Nu Alpha Omega

by H. Claire Taylor

  She looked up at the clock in the entryway. Eleven on the dot. Dammit. Her GPS was good. But the worst part of arriving at eleven wasn’t that it made ignoring the inexplicable accuracy of the voice in her head more difficult, but that it meant people would actually be starting to wake up on a Saturday morning, and the odds of Harris being the only person to see her in her dirty, soggy toga and bloody mud shoes were exceptionally low.

  The moment she stepped off the elevator, she knew she was doomed. A mixture of rap music from one end of the hallway and acoustic guitar from the other met her ears, and she nearly smacked right into Liz, the butch sophomore who lived across the hall from Jess and had asked on more than one occasion to borrow Jessica’s razor. (She’d always agreed, but insisted the girl never need return it.)

  “Damn, Jessica. I wish I’d had your night.”

  “Murlph,” Jessica replied, hoping it sounded like a word.

  The door to her dorm was unlocked and she opened it, expecting to find Leslie already inside. During her walk home, she’d spent time considering the question of Leslie and the night before and had decided that she should give her roommate the benefit of the doubt. Maybe the girl looked for her before leaving the party and simply hadn’t thought to look in a pasture.

  But Leslie wasn’t in their room, causing a wave of annoyance to move through Jessica at the fact that Leslie had, yet again, left the door unlocked while she was away. Granted, in this case it meant Jessica could make it in bereft of her keys and cell phone, but still.

  Jessica locked the door behind her and shucked off her toga, letting it fall to the floor midway between the front door and the door to the shared bathroom.

  A sticky note was waiting on the mirror when Jessica tried to take in her haggard appearance.

  Jess—

  Sorry I left the party without you. I had an early study group this morning and figured you would want to stay with Danny.

  -Leslie

  The bitch hadn’t even looked for her! Sure, it might have been a fairly safe assumption, considering how Jessica had paired off with him early in the night, but—

  A familiar ringing pulled her from her anger and she hobbled back into the bedroom to spot her cell phone lying on her desk. It, too, had a sticky note on it.

  Found this on the hood of my car. Guess you set it there?

  So the bitch even took her phone? She was glad to have it back, but who just leaves someone at a party without their phone?

  Jess removed the sticky note and looked down at the screen lighting up. She cringed when she saw the name, but she answered, because she probably deserved whatever she was about to get.

  “Hello?”

  “Well, well, well. Look who finally decided to answer.”

  “Hey, Wendy. Sorry. I lost my phone for a little bit.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me at all, considering the night you’ve reportedly had.”

  Jessica wanted to speak, but her mouth was so dry and her brain felt crystallized, so she remained silent and headed into the bathroom to suck water from the faucet.

  Wendy didn’t need permission to continue, though. “I know you want to be a dumb, reckless college student—it’s only natural—but if that’s the direction you want to go, let me know so I can finally take a damn vacation and you can call me where I’ll be relaxing in the Bahamas whenever you decide you want to gather up the shattered pieces of your personal brand.”

  “I’m sorry.” Then the questions formed in her delayed mind. “Wait, how did you know about last night?”

  “Eugene fucking Thornton.”

  Wendy never said fuck in any way, shape, or form other than as a middle name for Eugene, and even then it was only ever when he’d pulled some super despicable stunt. Jessica considered it fair warning to tread lightly. “He found out about it?”

  “Sure did.”

  “Crap.”

  “Crap indeed, meaning you’ve stepped right in it. Now I don’t know how much of it is true, but Eugene’s reporting that you were drinking underage, might have taken drugs, and there’s a boy who apparently revealed to his anonymous source that the two of you had sex.”

  “We didn’t have sex!” Jess protested. “He couldn’t stay hard enough—”

  “Oh lord God …”

  “No! I mean—” What did she mean? It was all true except the actual act of sex.

  “This is bad. Okay. I’ll contact my bloggers, get them to pump out a contradictory story. Maybe we can confuse the masses enough for this to blow over quickly.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Do me a favor, would you?”

