured sparrows, and he kissed the blonde girl on the top of the head in a way that did not say “frat party.” It did not say, “I’m going to get you drunk and try to have sex with you upstairs on a dank, NFL-themed duvet.”
“Who’s that?” I asked, nudging Cordy.
“Kristen? Charles’s girlfriend. They’ve been going out for like ever.”
“There’s no ‘like ever’ in college.”
He hiccupped. “Yeah, there is. You know who his dad is, right? He’s like big in the fracking world. Her mom is the heir to GenCo Media. What a waste,” he said, shaking his head.
Indeed, what a waste.
“Hey, man,” a new voice said, reaching across me to fist-bump Cordy. “Who’s your lady friend?”
I looked up and suddenly I couldn’t hear the music that was pumping through the house, the laughter or the screeches, the pinging of beer pong balls. It was like time froze. Will Bachman was literally leaning over the couch, grinning down at us. I felt a steely calmness come over me.
I smiled at him, reminding myself that for it to look real the smile had to reach my eyes. “I’m Chloe,” I said. I waited to see if he would recognize me—it had been years. Everything I did in the next fifty-two days would depend on if he recognized me, and how my calculus would have to change if he did. But I was betting on him not recognizing me. I grew up. I changed my name. But I never forgot.
His face was flushed with alcohol. In person, I could better see how his facial features had aged from our childhood, but the shape of his upper lip was the same and he had the same sandy eyebrows. Will Bachman. I thought about taking out the mechanical pencil in my purse and inserting it into his left eye.
“Chloe,” he said, smiling. “You don’t hear that name very often.”
“No,” I said. “Not really.” Even less frequently do you hear the last name Sevre, which is why I never put my real last name on my social media accounts. My plan would go so much smoother if he never figured out who I was.
Will perched on the arm of the couch and we quickly dispensed with formalities: our years, where we lived (of course I had prepared a fake background of being from Connecticut). “Where you from?” I asked, pretending to take a sip of my beer.
“Toms River, New Jersey, but spare me the Jersey jokes.”
There is not a lot I will spare you, Will. Not now, since I’ve found you.
8
Day 48
Phase One complete: Will Bachman was my buddy now. I had been tempted at the party to try and lure him away, but I told myself to concentrate on Phase Two: Interrogation. But now he knew me and trusted me, and it seemed like it would be pretty easy to get him alone. He followed me on Instagram but I didn’t follow him back. I didn’t want too many links between us that people could find once he was worm food.
Both Will and Cordy were insisting that I simply had to come down to Terrible Charles’s party that weekend. I had already mulled over this possibility. I wasn’t sure how I felt about conducting Phase Two at Charles’s party. For one, I had no idea about the location, so I would have little control over it. I also didn’t have a car. On the other hand, the isolated locale was appealing. The house—estate, rather—was about a forty-minute drive away at Fort Hunt, not too far from George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate. From what public property records and Google Maps could tell me, the Portmont estate was right on the Potomac River in Virginia, with Maryland on the other side of the river. I also wasn’t sure about showing up at a party at Charles’s house without him having expressly invited me. Technically it wasn’t his party—his parents were throwing a benefit to provide CEOs with manicures in white-collar prison or something. Showing up as an uninvited and unwelcome guest might only draw attention to myself.
I zoomed in on a campus map on my computer. If not at the Portmont estate, where would be a good place for the interrogation? It wouldn’t at all be hard to get Will drunk and corner him in a private room at the SAE house, or maybe his own house, but the problem with either of those is that they were his territory, and his friends could be in the vicinity. Another possibility was partying with him somewhere, then inviting him back to my dorm room only to lead him through a labyrinth of academic buildings, finding an isolated study room somewhere and using it as my staging grounds.
“Roomie,” I heard Yessica say from directly behind me. I didn’t jump. “What’re you up to?”
“Trying to find where this discussion section is meeting.”
“Do you want to go to Starbucks?”
“Do I have to put a bra on?” I said. I was wearing plaid pajama bottoms and my crop-top that said obvi on it.
“Hell no!” She was also wearing pajamas.
I donned my fuzzy slippers and she slid into her flip-flops. We only lived one block away from the massive Student Activities Center, where there was a Starbucks in the basement along with a million other things. There was a shortcut at the corner of the block, where you could duck into one of the academic buildings, Albertson Hall, and move through the ground floor rather than walking outside in your PJs. Albertson housed the music department and little practice rooms for music students lined the narrow hallway. It was cold down there, and smelled like concrete, but I liked to walk down the hallway and hear different instruments. I peeked in one window and saw a girl working a French horn. In another, four people were singing a cappella. When I looked into the third room—Terrible Charles! He was in profile, sitting at an upright piano, his fingers pouring over the keys. The music was dark, complicated rippling up and down in a tense tempo.
“Wh
at?” I heard Yessica whisper loudly. She peered over my shoulder, digging her chin into it. “Rachmaninov.”
“He’s good, right?” I whispered.
Charles stopped playing abruptly—we both jumped—but apparently he had made an error. He leaned forward and looked more closely at his sheet music, then flipped it back. We pulled away from the window before we could be spotted.
“Do you want a tissue?” Yessica asked. “To clean up all that drool.”
“Oh, come on. He’s beautiful. Piano players are the best type of musicians—all the brooding without any of the douchiness of guitar players.”
She giggled. We continued on to the SAC and waited in a long line for coffee. She got an Americano and I got a mocha because I needed to come up with a list of at least ten potential interrogation sites tonight. Also, I had half a novel to read for my lit class.
We headed back to the dorm, but as soon as we opened the door that lead into Albertson, we ran smack into Charles and his girlfriend. He had his sheet music tucked under his arm and she held a bunch of his campaign posters and a roll of masking tape. God, she was so basic it was painful to see them together. She was pretty, but not that pretty, like a third-tier character on a CW TV show. “Oh, hey,” he said, “You’re, uh...” He did that politician thing like my name was on the tip of his tongue when it probably wasn’t.
“Chloe.”
He reached to shake my hand, revealing a Jaeger-LeCoultre watch. Not bad. “This is Kristen, my girlfriend slash campaign manager.” She smiled. Her eyes were baby blue and she had on the most innocuous shade of pink lipstick. I introduced Yessica. “You all were invited to my party, right? It’s not an election party,” he said, smiling. “Technically an election party would be illegal according to our student bylaws. My parents are having a fundraising thing, but we can party adjacent to it.”
