So Wrong

by Camilla Stevens

  She gave Marianne the same non-verbal response using one finger on her glasses that River and Tiffany had received the night she first met them. Pierre University was certainly loosening her morals. Marianne just threw her head back and laughed.

  “Bonjour! Bonjour!!” sang out Professor LeFlor’s voice, entering the classroom.

  Both girls diverted their attention to the front of the class. Bonita watched River as he shrugged out of his leather jacket, the muscles of his chest, back, and shoulders performing an enticing little corkscrew underneath that t-shirt. It certainly wasn’t lost on little Miss Hopeful who had snagged Bonita’s seat the first day of class. Professor LeFlor was patently ignored as her big brown eyes beamed up at him, no doubt taking in the bruised face, motorcycle helmet, leather jacket, muscles....

  Bonita frowned as he gave Miss Hopeful a smirk that summed up everything his image presented: Bad Boy.

  Whether or not it was true, it was probably enough to get half the girls in the class to take note. This was confirmed as Bonita scanned the room, pulling her eyes away from River’s muscular back as he took his seat. Not a single female had her eye on Professor LeFlor as he began his lecture.

  “You had your chance, Tulip,” Marianne leaned in to whisper in her ear.

  Bonita shot her a look. Marianne just shrugged, giving her a patronizing smile. Bonita gave her a final annoyed scowl then turned her attention to the professor. If anything, that little entrance had proven exactly what she had predicted the first day: River Wright was nothing but an unnecessary distraction.

  Besides, I have a boyfriend.

  It nearly stopped him cold. He recovered quickly and made it past Marianne and Bonita without looking their way. Even running a bit late, he had originally planned to stop and make small talk with her, maybe throw in a witty one-liner. But her words were pretty clear.

  Bonita had a boyfriend.

  It pretty much confirmed what River had assumed about Darryl, but her words just now were so full of conviction. Perhaps River had read all her signals toward the guy wrong. Even beyond simply being irked that Darryl had shown up unannounced, she’d seemed upset to see him.

  At any rate, it was no longer his concern. She knew where to find him when she was done with the guy. Eventually she’d realize the attraction they had for one another.

  “He rides a motorcycle?”

  The question had caused a nanosecond of delay in his progress toward his seat. Safely out of vision, River had grinned and quickly made it the rest of the way.

  That little spark of hope only added to his elated state. After the good news from his friend Reggie, River had been on such a high that he dived head-first into taking his friend up on the suggestion that he finish up what he started. He’d headed back to his place, the pain in his body all but forgotten. After packing a change of clothes and a few other essentials he was off. It was stupid, since his left eye was practically blind. But what good was it to be 21 years old if you didn’t partake in bouts of recklessness every once in a while? Hopping on his Kawasaki Ninja ZX, he’d headed out of New York City toward upstate where the magic happened.

  The weekend had been so productive, and amazingly cathartic, that he’d stayed until Monday morning, speeding back into town in a mad dash to make it to class. To make it to her. He hadn’t once stopped thinking about Bonita even as he worked all weekend long.

  By the time he had made it to his seat, his pride was tumescent enough to actually grace Brown Eyes with a grin as she ogled him pulling off his jacket. Why not make the poor girl’s day?

  His had already gotten off to a nice start.

  As he took his seat, he briefly wondered what Bonita would make of the gift waiting for her.

  12

  “So, I did promise you something, Bonita,” Marianne said, wrapping her arm around Bonita’s as they got up to leave.

  Bonita’s head was elsewhere, somewhere it definitely shouldn’t have been, and she blinked in surprise as her arm was intertwined with Marianne’s.

  “Since you insist on denying your attraction to the poor boy, I’m going to do you a favor and give you the final nail in that coffin.”

  “What are you talking about?” Bonita asked with a guilty laugh, wondering if Marianne had actually been reading her mind. She just gave Bonita a knowing grin as she led her across campus toward her dorm.

  “Skeletons in the closet, Bonita, skeletons in the closet.”