  “Sure.”

  “Don’t ever drink or do drugs or spend even ten seconds in the company of any boy but Chris for, oh, I don’t know, ten years? And for everyone’s sake, figure out who the hell Eugene is getting this information from.”

  “It’s Courtney. I know it is.”

  “Was she at the party last night?”

  “Well, no. I mean, she could have been after I went into the woods with—”

  “Ugh. I don’t want to know the gory details of your bad decisions. I should be going.”

  Once she was off the phone, she was able to see all the missed calls from that morning. She scrolled down the list and was surprised to discover which one she wanted to call first. She dialed.

  “Hey, baby!” Destinee said when she picked up after the first ring. There was no anger or disappointment in her voice, but then again, it was only two words.

  “Hi mom,” Jessica replied, waiting to feel things out.

  “Heard you had a big night.”

  Was Destinee trying not to laugh? What was so funny …?

  Jessica stared down at her mud caked feet. “Yeah. You could call it that.”

  “I’d love to hear about it. Betsy from the pharmacy forwarded me Eugene’s article this morning—Betsy’s kind of a cunt—and I saw you had a full night of drinking, drugs, and sex. That true?”

  Jessica sighed. “Two out of three. Alcohol, obviously—”

  “And drugs?”

  Jessica sighed. This didn’t seem like something other people would tell their parents. “Yeah.”

  “Anything good?”

  “For a little while. Then not so good.”

  “Mmm,” Destinee said sympathetically. “So coke?”

  “What?”

  “Was it coke you did?”

  For some reason, Jessica found that assumption slightly offensive. “No, Mom. I’m not gonna try coke. It was mushrooms.”

  “Hot damn! I’ve always wanted to do those!” When Jessica didn’t immediately show support for her mother’s dreams, Destinee calmed down. “So no sex?”

  Jessica sighed, trying to ignore her memory’s short highlight of Danny’s Play-Doh dick smashing against her. “No.”

  “Well,” Destinee said, “I mean, as much as I’ve always supported your decisions in that arena, I have to say, the thought of you going behind Chris’s back didn’t sit well with me. I told that cunt Betsy you’d never do that, drugs and alcohol or no drugs and alcohol.”

  Jess hoped the disagreement had stopped at words, but that seemed unlikely. “Um. So, I didn’t have sex with someone else, but I did kind of kiss someone else.”

  There was silence on the line and Jessica’s lungs felt the air inside them freeze in suspended animation.

  “Okay, well a kiss ain’t too bad. I kissed plenty of boys growing up. Although I suppose I banged a bunch of boys, too—don’t matter. Do you still want to be with Chris?”

  “Yes,” Jess said hurriedly. “Of course.”

  “Well, if you want to be with him, you should probably come clean. He’ll understand. Maybe not right away. He’s a good boy, though, baby. And he loves the hell out of you. To the point where I don’t honestly know if it’s healthy. His mom and I have actually talked about it before, because we were both a little startled. But, you know. We’re just a couple of old women burned by men.”

 
“Please, you just turned thirty-six. And isn’t Rex healing those wounds?” She shut her eyes to brace herself; she knew what she’d done.

  “He’s more than healing these wounds, let me tell you. He’s healing them all night and all day. But still, some wounds take a while to get over.”

  All sex talk with her mother aside, Jess wondered how long it would take Chris to get over the wound she would deal him when she told him about Danny. Would he dump her? Would he start fake dating someone to get back at her? Or worse: would he real date someone because he actually liked that someone?

  Her stomach knotted when she heard the sound of another call coming through. It had to be Chris. She’d seen his name on the list of missed calls and immediately decided to save him for later when she could deal with it. But now she just felt guilty making him wait even longer.

  “One second, Mom. I have another call”—she moved the phone away from her ear and looked at the screen, about to accept it—“you gotta be fucking kidding me.” She rejected it instead.

