by Meg Cabot
As Cooper had evidently hoped he would—guys are so predictable—the kid takes a swing at him. Cooper ducks, his grin growing wider. Now he has license to beat the crap out of Winer, as he’d no doubt been longing to do.
“Coop,” I say. Because suddenly I realize things are not going at all the way I’d hoped. “Don’t.”
It’s useless. Cooper takes a step toward the kid just as Doug is taking a second swing, catches the kid’s fist in his hand, and, by applying steady pressure with his fingers alone, sends Winer to his knees.
“Where were you,” Cooper growls, his face inches from the kid’s, “the night before last?”
“What?” Doug Winer gasps. “Man, you’re hurtin’ me!”
“Where were you the night before last?” Cooper demands, evidently increasing the pressure on the kid’s hand.
“Here, man! I was here all night, you can ask the guys! We had a bong party. Jesus, you’re gonna break my hand!”
“Cooper,” I say, my heart beginning to drum. Hard. I mean, if I let Cooper hurt a student, I’ll be in serious trouble. Fired, even. Also… well, much as I dislike him, I find I can’t stand by and see Doug Winer get tortured. Even if he deserves it. “Let the kid go.”
“All night?” Cooper demands, ignoring me. “You were at a bong party all night? What time did it start?”
“Nine o’clock, man! Lemme go!”
“Cooper!” I can’t believe what I’m seeing. This is a side of Cooper I’ve never witnessed before.
And am pretty sure I never want to see again. Maybe this is why he won’t tell me what he does all day. Because what he does all day is stuff like this.
Cooper finally releases the kid, and Winer slumps to the floor, clutching his hand and curling into a fetal position.
“You’re gonna regret this, man,” the kid wimpers, fighting back tears. “You’re gonna be real sorry!”
Cooper blinks like someone coming out of a daze. He looks at me and, seeing my expression, says sheepishly, “I only used one hand.”
I am so stunned by this explanation—if that’s even what it is—that I can only stare at him.
A tousled blond head peeks in from the bathroom doorway. The girl from the water bed has managed to pour herself back into a bright orange party dress, but she’s barefoot, her wide eyes focused on Doug’s prone form.
But she doesn’t ask what happened. Instead, she asks, “Are my shoes in there?”
I lean down and lift up two orange high-heeled pumps.
“These them?”
“Oh, yes,” the girl says gratefully. She takes a few hesitant steps around her host and seizes the shoes. “Thank you very much.” Slipping the pumps onto her feet, she says to Doug, “It was very nice meeting you, Joe.”
Doug just moans, still clutching his injured hand. The girl scoops some of her blond hair from her eyes and leans down, displaying an admirable amount of cleavage.
“You can reach me at the Kappa Alpha Theta House anytime. It’s Dana. Okay?”
When Doug nods wordlessly, Dana straightens, grabs her coat and purse from a pile on the floor, then wiggles her fingers at us.
“’Bye, now!” she says, and jiggles away, her backside swaying enticingly.
“You get out, too,” Doug says to Cooper and me. “Get out or I’ll… I’ll call the cops.”
Cooper looks interested in this threat.
“Really?” he says. “Actually, I think there are a few things the cops need to know about you. So why don’t you go right ahead and do that?”
Doug just whimpers some more, clutching his hand. I say to Cooper, “Let’s just go.”
He nods, and we step from the room, closing Doug’s door behind us. Standing once again in the Tau Phi House’s hallway, inhaling the rich odor of marijuana and listening to the sounds of the football game drifting out from the game room, I study the spray paint on the wall, which the maid who’d answered the door is trying to wipe off with paint remover and a rag. She’s barely started on theF inFAT CHICKS. She has a long way to go.
She has a Walkman on, and smiles when she sees us. I smile automatically back.
“I don’t believe a word that kid said,” Cooper says, as he zips up his anorak. “How ’bout you?”
“Nope,” I say. “We should check his alibi.”
The maid, who apparently hadn’t had the volume on her Walkman turned up very high, looks at us and says, “You know those guys are gonna back him up whatever he says. They’re his fraternity brothers. They have to.”
