Four-Letter Word

by Christa Desir

  9

  I walked on stiff legs along South Campus, gnawing at each of my nails like they were a row of kernels on an ear of corn. I peeked inside the loggia and read some of the signs hung up on campus: WE NEED EDITORS FOR THE GRINNELL REVIEW, PRACTICE RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS DAY, PASS OUT RIBBONS FOR TRANS DAY OF REMEMBRANCE! I wasn’t sure I’d ever quite understand the workings of “the college,” even with having two parents who’d gone there. I turned and headed west toward the library, passing a group of students, guys all arguing about a basketball game, but they thankfully ignored me. By the time I crossed the tracks, my other thumb cuticle was bleeding too.

  I thought about the call from my parents that didn’t come because I’d been too chicken to send them the email, and I missed them with a swift and fierce pain in my chest. Not that I would ever tell them about the game. I could only imagine what my mom would say about a game called Gestapo. Making light of the organized cruelty and torture of marginalized people by Nazi secret police is hardly my idea of a good time on a Friday night, Chloe. Aren’t all the neo-Nazis around the world enough? Why would you do this? Guilt swept through me because she wouldn’t have been wrong. Which made me too ashamed to ever mention the game to her. Still, I wished I could tell my parents about Mateo. About how I wanted to believe he was real and not lying, but I couldn’t. And whether that was because I’d spent the better part of the past year watching my best friend turn away from me, or because I thought most teenage guys had some ulterior motive, didn’t really matter. I was still defeated.

  Eve and Holly were already in the square in front of Burling Library when I walked up. I tried to catch Eve’s eye, make sure she was okay, but she was sucking down another syringe of Jack Daniel’s and any kind of silent girl communication wasn’t in the cards. Holly looked bleary eyed too, but she waved me over and motioned to the seat on the bench next to her as if we were suddenly the best of pals.

  “Other Chloe,” she said, too loud and too chipper. “Any luck with the letters this time?”

  “No,” I said, letting my curtain of hair fall and slumping next to her.

  She patted me on the leg, her self-polished French-manicured nails as perfect as the rest of her. Only her pat on my leg was more like a slap. Too hard, too enthusiastic. It was like being fouled in hockey in a way the ref couldn’t recognize. “It’s okay,” she said. Slurred, really. “None of us was counting on you. You couldn’t get lucky with Josh twice.”

  Eve laughed and I hated her a little. And I hated myself for hating her after what she’d been through tonight. I’d heard her say stop and I hadn’t done anything. Sure, I’d thought about it, but in the end, I hadn’t intervened right away when I should have.

  Cam, Aiden, and Josh arrived, crossing from the arts building. Cam smirked at me, but I looked away and sucked on my bleeding thumb cuticle.

  Eve stood on wobbly legs and said, “Has anyone seen Chloe or Mateo? I’m freezing and want to get inside.”

  I didn’t say anything about Mateo or my letter. No need for Eve to hold that humiliation over my head just yet, not that she didn’t have one of her own. Stupid, stupid game.

  “We’re here,” Chloe Donnelly called, dragging Mateo behind her. “I found this guy on my way over. He claimed he was heading home. Can you believe it? Before we even officially ended the game.”

  Heading home? Was this another trick? Mateo glanced at me for less than a second, then moved to stand with the guys. I got out my tiny bottle of hand sanitizer. It burned when I rubbed it in, my cuticles not loving the alcohol in the stuff, but there was comfort in being germ-free.

  “Okay,” Chloe Donnelly said, rubbing her hands together as if she had just sanitized too. “Circle up with your teams and let’s see if we can figure out our opponents’ word.”

  I dragged myself toward Chloe Donnelly’s little huddle. The energy and excitement of the practice game were nowhere to be found. Holly seemed blurry and bummed out—had Eve told her what Cam pulled?—and Eve seemed overly peppy, like her mom when she was pitching the benefits of the Booster Club. Maybe she wasn’t as horrified about how Cam got her letter as I thought. Maybe her new attitude about sex made her think Cam’s gross trick wasn’t that big a deal either. Chloe Donnelly wrapped an arm around Holly and Eve, and for a second I considered walking away. Not saying anything, but taking off in the other direction, running until my legs hurt and I was far from there. But then Chloe Donnelly looked up, dropped her arm from Holly’s shoulder, and put it around me instead, drawing me in closer.

