Last Will and Testament

by Dahlia Adler

  My skin grows cold and clammy at his words. “And then what would happen?”

  “I’m not sure.” His shoulders drop, and my stomach drops with them. “I can’t afford next semester without it.”

  “It won’t come to that,” I say with confidence I don’t feel. Jesus, this is so messed up. “You told him. We’ll be fine.”

  Connor just nods.

  “What? What aren’t you telling me?”

  He sighs deeply. “Nothing. We’ll worry about it if it comes down to it.”

  “You think I’m gonna let it go at that? No, thanks, I’ve seen enough shoes drop this year. Tell me.”

  When his gaze finally meets mine again, I can tell it’s worse than I thought. “I need to be a student here to stay in the country, Lizzie. If not, I’m gonna have to go back to Canada eventually.”

  “No,” I say before I can stop myself. “No, that’s not possible. Not after all this.” I sound stupid and childish, but I can’t believe this could be it, after everything. “Who’s gonna care that you’re three fucking hours over the border, Connor? Seriously.”

  “I don’t think we want to find out, given that taking part in illegal activity is just about the worst thing you can do for Ty and Max right now. This is all bad enough. If your social worker finds out, she might decide this in an ‘unfit’ environment for the boys, and then they’ll be sent to foster care whether you feel capable or not.”

  I open my mouth to argue, then shut it. Goddammit, I hate when he’s right. But I still refuse to give up. “We’ll figure it out,” I promise him. “I’m not going to let you or the boys get fucked over. Trust me.”

  Whatever he’s about to respond, he’s cut off by the ringing of his cell phone, and whether it’s his mother or Professor Ozgur, I know he’s going to take it. And he’s going to walk out. And I don’t know when I’ll see him again. The realization rips me in two.

  “I’ll call you tomorrow,” he promises as he pulls out his phone. Then he kisses my cheek and is out the door with an “Allo, Maman.”

  I stare at the door for a long time after he leaves, until Max emerges from the boys’ room and asks for a snack. It takes everything in me to shift back into parenting mode, and from there into studying mode. And it hits me, as I open up my Stats textbook and watch the words and graphs blur, that this may be all there is for me for the foreseeable future. That this—balancing parenting and work, alone—may be my entire life for the next eleven years.

  There is no way I’m going to let that happen. Whatever I have to do, whomever I have to beg, I’m going to fix this. I’m going to make sure Connor stays. And I’m going to fix what’s left of all of our shitty lives.

  I wake up genuinely determined to kick ass and take names, and stay that way for about three seconds until I glance at my phone. The whole thing is lit up with texts from Cait, which I worry is a sign of doom. Usually, Saturdays are filled with the joy that comes with no class, not having to drive the boys to school…not having to do much of anything.

  But there’s clearly not going to be anything relaxing about this one.

  I can’t handle whatever she has to say without coffee, so I slip out of my room and offer up a silent prayer of thanks that the boys are still asleep as I set about getting some caffeine into my system. As soon as my mug is full, I check.

  How’d it go last night?? says the first one.

  Then, Was he mad??

  Oh, right. I’d never actually gotten back to Cait after Connor left last night. Maybe there isn’t anything new and terrible, then. Maybe—

  I jump up as the ringer sounds and Connor’s face lights up the screen. Immediately, I press a key to accept the call. “Hey.”

  “Have you checked your e-mail yet this morning?”

  There’s no missing the pain in his voice. “No.” My own voice is barely a whisper, and I retreat from the small dining table into my room, start up my laptop, and log in to my e-mail. “Sophie?”

  “Dummy e-mail account, but I can only imagine.”

  “How bad?” I ask, narrowing my eyes at my newest e-mail, which says “Open Me” and is from a none-too-flattering address I’ve never seen before.

  “Bad.”

  “How can it be that bad? We’ve barely even done anything here, and she—” I freeze as the picture pops up. It’s dark, and though it isn’t obvious it’s us, it isn’t obvious it isn’t. More importantly, I know exactly when and where this is. Because I recognize the grass outside my building. The grass where I sank to my knees in frustration that very first night Connor came for dinner.