  Once they were in Marianne’s room, she sat Bonita down on the comfortable little sofa opposite the matching arm chair, and escaped to the other room. Moments later she came skipping out with a large, leather-bound book in her arms. Through the spaces between her folded arms Bonita could read enough gold leaf lettering to assess that this was a Gascony yearbook. Now her interest was more than a little bit piqued.

  Marianne held the book close to her chest as she looked down at Bonita with mock solemnity. “Okay, what you are about to be privy to is absolutely top secret. There are quite a few reputations that could be completely destroyed by what I hold here in my arms.”

  Bonita just shook her head at all the pomp and circumstance. Who wasn’t awkward in high school?

  Bonita nearly yelped as Marianne plopped right down next to her in one fell swoop. She gave Bonita a guilty little grin.

  “Let’s get started shall we?” she said with a gleeful little wriggle, tucking her legs underneath her. She butted up against Bonita’s side and placed the book in-between them on both of their laps.

  “First of all, the pièce de résistance, you actually came for,” Marianne said, biting the corner of her mouth as she flipped to the right page. “This was taken during the school’s Casual Dress Day, or Normie Day as we called it.

  “Honestly, with all the rules they had—no thongs above jeans, no pants below underwear, no bra straps showing—I don’t know why they bothered. I mean what’s the point of not wearing a uniform if I can’t show up to class in nothing but a corset and garter belt?”

  They both laughed as Marianne settled on the right page in the book. “Aha, here we are.” She turned to Bonita. “Now brace yourself, Tulip, this one is going to be a shocker. I give you River Wright, or Riot, as he went by in those days.” Marianne rolled her eyes at the memory of it.

  Bonita had been prepared for a different River Wright, maybe skinnier with acne, or braces perhaps. She wasn’t prepared for this.

  “Honestly, I can’t believe they let him get away with it. On the other hand they were probably too preoccupied with the group of boys who showed up in t-shirts with the most offensive sayings they could find. What’s a safety pin in the eyebrow, when you have ‘I Shaved My Balls for This?’ to contend with?”

  Bonita was only half listening. She only noted the safety pin in River’s eyebrow when Marianne pointed it out. It was a minor detail in an explosion of rebellion.

  He was standing with a group of three other people all of them dressed in black clothing that might as well have been rags, as many rips and tears as there were. Despite the black lipstick and heavy eyeliner that the foursome wore, she didn’t have trouble picking out River. The green eyes sprang out from a sea of black and white. His thick, dark hair was longer, and definitely dyed a much darker shade than it was currently. He also looked skinnier, but it was hard to tell underneath all those layers of black.

  There were two other boys, one short and skinny and the other almost as tall as River but heavyset. The fourth person was a small, thin girl, dwarfed between River and the heavyset boy, who had lanky hair that was far too black to be her natural coloring. She was practically drowning in her black rags, the only thing visible being her pale face with black make-up.

  The four of them were scowling at the camera, but obviously posing. River had a slightly defiant look, earbuds still in his ears, and that cleft chin of his tilted slightly up as if to say: Yeah, look at me. What of it? The heavyset boy just looked on with amused indifference. The smaller boy had a sort of confused sneer. T
he girl in the middle just gave a dead-eyed stare, one arm crossed over her body, the hand holding on to the elbow of the other.

  “The big guy is Reginald, or Reggie, because his real name was too pretentious even by Gascony standards. The girl in the middle is Marie; she left for some reason after junior year. The guy on the end is Christopher. Word is he sells pot in Denver now or something.” Marianne laughed at the idea of it.

  “Not what you were expecting, huh?” she asked, inspecting Bonita’s face.

  Bonita turned to find her friend giving her an expectant smile, as though waiting for her reaction.

  “It’s,” she blew out of her mouth, “different, I’ll say that. What brought about the change?”

  Marianne just shrugged. “All I know is, senior year, the black was gone and he’d obviously hit the gym. He did have to skip out on the last part of his junior year for bringing a knife or a razor or something to school. Frankly, I think that only helped his cool caché afterwards. Everyone was kind of in awe of—”

  Bonita had stopped listening after “knife.” “A knife?” she exclaimed. “To Gascony? Why on earth would he have done that?”

