Rebecca frequently wonders what happened to Ellie to make her so constantly enraged. It got worse after Kacey, but that wasn’t what started it. She’s never asked. Some things can only be shared by choice, and Ellie doesn’t owe the rest of them an explanation for her traumas. It just means that Rebecca tries harder to find those bubbles of silliness, to spark the laughter without that furious edge to it. It’ll probably help her friend live longer.
Ellie managed to struggle through her hangover to attend her morning classes but gave up after lunch and returned to her room to take a nap instead of going to History of Criminal Justice in America. Which means that despite her interest, she probably hasn’t seen the newest LISTSERV.
“Are you reading porn on your phone again?” asks Hafsah, coming up beside her.
“That’s Delia,” she answers automatically. She finishes the email and puts her phone in her pocket, mulling over the information. “Ready?”
“Where’s Ellie?”
“Sleeping.”
Her shorter friend rolls her eyes, adjusting the strap of her bag on one shoulder. “I don’t understand how she keeps the grades she does when she misses this many classes.”
“She tracks which classes factor attendance and participation into the final grades and attends those.”
Hafsah blinks, then shakes her head. “So what were you looking at?”
“New email blast; they released the name of the student they found out at the hooker stop.”
“Do I want to ask how much of him they found?”
“Probably not,” Rebecca admits. “They also didn’t give that information. His name was Jordan Pierce, a senior in the accounting program.”
“Why wasn’t he reported missing?”
Pushing off the brick wall, Rebecca starts walking. The AC in the dorms may be anemic, but even that’s better than this oppressive heat. After a moment, Hafsah falls in step beside her. “It says he lives on Fraternity Row; maybe they’re used to him being gone at all hours. Or maybe he’s in a single, no roommate. Some of the houses have those rooms, right?”
“Not really,” Hafsah tells her. “Do you know how many people live in those houses? He almost certainly shares a room, and still no one reported him missing. That’s frightening—that someone can be missing for days, and no one notices.”
“It was a weekend.”
“Part of it was a weekend. Then we started the week, and no one missed him.”
“Or they missed him and didn’t think it was a bad thing.”
“Is that better?”
“No,” answers Rebecca. “Just different.” She carefully pulls her sunglasses out of her hair and shakes out the chin-length curls, feeling the itch of sweat along her scalp. Removing a stray hair from the joint where the earpiece meets the frame, she slides them back on properly. The amber-tinted world relieves a little of the building heat headache behind her eyes. “If you were ever missing, it wouldn’t take me days; I promise.”
“Same. So does this mean you’ll finally tell me where you’ve been sneaking off to at night?”
“Oh my God!” She walks faster, her longer legs swiftly putting some distance between her and her entirely too-pleased roommate.
Hafsah just laughs and jogs to catch up. “I think it’s cute you’re being discreet.”
“I am not secretly dating Det Corby.”
“Seriously?” Hafsah plants herself directly in front of Rebecca, forcing her to stop, spin around her, or run her over. Rebecca doesn’t think she’d be a bad person for being tempted by the last option. Briefly. Fleetingly tempted. Hafsah pokes her stomach with a strong finger, making her yelp. “Then where do you go?”
“For a walk if it’s cool enough. For a bike ride if I need to make the breeze.”
“And you feel the need to hide this?” she asks, crossing her arms over her chest. For someone eight inches shorter than Rebecca, Hafsah is weirdly intimidating.
Rebecca sighs. There probably isn’t a way out of this. “I don’t sleep well. Like, ever. And I realize you generally sleep like the dead, but I can’t just spin in circles in the room or suite. It would bother Susanna and Delia, even if you didn’t notice. And it bothers me to pace the hall or the lounge. I go for a walk or take my bike, and I come back when I can either sleep or sit still.”
“But why keep it secret?”
“Because I didn’t want you to yell at me for not taking a buddy at night.”
Rolling her eyes, Hafsah shakes her head and turns around so they can get moving. “You could have just told me, you know. I mean, there’s an RA on night duty at the desk; I’d feel okay knowing you were checking in with them. It is a shame, though,” she continues. “All this time, we thought you were sneaking out to see the detective. Insomnia is much less sexy.”
“Especially when you’re the one living it.”
“Any chance your nocturnal ramblings cross his—”
“Stop.”
“Are you blushing or heatstroking?”
“Yes,” Rebecca grumbles.
“Why are you so touchy about him anyway? He’s cute. He’s young. He actually seems like one of the good ones. What’s wrong with enjoying your crush?”
“Because y’all tease me about it?”
“Barely. Well, except for Ellie.”
Rebecca sighs. “You have no idea how much of it I get from Gemma.”
Hafsah giggles. “Okay, that’s fair. Family trumps. Heavens, I want to be there when Ellie and Gemma finally meet.”
“No! They are never, ever, never to meet!” Christ, her heart is pounding at the mere thought of it.
“Why not? They’d get along like a house on fire.”
“Yes, because they’d set the fire!”
Rebecca loves Gemma more than anyone else in the world—which is saying something in their very large close-knit family—but she’s also aware that whenever she gets in trouble, her parents turn to look at Gemma to find out how it’s probably her fault. Ellie has more than enough bad habits of her own already; as shitty as the world seems to be on a regular basis, Rebecca’s fairly sure it doesn’t deserve whatever Ellie and Gemma could cook up between them.
Hafsah erupts into giggles so strong she nearly falls over. Muttering under her breath, Rebecca grabs her friend by the elbow and steers her around a boy kneeling in the middle of the sidewalk to pick up his scattered papers. The giggles gradually fade despite a couple of relapses.
“So the Det Corby conversation is done now, yes?” Rebecca asks eventually.
“Agreed. Sourpuss.”
Rebecca sticks out her tongue. Maybe if there was an actual chance of something with Det Corby in the near future, she wouldn’t want to keep her crush so private. It’s not enough, though, that she likes him or even that he likes her—if he does in that way; her age and his job take the possibility out the window. She doesn’t think it’s unreasonable to not want to be teased for a relationship that can’t happen.
They walk around clusters of talking students in Turlington Plaza, giving a wide berth to an aggressive hate preacher and someone posing in sweat-streaked body paint that may be intended as performance art. Midterms are almost a month gone, and final exams/papers/projects are not quite a month out, which means the barely restrained sense of panic that grips the campus at those times is mostly absent. Here and there, though, Rebecca can hear groups discussing the news email.