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There’s something to be said for adrenaline, though. Because tonight I’m pretty sure I could leave those septuagenarians in the dust. I speed through Greek Row, past other houses celebrating first days and new friends and the seductive thrill of independence. I don’t know where I’m going as my feet bash the pavement, only that I have to get as far from Zeta Kappa as possible.
I push myself uphill along University Way, the street bordering UW that everyone calls “the Ave.” It always held this magic for me as a kid when my mom and I visited, all these cheap restaurants and cute shops and cafés filled with college students studying, looking impossibly mature and sophisticated. Tonight, there’s none of that.
It was an accident. I know I’m not at fault, and I think—god, I hope—everyone had enough time to get out of the house. If I’d stayed, the police would have questioned me, and hopefully they’d have believed that it was an accident. There would be no proof I’d done anything criminal. But all those accusatory glares, the way the whole crowd turned on me…
Well, it felt like I was back in high school.
Eventually my legs give out. I bend over and clutch my knees, panting. I’m still death-gripping that bottle of water, and I drain half of it in a single gulp. My thighs are burning and the denim is rubbing against my skin in all the worst places. In related news, these are no longer my favorite jeans. No one’s chasing after me, at least, but I’m pretty sure I’m lost. My phone is at 3-percent battery, and it dies just as I’m opening Google Maps.
I feel like a fucking fugitive. This is absurd. Beyond absurd. I have no idea how this day went from an uncomfortable roommate situation to an actual house on fire. Disaster has always found me, but this is next-level. A disaster that’s graduated from Harvard and joined Mensa and won a Nobel Prize.
I force myself to take deep lungfuls of night air, work to soothe my racing heart. I can’t give in to panic. Not yet.
I track the numbers on the houses and street signs, decide I need to head south, and after a dozen more blocks… there. There’s the edge of campus, and there’s the big bronze W that stands for What Did You Just Do? and Who Are You Trying to Fool? and Why Did You Think College Would Be Any Different?
I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.
By the time I swipe my student ID card at Olmsted, I’m beyond panic and well into misery. I slump against the wall of the elevator, catching my reflection, and I look about as wrecked as I feel. Mascara streaked down my cheeks, glasses smudged, face a shade lighter than a Solo cup. Hair a mess of snarls that won’t be fun to untangle tomorrow, but at least tomorrow will mean today is over.
I jam my key in the lock, and sure, the small amount of beer I had combined with my invigorating nighttime jog have made things a bit blurry around the edges. But the door to room 908 won’t budge. I heave all my weight on it, turn the key as hard as I can.
She dead-bolted it. Fuck. She either raced home before I could or I was out much longer than I thought.
“Lucie!” I whisper-shout, banging on the door. I imagine the new Olmsted won’t have dead bolts, which Paige told me were installed during protests in the 1960s to keep students safe. “Lucie—come on. Open up.”
No response.
“Lucie. Please.” I’d laugh if I weren’t about to cry. I’m so close to hysteria I’d do both if I had the energy.
Instead, after a few more minutes of unsuccessful knocking, I drag myself to the common room on the opposite end of the floor, which contains two battered couches, a TV, and a heap of questionable blankets. There’s just no chance someone hasn’t had sex in here.
I choose the less battered but still threadbare couch, which squeals when I sink onto it, as though even the furniture is protesting Barrett Bloom. Surely, none of this would have happened if I’d roomed with Christina Dearborn of Lincoln, Nebraska, the way I was supposed to. Or maybe they should have ripped this building apart over the summer instead of making all of us suffer like this.
One thing this room has going for it: a universal charging station. My brain won’t calm down, so I plug in my phone, clean my glasses with the edge of my T-shirt, and start doom-scrolling. The good news is that every outlet reporting the fire indicates there were no injuries, just the loss of some Zeta Kappa heirlooms. That loosens some of the tension in my twisted-up body. The bad news is that I’ve been tagged. In a not-insignificant number of pictures. A few were snapped while the fire was still raging, me at my most unflattering angles. Others were grabbed from my own Instagram, which I instantly make private but it’s too late. The photos are paired with words like BANNED FOR LIFE and FIRESTARTER and WE’LL FIND YOU, BARRETT BLOOM. And those are the nice ones.
My hands shake, a knot forming in my throat. All of it takes me back to high school, back to that wreck of a week after prom. #debloomed all over my Instagram, along with my freshman yearbook photo. A persistent, bitter ache in my stomach that followed me to graduation. One of Cole’s posts explained how after Blaine lost his scholarship, their parents took away his car and he spent a year at community college, struggling to get back on his feet. By the time he applied to transfer, he was so out of practice that he couldn’t get onto a tennis team anywhere, not even at the divisionthree school he wound up at. I’d ruined his brother’s life, Cole wrote. So, apparently, it was only fitting that he ruin mine.
Every time I reported one of those posts for harassment, Instagram told me it didn’t “violate our community guidelines.” If I scroll down, they’re still there, this digital record of exactly what people in high school thought about me. I have to stop myself before I scroll too far or I’ll never be able to fall asleep, my too-tight lungs and too-shallow breaths keeping me awake the way they did most of May and June, some of July, and only a little of August. I thought I was getting better. Putting all this behind me.
The way Lucie and the rest of my Island peers treated me after the article—that, I could get over. I could stand by my investigation and know I’d done the right thing. But the flowers in my locker and the posts and the hashtag felt different. I hadn’t known my heart was capable of breaking in that specific way, and that’s why it’s crucial no one ever sees those jagged pieces.
Over the past few months, I’ve practiced tucking it all away in the darkest corner of my mind, where it belongs. Today was supposed to be a fresh start, and yet here I am, in the middle of another mess. I’ve never stopped to consider the possibility that college could actually be worse than high school.
My phone hits the floor with a soft thud as I bury my head in a floppy gray pillow.
I am the same disaster of a person I’ve always been, no matter how much I wish I could leave her in my past.
DAY TWO
Chapter 5
“THIS HAS TO BE A mistake.”
God, I hope so.
I roll over, anticipating sore limbs and the rough scrape of the couch against my face. I remember unpacking a Costco-size bottle of Tylenol, but I’m not sure where I put it. If Lucie hasn’t unlocked the door, I might have to get the RA. And then I’ll face my Thursday classes, receive a “thanks but no thanks” rejection from the Washingtonian. Contend with my social-media notoriety.
On second thought, I could camp out here.
