by Meg Cabot
Sarah waves the thickly packed manila file. Elizabeth Kellogg had a record in the hall director’s office, which means that she’d either gotten in trouble for something or been ill at some point during the school year…
…which is odd, because Elizabeth was a freshman, and the fall semester had only just begun.
“Getta loada this.” Sarah is eager to share all she knows with me, Brad, and Tina. The latter two are listening to her with wide eyes. Pete, over at the guard’s desk, is acting like he’s busy watching his monitors. But I know he’s listening, too. “Her mother called Rachel, all bent out of shape because we allow residents to have any guests they want, and she didn’t want Elizabeth to be able to sign in boys. Apparently Mom expected her daughter to remain a virgin until marriage. She wanted Rachel to make it so that Elizabeth was only to be allowed to sign in girls. Obviously there are issues at home, but whatever—”
It’s the job of the GA—or graduate assistant—to assist the director in the day-to-day operations of the residence hall. In return, GAs receive free room and board and practical experience in higher education, which is generally their chosen field.
Sarah’s getting a lot more practical experience in the field here in Fischer Hall than she’d bargained on, what with a dead girl and all.
“Clearly there was some major mother-daughter rivalry going on there,” Sarah informs us. “I mean, you could tell Mrs. Kellogg was jealous because her looks are fading while her daughter’s—”
Sarah’s undergrad degree is in sociology. Sarah thinks that I suffer from low esteem. She told me this the day she met me, at check-in two weeks earlier, when she went to shake my hand, then cried, “Oh my God, you’re that Heather Wells?”
When I admitted that I was, then told her—when she asked what on earth I was doing working in a college residence hall (unlike me, Sarah never messes up and calls it a dorm)—that I was hoping to get a BA one of these days, she said, “You don’t need to go to college. What you need to work on are your abandonment issues and the feelings of inadequacy you must feel for being dropped from your label and robbed by your mother.”
Which is kind of funny, since what I feel I need to work on most are my feelings of dislike for Sarah.
Fortunately Dr. Flynn, the housing department’s on-staff psychologist, comes hurtling toward us just then, his briefcase overflowing with paperwork.
“Is that the deceased’s file?” he demands, by way of greeting. “I’d like to see it before I talk to the roommate and call the parents.”
Sarah hands him the file. As Dr. Flynn flips through it, he suddenly wrinkles his nose, then asks, “What is that smell?”
“Um,” I say. “Mrs. Allington sort of—well, she, um…”
“She yorked,” Brad says. “In the planter over there.”
Dr. Flynn sighs. “Not again.” His cell phone chimes, and he says, “Excuse me,” and reaches for it.
At the same moment, the reception desk phone rings. Everyone looks down at it. When no one else reaches for it, I do.
“Fischer Hall,” I say.
The voice on the other end of the phone isn’t one I recognize.
“Yes, is this that dormitory located on Washington Square West?”
“This is a residence hall, yes,” I reply, remembering, for once, my training.
“I was wondering if I could speak to someone about the tragedy that occurred there earlier today,” says the unfamiliar voice.
Tragedy? I immediately become suspicious.
“Are you a reporter?” I ask. At this point in my life, I can sniff them out a mile away.
“Well, yes, I’m with the Post—”
“Then you’ll have to get in touch with the Press Relations Department. No one here has any comment. Good-bye.” I slam down the receiver.
Brad and Tina are staring at me.
“Wow,” Brad says. “You’re good.”
Sarah gives her glasses a push, since they’ve started to slide down her nose.
“She ought to be,” she says. “Considering what she’s had to deal with. The paparazzi wasn’t exactly kind, were they, Heather? Especially when you walked in and found Jordan Cartwright receiving fellatio from…who was it? Oh yes. Tania Trace.”
“Wow,” I say, gazing at Sarah with genuine wonder. “You really put that photographic memory of yours to good use, don’t you, Sarah?”
Sarah smiles modestly while Tina’s jaw drops.
“Heather, you went out with Jordan Cartwright?” she cries.
“You caught him getting head from Tania Trace?” Brad looks as happy as if someone’s just dropped a hundred-dollar bill in his lap.
“Um,” I say. It’s not like I have much of a choice. They can easily Google it. “Yeah. It was a long time ago.”
Then I excuse myself to go search for a soda, hoping a combined jolt of caffeine and artificial sweeteners might make me feel less like causing there to be yet another death among the building’s student population.
4
* * *
Don’t Tell
I’m begging you
It’s a secret and if you
Don’t Tell
I’ll make you glad
You didn’t
Don’t Tell
No one knows
I’ve exposed my soul
To you
So don’t tell
“Don’t Tell”
Performed by Heather Wells
Composed by Valdez/Caputo
From the album Sugar Rush
Cartwright Records
* * *
The closest soda machine is located in the TV lounge, where all of the college’s crisis management people are congregated. I don’t want to risk asking Magda for a free one from the caf when she’s already in trouble with her boss.
