by Audrey Bell
Justin lived in the freshman dorms, which were pretty, bucolic stone buildings clustered on the quad. I swiped my ID at the door and jogged up to his room.
“Hey,” he said. He looked like he hadn’t slept. His hair was tousled, he had dark circles under his eyes, and I could see worry lines creasing his forehead. “Sorry. I didn’t realize it was so early. I’m kind of jetlagged. I just…I didn’t know what to do.”
“You called me. That’s what you’re supposed to do,” I smiled reassuringly at him. “Let me see the emails.”
“They were sending texts, too. I-I deleted most of them,” he said sheepishly. “But…” His voice trailed off as he handed me his phone.
The first text I saw read, you’re a faggot. stay the fuck away from our frat and don’t write any more lies about us.
“Have you responded to any of these?” I asked, trying to keep my voice neutral.
He shook his head.
“Good.”
“Actually…well, I asked them to leave me alone. A few times. Before I thought to call you,” he said softly. “And it just made it worse…They said—they said they’d stop if we printed a retraction.”
“We’re not printing a retraction,” I said flatly. “Retractions are for correcting mistakes, and you didn’t make a mistake.”
“Well, I deleted my Facebook. But, now there’s stuff about me on CampusRag.”
“I fucking hate that website,” I said bitterly.
He smiled weakly. “Right.”
CampusRag was a gossip blog where anonymous posters could say whatever they wanted about whomever they wanted. It was basically a disgusting mess of anonymous vitriol. Nobody deserved to be trashed on the Internet. Especially not Justin.
“Alright,” I spoke authoritatively. “Don’t write back to them and don’t let them think you’re intimidated.”
“But I am intimidated,” Justin insisted. “I just—I don’t know what to do. And they’re telling the whole world that I’m gay, which is something I haven’t told most people.”
“I’m going to handle this. I promise.” I looked into his glassy brown eyes. “Okay?”
“Okay,” he said softly. He closed his eyes and pressed the heels of his hands to his eyelids. He pulled off a heartbroken smile. He believed me. “Thank you.”
“Of course.” I spent a few minutes on his phone, forwarding the text messages, and longer on his computer, forwarding the emails. When I was done, I smiled at him and squeezed his shoulders. “This will look better in a few days.”
“Okay.” He breathed unsteadily.
I looked around the small, cramped dorm room. I remembered how lonely dorm rooms could feel in the awkward days before everyone returned from Christmas break. “Do you have dinner plans?”
He shook his head. David would like him. I mean, it would be hard not to.
“My roommate’s a great cook,” I offered. “You should come over.”
He smiled. “I’d like that.”
“Good, text me when you’re free. It’ll be great.”
He nodded.
“Don’t freak, okay? We’ll figure it out.”
I felt less sure of myself in the hallway outside of his room. There were official steps I could take to report harassment, but it was a long, arduous process and a resolution in April wouldn’t mean much to Justin now. Plus, the paper’s faculty advisor, Dean Canady, had gone to Romania for the break.
I fired off a quick email to him from my phone, alerting him of the situation, and letting him know I was looking for the quickest remedy. I scrolled through my emails until I found the one from Alexander Faulk.
While I walked to my car, I emailed Faulk, asking when he would be available to speak. I sat in the car turned on the heat and waited for him to write back.
I’ve never been the world’s most patient person. After a Miley Cyrus song and three commercials on the radio, Faulk still hadn’t written back so I drove to the frat house.
It was eight o’clock in the morning. I told myself that civilized people woke up at eight o’clock, which meant I was allowed to disturb the uncivilized people who were still sleeping. Maybe teach them some good habits.
The frat house was charming, yellow and clapboard. I parked across the street and walked as confidently as I could up the porch stairs to the front door.
I hadn’t been to a frat house at Northwestern. Not because I had anything against them. I didn’t. I just didn’t have friends in fraternities.
But this felt personal. It was hard not to hold a grudge against the organization responsible for bullying Justin.
I rang the doorbell and looked at the wide porch, which would have been inviting if it weren’t carpeted with crushed beer cans and cigarette butts. This is revolting, I thought. How does anyone live like this?
I hit the doorbell again and then knocked loudly. I thought of Justin. I took a breath and remembered that I was here in a professional capacity.
Justin. Confront it head on. Like an adult. Man to man. Woman to man. Just do it. I took a breath and knocked once more.
“YO! Just come in. It’s unlocked!” someone shouted over the faint sound of music. I pushed open the creaking door. The wide entryway was dusty, but uncluttered, and the French doors to my left were flung open to an empty lounge, where the TV was on.
“Hello?” I called out.
Nobody responded.
“Hello?” I shouted, a little louder.
“There’s money in the kitchen. Just leave the pizza on the counter,” the same rumbling voice called.
“I’m not delivering pizza,” I shouted back.
Who the hell ordered pizza at eight o’clock in the morning anyways?
“Shit. Hang on.”
He came down the stairs, buttoning a red plaid shirt.
When he looked up, my heart stopped.
It was the boy from the tailgate who I had kissed.
God, he looked good.
And God he was the last person I wanted to see right now.
