Four-Letter Word

by Christa Desir

  I blinked and wiped the snot from my face. Blinked again. “How do you know about the game?”

  She sat next to me, and Seth stayed standing, his hands in his pockets and his posture ridiculously straight. He almost looked like he was Secret Service for Melissa.

  “Everyone knows about the game, Chloe. It’s Grinnell. You think something like Gestapo is going to be kept under wraps? I’m just surprised more people in this dumb town haven’t asked to join you.”

  My body went numb at the idea that everyone was speculating about this, about me. I tried to channel my mom and not care what other people were saying behind my back, but I couldn’t. I didn’t want to be the subject of the rumor mill. It was bad enough knowing people gossiped about my absentee parents.

  “Why didn’t you say something earlier?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “Because I was waiting for you to mention it. I figured you’d tell me when you were ready to talk about it. I invited you over tonight to give you the out.”

  Being friends with Melissa was so relieving. I didn’t think I deserved the comfort of her, but I wasn’t going to turn her away because of my own insecurity. She didn’t seem mad I’d kept things from her, not like how Eve always got snippy if I did something fun without telling her or inviting her along.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

  “I guess you had your reasons.”

  I nodded. “It’s a big mess. I didn’t want to play again, but Mateo needed me to because . . . well, it doesn’t matter. I’m supposed to be looking for him.”

  Melissa released a long exhale. “Chloe, listen, this girl, the other Chloe, she’s not what she seems.”

  I let out a bitter laugh. “You mean she’s not a lying, manipulative bitch?” I slapped a hand over my mouth. My mom would freak if she ever heard me say something like that about another girl.

  Melissa laughed, the full open laugh she used to have when we were kids. “No, she is that. But I don’t know how much of her story is true, whatever she’s told you. I work in the school office a few mornings a week, doing a bunch of shredding and collating for the teachers. They haven’t gotten Chloe’s records from her old school. And she’s got a bunch of excuses every time Ms. McVoy asks her about it.”

  I scrunched my face. “Really? Well, are they legit excuses?”

  “Maybe, but Ms. McVoy has tried to call her parents a bunch of times and they’ve never answered or returned any of her phone calls.”

  I frowned. “Yeah, that’s kind of shady.”

  I’d never been to Chloe’s house. I didn’t even know where it was, which was pretty unusual for Grinnell. I didn’t know if Holly and Eve had been there, but I felt like if they had, they would’ve bragged about it. Said how “pink” it was and how it was too bad I couldn’t have come too. She’d asked if I could sleep over last week, but that was before everything got messed up with the game. And she’d even implied maybe I’d be sleeping at Mateo’s. It was possible she didn’t ever plan on having me over.

  “How much do you really know about Chloe Donnelly?” Melissa asked.

  I shrugged. “She said her mom’s a prof in Iowa City and her dad works in a law firm in Des Moines. I didn’t look it up or anything. I mean, why would I? Why would she lie about that?”

  Melissa glanced past me at Seth. He was still standing guard. He raised a shoulder. “Could be a fake identity, or a plant,” he said. “Like a 21 Jump Street sting.”

  My mouth dropped open. “Are you serious?”

  Seth shrugged again. “I don’t know. Look her parents up.”

  Melissa pulled her phone out and googled Professor Donnelly at U of I. “I don’t see anything on the website, but if she’s new, they might not have updated it with her information yet. Or maybe she doesn’t have the same last name.”

  “Probably we’ll have the same problem finding her dad. And Donnelly isn’t exactly an obscure name, so there’s no guarantee if we find it, it’ll be him. It’s not Smith, but still.”

  “True.”

  “If this whole thing is a sting operation, what’s her endgame? A petty drug bust in Grinnell, Iowa? Feels a little weak.”

  Seth frowned. “Maybe it has to do with the college. She wanted you to play here, after all.”

  I studied him. He had one of those chin dimples that made guys look younger than they are. I must have been staring at him too long because he tilted his head and raised his eyebrows as if asking, Do I have something on my face?

  I stood and held out a hand. “I’m Chloe.”