  “I know that tone of voice,” Destinee said. “What’s Jimmy want nowadays?”

  Jessica exhaled and headed into the bathroom to wash her feet. “He wants me to go to White Light Church for some reason.”

  “Want me to go instead?” Destinee asked, doing a poor job of hiding her nefarious intentions.

  “Uh, no. I think that’s a bad idea. He’s got Eugene in his pocket. Or maybe Eugene has Jimmy in his. Either way, Jimmy can rot.”

  “That’s my girl!”

  Jessica turned on the shower, letting the water warm up. “Hey, I’m caked in mud and blood and cow shit. I’m gonna take a shower.”

  “Balls, Jess. Okay, yeah. But I expect to hear the whole story on that next time you come home.”

  “With any luck, I’ll have forgotten all about it by then. Tell Rex I said hi.”

  She locked the door leading into the bathroom from the next room over, peeled off her bra and underwear, and stepped into the shower, focusing the stream first on her raw and abused feet. This was not the luxury she’d hoped for. The mud had formed a protective casing around her wounds, and once it was gone, the spray of water stung like hell on her blisters. At first she muffled her pain, not wanting to give her suitemates any further reason to think she was insane, but quickly she stopped caring about them. “Fuuuuuuuuuuhk.”

  She was just about to put the shampoo in her hair when someone started banging on her dorm room door so hard it shook the shower tiles under her feet.

  Then she heard his voice. “Jessica! I know you’re there!”

  Well shit, it wasn’t like she was hiding from him. She was just showering. Couldn’t a girl shower? Also, she was glad she’d locked her door behind her.

  She jumped out and wrapped a towel around her before limping out of the bathroom and opening the door. Chris didn’t wait for an invitation before plowing in.

  Okay, he was furious. She got that. And anger she could deal with. Plus, he was about to be more furious, she was sure.

  He whirled around to face her once she shut the door, and it was only then that he seemed to realize she was wearing only a towel. His eyes gave him away and he swallowed hard.

  And people said guys weren’t complex things, but here he was both fuming and horny. Jessica couldn’t imagine ever experiencing that particular combination of emotions.

  “Why are you showering?” he asked, and that seemed a strange place to start the conversation.

  “Because I needed a shower. Is that why you’re here?” she asked, impatient for him to go ahead and let her have it for not returning his calls.

  “No. I’m here because Jerry happened to mention this morning that you were out all night doing drugs and other things.”

  He couldn’t even bring himself to say it. “Well, your roommate was right. So?” She put the hand that wasn’t holding up her towel on her hip. The truth was out. Well, most of it.

  His anger melted away, though, replaced by a look of longing and desperation. His arched eyebrows fell, and his rigid lips softened, and all she wanted to do was go back in time and make last night never happen so she could hold him without hesitation.

  “What exactly happened, Jess?” It was a plea. She wished she could give him the news he wanted.

  And she wished she weren’t in only a towel.

  “I tried mushrooms.”

  Chris’s desperation warped into confusion. “You’d never tried them before? I don’t—”

  She shook her head slightly. “No, not like the kind on pizza. I know, I thought the same thing.”

  “Oh.”

  “The kind that gives you hallucinations.”

  He shifted his weight onto one leg, folding his arms across his chest. “I didn’t realize that was a thing.”

  “Yeah. It’s a thing.” She laughed morosely. “It’s definitely a thing.”

  “And?”

  “And I hallucinated, Chris! Sheesh, what do you think happened?”

  He nodded and exhaled, and she saw pre-game determination in his eyes. “Yeah, okay. And what else? Anything?”

  She needed to come out with it, with all of it, but now that he seemed less angry, she had less desire to antagonize him. “I … kissed someone else.” She decided not to mention the failed attempt at bumping uglies. Or more accurately, the successful attempt at what she’d started to think of as “mashing potatoes.”

  Chris’s expression didn’t change with her breaking of the news. “Okay. Yeah, that can happen on drugs.”

  “Since when are you Mr. Understanding about cheating?”

