by Meg Cabot
I examine the wand, which Lisa lays on the top of her desk. It’s clearly a wand from a pregnancy test. I recognize it from having seen them on TV and in the movies.
“Oh,” I say, attempting to sound casual. “So you did the test already?”
“Of course I did the test already,” Lisa says miserably. “I did six of them. I bought three of the kind that come two in a pack.” She pulls more of the wands from her desk drawer and lays them out on top of her desk, quite close to Dave’s file. “They’re supposed to be ninety-nine percent accurate, and they all say the same thing.”
“You peed on all those?” I ask, my eyes widening.
“Of course I peed on them,” Lisa says. “That’s how you find out if you’re pregnant.” She widens her own eyes at me. “Oh my God. Have you never done a pregnancy test before?”
“Well, no,” I admit. “I told you, I’ve got chronic endometriosis. I couldn’t get pregnant without medical intervention even if I never used birth control, and I’ve never not used birth control, so how am I going to get pregnant?” I remind myself never to touch that area of Lisa’s desk again, at least not until I’ve borrowed some cleansing liquid from Julio and thoroughly disinfected it. Not that I think Lisa is carrying any diseases, but honestly, used pregnancy tests are way more revolting than Sarah eating cheeseburgers at her desk. “So what do they say?”
“They say I’m pregnant!” Lisa cries. “See the plus sign? That means pregnant. Super-duper pregnant. Six times six pregnant.” She flops against the back of her office chair. “I have a dead RA, nine who are about to be fired, and a baby. Whoop-de-do! I’m the luckiest residence hall director in the world.”
I find myself needing to sit down. I sink into one of the hard-backed chairs to the side of Lisa’s desk.
After the information Eva had given me, I’d suspected Lisa was pregnant, of course, but I hadn’t fully believed it. Now that the truth is glaringly obvious, I’m having a hard time processing it.
But not as hard a time as Lisa.
“Heather, what am I going to do?” she asks, leaning forward to drop her head onto her desk. “This is so not how things were supposed to go. I just started this job. I have a building to run. I can’t have a baby!”
“Well,” I say carefully. “If you decide to keep it, I’m sure we can work something out. You bring your dog to work all the time. Why not a baby?”
Lisa, her head still on her desk, lets out a sarcastic snort. “Babies aren’t dogs, Heather, in case you never noticed.”
“Still, babies are pretty small,” I go on, every bit as carefully. “We could probably fit yours in the bottom drawer of that file cabinet over there. No one will ever even notice.”
Lisa raises her head. Her face is tear-streaked. “Cory’s going to notice,” she says, pulling a tissue from the box on one corner of her desk. “We had an agreement: no kids.”
“Well, sorry,” I say, “but if Cory was that antichildren, he should have done a little bit more to make sure you two didn’t have any.”
She frowns. “What do you mean?”
“He could have had a vasectomy.”
Lisa gasps. “Heather!”
“Why not? It’s a simple procedure that only takes half an hour to perform, and doctors do close to half a million of them every year in the U.S. alone.” I watch way too much of the Discovery Channel. “So why did Cory never get one? Do you think it might be because he’s secretly undecided on the subject of kids?”
Lisa stares at me, her mouth slightly ajar.
“Oh God, Heather. I never even thought of that. Do you really think that’s true?”
I shrug. “How should I know? But I think before you make any decisions about this, you and Cory need to have a long talk. And you need to visit your gynecologist too. Six plus signs probably mean you really are pregnant,” I say, waving my hand at her white wands, “but you never know. And remember, it’s your body. Whatever you decide to do is up to you.”
Lisa’s shoulders slump. “That’s just it,” she says. “I don’t know what to do. I feel so awful telling you all this, because I know how badly you want a baby and can’t have one, and here I am, never having wanted one, pregnant by mistake, like some dumb teenager on MTV.”
“Hey,” I say, reaching out to squeeze one of her hands. “It’s not like that. If I really wanted a kid, there are steps I could take. I’m just not any more ready to jump on the baby train than you are. But I’ll be here for you, no matter what. More important, I think Cory will be too. He completely adores you.”