  The grass where Connor held me against a tree, stripped off my underwear, and made me come so hard I saw stars that had nothing to do with the clear night.

  The picture is only a blurry still of us—the back of my dark head, the sleeve of Connor’s shirt—but it’s the two-line e-mail that has my entire body growing cold.

  This is only one frame of the video. Now get the fuck out of Radleigh or the entire thing goes to your professor and your social worker.

  “It’s from my building’s security camera,” I say, touching a finger to the screen. “Holy shit. How did she even get this?”

  “That video is gonna have a timestamp, Lizzie.” Connor’s voice is shaking, and it churns my stomach. “I told them we just got involved. If they see this, it won’t help that I came clean about any of it.”

  I’m listening to him, but I can’t stop staring at the words your social worker. Could she really have that information? Could she really do this? If this video were deemed evidence of the boys being in an unfit environment, I don’t have a shot in hell at the guardianship proceedings coming up next month. Hell, I don’t even know if I’d get to keep the boys through Christmas.

  Either way, there’s only one thing to do—I have to leave. “She won.” My mouth is so dry I can barely get the words out. “I don’t know how, or why she’s pushing this so hard, but she won. I can’t stay here and risk this getting out. I have to go home.”

  “And who’s to say that if you do, she won’t just release it anyway?”

  “What else can I do, Connor? Seriously, if you have any other ideas—”

  “I don’t,” he bites out, and I know his rage isn’t at me, but it stings all the same. “You need to reason with this girl. That’s all there is. Please.”

  I nod, then realize he can’t see me, and say okay even though the idea of going another round with Sophie is about as desirable as walking into my Byzantine final naked. Neither of us is in the mood to chat, and we quietly promise to call each other later before hanging up.

  Max wakes up while I’m still trying to decide on an outfit that combines “Feel bad enough for me to stop this psychotic crap” and “Shove it up your ass and die.” Of course he decides he doesn’t like any of our breakfast options, which makes me snap, which makes him cry, which wakes up Tyler, which puts him in Maximum Asshole Mode, which makes me stalk back into my room and throw on the first pair of jeans and sweatshirt my hands land on, just so I can get the hell out of here. I childishly tell the boys I don’t care whether they eat or not, grab my puffy coat, and storm out like I’m actually the youngest Brandt sibling.

  But as I turn toward the direction of the parking lot, I realize there’s somewhere I should be stopping before I deal with Sophie.

  And it makes me sick that that somewhere is in a place my brothers and I have been calling home.

  I do an about-face and walk to the security office, my stomach turning at the thought of finding the person inside who not only watched a tape of me fooling around with Connor, but put it into the hands of my worst enemy. It’s hard to imagine the heavyset woman who answers my knock has had anything to do with any of this, but I’m still wary when I ask if I can come in to discuss some security footage from the month of October.

  “We only save footage for a month,” she says, her voice tinged with impatience as she blocks my entry into the office. “If you were robbed—”


  “I wasn’t. I…can we please discuss this in private?”

  She takes the longest minute of my life to decide, and then finally steps aside to let me in.

  No point beating around the bush, so I wait until she closes the door behind us and say, “There’s footage of me, from October, doing…things.”

  “Things?”

  I’m not easily embarrassed, but the way her eyebrow rises like it’s being pulled up by a fishhook is definitely doing flame-y things to my face. Then I think of Sophie’s e-mail, of Connor’s shaky voice, and I push forward. “Someone turned security footage from this building into a sex tape, starring me, and I’d really like to speak to that person.” The word “Now” lingers on the tip of my tongue, but I swallow it back into the lump in my throat.

  I expect her to fire questions at me—how I know it came from here, how I know about it at all, why I was doing sex-tape-worthy things in full view of the security camera—but she just sighs. I guess all the answers are obvious, and this woman doesn’t seem dumb. Instead, she asks me for the date of the night in question and pulls out a binder as I give it to her.