  What kind of guy is River Wright?

  Again Marianne shrugged. “I didn’t spend a whole lot of time getting to know them, Bonita. I’m all for different strokes, but they were a bit too different, even for my tastes. Then, after he became too cool for school, he never told anyone why. His silence on the matter also helped him rise through the ranks. He had that air of mystique,” Marianne squinted her eyes as though in speculation.

  Bonita turned back to the photo, absorbing the old “Riot” and, for some reason, committing it to memory. She thought back to Darryl’s words about her father and the church. She almost laughed at what Reverend Jackson would have to say about “Riot.”

  “Since I’m sure you’re curious,” Marianne went on, “I’m going to punish you with the old picture of your competition, or I guess at this point, former competition.”

  Bonita shot her a questioning look.

  “Tiffany, the girl who’s been throwing herself at River since at least last year,” Marie clarified. “Apparently, this summer it got pretty intense. Not that River was biting, the little heartbreaker that he is.”

  “Marianne,” Bonita groaned, giving her an exasperated sigh. “I am not into River. I’ve already told you—wait, what?”

  “Yeah, yeah, he’s ‘all wrong’ for you, whatever that means.”

  “No, I mean about Tiffany.”

  “What about her?” Marianne asked, blinking in confusion.

  “So River never dated her? At all?”

  “Nope.”

  “But she was constantly draped all over him.”

  “Well, can you blame her?” Marianne asked, giving Bonita a teasing grin.

  “Yeah, but Tiffany is….”

  “Yes, yes,” Marianne said impassively, “Tiffany most definitely is. Speaking of which…”

  She pulled the yearbook away from Bonita’s hands and began flipping.

  “She always was.” She handed the book back to Bonita, who at this point would have been lying if she said she wasn’t burning with curiosity. Based on Marianne’s words, she probably wouldn’t like what she saw, but Pandora had nothing on the curiosity that was eating her up right now.

  “For heaven’s sake, did she ever not look like a bombshell?” Bonita exclaimed. She had been prepared for Tiffany to look exactly like she did these days, which was bad enough. Unfortunately, Tiffany Brookstone seemed to have never gone through an awkward teenage phase. The blue eyes gleamed confidently with an inappropriately adult-like, come-hither glint. The full mouth smiled brightly, one side ever so slightly higher, exuding a kittenish allure. Even her hair, thick and glossy, was perfect. She was probably exactly the kind of student Sting had been singing about in Don’t Stand So Close to Me.

  “The irony is, she wouldn’t have given River—or Riot—the time of day back then, as you might imagine.”

  Bonita just frowned down into the photo.

  “Don’t worry, Tulip,” Marianne said, laughing. “I’m quite sure you can hold your own against hers.”

  Bonita made her way back to her dorm pondering everything she’d just learned. Seeing the old River, or “Riot,” had been a shock to say the least.

  So he’d gone from a knife carrying teenager who dressed…oddly, and now he was your typical cocky playboy. So wrong for her…but somehow all the more exciting.

  When she got to her room she saw the package sitting on her bed.

  13

  “Ms. Moynahan in the mailroom asked if I could bring it up since I was already there first,” Stacey said, looking at Bonita with eager curiosity.

  Bonita ignored her as she made her way to the bed to inspect the box. It was large white box wrapped in a large red satin bow.

  “It’s a Veronica Ortale,” Stacey proclaimed, telling Bonita what was glaringly obvious from the gold lettering on the outside of the box. There was a hint of suspicion mixed with envy in her voice.

  Bonita frowned down at it then turned to Stacey. “Are you sure it’s for me?”

  “No offense, but I’m pretty sure there aren’t a ton of Bonita Jacksons at this school.”

  Bonita turned back to the box and continued frowning down at it.

  She heard an exasperated sigh from Stacey’s side of the room. “Well, aren’t you going to at least open it?”