  Seth grinned—a cute boyish smile that made me see part of why Melissa was into him—and shook my hand. “Yeah, I caught that. Seth. I’m Melissa’s.”

  Not Melissa’s boyfriend or fiancé or significant other or boo, just Melissa’s. My gut tightened in envy. I wanted to belong to someone like that or have someone belong to me.

  “It’s nice to meet you. Sorry I bailed on you guys earlier.”

  “Melissa was worried about you,” he said. A definite reprimand.

  “Sorry,” I said again, then shoved a finger in my mouth and started peeling at the cuticle.

  “My gran used to say biting your nails would cause a tree of dirty worms to grow in your stomach.”

  I dropped my hand and reached for my sanitizer in the pocket of my hoodie. “That’s gross.”

  He grinned. “Yep. But it got me to stop doing it.”

  Melissa stood now too. “I knew you two would like each other.”

  Seth wrapped his arm around her and pulled her close so she tucked into his armpit. “You should come watch a movie with us, Chloe. It’d make my girl happy.”

  The my girl had a slight twang, and it made me wonder if he’d grown up in the South.

  “Yeah, Chloe, ditch this game and let’s do something normal. Dari Barn is still open so we can grab some scoops on the way.”

  When we were little, we always called our ice-cream treats scoops, no matter what we were ordering. Even when we both religiously spent a whole summer eating only peanut-butter-cup cyclones, we told our parents we were getting scoops.

  I wanted to hug Melissa for making me remember how easy it had been then. How drama-free and simple. But she was still tucked into Seth, and the fact was, nothing was simple for me or her any longer.

  “I want to go with you,” I said, but then I shook my head, acceptance and defeat churning like a gross cocktail in my stomach. “But I really can’t. I need to finish this game. It’s complicated, and I have no idea if any of it’ll turn out, but I can’t bail on Mateo.”

  I willed her to understand. To see that me and Mateo were a little like her and Seth and that we weren’t going to give up on each other. That I wasn’t going to give up on him. That he wouldn’t “disappear” if I was looking out for him. That he wasn’t better off without me.

  Melissa grabbed my arm. “Chloe, I think you should come with us. I have a really bad feeling about this. You don’t owe it to anyone to keep playing.”

  But I did. I owed it to everyone, to all the people whose secrets I’d been collecting and keeping—even if I didn’t have any plans to disclose them. Whether I wanted it or not, my friends were trusting me to help them get out from underneath Chloe Donnelly. Though if Seth was right and it was some kind of sting, four platinum favors were definitely not going to help any of us.

  I had to believe it wasn’t as nefarious as that. We were in boring Grinnell. This wasn’t a terrorist plot or some kind of DEA operation. That stuff didn’t happen here. And I believed Mateo: Chloe Donnelly was just obsessed with a dumb game. That’s why she told Aiden’s parents about him and Josh. She needed Josh to keep playing. No amount of CSI or American Crime was going to make me think this went any deeper than a girl who spent way too much time gathering high school gossip.

  “It’s going to be fine, Melissa. Let’s hang out tomorrow, okay?”

  Melissa exchanged a nervous glance with Seth.

  “Really,” I said, reaching out to
squeeze her hand. “Trust me. It’ll all work out.”

  I hoped I sounded more confident than I felt. She stared at me for another thirty seconds then nodded. For a minute I thought she was going to hug me, but then she linked hands with Seth and told me to text her when I got home later.

  “It was good meeting you, Chloe,” Seth said.

  “You too. I hope I see you tomorrow also.”

  I didn’t know how that worked, if he stayed with her when he wasn’t in Johnston or what, though I couldn’t imagine Melissa’s mom going for sleepovers. Of course, how much worse could it get than an unplanned pregnancy?

  “You will,” he answered, no hesitation.

  They walked away, and my heart squeezed when I saw him lean over and kiss the top of Melissa’s head.

  I want that.

  25

  Even though the night felt like it was going on forever, it had actually only been an hour since we started the game, so we still had another hour and a half until it ended. I needed to find Mateo and give him my letter.

  I headed toward the East Campus dorms, powering on my phone, and it immediately pinged with a text.