Lisa’s gaze softens as she glances at a framed photo on her desk of her and Cory on their wedding day, holding Tricky, their ring bearer. “You think so?”
“I know so.” I give her hand a final squeeze, then release it. “It’s pretty obvious from the way he looks at you. Every time I see you guys together, his face is all goopy and smiley. He really, really loves you.”
The tips of Lisa’s ears turn red as she flushes, but this time from pleasure, not rage. “Goopy?” she echoes with a little laugh. “That’s not even a real word.”
“But you know what I’m talking about. That look guys get on their faces when the person they love is around . . . like they can’t believe anyone that amazing would ever fall for someone like them. That’s Cory, with you. It’s like he thinks he’s won the lottery or something. You two are going to be okay, no matter what.”
“You’re exaggerating to make me feel better,” Lisa says, but she’s smiling as she lifts the wedding photo on her desk and gazes down at it. “I do know the look you mean, though. It is kind of goopy. And he’s so great around our nieces and nephews. I always kind of suspected he secretly wanted a kid of his own . . . Oh, but, Heather, what if we have this baby and he turns out to be a serial killer?”
“What if you have this baby and she turns out to be a genius who finds the cure for cancer?” I hold my arms out wide. “Lisa, the fact is, you and Cory aren’t teenagers on MTV. You’re happily married college-educated adults with great, stable jobs and a kick-ass apartment in Greenwich Village for which you don’t even pay rent, in a building assistant-directed by me. You’re going to make incredible parents.”
Lisa’s flush of pleasure increases. “I hate you so much right now for making this all sound so reasonable. How are Cory and I going to backpack around Peru with a baby?”
“Leave the baby here in the file cabinet. I told you, I’ll watch her. Only from nine to five, though, then Gavin will have to take her.”
Lisa bursts into laughter.
There’s a knock on the door. “You guys?” Sarah asks hesitantly. “Can I come in?”
“Yes, of course, Sarah,” Lisa says, hastily dabbing the tissue to her eyes to wipe away evidence of her tears.
Sarah opens the door, popping her head inside.
“First,” she says in a low, intense voice, “Jasmine’s parents are here. Dr. Flynn already met them at the front desk and has escorted them to the second-floor library. Second, I could hear almost every word the two of you were saying in here.” She points at the grate above the doorway. “And I just want you to know, Lisa, all that stuff they say online about the abortion pill isn’t true. My friend Natasha said when she took it, she hardly had any cramping.”
Lisa drops her wedding photo.
Fortunately, my reflexes are lightning quick, and I save the frame from being smashed against the floor.
“Dammit, Sarah,” I say, setting the photo back on Lisa’s desk. “What did I tell you about eavesdropping?”
“Whatever,” Sarah says, looking bored. “But also, Lisa, if you decide to forgo the pills, I’m an excellent babysitter. Newborns seriously love me. It’s why I’m considering going into child psychology.”
Lisa’s face has gone ashen. She looks like she’s about to start throwing up again. “Sarah,” she says. “If you tell anyone about this—”
Sarah puffs out her chest, offended. “I’m insulted you’d even suggest such a thing.
I totally understand your ambivalent feelings toward parenthood, Lisa. You don’t want to lose your autonomy, but you also want to be the best mother you can be. Your concerns are completely natural. Also, hormones are raging through your body, so you need to consider that as well.”
“That’s not the—oh my God. Forget it.” Lisa sweeps her pregnancy test wands back into her desk drawer, closes it, then rises to her feet.
“Heather and I are going upstairs to meet with the Albrights,” she says, throwing back her shoulders. “Sarah, at five o’clock today all the new RAs are going to receive letters from the president’s office informing them that their employment with the Housing Office has been terminated and that they have until Sunday afternoon to find alternative lodgings.”
Sarah’s face falls. “What?” she cries. “You can’t be serious.”
“I’m serious as a heart attack,” Lisa says. “I suggest you not be here at five o’clock, and also that if any of the terminated RAs contact you, you do not engage. Your own employment is none too secure thanks to the continued leaks about Prince Rashid to the New York College Express.”
