"Alright, guys, I know this is ridiculous, okay?" Emily burst out. "I have no idea what that was about, and Jess, I have no idea why he hates you so much."
"I can be hateful, but I think all I did this afternoon was not act like he was God’s gift to the universe when he started telling all of his stories."
"I think you embarrassed him," Richard said gently. "Sometimes it doesn’t cost you anything to tell someone what they want to hear."
"And you’re the expert at that, aren’t you?"
"Don’t fight, guys," Emily said wearily. "He’s not worth it."
Jessie sat down. "Does that mean you’re going to come to your senses and dump the fool?"
"It means I’m going to talk to him. I was going to talk to him tomorrow, and then I was going to talk to him tonight. Now I’ll talk to him as soon as I see him."
It took about an hour, but Emily finally relaxed. Richard and Jessie treated her to more stories of their misspent childhoods, most of which made her laugh. At twelve there was still no word from Drew. Emily called, but all her calls went unanswered. At one, she was ready to call it a night. Richard offered to drive her. Jessie immediately ran up the stairs, mumbling how tired she was. Richard shook his head. "Subtle, isn’t she?"
They were halfway home when Emily asked Richard something that had been bothering her. "Did you ever meet Sophie?"
"Sophie Gorman? Yes. I actually met Drew through her."
That was different. "I thought you met Drew through the Solar Car Team?"
"Actually, it’s the other way around. I’m the one that brought him there. He was interested for a little while, but then he dropped off."
"For co-op, you mean? I thought he was going back when classes started again."
Richard was silent for a minute. "Once again, Emily, you’ve caught me at a sleep-deprived disadvantage. My memory fails if I stay up past my bedtime for too long."
"I’ll be sure to get you some gingko bilboa the next time I see it."
Richard insisted on walking her to her building. The lights were out. "You have no idea where he is?" Richard asked as they climbed up the dark stairs.
"Not a clue. He’s never done this before. I hope..." She didn’t want to finish the sentence.
"What?"
"I hope it isn’t his ex-roommates. They didn’t sound like the nicest people."
"What did they do?"
"Didn’t Drew tell you?" Emily lowered her voice. "He helped get them busted for dealing last quarter? That’s why he had to move to this off-campus apartment from the university."
Emily couldn’t see Richard’s face well through the dark. "Is that what happened?"
"I think that’s what he said."
Emily opened the door and turned on the light. She stopped.
"What’s wrong?"
Maybe she was tired too, but something was wrong with the room. Everything was in its place, even the things that were out of place when she and Drew had rushed out earlier in the day. So Drew had come back to the apartment. But... there was something by the brick near the fireplace that looked different, and she didn’t know what. "Not sure, but since we don’t have too much of value here, let’s assume that if someone wanted to rob us, they’ve already come and gone."
"You assume that, I’ll go check." Richard darted into the rooms, turning on all the lights, and found nothing. "All clear."
"Thanks for that, and thanks for tonight. Sorry everything took such a wild turn- twice."
Richard put his hand on her shoulder. "None of it was your fault. And I’ll have you know Jessie and I will be happy to eat your runny strawberry shortcake anytime you want to make it for us."
Emily smiled and put her hand on Richard’s. "You’re a good friend, and Jessie’s lucky to have you."
Richard smiled. For a moment, Emily thought that he was going to kiss her. Instead he squeezed her hand and walked to the door. "Off to bed now, and tell Drew to give me a call."
Emily closed the door after him. This was one of the most bizarre nights of her life.
CHAPTER 36
When Emily woke up at seven the next morning, Drew still hadn’t come home. How worried should she be?
She made herself some oatmeal and then grabbed one of the outlines she was working on. Finally, time to study, but now she was distracted. Still, she forced a good three hours of work on the first draft before she decided to do some yoga. She wanted to find her bliss.
