by Stacey Kade
“Oh, and your friend, Tory. She’s coming too,” Del says.
“You know Tory?” I ask, surprised.
“Everyone knows Tory,” Maisy says dryly, folding her arms across her chest.
A part of me is envious. We’ve been here a week and a half, and Tory is on a first-name basis with most of the campus, it seems.
But wait . . .
“Tory is coming to play a board game?” I ask.
Maisy snorts.
“She said she was when I talked to her about it the other day after class, but I suspect she’ll end up in the pong tournament downstairs instead,” Del admits.
Yeah, I suspect that too.
“Just, uh, think about it, okay?” Del gives me an uncertain smile, as he turns to head for the door. “Tomorrow at eight.”
Maisy winks at me. “You’ll be among friends. Some friendlier than others,” she says, tipping her head toward Del.
“Maisy,” he mutters.
“Okay, I will,” I say, still stunned, my face warm but in a pleasant, non-humiliating way for a change.
In fact, I’m not sure I’ll be able to stop thinking about it.
Chapter Eighteen
By the next morning, I’ve made up my mind. And then, for the rest of the day, I keep changing it.
I should go. I want to go. It doesn’t have to be a big deal. I like Maisy. And Del. And, to Lexi’s point, making actual friends would help my mom’s visit next week go more smoothly. Mom has checked in with me a couple of times this week in advance of her trip to campus, and it’s a relief, to an unexpected degree, to have stuff to tell her that’s not a lie, or even an exaggeration.
But going down to PBTs again, after everything that happened, when Liam might be there . . . I’m not even sure how I’d feel about that. Potentially seeing him again. That could be . . . I don’t know.
I should definitely not go. I need more time and distance. Maybe the next time Del and the others have a game night.
Assuming they invite you next time.
When classes are finally over on Thursday, my brain has become spiralized mush from going in circles. I walk into our room and flop on my mattress, not even bothering to take off my backpack.
“Goddamn it,” Lexi mutters under her breath, from her bed.
I turn my head to look at her. She’s scowling down at her laptop, which is balanced on her crossed legs.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“I think I was supposed to yarn over instead.”
I sit up. “What are you doing over there?”
In response she holds up knitting needles and her mangled, holey attempt at a scarf.
“Is it supposed to be . . . triangle-shaped?” I ask.
She glares at me, but there’s no real heat behind it. “I don’t know what I’m doing wrong,” she says.
“Why are you doing anything with it right now?” I ask. “I thought Yarn Club wasn’t meeting again until next week.” I’d stuffed my needles and sad attempt in my desk drawer.
“I bumped into Matt at the Union today,” Lexi says.
“Hot TA from Yarn Club Matt?” His full name, as far as I’m concerned.
She ignores me. “He asked me how I was doing with it, offered to meet up with me later to help.”
I grin at her.
“Shut up, Caroline. It’s not like that,” Lexi says, but her cheeks and ears are turning pink.
“I didn’t say anything,” I protest.
“He seems nice, okay?”
“He does,” I say.
“It’s just a scarf,” Lexi mutters, scowling at the clump of yarn attached to her needles.
It dawns on me that this conversation is more about Lexi talking herself into going, into trying. So I agree. “Just a scarf.”
“How about you?” she asks. “How goes the whole friend quest?”
I wince. Trust Lexi to bring up a sensitive subject with her typical bluntness.
“I noticed you weren’t home when I got back from class last night,” she adds.
“I went to Film Board. They’re the ones who—”
“Set up the movies and stuff,” she says. “Yeah, I know. How was it?”
I hesitate, kicking the toe of my shoe against at a mark on the linoleum floor. “Fun. Mostly.”
Lexi puts down her needles on the keyboard of her laptop with a clack. “Spit it out, Caroline,” she says.
“Del,” I say. “He’s on the Film Board. I met him last week when I was at that . . . party. He invited me and Tory, I guess, and a couple of other people over to play a game. Something with zombies versus humans. A board game,” I add. “It sounds like fun.”
