“Oh, yes.” I nodded, turning back toward the window again.
Just don’t forget to take care of yourself too.
How had I forgotten that part?
My phone started vibrating in my hand again, and I turned it off.
And then I stared out the window some more.
By the time the cab was pulling up outside my sorority house, I felt sick to my stomach. I didn’t typically take a cab from the bus station, not when the number 12 bus would take me within three blocks of my house, but I didn’t want to wait thirty-five minutes for the next bus.
I paid the cab driver, who was watching me concernedly, and he smiled nervously as I stepped out. I took a deep breath, staring up at my house. It was pushing seven-thirty, and it was dark out. With any luck, most of the girls would be out for the night, doing all those things college girls liked to do on a Friday night. I wasn’t one of those girls anymore. I hadn’t been for a very long time.
When I entered, I didn’t bother looking into the living room to see who was there. The TV was on, so clearly someone was. I just didn’t want to see who, nor did I want to see what they were watching. I hopped the steps two at a time, and when I entered my room, I shut the door and locked it.
I knew in that moment that this wasn’t going to be my home anymore. I had no idea what was going to happen when I walked out those doors, but for whatever reason, I knew this couldn’t be my life any longer.
I turned slowly in a circle as my brain tried to wrap around the notion that something big in my life was ending. And when the roof of my mouth started to ache as though the tears weren’t far away, I shook my head and inhaled deeply. “Fuck it,” I muttered, and I quickly walked to my closet, grabbing a bag.
I crammed clothes into the bag. It had been stupid to leave my duffel bag at Keegan’s. It had been stupid to leave my books there too. But when one was panicking in the way I was, it just didn’t serve to do so with bags over your shoulders. Having a meltdown and running out on Keegan would have been almost comically ridiculous with a duffel bag over my shoulder.
When there was a knock on my door, I paused, saying nothing.
“It’s me.”
I opened the door, peeking out at Jessa. Her face was grim, her brow furrowed, and when her eyes shifted to stare at my neck, there was no question in my mind. She knew.
I pulled the door open farther, unable to look at her any better than she was able to look at me.
“I got a call from Desi’s mom when I was on my way here talking about some fucking news story. What the hell, Gabe?” she hissed as she pushed past me. She was suddenly moving fast. “A van from one of the news stations just pulled up out front.” She moved to my window, peeking between the blinds. “We have to get you out of here.”
My heart was racing again, and the panic was creeping into my blood once more. God, was this day ever going to end?
I ran into my bathroom, grabbing my toothbrush and deodorant, and when I returned to my room, I narrowly managed to get them into the bag before Jessa zipped it up, and before I knew what was happening, she was opening my bedroom door. I wasn’t ready for this.
I could hear Casey talking to someone from the entryway, and there was only one stairway down, and it happened to take us to that very entryway. Jessa grabbed my hand, pulling me down the stairs. Every part of me wanted to put on the brakes.
“Fuck,” she muttered as we walked. “Put your coat over your head.”
Casey’s voice was suddenly cut off when the reporter spotted us. It was a blonde woman, beautiful and tall, and she pushed past Casey with her microphone out in front of her when we hit the bottom of the stairs.
It’s odd that in the pandemonium that ensued I can actually recall thinking how stupid people looked with coats draped over their heads. It was this strange image that anyone in contemporary times knew. The criminal, the crook, the accused just loved to hide behind a coat, and they always,
always,
looked ridiculous. And yet, when the microphone was thrust in my face as I followed Jessa through the small crowd of girls gathered inside the entryway, I instantly pulled my arms from my coat and draped it straight the fuck over my head, joining the ranks of those disreputable people who had come before me.
I stared down, watching my feet and the heels of Jessa’s sneakers in front of me. We stepped over the threshold to the large porch, and the activity around us followed. The voices were too many to sort out.
“Ms. Kitrick… Ms. Kitrick… Will you comment on the allegations…” and then the voice was muffled by more clamor.
“It’s so cool…” one of my housemates started to say.
“I just can’t believe…”
“Eh… Not surprising in the least,” Casey added to the jumble of voices.