An hour later she was more annoyed than she had been before. Her inner voice was silent, almost as if it refused to talk to her. She tried to relax, but every time she got there her thoughts would drift back to Drew. Finally it did have something to say. What are you doing? She sat up, mad at yoga, Drew and herself. She was going to have the talk as soon as the son of a bitch walked through the door.
Emily jumped up at four o’clock when the door opened, ready to rip into Drew for last night, for the library, for everything, but she stopped as soon as she saw his face. He obviously hadn’t slept at all.
"What is going on?"
"Oh, Emily." Drew pulled her into a tight hug. His odor was very strong, but after a moment Emily hugged him back.
"I was worried about you. Richard was worried about you- call him. What were you doing?"
"The whole system was ready to crash, it was awful. The techs thought they had it under control, but then they had to call the whole team in. I wasn’t the only one up all night. Literally, we just got out about thirty minutes ago."
He was sitting down now. "That sucks. But you could have called or sent me a text to let me know."
"I know, I’m sorry. I kept thinking I’d be done soon. I thought I’d said where I was going to be last night before I left, I’m sorry."
"Yeah, I guess you were a little distracted," she said after a moment. "Why don’t you get some sleep?"
"Will you come with me?" he pleaded.
"Sorry," she said firmly. "I really need to work on these papers."
"Can you at least stay here and do it? I promise, I’ll be sleeping." Emily nodded. She wasn’t worried. She dug into her papers and started to feel, if only for a few hours, like her old self again.
CHAPTER 37
"So what happened?" Zainab said as soon as she saw Emily on Monday.
"With dinner?"
"No. Did you talk to him? Did you leave him? Have you regained your senses yet?"
"Uh, no, but I have a very good excuse. A few of them, actually." Emily told Zainab all about dinner with Richard and Jessie and Drew’s strange exit and subsequent return.
Zainab shook her head. "And what have we learned?"
"That I should have talked to him on Thursday like I promised?"
"You don’t think we’re past the talking point?"
"I know he’s an ass, alright? I know he’s been treating people badly, including me. And I feel like he’s trying to dodge me now. I’m not going to let him. I’ll talk to him tonight, I promise. And don’t you say another word, Z, unless you are also ready to stop running after Joe like His Girl Friday."
"At least Joe is nice to my friends."
"Of course he is. He wants us to help him be the next President."
"He’s also not crazy."
"He’s pimping himself out to be President of the SGC. I question his judgment."
"Emily, talk to Drew tonight, or I’m talking to him for you!"
"Okay, okay." Emily wasn’t going to pretend to resist.
~~~
Emily got back to the apartment at five. Tonight, she really did need to go to the library to get a few more notes for the second draft of another paper she was working on.
She told Drew she needed to study by herself and couldn’t afford any distractions.
"Mm hmm." He nodded. "How do I know that you’re not going to meet someone if I’m not there?"
She let that sink in for a moment. "Excuse me?"
"How do I know that you’re not going to meet someone if I’m not there?"
"Jesus Christ! Is that why you’ve been coming with me? You think I’m meeting someone behind your back?"
"Why else wouldn’t you want me to come with you?" He was so calm.
"I will say this slowly for you. I. Have. To. Study. I have a draft due tomorrow, and I need to get it done. I don’t like working this close to a deadline, but your insistence on following me everywhere hasn’t left me much of a choice. I am not meeting anyone except the person who wrote the criticism I have to read. Got it?"
"So why don’t you want me to come with you?"
Emily hit the table with her open hand. "Because I do not want to pass notes, hold hands, whisper or have to tell you I missed you! I need to get this done, and I can’t do that if I have to take care of you tonight!"
"I thought you were smart. Why can’t you get your work done between classes, before I come home? Maybe you should spend less time socializing and more time working."
"How dare you?" She was shouting now. "Did you not notice that I am taking five classes, not four? I don’t have as much free time during the day to study. And since you’re so rude to my friends, if I want to see them when you’re not around, that is just what I am going to do."