I took half a step backwards like fleeing back to my car was an option.
No, I told myself. Just do it. Pretend you never kissed him. Never happened.
He laughed. It was a low, rolling, and pleasant sound. He ran his hand through his damp hair. I bit my tongue watching him.
“I really never did catch that name,” he said softly. He slid his hands into his pockets and smiled at me.
“Hadley Arrington.”
“Ah. Hadley Arrington.” He smiled wider. “Well, I knew the easiest solution to my problem would’ve been asking you, but you are very, very hard to find. In fact, I had very recently concluded that you were some sort of rainstorm mirage.”
“I’m not a mirage,” I said flatly.
“I bet that’s what you tell all the boys.”
My eyes quivered in their sockets, absolutely itching to roll. “Listen, is Alexander Faulk here?”
“You mean Xander? No. He’s not back from Minnesota yet.”
I nodded. “Gotcha.”
“Hadley Arrington,” he repeated my name with a wolfish grin, and came the rest of the way down the stairs. He sat down on the steps and tied one of his sneakers. “You remember me, right?”
I nodded. “Yes.” Unfortunately, since I’m not here to make friends.
“You honestly don’t want to know my name?” he asked. I looked at him, praying his name didn’t belong to one of the email addresses I’d culled from Justin’s inbox.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Jack,” he said with a cocky grin. When I didn’t return the smile, he ran a hand through his hair and stood up. “I’m sorry. I’m not being very helpful. Are you okay? You don’t look like you were expecting to see me. Um, Xander’s not here. But I could give you his phone number.”
“Well, is John Diamond here?” I asked.
Jack smiled again. “That’s actually me. Everyone calls me Jack.”
Well, that was just spectacular.
“Great,” I muttered.
He cocked his head. “I have to say, you seemed a lot happier about seeing me the last time we met.”
I flushed. “Well, I was drunk.”
His eyes twinkled. “You weren’t that drunk.”
“How would you know?” I demanded. “Anyways, I’m not here to discuss tailgate.”
His smiled faded a little. “Okay. Uh, what are you here to discuss then?”
“I’m the Editor-in-Chief of The Daily Northwestern,” I said. “One of my staff writers is being harassed by members of your fraternity.”
His smile faded completely. “Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
He gave me a defeated look. “Christ. We told them to leave it alone.” He ran his hand over his face.
“Told who?”
“Our sophomore class. They’re all motherf….animals,” he said. He shook his head. “Damn.”
“Well, they’re not leaving him alone.”
“Yeah. Shit. I’m sorry…You want to talk over here?” He led me into a study room off of the foyer. He quickly closed the open sketchbooks on one of the bigger tables and placed them on the floor.
I sat down across from him. He rested his chin on one hand thoughtfully. “So, what are they doing?”
“Juvenile, cyber-bullying crap. I’ll forward you the emails.”
“Oh, yeah, sure. Let me grab my computer.” He got up and I heard his footsteps on the stairs. I focused on the crooked dartboard hanging on the wood-paneled wall. Be professional. Resolve the problem.
I forwarded the material to his email address while he went to get his computer. When he came back, he looked grim.
“As you can see, this is clearly crossing the line,” I said formally. “And while I understand that members of your fraternity didn’t like the facts that were printed in Justin’s article, you were repeatedly contacted with a request for a comment. I let Alexander know he could talk to Justin and clarify your position…” My voice trailed off. He wasn’t listening to me.
His eyes were glued to the screen and he clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth regretfully. “Ah, shit,” he said wearily. “This is not—this is not something I knew about. Xander either. Our sophomore class is really out of control.” He ran a hand through his hair and put his screen down. “We’re looking into the roofie thing, by the way. Honestly, we were all really freaked out when we saw the article. I mean, I was and I know Xander was. Neither of us even had known about it. That’s why Xander emailed you. He wanted to explain.”
I took a deep breath. “And I told him he could. Justin emailed you both, asking for a statement.”
Jack winced. “Yeah, I know. Xander is crazy busy, though, and I’m not so good with emails.”
“Look, that’s not the point,” I said. “If there’s an update, if you’d like us to print a statement, that’s fine. I told you that we’d do that. But this shit has to stop. He wrote an article about student health and you guys are making his life hell.”
He cleared his throat. “I’m not behind this.” He looked at me. “I mean, I’m not saying it’s not awful. It is. But this is like a few random kids. This isn’t a fraternity-wide effort.”
“Well, it needs to stop.” My voice sounded brittle and harsh to my own ears. I didn’t want to hear about Jack’s lack of culpability. “He wrote an article. He tried to get a lot of you to talk to him, but none of you would. He didn’t make this stuff up. It happened. It happened here.”
“I’ll talk to the guys.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t want you to talk to the guys. I want you to let the guys know that they can either apologize and take down the posts on CampusRag and stop emailing him, or else they can deal with the administration. I’m not going to let you bully one of my staff writers out of school.”
“Hey,” he said indignantly. “I’m not bullying anyone. I would never say any of this shit.”
“When you’re the head of an organization, you’re responsible for its actions.”