When Jessa suddenly stopped, I ran into the back of her, and I reached out, clutching the back of her coat.
“Shut the fuck up, you stupid cow,” Jessa snapped at Casey.
It was a chorus of gasps I heard then, and I shut my eyes. I nudged her, prodding her forward.
“God, what the hell is wrong with you fucking people?” Jessa was losing her cool, but her feet started moving again. “And get that goddamned camera out of my face.”
Oh yes, I indeed understood why people hid under their coats. This was horrifying. This was like being naked. This was worse than being naked. It was like being naked while the world laughed at you. I gritted my teeth, wanting to fall apart again, but I clung to Jessa’s jacket instead, focusing on putting one foot in front of the other as she led the way to her car.
She helped me climb in, and I didn’t bother pulling the coat from over my head until I could feel the tires moving. And then I sat there, my mouth hanging open as I stared out the front window. I was more relieved than I realized I could be, and yet, I was devastated too.
Jessa glanced at me as she drove us toward Waterville. “Are you going to talk to me now?”
I nodded. I was starting to feel numb, blessedly numb. I needed to be numb.
“I made a mistake.” I didn’t bother looking at her when I spoke, but when she reached over and took my hand, I covered my eyes with my free hand and I wept. I cried as if I’d been holding back the tears since the day I embarked on this disaster, and in truth, I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what I’d been doing—stifling the feelings, stifling the pain of what I was doing. Keegan had been right. Life had become this pretend thing to me, and I’d used him to make it go away for a while.
But there were no more coping mechanisms left.
When the tears finally dried up, I opened my mouth, and I talked. I talked, and I talked, and kept talking until we were within a mile of Waterville.
“You mean that douche nugget piece of shit was your
client
?”
“I… Jessa, I think there’s a bigger story here than—”
“That piece of shit,” she muttered. “I mean, yeah. You’re right.” She shook her head. “But that piece of shit.”
“No. I don’t think he is actually. Or maybe he is…” My brow scrunched as I tried to work through the details. I had no idea what Keegan was at this point.
Jessa glanced at me, rolling her eyes.
“He didn’t leak the picture. It wouldn’t serve his purpose.”
“
Serve his purpose
?” She practically yelled the question at me. “His
purpose
should have been
you.
”
I sighed. “Yeah.”
I looked around as we drove. It was just a small place. A simple place. There wasn’t much prettiness to it. You couldn’t find an evening gown in this whole town I bet, aside from the old prom dresses hanging in the closets. I liked it here. But I also hated it here.
The small hospital we were passing was the very one where I’d said goodbye to our mother. The school we passed next was the one I’d attended from the time I was in kindergarten to twelfth grade. I was a good student, one of the best. But that was just a memory now of some other girl. That other girl had different dreams than I had. The most I wanted out of life was to survive it. But she’d had
real
dreams. She wanted to help people when she grew up; she wanted to get married; she wanted to have children, a nice home, a decent car, a good job.
There was living, and there was surviving. That girl with her simple dreams wanted to live. I just wanted to survive, and if asked why I cared to, I’m not sure I could answer. Keegan was right. I was so broken.
“Can you forgive me?”
Jessa had just pulled into her parking spot. It was just a small fourplex that she lived in—simple, basic. She looked at me, and she shrugged. “I don’t know, Gabe.” She shook her head. “See…” She looked away and sighed. “I just feel like…like you’re stealing my thunder.”
Sometimes her sarcasm could sneak up on even me. “Uh…”
“I was going to open a brothel in the basement, like…two weeks from now. And”—she shook her head again—“now I just feel like folks are gonna know prostitution is illegal. It’s going to be bad for my business.” Her tone was so serious and concerned.
“Prostitution has always been illegal.”
“Yeah, but people didn’t know it was,” she said defensively. Jessa was damn good at this.
“No, they
did
actually. Everyone knows…”
“Eh.” She shrugged dismissively. She finally smiled at me, letting go of the bullshit. “You don’t have to be perfect for me to love you any more than I’ve ever had to be perfect for you to love me.”
“I’m sorry. People are going to…talk.”
“Uh, you mean like Casey? Yeah. I swear to God that bitch was pulling lipstick out of her pocket, readying her ugly-ass face for the camera.”