"Okay, then. So which of your friends are you going to see if I don’t come?"
Emily snapped. "You crazy freak!" She grabbed her backpack and went to the door. Drew stood up and blocked her exit with one of his long arms.
"We’re not done with this conversation."
"If you don’t open this door right now, I am going to scream for help. And then when you do finally let me go- tonight, tomorrow, whenever- I am going to file a police report. And you know what this is? I think it’s kidnapping. Unless you’re not going to let me leave? Are you going to kill me, Drew? Are you going to shove my body somewhere? Bad plan, because it may take her a few days, but Zainab’s going to notice if I don’t check in. And she knows where you live. As does Jessie. As does Richard." She didn’t let his gaze go. "So are you going to let me go now, or do you want to make this messy?"
His eyes were angry, but he stepped away. Emily quickly flung the door open and flew down the stairs, then sucked up every last bit of the cold air. She dialed Zainab as soon as she could get her hands to stop shaking. "Pick up, pick up!" No answer. Emily’s antipathy for Joe was starting to grow into outright hatred. Should she call Jessie? What could Jessie do? Should she call Richard? There were a bunch of things Richard could do, but Emily didn’t want to drag him into this embarrassing, dysfunctional weirdness.
"Emily!" Her feet felt heavy. Drew was running after her. She could run, but her backpack was heavy and Drew was taller. She couldn’t move anyway.
"What are you doing?" she said as Drew reached her.
"I’m sorry."
"I don’t want to play anymore. And like I said, I need to study." She turned and walked toward the library, but he was right behind her.
"I promise I won’t say anything, you won’t even know I’m there."
"You can’t even trust me to go study, much less see my friends. That’s sick!"
"Do you know what it’s like for me every day when I’m not with you?" His face softened into desperation. "Don’t you think I know I’m out of your league? Who could blame you if you picked up and left me someday?"
"If you can’t trust me, if you can’t let me do the things I need to do, then this doesn’t work. I am not evaluating my options. I’m just trying to get out of school. How do you not get that?"
Drew’s eyes filled with tears. "Please let me come with you. I promise I’ll behave."
Fighting with him when he was this pathetic made her feel like an ogre. And people were looking at them. "Fine," Emily whispered. So they walked to the library slowly, while he held her to him. Once on the steps, he needed a few minutes to collect himself, but finally, at six, they were able to go in. The only seats they could find were near a big guy Emily thought must have been a football player and a group of five girls she guessed were freshmen.
Drew let Emily put in about two hours of work before he started bothering her. First it was little notes, then tickling, and finally whispers. She tried to put him off and shush him, but he persisted. Finally, Emily laughed at a few of his jokes and absently nodded through some of his stories, hoping he wouldn’t give her a quiz like he sometimes did. She had just finished an "mm hmm" when she saw a shadow looming over Drew.
It was the football player. He bent over Drew. "Listen, not all of us are here to talk and play footsy. If you can’t shut up, then get out."
"Okay, I-I’m sorry," Drew stammered out in a small voice and the other man, not even looking at Emily, clomped past the girls and back to his seat.
For the second time that night, Emily was shocked. "Are you going to let him talk to you like that?"
"What do you want me to do, get in a fight with him?"
She remembered him holding the door closed three hours ago and how he'd talked to her and Jessie on Saturday night. "Of course not." She stood up and marched past the girls to the football player.
"Excuse me," she said in a voice as brave as she could manage. The man looked up.
"Yeah?"
"Yes, I’m sorry if my boyfriend and I were making too much noise just now, but from now on, if you have something to say to either of us, I’d appreciate it if you were just a little more polite." She turned back to her seat. She had just gotten past the girls when she got an answer.
"Drop dead, bitch." She saw Drew, ashen and immobile. She saw the girls, some of whom were suppressing a giggle, some of whom looked scared. Emily turned back to the man.
"Oooh!"
He stood up. "How about I show you how to be quiet?"