  “One of the new guys was on that night,” she says in a way that might be intended to sound apologetic; I’m not really sure. “I’ll talk to him.”

  “Ma’am, with all due respect, this is the literal definition of an emergency. I can’t wait for you to set up a meeting with this guy and then get back to me.”

  “What would you have me do, ma’am? Give you his name and phone number? That would be a huge violation.”

  “As opposed to handing out a tape of me, taken outside my own home? Are you kidding me right now?”

  “Correct me if I’m wrong, but the only way this tape could’ve caught you is if you were already out in public,” she says, narrowing her eyes. “So pardon me if I don’t understand why you suddenly care about propriety.”

  The words are a slap in the face. She’s right, but that isn’t the point. Making a mistake in the past shouldn’t mean you deserve to have it haunt you forever. Not when there are things that can be done to fix them. “Because a career and the custody of my two little brothers depends on it. Please.”

  There go those eyebrows again, and she studies my face as if trying to tell whether I’m making this all up. Finally, she sighs again and says to sit tight. Then she picks up the phone and places a call. For a moment, I’m terrified no one will pick up on the other end, but then she’s telling someone to come in to the office ASAP, and when she hangs up, she says he’ll be here in half an hour.

  “What am I supposed to do until then?”

  “Go home,” she says. “Leave me your phone number, and I’ll call you once I’ve spoken with him.”

  “Wait. I can’t even be here?”

  She gives me a look like I’m an idiot, and I suppose I should’ve seen that coming. I leave her my number, ask her to please get in touch with me as soon as possible, and then let myself out.

  I don’t want to go home yet, but I don’t want to be far when the guy shows up, so I busy myself by going grocery shopping at the corner store. As I toss bacon, frozen waffles, and other things it probably makes me a terrible guardian to be feeding the boys into my basket, I check my phone obsessively, waiting for the screen to light up.

  It doesn’t. I text Cait back while I check out, then slide my phone into my pocket so I’ll stop staring at it.

  It’s not even 10:00 a.m. and I already know it’s gonna be a very long day.

  • • •

  Unsurprisingly, when I do get the call from security as I’m frying bacon and eggs for Ty and Max with jittery hands, it’s not particularly informative. “He swears he didn’t hand off that footage,” she says.

  I keep my voice low, though Ty and Max are distracted by the TV anyway. “Does it feed to anywhere else?” I ask.

  “No, just to this office.”

  “Does anyone else go over it after the livefeed?”

  “Not unless someone’s reported an incident.”

  “And did anyone?”

  “Let me check.”

  You didn’t already? I want to scream as my knuckles whiten around the phone while I listen to her flip pages. Resisting the urge to go off on this lady is seriously draining the last of my reserves of grace.

  “Hmm, actually, it looks like someone did report an incident—a possible break-in. Suspect a Caucasian male about six feet, a hundred and sixty pounds, brown hair…”

  Connor. “Can you tell me the name of the person who reported the incident?”

  “Now, you know I couldn’t—oh.”

  “Oh? What’s ‘oh?’”

  “You’ve never made any inquiries about this before today?”

  “No, I haven’t; I didn’t know there was anything to inquire about until today. Why?”

  She takes a deep breath. “Because according to this, the incident was reported by one Elizabeth Brandt.”

  • • •

  I run out of the house so fast I actually have to dash back in to shut off the stove and grab my coat and gloves, then yell back to Ty to serve himself and Max. By the time I reach the Epsilon Rho house, I’m sweating in the puffy down, despite the fact that it’s below freezing outside.

  I rap on the door so hard I think my knuckles might bleed.

  And I’m not at all prepared for Sophie being the one to answer the door.

  Her lips curl into a smirk the second she registers who’s darkening her doorstep. “Come to say goodbye in person?”