Now Sarah looks stricken. “You can’t think I’m the one leaking information about him to the—”
“Heather and I don’t,” Lisa says stiffly. “But a lot of people do, thanks to your past history and your very vocal opinions about Qalif. So if you value your job, I suggest you start keeping your mouth shut, and lay low.”
Sarah nods wordlessly, her eyes shiny with unshed tears.
“I’m glad you understand,” Lisa says in a slightly more sympathetic tone. To me, she says, “Come on, Heather.”
But we’ve hardly gone two steps when an all-too-familiar voice sounds from the doorway to the main office.
“Ms. Wells! There you are. Where have you been all day? I must have left you a dozen messages. Why haven’t you returned any of my calls?”
Mrs. Harris, Kaileigh’s mother, comes bustling in, then plops her backside into the visitors’ chair in front of my desk, balancing her large designer handbag on her knees and peering out from behind the enormous bouquet Rashid sent me.
“Of course I understand how busy you all must be after the tragedy.” She lowers her voice dramatically as she says the word “tragedy.” “But I really must speak to you about Kaileigh’s roommate situation. It’s gotten a thousand times worse since I spoke to you yesterday. I hope you got the message I left that Mr. Harris is consulting our lawyer back home in Ohio. That’s how bad things have gotten. He didn’t even want me to come here, but I said I’m sure we didn’t have to stoop to litigation, as you seem like a reasonable person.”
“Okay, Mrs. Harris,” I call to her from Lisa’s office. “Thanks. I’ll be with you in just a second.”
I duck back into Lisa’s office to whisper, “Lisa, you go on upstairs to meet with the Albrights. Sarah, you go home. I’ll handle Mrs. Harris.”
Lisa glances at the clock hanging on the office wall. The little hand is already on five, and the big hand is inching perilously close to twelve. At any moment the letters from the president’s office will be delivered to the RAs, and all hell will be breaking loose.
“Are you sure?” Lisa asks, chewing her lower lip uncertainly.
I nod. “I’ve been shot at before by homicidal maniacs. I think I can handle an angry mother.”
21
What Is New York College Doing with Your Tuition Money?
We all know that tuition is going up at New York College at the same time that large donations from certain Middle Eastern countries are said to be flowing in. What is the college doing with all our money?
Rumor has it that plans have been submitted to the city by New York College to build a state-of-the art fitness center (possibly for the president’s beloved Pansy basketball players).
The new fitness center—estimated to cost over $300 million—will feature, among other things, an indoor sand volleyball court, a forty-foot climbing wall, ten racquetball and squash courts, an indoor Olympic-size pool, steam rooms, saunas, four performance studios, twenty thousand pounds of free weights, three yoga studios, two hundred pieces of cardio equipment, and four full-size tennis courts on the roof.
Thank goodness the college is spending all this money on a gym and not on new lab equipment or recruiting better professors, because I enrolled at New York College to get ripped abs, not an education!
New York College Express,
your daily student news blog
I’d just finished talking to Mrs. Harris—who doesn’t have much of anything new to say, except that she really, really wants her daughter, Kaileigh, to be moved from room 1412 because now Ameera, instead of “slutting it up,” is spending all her time weeping—and was typing a letter, when I got a call from the front desk.
It’s Gavin.
“Hey,” he says. “Some dude just dropped off a bunch of official-looking letters for the RAs. They’re from the president’s office.”
“So?”
“Well,” Gavin says. He sounds nervous. “I put them in their regular mailboxes instead of bringing them back to the office to go in their staff mailboxes.”
“That’s okay,” I say.
Dear Ameera, I’m typing. This letter is to inform you that a mandatory meeting has been scheduled for you in the Fischer Hall director’s office tomorrow at 9:00 a.m.
“Well,” Gavin says. “You know that Megan chick with the long nose?”
“Gavin, you know better than to call women chicks.”
“Sorry. That Megan woman? She opened her letter. And now she’s crying and calling her parents on her cell phone in the middle of the lobby, saying she’s been fired from her RA position.”