He shook his head. “You’re confused.”
“I’m confused?”
“They voted for me because they were stoned. You know what the vice-president of a frat does? Nothing.”
“The position exists for a reason, and not doing anything when the organization you’re in charge of is bullying a kid makes you culpable.”
“Look, I’ll get it to stop.”
“Good,” I said tersely.
“You don’t believe me?”
I shrugged. “I never said that.”
“I’ll take care of it, Hadley.” He met my eyes. They were cool, calm, and for some ridiculous reason, I nearly trusted them.
“Great. Thanks,” I said. I sounded like a bitch. I had expected more of a fight, honestly. I took a breath and exhaled. “Sorry. I really appreciate it. If you’d get it to stop. I just—I don’t know. He’s a nice kid.”
He nodded. “I’ll take care of it,” he repeated.
I twisted my lips and snuck a look at Jack. He was staring at me. I dropped my eyes and stood up. It struck me as sad that the stranger I kissed at a tailgate, the random person I happened to notice, would reappear like this. As someone who was involved with an organization that was hurting someone I cared about.
Everyone knows you shouldn’t trust strangers. Shouldn’t listen to them. Shouldn’t take candy from them. Shouldn’t get into their cars. You definitely shouldn’t kiss them.
Most people learn this in kindergarten. But I, Hadley Arrington, had missed that lesson. Or chosen to ignore it. I slipped on my coat, feeling like an idiot.
“Thanks for taking the time to meet with me,” I said seriously.
“Yeah, no worries,” he said. “Sorry about this. Really, I’m sorry.”
He walked me to the door quietly. When we reached it, he set a hand lightly on my back.
I jumped.
“Sorry, sorry,” he said. He held his hands up where I could see them. He looked at me. “Look, this is really bad timing.”
“What’s bad timing?”
“This,” he said. He bit his lip. “After tailgate I spent a while trying to figure out who you were. But nobody could tell me.”
“Probably because I don’t ordinarily act like that.”
He smiled. “Oh. Well, that’s a shame.”
“For you, maybe.”
“For me, definitely.” He laughed. “So, can I ask you to dinner or is that going to piss you off?”
“I don’t think now’s a good time to talk about dinner.”
“Yeah. I know. Bad timing.”
“It’s always bad timing,” I said.
“That’s too bad.”
I stepped out of the door.
“Can I ask you a serious question, though?” he said. “Why’d you kiss me?”
I shrugged. “My roommate dared me.”
His face changed. Not dramatically, but enough to know that what I said had been hurtful.
He laughed. “Ha. Of course, of course.” He nodded. “I should’ve thought of that.”
I stared at the mixture of surprise and hurt on his face and swallowed. He’d leave me alone if I left now. But, I wouldn’t like the unsteadiness in my stomach.
I put my hand on the door to keep him from closing it.
“I mean.” I swallowed. “He dared me to kiss someone. And I chose you.” I flushed, as something else crossed his face, and I pulled the door shut before I could say anything else.
Chapter Nine
“You will never believe what happened,” crowed David when I walked through the door. He was curled up on the couch with a book and a cup of tea.
“You’re telling me,” I said. I shook my head and walked to the kettle, which was still steaming.
He smiled at me. “What happened to you?”
�
�You first,” I said.
“Ben Mitchell,” he said simply.
I waited for the name to ring a bell. I cocked my head and snapped my fingers. “Soccer player, right? You were in love with him for a whole month sophomore year.”
“Football player,” he corrected. “Tall, dark, and handsome. And I was in love with him junior year.”
“Well, close enough. What’s up with him?”
“I saw him today.”
“That’s it?”
“No, that’s not it.”
I opened one of the cabinets in our kitchen and rummaged around for tea bags. I yawned.
“He asked me out.”
“Wait-what?”
“He asked me to go see a movie with him,” David said. “We had chemistry together last year. We were lab partners. And when I ran into him at the grocery store today, he just asked me to see a movie.”
I hesitated. “Just the two of you?”
“Yes, just the two of us,” David said. “You seriously think he’d ever invite me to hang out with his friends?”
“Is he…out?” I asked cautiously.
David waved away the comment with his hand. “No, he’s still in the closet, but I don’t really care. He’s dreamy.”
I didn’t like the idea of David being someone’s dirty little secret. Especially after what he told me in San Francisco about never allowing anyone to make him feel ashamed of who he was again.
“Yeah, but, I mean—isn’t that a big headache? Dating someone who’s hiding his real identity?” I asked cautiously.
“As previously discussed, Hadley, he’s dreamy. Dreamy,” he said. “Plus, I’m not going to hide my real identity. He can do whatever he wants.”
“If you say so,” I said. “You’ll still be around for dinner, right?”
“Yeah. I’m making lasagna.”
“Can you make it for three? I asked Justin over. From the paper.”
“Ah, the Justin that Nigel wanted me to go out with?”
“Yes.”
“Hope you didn’t make any promises. Because I cannot cancel on Ben.”
“I didn’t. I just invited him for dinner. I had the craziest morning.”
“What happened?
“Well, I found out who I made out with at tailgate.”