  I yank her outside, ignoring the fact that she’s not remotely dressed for the weather, and pull the door closed behind us. “What the—”

  “You fucking psychopath!”

  She stops. Freezes. Shivers. I could not give less of a shit. For once, Sophie actually looks a little frightened. And she should. She quickly tries to mask it with bold irreverence, but there was no missing it, and it fucking feeds me right now.

  The fact that when she opens her mouth, no sound comes out, doesn’t hurt.

  “Don’t. Say. A word,” I seethe, spit flying. “You called the security office at my home and pretended to be me so you could illegally obtain footage of me and turn it into a sex tape? I realize you have extremely limited brain capacity, Springer, but you do understand that custody of my orphan brothers is at stake, right? And your stupid petty shit over a guy who obviously never liked you that much to begin with isn’t even a drop in the fucking relevance bucket compared to that.”

  “Oh, enough with the martyred orphan act.” She rolls her eyes. “As if you’re such a victim. If you care so much about your brothers, maybe you shouldn’t have been screwing a teacher in the first place, outside, where anyone could see you.”

  “Except only one person did see, and that would’ve been the end of it if you weren’t so intent on destroying my life. Don’t put this on me. I tried to apologize to you.”

  She barks out a seal-like laugh, but she’s so cold it comes out in shaky puffs of air. “Please! As if that meant shit.”

  “What the hell else could I possibly have offered you at that point?” I demand. “What could I have done to make it better? Nothing would’ve been good enough for you except destroying my life, and let’s be honest, Soph—you’re not worth it.”

  Her eyes flash with sparks, but my entire body is brimming with flames of rage, and I’m not stepping back, not for a second. “I don’t know how you knew to get that tape, or how you got a copy of it, but if you even think of doing anything with it other than destroying it, I will uncover every detail and have you afuckingrrested.”

  “Oh, please, like you’re in any position to threaten me. This is insane, and I’m going inside.”

  She turns back to the door, but I yank her back around and hold her there, my fingertips digging into the soft, cold flesh of her arms. “Delete the tape, Sophie. Obliterate it. Now.”

  “If you had any shot of me doing you any favors before, you’ve certainly blown that now,” she says through cha
ttering teeth. “You know how I knew to ask for that tape, you slut? I came to your complex that night. I was stupid enough to let Trevor talk me into thinking maybe you were lying about everything you said at the diner. I wanted the truth, from you, with no one else around. And then what do I see when I pull up but you waving goodbye to your TA, who’s sporting wood like a thirteen-year-old kid with a Victoria’s Secret catalog.

  “So yeah, I knew you were just enough of a stupid skank to have done something right there, and saw outdoor security cameras, and I took a shot there might be a recording. And I was right. And maybe if you didn’t live in such a shithole, you’d have security guards who aren’t both painfully stupid and hard up for cash. I wasn’t even sure what I was gonna do with it until that day I saw you at the doctor, but now? I sure as hell do.”

  She pulls her arm back, and this time, I let her. “So. All your mysteries solved, except for the big one: How do you even live with yourself?”

  Then she lets herself back into her big, fancy house, leaving me alone in the cold.

  • • •

  Connor’s going to kill me. He asked me to do one thing—to talk to Sophie like a freaking human—and I couldn’t even do it. But it’s not my fault that she’s not human.

  All I can do is pray that someone who can get to her is.

  When I ring the bell a few doors down at the SigPsi house, I’m not sure who I expect to answer, but I’m beyond relieved when it turns out to be Doug Leach. “Lizzie,” he says, puzzled but not unkind. “Did not expect to see you here.”

  “Did not expect to see me here either. Trust me. Is Trevor here?”

  “Up in his room.”

  Doug steps back to let me in, but the thought of being back up there, of reliving that night, gives me pause, and I linger on the doorstep, even though it’s freezing as balls and I’ve already been out way too long, with Sophie. Finally, I take a cautious step over the threshold, more to escape the wind than anything else, but I don’t move beyond that, even when Doug closes the door behind me.