by Ann M. Noser
I frown. “But if you’re still here at Christmas, I’m going to have to bring you home with me.”
“Oh yeah. I definitely want to meet your folks.” Jake grins mischievously and flips through the menu.
“Why? Oh no. You’re not going to pretend to be my boyfriend, are you?”
“Why else would you be bringing me home?”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Panic courses through me at the thought of introducing Jake to my parents.
“Why not?”
“I never thought that when I finally brought a guy home to meet my parents, he would be a dead guy.”
“Sucks to be you, I guess. What are you so worried about anyway? This is going to be fun.” Jake smiles in a way that scares me.
he weeks fly past. Soon Christmas break looms on the horizon.
Abby starts to wear stretchy pants and loose-fitting tops. Both of us are busy wrapping up classes, working our on-campus jobs, and making the necessary arrangements for the move to the apartments. Abby arranges some financial aid to help with her situation.
Whenever I ask if she wants to talk about the baby, she changes the subject. If I bring up the issue of contacting the baby’s father, she silences me with a mind-your-own-damn-business stare. I feel like a coward for not pushing harder but know all too well how important it is sometimes to keep your own secrets private.
After the last Zoology lecture before finals, I rush to my tutoring job. Amanda the Gorgeous leans over her “hot” boyfriend Eric at my usual table. I spot the last remaining copy of Sam’s old essay in her French manicured hand a mere second before she stashes it in her fashionable shoulder bag.
I point at her expensive purse. “You’re not supposed to take those out of here.”
“What are you going to do? Tell on me? I’ve got a paper due tomorrow afternoon for British Lit, and I don’t have time to do it. Besides, it isn’t going to hurt anyone if I use this old paper.” Amanda smiles at me like she wants to be my friend.
I know the young British Lit teacher is new to campus. If such a pretty student shows up with an exceptionally good paper, he might not question it. He probably doesn’t even know the tutoring lab keeps old term papers on hand for students to examine. Even if he came in here to look, there aren’t any more copies of Sam’s paper left except for the one back in my room, along with all of Sam’s clothes, which Jake refuses to wear.
“I think you should write your own paper,” I warn her, but she doesn’t seem to notice. Or care.
“I will write my own paper. I’ll just use this to help.” Her lip liner has been perfectly applied. At least she works hard at something.
I hope the predatory flare of my nostrils won’t give me away. Secretly, I want Amanda to copy Sam’s paper. I want to set her up to fail. I want her Glamour magazine lifestyle to come crashing down upon her invisible tiara.
“Go ahead, but you might get caught.” I try to sound innocent.
With a swirl of her long, glossy hair, Amanda struts off, taking Sam’s paper with her.
I start tutoring her boyfriend.
“You’re not going to tell the tutoring lab manager, are you?” Eric asks.
“Of course not.” I have something much more devious in mind, something Sam wouldn’t even want me to do.
The next afternoon, I follow Amanda and hide down the hall from her Brit Lit class, waiting for it to end.
Amanda leaves the room first, with everyone else flooding out in her wake. After she disappears around a corner, I sneak in against the throng and drop Sam’s paper into the box on the young professor’s desk.
“Hi, are you in this class?” he asks.
I wink at him and leave before he asks anything more.
I figure that if Amanda hasn’t copied Sam’s paper word for word, she won’t get in trouble. If she plagiarized him, then she deserves what she gets. Not everyone might agree with me, but I have many reasons for doing this. I just can’t explain them all, not even to myself.
Amanda storms into the tutoring office the very next day. Her cheeks blaze fire engine red. They match her pointy shoes.
“I can’t believe what you did!” she yells.
I just smile.
“Why did you do this?” Her eyes fill with tears. “What have I ever done to you?”
“Don’t fake cry with me,” I warn. “I’m not stupid enough to fall for it. It’s your fault this happened. You knew whose paper that was.”
“What difference does that make? I took his paper because I knew it would be good. I needed that A.” Her reasoning remains empty of any concern for anyone but herself.
Hands shaking, I stand up and yell in her face. “How could you use Sam’s work after what you said to him last year? Don’t you even feel sorry about that? Don’t you even feel the least bit responsible for what happened? Sam went off and killed himself after you rejected him! How can you be so heartless?”
Amanda blanches. “How could you possibly know about that? I never told anyone. I never thought he would kill himself.” She doesn’t really sound sorry. She just sounds surprised.
Tony, the tutoring manager, separates the two of us. “Ladies, ladies…you shouldn’t be shouting in here.” He wipes sweat off his brow.
“Don’t worry, Tony,” I assure him, narrowing my eyes at Amanda. “We’re done here.”
“Oh.” He glances at the phone across the room on his desk. “Then I guess I kind of overreacted.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“I already called the campus police,” Tony admits.
“Oh no!” I groan.
A short time later, Officer Walker strolls in. He takes Amanda away to question first. Then he brings me into an empty room where we can speak privately.
“Emma, why are you always in trouble? It’s not my job to break up chick fights, but that tutoring manager of yours is a Nervous Nelly, so I’m here.” He sighs. “Do you have anything you want to say?”
