Extra Credit

by Sarina Bowen

  For a second I wasn’t sure what to do. I didn’t want to be underfoot. But there was something hesitant in in Katie’s expression. As if perhaps she could use a little backup. “I’d just as soon help you, if that’s okay,” I said.

  I knew I’d made the right choice, because the most beautiful smile lit her face. “Awesome. Then will you help me set up a folding table? Last time, mine fell down on one end, like a wounded camel. And all the Halloween pumpkins went rolling off.”

  Well, okay then.

  There was a stack of collapsed folding tables leaning against one wall. I grabbed one and let Katie show me where to set it up, which took about sixty seconds. Then I drank my beer while she went running off for wrapping paper and tape. The beehive was in full swing around me. There were girls on the old wooden staircase, wrapping strands of Christmas lights around the banister, and girls toting boxes of Christmas cookies through the front door.

  Katie returned with three enormous rolls of wrapping paper. “I’ll just grab the first stack of gifts,” she said.

  “Are you sure I can’t help with that?” I asked.

  She waved me off. “It’s mayhem back there. I’ll be right back.” True to her word, she soon reappeared with a stack of boxes. They were rainbow looms — those things that little kids used to make bracelets out of rubber bands.

  Measuring the boxes, I began cutting pieces of Santa Claus paper to size. Functioning as an assembly line, Katie and I became a wrapping machine. I cut. She folded and taped. Working side by side made it easy for me to admire Katie. As she moved, her silky hair fell over her shoulder like a curtain. It made me want to sift my fingers through it, to see if it was as soft as it looked. And the way her dress skimmed her hips was making me a little bit crazy. In a perfect world, I would have loved to fit my hands around her waist.

  Down, boy. I lowered my head and cut another rectangle of wrapping paper instead.

  When every box was wrapped, Katie disappeared for a minute into a closet, returning with a towering stack of… basketballs! Some of them were ordinary basketballs, and pretty good quality. Others were meant for little kids, with cartoon pictures drawn all over them.

  “Now we’re talking,” I said. “Those are some lucky kids if they’re getting these.”

  “Glad you think so,” she said. “But they’re not going to be easy to wrap.”

  I saw what she meant. The balls were in half-boxes, which meant that one side would cave in a bit when we taped it. “It will work,” I told her. “This is just karmic payback for all those years my mother had to figure out how to wrap basketballs for me in blue and white Hanukkah paper.”

  Katie gave me a killer smile. Then she unrolled a long span of wrapping paper, this one in plain green. Then she grabbed a ball — there were bears on this one — and set its oddly shaped carton onto the paper.

  “Hold up…” I gave her the hand signal for time-out. “We can’t wrap the kiddie balls in that plain paper, unless you’re putting name tags on each of these. The paper should signal what’s inside, right? A guy who chooses the green wrap can’t end up with Disney characters on his basketball. He’s going to get his ass kicked.”

  Katie’s hands stilled. Then she and Amy, who was wrapping stacks of teddy bears nearby, both began to laugh. “Omigod, so true!” Katie said. She swapped the ball for a plain one. “The bigger question is, did I screw this up? Should I have not bought the decorated ones at all?”

  I shook my head. “Those are good for little kids, because the bigger kids won’t steal them. No cool dude is going to bring a ball with pandas on it to his pickup game.”

  “These are all good points,” Amy remarked. “And now I’m thinking that we should put age ranges on everything. We could write, ‘a sporty gift for up to age six.’ Would that work?” She raised her eyes to me.

  “Well, sure.”

  While Katie’s sorority sister ran off to find some paper to make the tags, Katie touched the cuff of my shirt. “You are really good at this. Thank you for helping.”

  I shrugged. “I had lots of experience getting my ass kicked. I know all the scenarios.”

  Giggling, she touched a warm hand to my back for a second as she reached for the tape. Every time she put one of those slim hands on me, I felt it everywhere. And she smelled incredible. Like strawberries. I don’t know what it was — a lotion? A fruity shampoo? Whatever it was, it was making me crazy.