I only recognize a few of the many administrators in the lounge, and then only from being interviewed by them when I’d applied for my job. One of them, Dr. Jessup, the head of the housing department, detaches himself from another administrator’s side when he notices me, and comes over, looking very different in his weekend wear of Izod shirt and Dockers than he did in his usual charcoal suits.
“Heather,” Dr. Jessup says, his deep voice gruff. “How’s it going?”
“Okay,” I reply. I’ve already jammed a dollar into the machine, so it’s too late to run away—though I’d like to, since everyone in the room is staring at me, like, Who is that girl? Don’t I know her from somewhere? And what’s she doing here?
Instead of running, I make a selection. The sound of the can hitting the slot at the bottom of the machine is loud in the TV lounge, where conversation is muted out of respect for both the deceased and the grieving, and where the TV, which normally blasts MTV 2 24/7, has been turned off.
I retrieve my can from the machine and hold it in my hands, afraid to open it and attract more undue attention to myself by making noise.
“How do the kids seem to you?” Dr. Jessup wants to know. “In general?”
“I just got here,” I say. “But everybody seems pretty shaken up. Which is, you know, understandable, considering the fact that there’s a dead girl at the bottom of the elevator shaft.”
Dr. Jessup widens his eyes and motions for me to keep my voice down, even though I hadn’t been speaking above a whisper. I look around, and realize there are some administrative bigwigs in the TV lounge. Dr. Jessup is hypersensitive about his department being perceived as a caring, student-oriented one. He prides himself on his ability to relate to the younger generation. I realized this during my first interview, when he’d narrowed his gray eyes at me and asked the inevitable question, the one that makes me want to throw things, but that I can’t seem to escape: “Don’t I know you from somewhere?”
Everyone thinks they’ve seen me somewhere before. They just can’t ever figure out where. I get “Didn’t you go to the prom with my brother?” a lot. Also, “Weren’t you and I in one of the same classes in college?”
“I used to be a singer” was what I’d said to Dr. Jessup, the day of my job interview. “A, um, pop singer. When I was, you know. A teenager.”
“Ah, yes,” Dr. Jessup had said. “‘Sugar Rush.’ That’s what I thought, but I wasn’t sure. Can I ask you a question?”
I’d twisted uncomfortably in my seat, knowing what was coming. “Sure.”
“Why are you applying for a job in a residence hall?”
I’d cleared my throat.
I wish VH1 would do a Behind the Music on me. Because then I wouldn’t have to. Explain to people, I mean.
But it’s not like I’m Behind the Music material. I was never famous enough for that. I was never a Britney or a Christina. I was barely even an Avril. I was just a teenager with a healthy set of lungs on her, who was in the right place at the right time.
Dr. Jessup had seemed to understand. At least, he’d tactfully dropped the subject after I mentioned the stuff about my mom fleeing the country with my manager—and oh yeah, my life’s savings—my label dropping me, and my boyfriend, too, in that order. When I was offered the position of administrative assistant to Fischer Hall, at a starting salary that equaled what I used to earn in a week on the concert circuit, I accepted without hesitation. I wasn’t seeing much of a long-term career in waitressing—which, for a girl who doesn’t even like standing up to wash her hair, can be brutal—and getting a college education seemed like a good idea. I have to wait until I pass my six months’ probation—just three more to go—but then I can start enrolling in as many courses as I want.
The first class I’m going to take is Psych 101 so I can see if I’m really as filled with neuroses as Rachel and Sarah seem to think.
Now Dr. Jessup is inquiring about Rachel’s mental health.
“How’s she holding up?” Dr. Jessup wants to know.
“I guess she’s okay,” I say.
“You should buy her some flowers, or something,” Dr. Jessup says. “Something to perk her up. Candy, maybe.”
I say, “Oh, that’s a good idea,” even though I have no clue what he’s talking about. Why should I buy flowers or candy for Rachel? Does Elizabeth Kellogg’s death affect Rachel more than it affects Julio, the head of the maintenance staff, who’ll probably be the person hosing Elizabeth’s blood out of the elevator shaft later on? Is anybody buying candy for Julio?
Maybe I should just buy flowers for both of them.
“Rachel’s not used to the city yet,” Dr. Jessup is saying, by way of explanation, I suppose. “This is bound to shake her up a little. She’s not a jaded New Yorker yet, like some of us. Right, Wells?” He winks.
“Right,” I say, even though I still have no idea what he means. Would a Whitman Sampler be enough, or did he want me to go all the way to Dean & Deluca’s and buy a bunch of those petits fours? Which would be okay, because then I can get myself some of those chocolate-covered orange peels.
Except…Rachel doesn’t eat candy. It’s not on the Zone. Maybe I should get her some nuts?
But our conversation comes to an abrupt end when President Allington comes striding into the lounge.
I’ll tell you the truth. I never recognize Phillip Allington at first glance, even though I’ve been seeing him get off the elevators every weekday morning since last June, when I started working at Fischer Hall.
The reason I never recognize President Allington is because President Allington doesn’t exactly dress like a college president. His ensemble of choice is white trousers—which he continues to wear well after Labor Day, regardless of Miss Manners—gold New York College T-shirt (tank top for really humid days), Adidas, and, in inclement weather, a gold and white New York College letter jacket. According to another article I found in Justine’s files, the president feels if he dresses like a student, he’ll be more accessible to them.