“I’m sick of people cheating off those who do all the work. I warned Amanda not to use the paper, but she wouldn’t listen to me. She deserves what she gets.” I slump in my seat.
Officer Walker raises his eyebrows. “Amanda claims she took the last copy of Sam Metzger’s paper in the file cabinet. She says she double checked. That guy who runs the tutoring lab agrees with her. There were no other copies. So where did you get the copy you gave the professor?”
“There used to be another copy in the lab.”
“So you took the other copy? Isn’t that against the rules? Aren’t you being a little hypocritical?”
“I didn’t take it. Someone else did. I just knew where they left it.”
“So, why did you only go after Amanda if they both did the same thing wrong?”
“This other person didn’t copy the paper.”
Officer Walker shakes his head. “We’re just spinning in circles. What aren’t you telling me? And what is your obsession with Sam Metzger?”
I want to ask him: what is your obsession with me?
Someone knocks, and Jake steps in. “Pardon me, Officer Walker. I was just coming to meet Emma for dinner, and I heard what happened. I’ve been listening in at the door. I think I can answer your question.”
Jake glances at me before continuing. “Sometimes I study in the tutoring lab, and I must’ve shoved that paper in my bag without realizing it. I tend to lose focus when I’m hungry. Then I left that paper in Emma’s room, and she must’ve found it when she packed for moving out of the dorms. I’m sorry for the confusion, but that’s what happened.”
His story sounds plausible, but will Officer Walker believe him?
“Nice to see you again, Samuel Jacob Anderson.” Charlie Walker enunciates each syllable of the name a little too distinctly for my comfort. “So glad you decided to move to town.”
I look from one to the other, wondering what is going on, then remember they met that first day when Jake disappeared from my room.
�
�You’ve got to start paying attention.” Charlie laughs, but his laugher doesn’t sound genuine. “Just because you saved that sleepwalker’s life, you think you’re somebody special. Oh, one more thing before you go, Emma.” The policeman clears his throat. “How did you know what Amanda said to Sam just before he jumped off the bridge? She swears she never told anyone. None of Sam’s friends knew about this when I questioned them last May. They only knew he fretted over getting into medical school.”
Charlie Walker leans forward. “So, tell me, how did you know the details about his last conversation here on earth?”
Jake isn’t going to be able to talk me out of this one.
realize Officer Walker has only been playing with me before this.
“I’m a police officer. I’m not in academia―I don’t care about who took papers and what they did with them.” Officer Walker pauses, making me even more nervous than before. “Emma, you visited Sam Metzger’s mother and his grave. Somehow you have access to his mail and old school papers. And now you know the details of a conversation his closest friends knew nothing about.”
Jake and I exchange glances.
“Sam Metzger didn’t leave a note. He didn’t tell anyone else about Amanda. How come you know about this?”
I hold my breath and try to think up a lie. The night he went back into the river, Sam confided to me every single detail of this doomed conversation. In my mind, I can see exactly how it happened.
Aha! Now I know what to do.
“I was there. I saw the whole thing.” The lies flow so smoothly from my mouth, I almost believe myself. “I’d been studying late in the library, and I saw them together in the hallway just outside.”
I tell Charlie every word of their conversation and how those words have haunted me ever since. “She called him a loser. She made him feel terrible. Amanda’s the reason Sam jumped off that bridge last year. I didn’t tell anybody because I didn’t want them to make fun of him. I felt sorry for him. I wanted to do something nice for his mother, so I took her some of his mail that had been left in the apartment I’m moving into at the end of the month.”
My face flushes. “Then when Amanda showed up in the tutoring office with Sam’s paper in her selfish little hands, I just snapped. I’m not usually a tattler. If anyone else had done this, I wouldn’t have done anything about it. I’m a coward, remember? I’m the type of girl that hides behind curtains at funerals. But I’m not sorry for what I did. Given the chance, I’d do it again.”
Officer Walker leans back in his chair. “That’s a very interesting perspective on the situation, Emma.”
“Now, may I be excused? I’d like to get some fresh air.” My ears buzz, and my hands shake.
“Wait a minute…” Officer Walker stops me. “I’ve got one more question.”
What now? I’ve run out of lies.
Officer Walker blinks a few times, as if trying to focus. “Emma, I can’t quite figure you out. Most girls―women, excuse me―always take the female’s side of an argument, but not you.”
Now he’s got my full attention. “What do you mean?”
“Well―and by this I don’t mean any disrespect to the dead―the night he died, Sam said some out-of-line things to Amanda as well.”
My eyes narrow. “Like what?”
He taps his pen on the table. “By your account, you were there. Why don’t you tell me?”
My cheeks burn. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“So you didn’t see Amanda’s friends coming down the hall just as Sam brought up the very sensitive subject of her parents’ troubled marriage?”
I stare at him blankly.
“And you missed the part when Sam kept talking about how Amanda’s dad had cheated on her mom so many times she finally decided to leave him? You’re telling me you were there the whole time, but you didn’t hear Amanda beg him to stop before her friends got close enough to hear?”
“She’s lying,” I croak. “I know she’s lying. She just wants you to feel sorry for her.”
“Is she?” Officer Walker raises his eyebrows. “Okay. I’ve heard enough. Now you can go.”