  “So did either of you get anyone’s letter?” she asked, scanning Holly’s and Eve’s faces. Hard to miss I wasn’t included in the question. None of us was counting on you.

  “No,” Holly whined. “I couldn’t find anyone and I looked everywhere. A couple of college guys asked me to a party at Fairgrounds later, though.”

  I had no idea where Fairgrounds was, and from Eve’s facial expression, neither did she. But then she recovered and quickly grinned, saying, “That’s cool. We should go.”

  Holly’s face registered shock. “Are you for real? You never want to go to college parties.”

  Eve’s eyes flashed toward me for an instant. Had she told me the truth about almost having sex with a college guy over spring break? She looked strange and guilty, but there were so many reasons for her to seem that way after tonight. I used to know everything she was thinking, but now I didn’t have the first clue.

  “I’d totally go,” Eve said. “But I forgot that my mom expects me home by midnight because we’re delivering plants tomorrow.”

  Holly shook her head, but I didn’t know if it was because she thought Eve was lying or if she felt bad Eve had to be part of her mom’s early Saturday morning plant delivery. “Of course she does. Maybe I’ll go to Fairgrounds on my own. I mean, a party’s a party, right? I need to find out what Cam wants to do.”

  Eve looked hurt but then perked up again. “Whatever. I’ll go with you next time for sure, okay?” She touched Holly’s charm bracelet. BEST FRIENDS. God, all the posturing was so exhausting.

  “Eve? Did you get anyone’s letter?” Chloe Donnelly asked, evidently seeing the whole Fairgrounds thing as a distraction and opting to ignore it.

  Eve shook her head. Chloe Donnelly raised an eyebrow but only said, “I guess people are taking the game more seriously now, not going to be swindled by a plate of Rice Krispies Treats and a pretty face. Don’t worry, Eve, I got Aiden’s and Mateo’s letters. B and T. So at least we can guess.”

  She’d gotten Mateo’s letter again? My shoulders got tight and I had to work hard to relax them. Was it before or after I’d seen him? It had to have been before. But he hadn’t said anything. Maybe that was why he’d asked for my letter. He was embarrassed about losing his. Though I couldn’t help but wonder how he’d lost it. If it was about secrets, how did Chloe Donnelly know any of his? She’d just moved to Grinnell. Which meant it was more likely about sex. My stomach went acid-fire hot and my shoulders tightened again. I should’ve asked her, put myself out of misery and found out what she did to get the letter, but I stopped myself. I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want Mateo to have been with her and then been kind to me, even if it was just about my letter. I needed him to be a good guy.

  I put my thumbnail in my mouth, but the gross taste of hand sanitizer made me pull it back out. Mateo said sex wasn’t the first thing he thought of when it came to winning the game. But it could’ve been the first thing Chloe Donnelly thought of.

  I looked at her T-shirt dress, wondering if it had been as wrinkled before. Or if she’d been doing sex things and it had gotten wrinkled. Sex things with Mateo. Or maybe he was groping her to find the slip of paper that contained our word. I didn’t care about the gross sanitizer; my thumb was back in my mouth. I’d determined I wasn’t going to ask her what she did, but that didn’t mean my brain wasn’t going to continue spinning out all the scenarios it wanted.

  “What words have B and T in them?” Chlo
e Donnelly asked.

  Words. Right. Focus on the words. This is a dumb word game. That’s all.

  “Boat,” I said, dropping my thumb. What was I even doing? I didn’t care about any of this. I wanted to get home.

  “Boat is stupid. Cam wouldn’t have picked that word. We live in Iowa,” Holly said. Apparently, she’d sobered up enough to remember she found me mostly intolerable.

  “What does living in Iowa have to do with anything?” I snapped back.

  Eve stepped closer to Holly. Always choosing her side. “Boat really isn’t the first thing that comes to my mind. Holly’s right. It’s probably bent or boot.”