  Bonita stared for a few seconds longer, then satisfied their curiosity as she reached out to untie the large bow. She pulled the top off and put it aside. She could see the yellow beneath the white tissue paper. On top was a small white envelope.

  She was cognizant of Stacey craning her neck to take a peek, so she subtly turned her back and opened the envelope.

  The dress was stunning on you. I’m sorry to have ruined it. Hopefully, this one compliments you just as beautifully.

  ~River Wright

  “River Wright?!” Stacey exclaimed over her shoulder.

  Bonita had been so caught up in the words, and the person who’d written them, that she hadn’t been aware of Stacey covertly closing the distance between their beds.

  Perfect. Just perfect.

  She gave her roommate an angry glare, which was completely ignored as Stacey’s eyes shifted to the yellow peeking up from the tissue paper.

  “Personal space?” Bonita protested angrily, twisting her body away from her roommate.

  Stacey’s eyes were torn from the yellow dress and shot up to Bonita’s, blinking rapidly in confusion before realizing her presence was not wanted. She rolled her eyes and dutifully strode back to sit on her bed, staring up at Bonita expectantly.

  Bonita had no desire to inspect what was obviously a replacement yellow dress in front of the prying eyes of her roommate, but curiosity got the better of her.

  She pulled the tissue paper aside and saw the bodice of a dress in almost the same shade of yellow as the one that had been ruined. The glaring difference lay in the fact that the original had been cotton and this one most definitely was not.

  With something bordering on fear, Bonita reached out to lift the dress by the shoulders. The soft, smooth feel of the fabric in her hands told her that this was not the sort of dress you could just throw in the washing machine to clean. As she lifted it away from the tissue paper, it seemed to blossom into life rather than simply unfold.

  Both girls gasped as it fluttered in silky waves when Bonita held it out in front of her. The sleeves had the similar wide flare of her original dress and the neckline fell in silken drapes at the center. It was cinched in at the waist and billowed out in a feminine, knee-length twirl skirt. It was a surprisingly accurate stand-in for the original.

  “Oh my God,” Stacey sad with awe, “that one has to be at least two thousand dollars.”

  Bonita nearly dropped the dress when she heard that. “Two thousand dollars! For a dress?” she asked looking at her roommate.

  Stacey just
rolled her eyes. “It’s a Veronica Ortale,” she said as though that should mean something to Bonita, “and one of the nicer ones.”

  Bonita frowned at the dress, now afraid to put it back in the box, for fear of somehow damaging it.

  What in the world was she supposed to do with this thing?

  “Well, aren’t you going to try it on?” Stacey urged.

  Bonita looked at her as though she were crazy. “I’m not keeping it!” she told her roommate, as though that were the obvious route.

  Stacey just gaped at her in appalled shock. “So what are you going to do with it?”

  “Give it back of course.”

  Stacey looked at it with obvious longing. “You’re insane,” she whispered.

  Bonita just brought her attention back to the dress. Finally, she had enough courage to place it gingerly back into the box. Hopefully River could get his money back. Not that he needed it.

  Bonita sat in her physics class—one of her final obligations before the MCAT for medical school—thinking about the dress. Before class she had gone online to see just how much it actually cost. It wasn’t quite $2000, but $1745 was bad enough.

  What in the world had possessed him?

  She tuned out Professor Papadopoulos as she thought about the way it looked and felt in her hands. It wasn’t just a dress, it was a work of art. There was no way she could ever wear it.

  “…and so the rate at which acceleration…”

  Bonita snapped out of her musings. She shook her head with an irritated grimace. Just as she had suspected from the first moment River sat next to her in French Literature, he was a distraction…and this wasn’t even a class she shared with him.

  Yes, the dress definitely had to go back. It was a shame really, she hadn’t even tried it on.

  Which was exactly what she did when she got back to her room.

  She took a quick mental note, reminding her that Stacey had class for the next half hour, then she had quickly pulled it out, undressed and slid it over her head.