"Yeah, I’d like that. Why don’t you show me what a big boy you are?"
A security guard walked by before the jock could make good on his threat. He looked at everyone, and then addressed himself to Emily. "Is everything alright here?"
"I’m not sure, sir. What do you think, big guy?"
He looked at her, then the guard. "Yes, sir. Everything is fine."
"Good. Let’s keep it that way."
Emily sat back in her seat, opened her book and didn’t say a word. She didn’t have anything to say to Drew.
A moment later, she heard a flurry of papers being shoved into bags, giggles and then a bunch of feet shuffling off. Someone tossed a note into Emily’s lap. He’s an asshole, anyway. Yep, that pretty much said it all. She put the note on the desk. Drew picked it up, but she didn’t care if he had anything to say about it.
Less than fifteen minutes later, she heard more shuffling of papers. Drew turned around. "He’s gone!"
"That’s nice, but you know what? I’m not done yet." Drew, for once, didn’t say anything.
~~~
"So?" Zainab said as soon as she met Emily in the Student Center the next day.
"I don’t think I’ll ever have to worry about Drew coming with me to the library again."
Zainab gasped several times during Emily’s story. "He didn’t even stand up after that asshole called you a bitch?" she asked when Emily was done.
"He didn’t need to. And I don’t care."
"You know you could have been really hurt, right? That was a pretty stupid thing to risk."
"I’m so fed up, Zainab. I’ve been lied to, stood up and manipulated and that idiot was stupid enough to disrespect me to my face. Believe me, I’m not the one who had something to worry about."
Zainab patted her on the shoulder. "Remind me not to get on your bad side."
CHAPTER 38
Mitch checked his email after every class, right before he went to bed, and as soon as he woke up. He also called his parents twice a day. "Mitch, it hasn’t come yet. You know we’re going to call you as soon as we get it."
"But sometimes Mom forgets to check the mail."
"She doesn’t anymore."
That day, his parents made the call. "Son, I’m very sorry to tell you-" Mitch f
elt a pit open up his stomach- "that you’ve been condemned to spending the rest of your life lying for people who don’t deserve it." Silence. "You’re in! Congratulations, you’re going to law school!"
"Yes!" Mitch shouted so loudly that almost everyone on the campus could hear him, or so he thought. "Okay, Dad, I’m going to call you back later. Whoo!" He threw open his door and ran into the hallway.
Martin was the first person he found. "I’m going to law school, man!"
"Oh, bummer, sorry to hear that." Martin laughed, then high-fived him. "Where?"
"The one back home." The undergraduate program may not have had the best reputation, but the law school had a very good one.
"And you’re sure this is what you want?"
"This is the only thing I’ve wanted since high school. This is what I went to college for."
"So what are we going to do to celebrate?"
Mitch grinned. "I was hoping to find Kyra."
Martin groaned. "You do that, then let me know when you want to have some fun that’s actually fun. I think I saw her near the North Hall about an hour ago."
Mitch half-skipped toward the North Hall, not troubling himself about why she would have gone there when all of their classes were in the South or West Hall. She must have been visiting one of the dorms there.
He walked through the halls and thought he caught some strange looks from some of the Danish students. He had gotten almost to the end of the hall when he heard groaning. He was about to move on when he heard a familiar moan. He stopped in his tracks.
"Uli, you do that really well."
"Thank you. Now I think there was something you did last time I particularly liked."
Mitch moved without thinking. He knocked on the door. "Who is it?" Uli asked.
Mitch knocked again. And again. Uli opened the door a crack. Mitch pushed it open and saw Kyra scream as she covered herself with a sheet. "Oh, my God!"
She cowered under the covers and started to whimper. Mitch looked at Uli, who looked like he had no idea what all of the fuss was about. "No problem," Mitch said. "She’s all yours." He forced himself to walk away, one foot in front of the other.
The Smartest Girl in the Room Page 17