  Mateo: Meet me outside Herrick Chapel.

  My stomach swooped and I switched direction. I tucked my hands in my hoodie because the night had gotten cool and breezy. I tried not to wonder what Mateo had been doing for the past hour. It didn’t matter. I was meeting him and this was all going to work out. I pushed away all my doubts and walked faster past the science center toward the other academic buildings and chapel. My parents had gotten married in Herrick Chapel. They said it was only right since that was where they fell in love—getting to know each other more as they protested William F. Buckley Jr.’s convocation speech.

  I felt raw and way too exposed as I rounded the corner to the chapel steps, but everything eased in me when I saw Mateo standing in the doorway with his foot holding the door open.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Waiting for you. Come on.”

  I slipped behind him into the dimly lit chapel. “How did you get inside? Herrick’s supposed to be locked at night.”

  “It’s locked now,” he said, tugging at the door handle until it clicked. He pulled me forward for a kiss. Kissing Mateo was like having the best day in the world, over and over again. I lost all sense of time and my body got all warm and felt heavy and light all at once.

  “My letter’s K,” I whispered when he finally inched back.

  He laughed. “Not exactly what I was kissing you for.”

  “Yeah, I know. But I wanted to make sure you had it. Did the other guys get Eve’s and Holly’s letters yet? I should’ve asked the girls for their letters when I saw them, just in case they couldn’t find Cam or Aiden or Josh. I didn’t think. I should’ve given them my letter to give to the other guys too. In case I didn’t find you.”

  He tucked my hair behind my ear. “I would’ve found you. I would’ve come for you.”

  It sounded both incredibly sweet and incredibly dirty, and I wasn’t sure which way I should take it, all the contradictions around Mateo too much for me to stay on any real solid ground for long. Was it always going to be like this with him? I wanted to ask, but it would end up a blurt about whether he thought about me like I thought about him, so I swallowed my worries and deflected. “So did the guys get Eve’s and Holly’s letters?”

  “Yeah. Cam texted. P and I.”

  I blinked away the fuzziness from the kiss and being so close to Mateo, and tried to focus on what Chloe Donnelly’s word could be. Pick? Pike? “Oh. Oh, no way,” I said as soon as it all clicked into place.

  Mateo shook his head but grinned, having figured it out too. “Pink. Of course. I should’ve figured. Stupid and obvious. Not even an anagram. It’s almost like she wants to lose.”

  “Or she’s so sure of herself and her girls that she isn’t worried about how obvious it is.”

  He slid his hand to my waist, his thumb slipping beneath my shirt to rub my hip. “Probably that. Though she was stupid to trust you girls. Not after only knowing you three weeks.”

  “She knows secrets about Eve and Holly too,” I said. Though I didn’t want to get into the prison thing or Eve’s Ritalin usage.

  He didn’t ask, which was classic Mateo, never one to gossip. Instead, he put his other hand on my hip and said, “She doesn’t have anything on you, though. My sweet, honest girl with a big heart. My Chloe doesn’t have secrets.”

  Why did every dumb line sound perfect coming from him? Everything I would’ve scoffed at if Eve or Holly had said some guy fed them seemed genuine from Mateo. As if what he said took him by surprise, like he was a blurter too. I loved the idea that I could unhinge this boy, make him blurt. It made me seem powerful, the same as when his hands shook and he became breathless and flustered in the truck with me. Not giving me a line. Not pulling a varsity move. Just being him. It was maybe better than how Seth had said, I’m Melissa’s.

  “Did that sound cheesy?” he asked. “That my Chloe. Sorry. It was . . .”

  I grinned. “No. It’s okay. I liked it, which I probably shouldn’t say because . . .”

  Because it was possessive and I wasn’t someone’s anything; I was my own person, and, and, and . . . But all my mom’s judgy feminist criticism dissipated in my mind. My Chloe sounded perfect to my ears because it meant someone thought I was special enough to be his. Mateo was taking a risk for me. He made me feel like I was worth it. As if the cost wasn’t too high. As if I was the first person on his list instead of the last.