Lexi seems unimpressed by this, but then again, she was never an only child, desperately attempting to play Sorry! with herself as the only opponent. For me, board games have not lost their appeal. Plus, you know, zombies.
“And you like him,” Lexi says, cutting straight to the heart of the matter.
I squirm. “I . . . don’t know him.” And I’ve recently learned the hard way that that can be a big problem.
“But what you do know about him, you like,” she says. “So what’s the problem? Go play the game.”
“He’s a PBT. He lives in the Phi Beta Theta house.”
“Del,” Lexi says with a frown; then her expression clears. “Oh. Delfino. His first name is Marc, I think, but nobody calls him that. He was okay, as far as I know. He’s a sophomore.”
“Yeah.” I was figuring that, if not older.
She looks at me. “But Caroline . . . ,” she begins.
“I know, I know!” I hold my hands up to stop her words. “Believe me, I’ve already thought about it, okay?”
“They’re going to give you shit, guaranteed. Maybe not Delfino, but someone will.”
“Yeah.” I hesitate. “One of the other guys at Film Board, John something? He’s PBT and—”
Her mouth twists in distaste. “Yeah, I’m familiar with John.”
“He’s already said some stuff, but Del and Maisy—they’re friends—they made him shut up.”
Lexi shrugs. “I mean, if you want to go . . .” There’s something she’s not saying. But before I can decide if I want to ask her about it, she continues.
“I think you have to be honest with yourself about why you want to go, Caroline,” she says, setting aside her knitting to type on her laptop.
I stiffen. “What does that mean?”
“It means if you’re only going because you’re hoping Liam will see you and suddenly realize he made a mistake and there’ll be some grand reunion, Felicity-style or whatever”—she gestures to the poster on the wall behind me—“you gotta know the odds of that aren’t good.”
I blink at her. Once, that would have been my first and only thought: Will going to the PBT house—or anywhere, really—bring me into proximity with Liam and give me the chance to reconnect with him?
But this time, it didn’t even dawn on me, a realization that startles me.
However, now that Lexi mentions it . . .
I take a breath against the sudden ache in my chest. I probably won’t see him. I’m not even sure if I want to. Okay, that’s a lie—I want to, but it’s like when you’re starving and you want to take that first bite of pizza before it’s cooled enough to eat. You know it’s a bad idea and it’ll hurt, but that’s not quite enough to make the urge go away.
As for the Felicity aspect, it’s definitely true that Ben was always more interested in Felicity when she was seemingly happy with someone else. So going to game night with Del might work to my advantage in that regard. But honestly, I haven’t had a whole lot of time to compare my life to Felicity’s fictional one in the last week or so. Keeping up with my own reality has been enough.
“Liam’s not a magic bullet,” Lexi adds. “Being with him won’t fix anything.”
“I never said it would!” I just thought it, a lot. Before, though. Not now. I don’t think.
“It’s up to
you,” Lexi says, still managing to convey exactly what she thinks is the right/only choice. Which is infuriating. Just because she wants nothing to do with that fraternity because of Jordan doesn’t mean that’s the right choice for me, too.
“But what about that stuff you said about doing what I want? Not letting the rumors stop me?” I demand. “Making Ashmore mine? That’s what I’m trying to do!”
“So then go, Caroline,” Lexi says. “But know what you’re getting yourself into.”
That, I want to tell her, is exactly the problem: I have no idea.
• • •
Tory is on board when I track her down in the cafeteria after dinner to ask if she’s going for game night. “Of course, darlin’, let me get my face on!” she says, patting me on the shoulder and heading for her room.
Then, to my complete non-surprise, as soon as we arrive at the Phi Beta Theta house, she takes off for the basement, drawn toward the barks of male laughter like a mosquito to freshly exposed skin.