Cooper and I exchange glances.
“She has a point,” I say. “I mean, if he didn’t talk when you had him in that hand lock, or whatever it was… ”
Cooper nods. “The Greek Association really is a marvelous institution,” he remarks.
“Yes, it is,” the maid says, just as gravely. Then she bursts out laughing and goes back to scrubbing the F.
“About what happened back there,” Cooper says to me, in a different tone of voice, as we stand waiting for the elevator. “That kid… he just… the way he treated that girl… I just… ”
“Now who’s got the Superman complex?” I want to know.
Cooper smiles down at me.
And I realize I love him more than ever. I should probably just tell him that, and get it out in the open so we can stop playing these games (well, okay, maybe he’s not playing games, but Lord knows I am). At least that way I’ll know, once and for all, if I have a chance.
I’m opening my mouth to do just that—tell him how I really feel about him—when I notice he’s opening his mouth, too. My heart begins to thump—what if he’s about to tell me thathe lovesme? Stranger things have happened.
And hedid ask me to move in with him, pretty much out of the blue. And okay, maybe it was because he felt bad about the fact that I’d just walked in on my fiancé, who happens to be his brother, getting a blow job from another woman.
But still. Hecould have done it because he’s secretly always been in love with me… .
His smile has vanished. This is it! He’s going to tell me!
“You’d better call your office and tell them you’re going to be late getting back,” he says.
“Why?” I ask breathlessly, hoping against hope that he’s going to say,Because I plan on taking you back to my place and ravishing you for the rest of the day.
“Because I’m taking you over to the Sixth Precinct, where you’re going to tell Detective Canavan everything you know about this case.” The elevator doors slide open, and Cooper unceremoniously propels me into the car. “And then you’re going to keep out of it, like I told you.”
“Oh,” I say.
Well, okay. It isn’t a declaration of love, exactly. But at least it proves he cares.
12
The “rat” in “unreliable narrator”
The “lie” in “silliest”
The “end’ in “narcissistic tendencies”
The “us” in “total disgust.”
“Rejection Song”
Written by Heather Wells
“What do you mean, we have to go to tonight’s game?”
“Departmental memo,” Tom says, flicking it onto my desk. Or should I say his desk, since he’s apparently taking it over for the duration of Gillian Kilgore’s stay? “Mandatory attendance. To show our Pansy Spirit.”
“I don’t have any Pansy Spirit,” I say.
“Well, you better get some,” Tom says. “Especially since we’re having dinner beforehand with President Allington and Coach Andrews here in the café.”
My jaw drops. “WHAT?”
“He thinks it’s just the ticket,” Tom says, in a pleasant voice I happen to know is solely for the benefit of Dr. Kilgore, behind the grate next door, “to show the public that the Fischer Hall cafeteria is safe to eat—and live—in. He’s upset about everybody calling this place Death Dorm.”
I stare at him. “Tom, I’m upset about that, too. But I don’t see how eating warmed-over
beef-stroganoff and watching a basketball game is going to help.”
“Neither do I,” Tom says, dropping his voice to a whisper. “That’s why I’m taking a little peppermint schnapps with me in a flask. We can share, if you want.”
Generous as this offer is, it doesn’t quite make the evening sound more palatable. I’d had big plans for tonight: I was going to go home and make Cooper’s favorite dinner—marinated steak from Jefferson Market, with a salad and roasted new potatoes—in the hope of buttering him up enough to ask how he’d feel about my dad moving in for a bit.
And Cooper needed major buttering up, if I was going to get him to quit being so mad at me over the Doug Winer thing. After his initial chagrin over the way he’d manhandled the kid (or over me witnessing the way he’d manhandled the kid) had worn off—about midway through our meeting with Detective Canavan—Cooper had been quite vocal in his disapproval over my involving myself in the investigation into Lindsay’s death at all. I believe the words “damned stupid” were mentioned.
Which did not bode well for my plan of bearing Cooper’s children, much less asking him if my dad could move in.