“Oh God…” I sighed. “I’m gonna be one of those weirdos on TV with a coat over my head.”
“Are you kidding? They can’t air that shit. I dropped enough F-bombs it would be one long beeeeeeeeeep.”
“Yeah. We need to talk about your language, by the way.” I actually managed to smile at her.
“Sure. Me and my bad language will get in line after you and your prostitution. We’ll see which of us comes out…” But then her words trailed of, and she looked at me. “So…could you be arrested for this?”
I sighed. “Yeah. I suppose maybe I could be. I don’t know what to expect. Expulsion from school, from my sorority for sure. Maybe arrest. I really don’t know.”
I figured out at least part of those questions soon after we walked inside. I didn’t really want to turn my phone back on because I didn’t want to have to deal with Keegan. I didn’t want to hear his voice in my messages. He was right. I was the queen of ostrich-style defenses. I preferred to walk the other way, hide under the covers, pretend my problems didn’t exist, hell, pretend he didn’t exist.
I suspected Keegan was the opposite. I’d liked that about him. He didn’t seem afraid of the world in the way I was. Of course, I still thought like a child in many ways in that regard.
Oh, the big bad grownups might catch me being naughty.
But not Keegan. Not even his parents could intimidate him. It hadn’t escaped my attention that his sole reaction to the news story had related to me, not his parents, not what they would or could think of either him or me. He just thought about me, and yet, this all somehow stemmed from him too. It was entirely too confusing.
Regardless, my phone had messages, and a few of them were not from him. There were three messages from numbers I didn’t recognize that had Milwaukee prefixes, and I was guessing they were going to be important. I sank down to sit on the side of Jessa’s bed, and I held my breath when I hit play on the first one.
“This message is for Gabrielle Kitrick. This is St. Mary’s University President Donna Lang. In light of the allegations of grievous misconduct that have been brought to our attention, the student conduct board will be holding a disciplinary hearing next Tuesday at eight-thirty in the morning. Your attendance is mandatory, and should you fail to appear, the board will be forced to recommend immediate dismissal. You are welcome to bring a student or faculty advisor with you if you choose. While we understand that the…issue is ongoing and, to my understanding, no criminal charges have yet been filed, the university has chosen to act swiftly for the benefit of our entire student body. The panel will be making their recommendations based on their findings after the disciplinary hearing. Should additional information come to light after that decision has been made, you will have the right of appeal. Please contact the school before the end of the day Monday if you have any questions related to the disciplinary hearing process. Additional information on the process can be found in your student handbook.”
My heart was pounding by the time the message ended, and moments later, when I hit play on the second message from another unknown Milwaukee prefix, it sped up again.
“Hi, Gabe. This is Professor Carmichael. I hope I’m not being too intrusive to reach out to you during this difficult time, but I was just made aware of your disciplinary hearing next Tuesday morning. I’d like to offer to be your advisor during the hearing if that would be okay with you. I’m not able to direct you in any way or interfere with the questions the panel asks you, but I am allowed to make a statement in support of you, and I’d really like the opportunity to do so. Please call or email me. I will plan to attend on Tuesday morning, but the hearing is closed, so you’ll need to notify the school prior to Tuesday if you accept my offer, or I won’t be granted admittance. Please let me know if you need anything.”
And the final message.
“This is Candace Evers, Membership Committee Chairperson of Delta Sigma Epsilon. I’m calling to inform you that the membership committee has decided to place you on interim suspension due to recently discovered information linking you to behaviors that are non-compliant with our member code of conduct. You will receive an official letter from the charter outlining the reasons and additional information about your membership options, including the documentation you will need to complete and return to us should you choose to resign your membership and office during the course of our investigation into this matter. District Representative Carla Klein will be monitoring the progress and outcome of your upcoming disciplinary hearing, at which point she will make her recommendation to the committee regarding any possible disciplinary action up to and including permanent expulsion. You are expected to surrender your official membership certificate, card, and all insignia items. You must also remove yourself and your personal possessions from the Delta Sigma Epsilon property before the end of the month. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me.”