  “I really wasn’t sure what to buy for the boys,” she said, leaning over the next gift. “I hope these have a shot at making someone happy. There were trendier toys at the store, like action figures. But I went with sturdier things, and I hope it was the right call. These kids don’t get to make a list and choose.”

  I cut the next piece of wrapping paper, thinking about that. “Even when you get to choose, gift-giving is never perfect, right? I asked for a lot of stuff as a kid only to find out it wasn’t as good as it looked on TV.”

  “Ha! That is so true. My EZ Chef Oven never baked the cakes all the way through. I just hope that something here makes somebody’s day, you know?”

  “It has to,” I told her. “There’s something a little magical about getting a wrapped gift, especially if it’s unexpected. The experience is bigger than the thing that’s inside.”

  She didn’t answer for a second, and I didn’t quite know why. But then she spoke, and her voice was quiet. “You’re a smart guy, Andy B.,” she said, catching another piece of tape on her slender forefinger. “And we’ve been here an hour, and so far I haven’t had to use the secret code word.”

  Her eyes flicked toward the arched doorway then. The sound of male voices had been coming from that room for a while now. She didn’t look happy about it.

  “That offer still stands, though,” I whispered.

  “And I do appreciate it,” she breathed.

  Eventually, we got everything wrapped except for one basketball — a pink one, with ducks on it. This last ball had a torn box around it and a black ink mark on its surface. “What do we do about this one?” I asked. “Ditch the box? Tape it up?”

  Katie regarded it with a frown. “This one they gave me at the store, because it’s damaged and because all our purchases were for charity. But I don’t think I want any kid to get a damaged gift. That’s just not right.”

  “Without it, do you have enough toys?”

  “We do.”

  “Fair enough.” I tore the ball from its box and tossed the cardboard onto our recycling pile. Then I spun it on my fingertip. Holding a basketball — even a pink one with ducks — always made my head feel clearer.

  The Christmas tree setup next door must have been almost finished, because the sound of male laughter grew louder, and guys began to wander in, beers in hand. Their new role seemed to be smirking and drinking. Katie kept her eyes glued to the gift-wrapped packages which she was busy tagging. But I noticed that her body drifted a few inches closer to me.

  And I didn’t mind one bit. I was flattered, honestly. If my job tonight was to provide some kind of cover, I could do that.

  Now, nice guys usually got friend-zoned. That wasn’t only true in movies. I was living proof. And there were days when that got depressing. But tonight I was just where I wanted to be. I didn’t mind being needed by this fabulous creature. Because, what a view! And these girls had good taste in beer.

  Really, things could be worse.

  With her laser focus, Katie leaned over another gift tag, that silky hair cascading off her shoulder and into her work, where I saw the ends begin to adhere to the tape in its dispenser. “Hang on,” I said, hooking the pale strands with my thumb. “You don’t want to tape yourself to that present.” Gently, I released her hair from the adhesive. And then there was nothing left to do but sweep the whole bunch of her hair back and over her shoulder, where I smoothed it down where it belonged.

  Her eyes locked on mine. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “No problem,” I said, but my voice was thick. Because
touching her had made my brain take a day trip to Atlantic City.

  I gathered up a stack of wrapping paper scraps and went looking for the recycling bin.

  Chapter 4

  Katie

  So far, so good.

  The gift wrapping had gone even faster than I’d hoped. And Andy was good company. I didn’t feel like I had to be on script with him. There was a social dance I’d learned at my mother’s heel. “Ask his opinion,” Mom had taught me. “A man wants someone to validate his worldview.”

  Even at frat parties, between games of beer pong and funnels, I’d stuck to a version of the script. Flirt and dodge. Toss the hair. I knew how to listen in a way which expressed interest without giving too much away.

  It was exhausting, really. And tonight, I didn’t have it in me. But it seemed not to matter. Andy’s quiet companionship didn’t demand anything of me. That was all for the best, because I was too freaked out by the sounds of laughter bleeding in our direction.

  Some of that laughter was almost certainly directed at me.