Sadly, Detective Canavan was not in the least bit interested in any of the information I was able to impart pertaining to Lindsay’s complicated love life. Or at least, if he was, he didn’t act like it. He sat at his desk with a bored expression on his face through my entire recitation, then, when I was done, all he said was, “Ms. Wells, leave the Winer boy alone. Do you have any idea what his father could do to you?”
“Chop me up into little pieces and bury them in cement beneath the concrete foundation of one of the buildings he’s constructing?” I asked.
Detective Canavan rolled his eyes. “No. Sue you for harassment. That guy’s got more lawyers than Trump.”
“Oh,” I said, deflated.
“Was the Winer boy signed in the night Lindsay was killed?” the detective asked, though he clearly already knew the answer. He just wanted me to say it. “Not just by Lindsay, but by anyone else? Anyone at all?”
“No,” I was forced to admit. “But like I was telling Cooper, there are tons of ways people can sneak into the building if they really want—”
“You think whoever killed that girl acted alone?” the detective wanted to know. “You think the murderer and his accomplices all snuck in past a guard who is paid to keep people from sneaking in?”
“Some of his accomplices could live in the building,” I pointed out. “That could be how they got the key… .”
Detective Canavan gave me a sour look. Then he went on to inform me that he and his fellow investigators were already aware of Doug Winer’s relationship with the victim, and that I should—in fancy detective-speak—butt out, a sentiment that was echoed by a still-steaming Cooper on our way home.
I tried to explain to him about Magda and her request—that Lindsay’s character need not be assassinated during the investigation into her death—but this only resulted in Cooper’s pointing out that beautiful girls who love too much, as Lindsay appeared to have done, often meet unpleasant ends.
Which really only served to illustrate Magda’s point.
Cooper, however, was of the opinion that if the shoe fit, Lindsay was going to have to wear it. To which I replied, “Sure. If anyone could find her foot.”
Our parting, at the front door of Fischer Hall, was not what anyone would reasonably call amicable. Thus the need for steak before I introduced the topic of my father.
“I have to go home and walk my dog,” I say to my boss, making one last effort to get out of what I just know is going to be an evening filled with hilarity. Not.
“Fine,” Tom says. “But be back here by six. Hey, don’t give me that look. You were at the ‘Budget Office’”—He makes air quotes with his fingers—“for two hours this morning, and I didn’t say anything about it, did I?”
I make a face at him but don’t protest further, because he’s got a point. He could have busted me for my disappearing act earlier in the day, but he didn’t. Possibly he’s the coolest boss in the world. Except for the part where he wants to quit and go back to Texas, where girls apparently don’t get decapitated in their residence hall cafeteria.
Having to attend this mandatory dinner and game is putting a serious crimp in my groveling plans. But when I get home to let Lucy out, I see that Cooper’s not around, anyway. The message light on the machine is blinking, and when I press PLAY, I realize why Coop might be avoiding home. I hear Jordan’s voice, saying irritably, “Don’t think you can just hang up on me like that, Cooper, and that it’s all over. Because it’s not. You have a real opportunity here to show the family that you can be a stand-up fellow. Don’t blow it.”
Wow. Stand-up fellow. No wonder Cooper hung up on him.
Poor Cooper. Having me around has put a real crimp in his resolve never to speak to his family again. I mean, considering that my living with him basically drives Jordan crazy. So instead of ignoring his black sheep brother, as he might have were I not around, Jordan instead focuses inordinate amounts of attention on trying to figure out what’s going on between us.
Which, sadly, is nothing.
But I don’t have a problem with Jordan thinking otherwise. The only problem, of course, is that it’s highly unlikely Cooper is ever going to fall in love with me if he’s constantly being harangued about me by his brother. That, and my annoying tendency nearly to get myself killed all the time, has to be extremely off-putting. Not to mention the fact that he’s seen me in sweats.