Which leaves me standing alone in the hallway, near the stairs. It’s much quieter here on this random Thursday than it was the first weekend or on the first night after classes. There’s no one to ask where Del’s room is, something I should have thought about before now.
I hesitate, tempted to follow Tory downstairs to where the beer pong tournament is probably underway. At least that’s familiar, even if it’s not something I enjoy, and I can probably find someone to tell me where Del’s room is.
Someone like Liam? a voice in my head that sounds suspiciously like Lexi’s asks with scorn.
No. I push that thought aside and make myself start up the stairs, though I’m half expecting a group of brothers to come charging down and accuse me of venturing into their personal space, uninvited. Like when I tried to use the “wrong staircase.”
But I am invited this time. So that’s exactly what I’ll say if someone questions me.
But no one does.
At the top of the stairs, a long hallway stretches the entire width of the house, with doors on either side. Most of them are closed.
But one is open, casting a triangle of light into the hall. Familiar voices drift toward me.
“You can’t do that! Just because I got the lighter and the dynamite last time—”
“Because you cheated!” Del sounds exasperated.
Maisy laughs. “How did I cheat? I drew a card, Del. If anything, it’s on you for not shuffling thoroughly enough.”
I can’t hear Del’s exact response, but the grumbling tone of it gives me a pretty good idea of what his thought is on that idea.
I head toward the open door and then pause cautiously, poking my head in before entering.
Del and Maisy are kneeling, facing off over a game board set up on an oversized glass-and-metal coffee table that looks like a reject from the eighties. It doesn’t seem like it belongs in a fraternity house. Or with anything else in the room, which includes an ancient couch and love seat in a shocking red-and-orange floral pattern with stuffing poking out of the holes where upholstery buttons used to be, a cheap pressboard entertainment center that’s tilting severely to the left, and an aquarium bubbling atop a stack of plastic milk crates. Behind the entertainment center, a deep purple curtain divides the room, giving the back half, presumably where the bed or beds are, some privacy.
The living area is messy, in the sense of shoes piled in the corner, an overflowing recycle bin, and a pizza box on the floor with a giant shoe print on it, which I hope is supposed to be garbage. But it’s not as gross as the basement would have led me to expect.
Del glances up suddenly. “Hey, you made it!” he says, standing.
“Sorry. I . . . I wasn’t sure which room, so I . . .”
He gives me a chagrined look. “I didn’t say, did I?”
I shake my head.
“Sorry. But you found us anyway—that’s awesome!” He seems genuinely pleased that I’m here. “Come on in.” He waves me forward, and I step over the threshold. “Welcome to the palace.”
The palace? Um . . . okay.
Maisy reads my expression and laughs. “Right? It’s only because his roommate’s last name is King. There is nothing palatial about this shit hole.”
“Hey,” Del says, with faux hurt. “I’ll have you know we vacuumed today. In preparation for company.” His gaze skips back to me, a shy smile pulling at the corners of his mouth.
“I’ll send out the royal decree,” Maisy says, taking a sip from the red cup at her elbow.
“We’re getting set up,” Del says to me. “Zombies on this side.” He indicates the space next to him.
“Unless you want to be on the winning team,” Maisy interjects.
Del scowls at her.
“No, I . . . zombies are fine,” I say.
Maisy winks at me. “I bet they are.”
I try not to squirm from embarrassment.
Del valiantly ignores Maisy and gestures toward the couch. “You can sit here. Do you want something to drink?”
He steps around me as I perch on the edge of the couch and heads for a mini fridge by the entertainment center.
“I’ll get the others,” Maisy says, getting to her feet. “Be right back.”
“We have beer and some seriously questionable milk,” Del says. “And this might be orange juice, but . . .”
“Beer is good,” I say.
He hands me a cold can of Miller Lite as Maisy returns with three others in tow, two guys and a girl.