  “So what are we doing here?” I asked, glancing toward the altar, a piano in the middle next to the pulpit that made me think there’d been a concert earlier. “Aren’t you worried we’ll get caught?”

  “Cleaning crew left about twenty minutes ago. That’s how I slipped in. Doors won’t open up again until the morning.”

  The dim light and the echoing way our voices bounced off the pews and the stained-glass windows made me feel as if time had stopped. Like we were in a sort of dreamworld where nothing could penetrate the walls around us. A strange hazy glow and Mateo’s smell and warm breath heating up the skin on my face and neck.

  Mateo took my hand and led me to the small balcony. Track lighting along the walls guided our path. I didn’t know if they always kept the lights on in Herrick or if Mateo had figured out how to work them, but I was grateful to be able to mostly see him, even if it was all angles and shadow.

  The chapel was like most churches in our town, nothing hugely special about it, the altar and the pews and a big pipe organ and stained-glass windows portraying Biblical figures. But my parents had told me about all the people who had given convocations there over the years, and it was overwhelming to think about the history of the place. As if the powerful words from each presenter had seeped into the walls and made every pew, every candle, every pipe from the organ come alive.

  I stepped lightly walking up the stairs, not wanting to interrupt the silence and sacredness of the space. I’d seen my parents’ wedding photos taken here: Mom in a simple yellow dress and Dad in khakis, a blue shirt, and a wide red tie that matched the carpet. My parents told me they didn’t do anything fancy for their wedding because they were broke and every extra penny was saved to set up my mom’s organic coffee shop. But they looked happy in the pictures. The only other time I’d seen them that happy—not weighted down by all the trivialities of Grinnell life or a baby they couldn’t have—was when they’d told me we’d been accepted into the Spirit Corps.

  Mateo directed me to a pew near the front of the balcony and then slid in next to me. I suddenly felt all shy and awkward and nervous about what we were doing. It wasn’t the church so much as it was the quiet, the space being ours until we had to return to the game.

  Mateo wrapped his long fingers around the top of the pew in front of us. No dirt and nicely trimmed nails. Probably his parents’ hands looked like they worked on the farm, but Mateo worked at Beau’s and his h
ands were a little rough but clean. I noticed a tiny burn scar on his wrist from what I assumed was a too-hot pizza pan and touched it with my finger.

  “I brought you here because I wanted to be with you. We have time before the end of the game and who knows what’s going to happen later. But I wanted to see you and hang out with you. This seemed . . . I don’t know, kind of the perfect place.” His voice echoed around us, and because of the chapel or because it was him, it felt grave and important.

  I nodded, then leaned forward and kissed him again. I wanted to get lost in him, to forget about the game and Chloe Donnelly and my tears over my parents and just think about him. His mouth and his lip ring and his hands and his skin.

  He drew back from our kiss and said, “Are you still scared, Chloe?”

  “No,” I whispered. “Not with you.”

  I didn’t ever think I’d be this girl. In my wildest imaginations about Mateo over the past year, I couldn’t believe I’d be the one to take off my shirt and bra first. To help him pull his shirt off because I wanted to feel his skin against mine.

  We were both in deep. I could tell by how shaky his hands were and how he wasn’t nearly as smooth and coordinated as the first time we’d kissed. He was fumbling, like he had in the truck earlier. Coming undone in the same way I was. Everything I’d been afraid of for so long seeped out of me until my mind wrapped itself around a want I couldn’t ask for but felt desperate to have. Mateo. Mateo. Mateo.

  He pulled back a few inches and looked at me like I don’t remember anyone ever looking at me. Like he was the lucky one to get to be there with me. Like he wanted me as much as I wanted him. “Chloe,” he said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Would you let me?” His hands moved to the button of my jeans. “Could I be your first? Could we . . . ?”

  The logical side of me wanted to say no. This was going ridiculously fast with us and we were in the middle of a game that could have terrible consequences. But the logical side of me was outside of this space. Only my heart was here now, pumping double time at the way he’d asked me. It was a plea and a prayer and a question all tangled together, and I was ready to hand him my unconditional yes. Almost.