There are no other messages on the machine—not even, weirdly, from my dad, though he’d said he was going to call. A quick scan of New York One shows the meteorologist still talking about this blizzard we’re supposed to get—now it’s hovering somewhere over Pennsylvania. I lace on my Timberlands, fully expecting that I’ll just be taking them off later that night without having encountered a flake of snow. On the plus side, at least my feet will get gross and sweaty from wearing snow boots inside a hot, crowded gymnasium.
Back outside, I’m hurrying around the corner to Fischer Hall when I spy Reggie conducting a transaction with someone in a Subaru. I wait politely for him to finish, then smile as he approaches.
“Business is picking up,” I observe.
“Because this storm they predicted is holding off,” Reggie agrees. “If we’re lucky, it will pass us by completely.”
“From your lips to the weather god’s ears,” I say. Then, pushing aside my—only slightly—guilty conscience, since I knew I was about to do something both Cooper and Detective Canavan wouldn’t like (but really, if either of them would show just a modicum of respect for the deceased, I wouldn’t feel obligated. I mean, how come guys who have a lot of sex are considered players, while girls who have a lot of sex are considered sluts?), I continue, “Listen, Reggie. What do you know about a kid named Doug Winer?”
Reggie looks blank. “Never heard of him. Should I have?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “He appears to be Big Man on Campus. He lives over at one of the fraternities.”
“Ah,” Reggie says knowingly. “A party kid.”
“Is that what they’re calling them these days?”
“That’s what I call them,” Reggie says, looking mildly amused. “Anyway, I haven’t heard of him. But then, party kids and me? We travel in vastly different social circles.”
“Probably not as different as you might think,” I say, thinking about the marijuana haze hanging over the Tau Phi Epsilon pool table. “But will you ask around about him, anyway?”
“For you, Heather?” Reggie gives a courtly bow. “Anything. You think this boy has something to do with the young lady who lost her head?”
“Possibly,” I say carefully, conscious of Detective Canavan’s threat about the litigiousness of Doug’s father.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Reggie says. Then he knits his brow. “Where are you going? Back to work? They’re making you keep very long hours this week.”
>
“Please,” I say, rolling my eyes. “Don’t even get me started.”
“Well,” Reggie says, “if you need a little pick-me-up… ”
I glare at him. “Reggie.”
“Never mind,” Reggie says, and drifts away.
Back at Fischer Hall, the excitement about the staff’s Dinner and B-Ball Game With the President is palpable. Not. In fact, entirely the opposite is true. Most of the staff are milling around the lobby looking disgruntled. The cafeteria staff—day shift—are being particularly vocal in their protest that, as this is a mandatory function, they should be receiving overtime pay for it. Gerald, their boss, is maintaining that they’re getting a free meal out of it, so they should just shut up. Understandably, his employees seem to feel that eating the food they helped prepare in the cafeteria they help maintain and which was, just the day before, the sight of a grisly murder is not as great a treat as he seems to feel it is.
It’s odd to see the maintenance staff out of uniform. I barely recognize Carl, the chief engineer, in his leather jacket and jeans (and multiple gold neck chains). Head housekeeper Julio and his nephew Manuel are almost unrecognizable in sports coats and ties. Apparently they went home to change before coming back.
And Pete, out of his security uniform, looks like any other father of five… harried, rumpled, and anxious about what the kids are up to back home. His cell phone is glued to his ear, and he’s saying, “No, you have to take them out of the can first. You can’t microwave SpaghettiOs still in the can. No, you can’t. No, you—See? What did I tell you? Why don’t you listen to Daddy?”
“This,” I say, coming up to Magda, who is resplendent as usual in tight white jeans and a gold lamé sweater (the school colors), “sucks.”
But there are bright spots of color in each of Magda’s cheeks… and not the painted-on kind, either.
“I’m seeing so many more of my little movie stars, though,” she says excitedly, “than come in during the day!”
It’s true that the dinner hour is the most highly attended meal of the day at Fischer Hall. And it looks as if the president’s decision to set an example, by boldly taking a tray to the hot food line and choosing the turkey with gravy, has had an impact: the residents are trickling in, getting over their skittishness about eating in Death Dorm.