But I’ve never seen a New York College student dressed in the school colors. They all wear black, to blend in with the rest of the New Yorkers.
Today President Allington has opted for the T-shirt rather than the tank, even though the temperature outside is over seventy degrees. Well, maybe he had a meeting of the board of trustees to attend, and wanted to dress to impress.
It isn’t until all the other administrators immediately rush over to him to make sure the president knows what an integral part he or she is playing in the resolution of what will no doubt be referred to on Monday in the student-run newspaper as “The Tragedy” that I’m like, “Oh, yeah. That’s the president.”
Ignoring everyone else, Dr. Allington looks directly at Dr. Jessup and says, “You should do something about this, Stan. This is not good. Not good at all.”
Dr. Jessup looks as if he wishes he were the one at the bottom of the elevator shaft. I don’t really blame him, either.
“Phil,” he says to the president. “It happens. In a population this big, there are bound to be some deaths. We had three last year alone, and the year before that, there were two—”
“Not in my building,” President Allington says. I can’t help thinking that he is trying to sound like Harrison Ford in Air Force One (“Get off my plane”).
But he sounds more like Pauly Shore in Bio-Dome.
This seems to me like an appropriate time to go back to my office. I find Sarah there sitting at my desk, talking on the phone. No one else is around, but there’s still a disagreeable amount of tension in the room. It seems to be emanating from Sarah, who slams the phone down and glares at me.
“Rachel says we have to cancel the hall dance tonight.” She is practically glowering.
“So?” This sounds like a reasonable request to me. “Cancel it.”
“You don’t understand. We’ve lined up a real band. We stand to lose about fifteen hundred dollars from this.”
I stare at Sarah.
“Sarah,” I say. “A girl is dead. Dead.”
“And by veering from our normal routine because of her selfish act,” Sarah says, “we will only cause her death to be romanticized by the student population.” Then, coming down off her grad student high horse for a second, she adds, “I guess we can make back the lost revenue in T-shirt sales. Still, I don’t see why we should cancel our dance, just because some nutcase took a dive off the top of an elevator.”
And people say show biz is rough. They’ve obviously never worked in a dorm.
Excuse me, I mean, residence hall.
5
* * *
I don’t see how
We could have drifted so far apart
Seems like just yesterday
You were calling me baby
Now I’m alone
And I can’t help crying
Do Over
Baby I want a
Do Over
’Cause I’m not ready
To let you go
“Do Over”
Performed by Heather Wells
Composed by Dietz/Ryder
From the album Sugar Rush
Cartwright Records
* * *
Being this is New York City, where so many unnatural deaths occur every day, it ends up taking the coroner’s office four hours to get to Elizabeth’s body.
The coroner arrives at three-thirty, and by three thirty-five, Elizabeth Kellogg is declared dead. Cause of death, pending an investigation and autopsy, is recorded as acute trauma, in the form of a broken neck, back, and pelvic bone, in addition to multiple fractures to the face and extremities.
Call me a dreamer, but I don’t think anybody in the student population will be romanticizing her death when they find this out.
Worse, the coroner says he thinks Elizabeth has been dead for nearly twelve hours. Which means she’s been lying in the bottom of that elevator shaft since the night before.
And okay, he says she died on impact with the cement floor, so death was instantaneous. It’s not like she’d lain there, alive, all
night.
But still.
There’s no hiding the coroner’s van, or the body that is eventually trundled out of the building and into it. By four o’clock, the entire student population of Fischer Hall knows there’s been a death. They also know, once the elevators are turned back on, and they are finally allowed to take them back to their floors, how she died. I mean, they’re college students: They’re not stupid. They can put together two and two and come up with four.
But I can’t be too concerned with how the seven hundred residents of Fischer Hall are dealing with the news of Elizabeth’s death. Because I am too busy being concerned with how Elizabeth’s parents are dealing with the news of her death.
That’s because it was decided by Dr. Jessup—a decision backed up by Dr. Flynn—that because of Rachel’s previous contact with Mrs. Kellogg concerning Elizabeth’s guest privileges, she should be the one to make the call to the dead girl’s parents.
“It will be less of a shock,” Dr. Flynn assures everyone, “for the Kelloggs to hear the news from a familiar voice.”
Sarah is unceremoniously banished from the office once the decision is made, but Dr. Jessup asks me to stay.
“It’ll be a comfort to Rachel,” is what he says.
He clearly hasn’t seen Rachel in action in the cafeteria, cussing out the salad bar attendants for accidentally putting full-fat ranch dressing in the fat-free ranch dispenser, the way I had. Rachel is hardly the type who needs comforting.
But who am I to say anything?
The scene is excruciatingly sad, and by the time Rachel hangs up the phone, I have what feels like an oncoming migraine as well as an upset stomach.
Of course, it could be the eleven Jolly Ranchers and the bag of Fritos I’d had in lieu of lunch. But you never know.