This is a nightmare. It has to be. Maybe I’ll wake up soon and be in Italy, on my honeymoon with Cooper, and I’ll tell him about it and we’ll laugh over mimosas.
Probably not though.
“And?”
“Well, I thought you should know about it,” Gavin says.
“Thanks, Gavin,” I say. I’ve started another letter. It says the exact same thing as Ameera’s letter, but begins Dear Rashid.
That’s because the other thing Mrs. Harris complained about is that the prince is spending too much time around her daughter’s room.
“Every time I’m in there,” she said, “it seems like he’s knocking on the door, asking what the girls are doing, if the girls want to go out, if the girls want to come up to his room to watch a movie or play with his Xbox or if Ameera got his flowers. Did you know he sent her flowers, exactly like the ones you have here?” She swatted at the flowers the prince sent me, because the bouquet really is quite large, and was getting in her way as she tried to speak to me. “I asked Kaileigh if the prince sent her flowers, because you know she was quite badly shocked by the death of her RA too. But no, he didn’t bother. Only Ameera. But Ameera won’t even see him. Every time the prince comes over, Ameera pulls the covers over her head and refuses to even look at him. Well, you and I are adult women, Ms. Wells, we know what’s going on there.”
I’d stared at her in confusion. “We do?”
“Of course we do,” Mrs. Harris said. “I’m sure the prince heard what kind of girl Ameera is, and she’s playing hard to get. That’s why he’s sending her flowers, and not my Kaileigh. My Kaileigh would never think of doing those kinds of things, not even with a prince, even if he did take her and her suite mates to that fancy sushi restaurant for lunch. Because that’s all it was, lunch. Kaileigh assured me of that.”
I’m not sure Mrs. Harris is right about any of her theories, but I am sure that if I can get Ameera and Rashid in the same room—my office—at the same time, I might get some kind of explanation out of them as to what’s going on, and that could (hopefully) lead to a clue as to what Jasmine saw the night she was killed, and maybe even a clue as to why she was killed and who killed her.
It’s a long shot, but so far it’s looking like the only shot I have.
Failure to
attend this meeting will result in disciplinary action, I type. If you have any questions, please contact Heather Wells, Fischer Hall assistant director.
“Oh, crap.” Gavin’s voice distracts me on the phone. “That Christopher Mintz guy just got his letter. So did Joshua Dungarden. Oh, shit.” He’s snickering into the receiver. “He’s crying! He’s crying! Like a little kid!”
“Gavin,” I say severely. “Hang up the phone. But wait, before you do—” I think of my own two letters sitting on the printer. Somehow I have to get them up to the desk so they can be delivered to Ameera and Rashid’s mailboxes. Also, somehow I have to get out of the building and home, and I have to do all this without going through the lobby and running into all these crying kids. And also keep those kids from coming back here and trashing this office after I leave, something disgruntled ex-employees have been known to do.
“Can you come back here and pick up two letters I need delivered? And also have Pete turn off the alarm on the side doors so I can leave through them? And then call Carl and have him change the locks to the residence hall director’s office, and make sure to give the new keys only to Lisa, Sarah, and me?”
There’s a long pause before Gavin says, “For you, my lady, I would clip the wings of a dragon.”
I hesitate. “Does that mean you’ll call Carl, and the rest of the stuff I asked you to do?”
He heaves a gusty sigh. “Yes. That means I’ll call Carl, and the rest of the stuff you asked me to do.”
“Great! Thanks.”
I hang up, wondering how Sarah could ever have discounted Gavin as one of the decent guys. He’s definitely a little weird, but extremely decent.
After he comes back to get the letters for Ameera and Rashid, assures me Pete’s turned off the alarm on the emergency side exit that the president occasionally uses as an entrance for party guests when he entertains in the penthouse upstairs, and that Carl’s on his way to change the lock to the outside door to the office (the RAs don’t have keys to Lisa’s office, so that’s all right), I shut off the lights and slip away, just as indignant sobs can be heard floating down the hallway toward me.