  Chloe Donnelly crossed her arms. The T-shirt dress definitely looked more wrinkled around the boobs, sort of stretched out at the neck. “He’s your boyfriend, Holly. You guess.”

  Eve’s cheeks turned pink at the word boyfriend and she looked down. Now I felt bad for being upset when she sided with Holly. It wasn’t her fault Cam tricked her. She’d said stop. I didn’t know why she wasn’t explaining what happened. Maybe that was why I was no good with secrets. It seemed more logical to be honest.

  “Boot,” Holly said with certainty. “Cam would choose boot.”

  Chloe Donnelly nodded, but glanced at me and raised her shoulder slightly as if she thought I might be right. She bumped my arm and smiled at me. We were friends still, apparently. I looked down and said nothing, emotions churning too much about this girl who was friends with me one minute and playing a game I hated the next.

  All the things from the night overwhelmed me and there was no sorting through them until I was home, so I kept my eyes trained on the ground. The platform sandals Holly and Eve were wearing were kind of crappy looking up close. Like they’d been made cheap and wouldn’t last very long. Eve must really be in trouble with her parents if they weren’t lavishing the best stuff on her. Not that they were super rich, but her mom never skimped on quality because she always said, “The good stuff lasts longer, and how you present yourself reflects on your whole family.” I wondered if Eve’s mom thought Holly “presented” as a higher-quality friend for Eve than I was.

  “Boot it is then. Okay, guys,” Chloe Donnelly called toward the huddle of guys, pulling out her folded slip of paper and holding it over her head. “Come on over and let’s hear your guess.”

  Nerves twisted inside me and I clutched the tiny purse I wore across my chest to keep from attacking my nails again. I had nothing but stubs to gnaw at after the night, and I could only imagine what Nan would say when she saw them at breakfast in the morning.

  The guys had two of our letters. They had as much of a chance guessing our word as we did theirs. Which meant they could win a platinum favor. I gripped Chloe Donnelly’s free hand. “The platinum favor. Is it . . . ? I mean, can the guys ask anyone if they win? Does each winner get assigned a loser on the opposite team to ask the favor of?”

  She laughed. “No. If they win, they get four ‘can’t say no’ favors from our team. They can each ask any one of us. That’s what makes it so completely pink.”

  “But then they might all ask the same person. And she’d have to say yes no matter what. Four times.”

  Chloe Donnelly nodded. “Yep. That’s how you play. But don’t worry, Other Chloe. It’s not that hard to say yes after the first time.”

  Cam laughed from where he was standing a few feet away. Oh God. I was going to barf. My eyes went wide and the image of his hand up Eve’s skirt spun around my head on an endless loop. Please, God, do not let them guess our word.

  “So let’s hear your guess, Cam,” Chloe Donnelly said.

  His smirking face changed into one of frustration and irritation. I’d seen that face before, when he’d lost to Aiden in the fifth-grade student council election. It was the face that said I can’t believe I have to deal with such amateurs. “Well, I was the only guy who got a letter from anyone. . . .” He glanced at Eve and her neck got splotchy, but she didn’t look away. “So I’ve only got a guess, but I’m going to go with easy.”

  Wait. Wait wait wait. He was the only guy who got a letter? My gaze shot to Mateo. He didn’t tell Cam my letter? So he was telling the truth all along. I couldn’t stop the smile from taking over my face. I probably looked like a grinning doofus, but I didn’t even care. Mateo didn’t tell anyone. He wasn’t trying to trick me. He was trying to help me. A half grin pulled up the left side of his mouth, but then he looked back to Chloe Donnelly, the girl who had taken his letter from him. Both our smiles disappeared.

  “Easy? Easy? Puh-lease. As if I’d ever pick a word with a Y. Our word was dent. An anagram.” She opened the slip of paper and showed it to them. “Too bad for you guys.”

  They didn’t get the word right. Thank God. Relief pounded through me. They didn’t win. Maybe because Mateo hadn’t said anything about my T. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling this time. I wouldn’t be doing any platinum favors for anyone.

  Chloe Donnelly waved at Holly, this sort of queenly wave as if she was really above all of us. Holly tottered forward and smiled at Cam. “Okay. Our guess is that your word is boot.”