I flee the room and the building, Jake close on my heels. My shaky steps disperse the snow dusting the sidewalks. Soft flakes collect on my hair and clothing.
Jake waits until we are halfway across campus before speaking. “Emma, that had to be the most eloquent display of B.S. I will ever see in my whole life, and I consider myself to be a professional. I’m so impressed. I think I’m finally having a positive influence on you.”
“If teaching me to lie is what you consider a positive influence, then I guess you’ve succeeded.” I groan, my face in my hands. “I didn’t realize this was one of your goals.”
“Well, technically, it’s only one of my goals for you. You see, I think I came back to teach you how to have fun. You’re seriously lacking in that department.”
“This is what you call fun?” I shriek. “I’m getting an ulcer. I’m sure of it. My stomach is starting to eat itself. I don’t think this is fun. At all.”
“This is exactly why you need my help. Think of Sam. Now, maybe he was a good guy and all, and maybe you don’t think it’s an insult when I tell you you’re just like him, but that’s the whole problem. Look what happened to him. You don’t want to be like him, because you don’t want to end up like him.”
“Oh no, what do you have planned for me now?”
Jake grins. “We’re going to sneak out tonight and put garbage cans on top of all of those ridiculous recycled art statues on campus.”
I consider the four new statues by the Fine Arts building, all copies of famous sculptures, made entirely of recycled materials.
“I have a better idea. The garbage can idea is overdone.”
After midnight, we gather scissors, tape, and some other supplies and head out. On our way out of the dorm, Jake flirts with the young freshman girl at the front desk as I duck behind her to steal the lost and found box.
We cross the bridge and approach the statues in the moonlight. We cover Michelangelo’s David’s privates with a pair of Sam’s “tighty-whities” Jake refuses to wear. I add a wife beater on which Jake writes “Ho Ho Ho” in red magic marker.
We crown Rodin’s Thinker with a dunce cap and accessorize his look with sunglasses and a few bangles. We turn The Kiss couple into cross-dressers. Jake cuts up some nasty old bra and a pair of girl’s undies and tapes them around the man.
“I just don’t understand how a girl can lose her bra,” I comment.
Jake clears his throat. “It’s not necessarily my job to teach you that.”
On the woman, we tape bright red boxers and a Guns N’ Roses T-shirt Jake wanted to keep but was too small for him. We fill the bowls of the Savannah Bird Girl with the rest of the miscellaneous lost and found crap, after we loop a brightly striped scarf around her neck and a Minnesota Twins cap upon her head.
We run away, laughing.
“Jake, you giggle like a little girl.”
Jake punches my arm. “So do you.”
Trying to avoid the blow, I lose my balance and topple into the new snow. “I am a girl, in case you didn’t notice.”
“You’re right, I didn’t notice…” Jake gives me a hand. “Because you always dress like a boy.”
“I do not! Why does everyone keep saying that?”
He points at my clothes. “Just look at that enormous jacket.”
“Hey, I happen to enjoy being warm.”
Jake laughs and shakes his head.
As we cross over the bridge, I hold my breath, listening for the awful sucking sound. I pull on Jake’s arm to make him hurry on home. I don’t want to think about how temporary our friendship might be.
The idea of losing Jake still bothers me the next morning after he goes off on his own. Life will be so boring once he isn’t around.
Distracted by my own thoughts, I file out of the lecture hall with the other students after my Am
erican Literature final.
“Hi, Emma!” Chrissy startles me with her approach. “I heard you decorated all those statues last night. I can’t believe it! It doesn’t sound at all like you. Especially during finals week.”
“Yeah, well it was sort of Jake’s idea to begin with.” How on earth has she heard about this already? I guess it shouldn’t surprise me. Chrissy has always been the Dorm Gossip Queen, and Jake loves to talk about himself.
“Speaking of Jake, there’s something else I can’t believe. Since when are you against organ donation?”
“What are you talking about?” I ask. “Why would anyone be against organ donation? It saves lives.”
“Jake said that you’re against organ donation because you’re Catholic. That’s why I’m not supposed to tell you he’s donating a kidney to his sister at Christmas.”
This stops me dead in my tracks. “What?”
“Why are Catholics against organ donation?” Chrissy asks. “And do you even count? You hardly even went to church when we were roommates.”
What on earth is Jake up to? I can’t wait for Chrissy to stop talking so I can go find Jake and kick his organ-donating butt.
fter finals end, Abby and I have twenty-four hours to haul all our stuff to the apartments. I throw almost everything into bags to hoist down to Abby’s car but hesitate when it comes to Grandma’s wooden bowl. A nagging fear eats at me that something horrible will happen if I break it. After raiding the recycling closet, I ever so carefully wrap the bowl in layer after layer of newspaper and place it in a firm box for safe transport.
As I lug all my belongings into the apartment, I wish Jake was around to help. But I don’t see him until late the following day at the bus station, when he saunters up to my side, lugging two bright orange duffle bags over his shoulders.
As we climb aboard the Greyhound, Jake mutters, “I can’t believe you own a Lexus and you’re making me ride the bus all the way to North Hudson.”