  Since the gifts were wrapped and tagged now, the next step was stacking them beside the Christmas tree in preparation for the kids’ party tomorrow. But I didn’t do my share, because I was putting off going into the next room. Instead, I grabbed another beer for Andy, and then planted myself right next to him. I looked up into his big brown eyes and just let him ground me. “Are you ready for the exam in European Paintings?” I asked. The test was in three days.

  “Not yet,” he said. “I think the baroque art is going to be the hardest to memorize,” he said. “All those dark canvases. They’re blending together on me.”

  “True,” I agreed. “I’m so far behind, too. I didn’t make it to the last two lectures, when he reviewed the final list of artworks. I’m probably going to memorize the wrong ones.”

  Andy shrugged. “I copied down the entire list in my notebook. I’ll make you a copy if you want.”

  My heart gave a little bounce. “Could you?” This guy was going to save me twice this week — once from being dateless, and once from being clueless.

  “No problem.”

  Across the room, one of the brothers stood on a chair, banging a spoon against a beer bottle. It was a beefy guy that they called Whittaker up there, looking for attention. “Ladies and not-so-gentlemen!” There was laughter all around me, but I did not laugh. Neither did Andy, actually. Even as the chuckles died down, I glanced upward, over my shoulder. He met my gaze with the world’s most discreet eye roll.

  “…The girls of Tri Psi ought to know that this year’s tree was a three case effort. That’s right. It took seventy-two beers to cut this sucker down and stand it back up on your porch.”

  There was another smattering of laughter, but I still wasn’t feeling the love. Nothing was as light and funny as it would have been a week ago. To my new, jaded eyes, the peculiar mating ritual where a bunch of big strong boys put up a tree for the sorority princesses just hit me wrong. I mean, why couldn’t we put up our own freaking tree? How hard could it be? And what were we supposed to owe these bros in exchange for their labor?

  Gah. I was thinking too hard again.

  “…So come on in, ladies, and let us light her up for you.” He hopped off the chair and lumbered into the porch room. The sisters began to follow him.

  But I did not. Because I hadn’t seen Dash yet tonight, though I was sure I’d heard his rasping chuckle more than once. Rationally, I knew that I was going to have to face him down at some point. I had seven semesters left at Harkness. And pledging this sorority meant that I’d encounter him frequently. I needed to just get past it.

  Yet something stuck my Prada heels to the floorboards. I just couldn’t make myself go in there. And a full-body shiver started in my shoulders and worked its way down.

  A warm hand landed lightly on my back. “Katie, are you okay?”

  Yes?

  No.

  God.

  I spun around and looked up (way up — he must be 6’-4”) into his chocolate eyes. “I think I’d like to go outside for a minute.”

  He blinked once. Then, without a word, he turned toward the front door.

  Like a fool, I’d run out onto the porch without my coat. So immediately I broke out in goosebumps. But the cold air felt good in my lungs. I needed to calm down. Like right now.

  “Should I get your coat?” Andy asked. “Do you want to go?”

  I shook my head. As stupid as I probably looked right now, I wasn’t quite ready to bail. Jeez. If I let myself get this freaked out about seeing all those jerks from Beta Rho, what a long year it was going to be. “Crap,” I swore. Get it together, girl.

  “Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” As Andy said that, he draped his sport coat over my bare shoulders.

  “Thanks,” I stammered. “I’m not usually such a drama queen.”

  His eyebrows arched. “Well, maybe you have a good reason.”

  There was curiosity in his eyes. But it wasn’t judgmental. “I don’t like the way they look at me,” I blurted, before I could think better of it.

  “Why?”

  Right. The reason was much too embarrassing for polite conversation. So instead of answering, I just looked down at my shoes.

  “Let’s just go, then?” he suggested. “You look a little… traumatized, actually.”

  That’s when I let out a big sigh. Because there were people in the world who had good reason to feel traumatized. But I wasn’t one of them. I hadn’t been raped, or injured, or abused in any way. I’d just been stupid. Very, very stupid. “Ugh,” I said. “If I leave, I’m giving him too much power.”