  “It’s not cheating.” But it was clear she wasn’t the one he was trying to convince. “Do you want to kiss … whoever again?”

  “Uh, no. Never again.”

  He nodded, considering it.

  “Yeah, okay. It happens.”

  Fuck. Why was he so understanding? It was eating at her.

  “You’re not mad?”

  He scoffed. “Oh, I’m mad, but mostly that you didn’t return my calls and I had to hear about all this through Jerry. But you kissing someone else? I mean, it was a mistake, right? Anyone can make mistakes. Even you. Anyway, I understand.”

  “But how do you understand? Have you been kissing other girls?”

  He jerked his head back like she’d extended her arm the two yards between them and slapped him across the face. “What? No! Are we really doing this again? I already told you I’m not going around making out with other girls! It’s like you’re set on me being some kind of a slut.”

  The word met her ears like nails on a chalkboard and she felt instantly dizzy. “Get out.”

  His folded arms dropped limply to his side. “Huh?”

  “You obviously think I’m a slut. Just like my mom, huh? How long have you thought that about her? About me? No, you know what? Never mind.” She couldn’t even look at him, instead focusing her eyes on the floorboards. “Get out.”

  “Jess, I don’t think your mom’s—”

  “Get the fuck out!”

  He jumped, but then started moving past her for the door. “Jesus, Jess! You kiss another guy and then kick me out? You’ve fucking lost it. You’re acting crazy.”

  Did Chris realize that was the worst possible thing to say to her? Probably not. But it didn’t matter.

  “GET THE FUCK OUT, CHRIS!” Okay, even she had to admit the voice-cracking shouting seemed only to prove his point.

  When the door slammed a moment later, all she could hear was the running water in the shower and a high-pitched ringing in her ears. She didn’t even notice the door had opened again until she heard another voice. A female this time.

  “Jessica? You okay?”

  She jumped when she felt a hand on her shoulder and whirled around to see Leslie staring doe-eyed at her.

  “Fucking shit! Why are you sneaking up on me?”

  “Sorry, I thought you heard me. I just saw Chris storm out, is everything okay?”

  Jessica shr
ugged Leslie’s hand off her shoulder and headed back to the bathroom. “Wonderful. And it’d be a lot better if you minded your own damn business.” She slammed the door, and a moment later, as she was back under the warm water, it occurred to her to wonder if she and Chris had just broken up.

  I AM INFINITE PATIENCE, AND EVEN SO, THIS IS GETTING RIDICULOUS.

  There’s no point. Jessica stared up at the top bunk from the spot where she’d spent ninety percent of the last week, only getting up to use the restroom and once, when Leslie had been too busy to make her usual run for Jessica’s daily pizza intake, the dining hall.

  THERE IS A POINT. THERE ARE MANY POINTS. ONLY ONE OF WHICH IS THAT I AM TIRED OF HEARING YOUR SELF-PITY.

  Then go away. Oh wait, you can’t because you’re just a figment of my imagination.

  THIS SLOTH WILL GET YOU NOWHERE.

  That’s why I’m doing it. I don’t want to go anywhere. There’s no point in going anywhere.

  She wondered briefly for the seven thousandth time that day, what Chris was doing. It wasn’t her right to know, though. A stiff, emotionless phone call the same day of their blow-out fight had resulted in them “taking a break,” whatever that meant. She couldn’t even remember who had suggested it first. But it didn’t matter. Because nothing mattered.

  HOW ABOUT THIS? IF YOU GET UP, I’LL NEVER MENTION THIS WEEK OF YOUR LIFE TO WHICHEVER SCRIBE I CHOOSE TO WRITE YOUR STORY AND WE FORGET THIS WHOLE SORRY THING EVER HAPPENED.

  No.

  FOR MANKIND’S SAKE.

  Let me die in this bed.

  SUCH A MARTYR.

  Isn’t that what you want me to be?

  WHAT I— I RESENT YOUR PRESUMPTION.