“Lachlan,” Maisy says, pointing to the blond guy with hair down to his chin and an impressive goatee. “His girlfriend, Gina.” She nods to the curvy girl with long dark hair pulled up in a sloppy bun. “They’re on Team Human with me. You get Mayer,” she says with a dismissive wave to the last member of the trio. He’s a good foot taller than Del and broad through the shoulders. He’s wearing a White Sox hat, and ASHMORE SWIMMING AND DIVING is printed across his blue sweatshirt in flaking white letters.
“Fuck you, Maisy,” Mayer says pleasantly. He’s clearly joking, but the heat in the way he looks at her makes it seem like he might not be opposed to such an idea.
“You wish, Mayer,” she says, blowing him a kiss, her gaze lingering too long.
Oooh. Definitely something there. I wonder why they’re not together. But no one else mentions it or even seems to notice their flirting.
As awkward as it feels to be the only new person in a group where everyone else has history, listening and watching them interact fills me with both a tiny sense of being part of what they have and envy that it’s not more.
“This is Caroline,” Del says, slipping past me to sit on my left. “She’s joining us on our brave attempt to save the world from humanity.”
“I think it’s supposed to be the other way around,” Gina says, as she sits on the floor across from me.
“Not on this side of the table,” Mayer says, taking a seat on the couch to my right.
“Zombies bite back,” I say.
Del laughs, which sends a wave of warmth through me. “Exactly.”
The game, as it turns out, is more complicated than I thought at first glance. Dice and cards and weapons and regeneration spots. Kind of like Clue on crack. Zombie crack.
But sadly for us on the brain-devouring side, the zombies are eradicated in just over an hour of playing, leaving Maisy, Gina, and Lachlan triumphant.
“We might need to rethink our strategy,” Mayer says, cracking his knuckles.
“Chain saws,” Del says glumly.
“And dynamite,” Maisy says with glee. “Don’t forget the dynamite.”
As Del and Lachlan reset the board for their respective sides, I catch Maisy’s eye. Bathroom? I mouth.
“The bathroom?” she asks loudly, making me cringe. “Oh, sure. The guest bathroom is downstairs, directly across from the front door. And believe me, that’s the only one you want to use.” She wrinkles up her nose.
“Okay, thanks.” I stand and start to edg
e past Mayer, who shifts his legs out of the way.
“Del,” Maisy says. “Your guest, your female guest, is going to the bathroom.”
“Oh!” He lurches to his feet. “Sorry, Caroline.”
Oh God. Can this be over? I just wanted to pee. “I . . . really, it’s okay. I don’t need an escort,” I say, which makes Gina laugh.
“No, it’s not that,” he says, moving past the table and disappearing behind the room-divider curtain. He returns with a bottle of hand soap, a handful of paper towels, and a roll of toilet paper, all of which he gives to me.
“It’s sort of BYO . . . everything,” he says with a sheepish look. “If we leave stuff down there, it disappears.”
“Including the knob on the door once,” Maisy offers.
“But it’s back now,” Gina adds, when she sees my expression.
“Boys,” Maisy says with a shrug.
“Okay, um, thanks?” I say to Del.
“Sure.” He beams at me.
And I leave then, juggling my supplies, before he decides he needs to walk me down, too.
I find the bathroom exactly where Maisy said it would be, doorknob and lock firmly in place, which is even better. Aside from a layer of grime on the beige tile floor that appears to be permanently ground in, it’s relatively clean.
I’m washing my hands when I feel my phone buzz in my back pocket. After drying my hands with the thoughtfully provided paper towels—Del is right; there is nothing in here, not even a holder for the toilet paper; only holes in the wall where it should be—I pull my phone out to find a couple of missed calls and a voice mail from my mom.
Checking up on me again, no doubt. Even though she’ll be here a week from tomorrow.
After balancing the soap and toilet paper in the crook of my arm, I open the door and then start texting a response, telling her I’m out with friends (TRUE!) and I’ll call her tomorrow.
But with my head bent over my phone, I only make it a few steps into the hall before I sense a presence right in front of me and jerk back to avoid a collision, tripping over my own feet.