  “Maybe not,” Andy challenged. “What did he do?” After asking, Andy immediately clapped a hand over his own mouth. “Sorry. It’s none of my business. But you have me imagining the worst, here.”

  Ouch. Now a nice guy was worried about me, and I didn’t even deserve it. “That’s the stupid thing! Everything that went down…” Gah! I cringed at my unfortunate choice of words, “…between Dash and me was voluntary. I wasn’t even drunk. Not very, anyway.”

  This explanation did not seem to appease Andy. When I looked up, his face was still full of concern. I hadn’t meant to talk about this tonight, or maybe ever. And certainly not with him. And now he’d know that he was on a date with someone who was crazypants.

  I took one more deep breath of cold air, which helped. A little. “Okay, I broke up with him because he didn’t seem all that interested in me as a person. All he wanted to do was play video games with the brothers, but I was supposed to just hang around and watch until bedtime. Like a good little woman.”

  “Charming.”

  “I know, right? In my defense, I realized pretty quickly that he wasn’t worth the effort, and I told him we were through.” What I might have added was the fact that Dash didn’t seem very broken up about losing me. And that should have been a big clue. But I’d missed it.

  The story should have ended there. Because my instinct about him had been dead on. But it didn’t end there. And that’s why I’d been hearing a chant playing inside my head all week. And the mantra was: Stupid… stupid… stupid…

  Andy was watching me with patient eyes, waiting for an explanation. It was silent there on the porch. And somehow I kept talking. “So, last week I went over to the Beta Rho house for a few minutes, just to drop off a bin of Christmas decorations for tonight. It was quiet there that night — the usual video games but no party.” I’d been telling this part of the story to my shoes, but now I looked up to find Andy watching me. God, this was going to be embarrassing. “That night, for the first time, he made a big effort to talk to me. You know, the full court press.”

  Andy smiled at my basketball reference, but he didn’t say a word.

  “He got me a glass of wine and asked me a lot of questions about my classes, and pledging Tri Psi, and…” I rolled my eyes. “Ugh. I just sort of fell under the spell. He was so sweet and patient, telling me how much
he missed me…”

  “So far, so good.” Andy pressed. “What went wrong?”

  Yikes. I hadn’t told a soul about this, not even my roommates. And tomorrow, I would probably regret telling Andy. I really didn’t need even more people to know this story. But I was angry. And I wanted someone to know what pigs they were.

  “Okay, he played me like a hand of poker,” I sighed. “After my second glass of wine on an empty stomach, and two hours of heavy flattery, he wanted me to come upstairs with him. Fool that I am, I went.” I looked down at the porch floorboards again. “He took me into one of the brothers’ rooms. And we…” I cleared my throat. “We fooled around a little bit.”

  Andy dropped his voice. “But you didn’t want to?”

  He was about to get the wrong idea. “That’s not it. See, I didn’t mind at the time. I didn’t start feeling bad about it until two days later. But that night I heard some voices in the hall. I heard a couple of the brothers laughing. But the door was shut, and I didn’t think anything of it.”

  “Oh, shit,” Andy whispered.

  I looked up quickly, catching a wince on his face. “What?”

  He closed his eyes for a long moment. And when he opened them, he said, “please tell me that this was not a hole-in-the-door situation.”

  My stomach dropped. Was I the only one on the planet who didn’t know any better than to fall for Beta Rho’s pledge ritual? Slowly, I nodded.

  Andy’s face sagged. “I’d always just assumed that was a myth.”

  “Apparently, it’s not.” I tried to say this with nonchalance. But I don’t think I pulled it off. Because my eyes began to sting. And that was no good, because, you know, mascara. Carefully I pressed my fingertips against my tear ducts. “I wouldn’t have even known, except that I overheard a couple of them talking about it. I was studying at one of those carrels in the stacks. Have you been up there?”

  Andy nodded. There were twelve floors of books, and each floor had a row of old oak study desks with little walls attached. When you really needed to study — as opposed to picking somewhere with good people-watching — the stacks were the place to go.