  Cam’s shoulders dropped a fraction. “Close, baby, but our word was boat.” He pulled out his crumpled word and a safety condom dropped out. He left it on the ground as he held up his slip of paper, and it took everything I had not to point out that he was littering. “See? Boat. So it looks like no one wins.”

  Boat. I raised my told-you-so eyebrows at Holly, but she only sneered at me.

  Chloe Donnelly strummed her black-polished fingernails on her crossed arms, the rings on every finger glinting in the light from the street lamp. She glared at Holly for a second, but then smoothed out her face as if none of this mattered and turned back to the guys. “Technically, you’re right, no one officially wins. But we did get two of your letters and you only got one of ours.”

  “Hold on,” Aiden said, stepping forward, all stiff and almost angry. “That’s not how you explained the rules. You said a team had to correctly guess their opponents’ word to win.”

  Josh stepped next to him. His shirt was wrinkled, untidy. He must have been hiding in a balled-up position. “Aiden’s right. You can’t change the rules after the fact. I’m not giving up a platinum favor when you didn’t really win. The practice game was a fair win, but this . . . no.”

  Aiden looked at Josh and nodded, some secret guy communication happening that once again I didn’t really understand. I studied Aiden and wondered how Chloe Donnelly got his letter from him. He was always so uptight and put together. I couldn’t really believe he had secrets, not with his path to the Naval Academy lit up like a landing strip toward his future. Maybe an easy hookup was all he wanted. Something without the clingy strings of Eve Jacobson.

  All the sex-stuff speculation made my skin crawl. I was so far out of my league with this game. I didn’t know Chloe Donnelly well enough to guess if she’d offer herself up for a letter. And the more I did get to know her, the more I guessed her stories about abortions in Chicago and her outrageous friends weren’t completely true. She did get two letters, though. So maybe sex was involved. It seemed gross and trampy, but maybe this was how they played in Chicago. Cam certainly seemed to be inclined to play that way. Although I couldn’t imagine Mateo would have gone for that. Especially after he’d kept my letter to himself. So maybe she had some sort of leverage on Mateo. But how?

  None of it made sense; my brain hurt from all the speculation. I’d watched Cam get Eve’s letter, and still I wasn’t completely sure how to play the game that would work for me. Not with what was on the table for the winners.

  I thought again about asking Chloe Donnelly how she got Aiden’s and Mateo’s letters, but something kept holding me back. Partly it was not wanting to seem like I had no idea what I was doing, but more, I was afraid of finding out. My mom would call it the bliss of ignorance, but I’d hardly consider myself in a state of bliss. The only thing worse than all the speculation would be finding
out my fears about the game were right, and then what would I do?

  “Okay, okay, you big baby rule followers,” Chloe Donnelly said. “No one won this time. We all get to hold on to our platinum favors. Which is super boring, but whatever. Everyone needs to try harder next time we play.” She turned and stared directly at me before saying, “And maybe we could make more of an effort at offense instead of choosing to hide. I know you have it in you.”

  I didn’t say a word, just shoved my pinkie in my mouth and gnawed off the last sliver of nail there. It didn’t matter that Chloe Donnelly was disappointed. Or that in all likelihood Holly and Eve would go back to Eve’s house for a sleepover—something Nan and Pops had long ago cut off discussion about with a succinct You have a bed here—and discuss how worthless I was at Gestapo. None of it mattered. Because there was no way I was going to play this game again.

  10

  It was ridiculous to have wanted Mateo to walk me home, too much to ask for after he already didn’t tell the guys my letter. But still, I wanted the chance to ask him why he didn’t. I walked slowly toward High Street, hoping he’d catch up with me, but I saw him turn the opposite way down Sixth, and I was left alone.

  When I slipped in the door, Pops made the snoring-snort sound he did whenever he was lightly dozing on the couch. He’d waited up for me.

  “Chloe?” he asked, heaving himself and his stomach pooch up and heading my way with a cautious stride, as if I might be someone else. His thinning gray hair stood out at all angles, and I felt bad he’d had to stay up.