Hafsah plucks at her lightweight tunic. “I am going to take a cool shower. This is terrible.”
“Just wait for July.”
“Sure, but by then I’ll be back in Minnesota, with a different hellscape of heat, humidity, and mosquitoes.”
“Way to sell it.” Grabbing two bottles of water from the mini-fridge that Delia contributed to their side of the suite, Rebecca salutes Hafsah with one of them, leaving a delightfully cold trail of drops on her forehead. “I’m going to check on Ellie, make sure she’s hydrated.”
“Better you than me. I can’t deal with her when she’s hungover.”
“It can be rough,” she agrees. “But at least we don’t have dicks. Then she’d really be intolerable.”
Hafsah gives her a look, but whether it’s reproach for the crassness or a reminder that Ellie is generally intolerable is anyone’s guess.
Grinning, Rebecca heads through the bathroom, which smells faintly of mildew and mold despite the janitors that come through every Friday morning. The girls are pretty careful to keep it clean, spraying down the stalls after showering and hanging their towels to dry. She has a feeling that smell has been there for a few decades, and even the best care can’t lift it out of the tiles.
In the connected suite, Luz’s and Keiko’s sections of the study space are covered in project detritus and a frankly alarming number of Pop-Tarts wrappers. Ellie’s, on the other hand, is perfectly organized and tidy. Even the books from her classes this morning are up on the overhead shelf, arranged by class and then by size. Her room looks much the same, not even a stray sock marring the view.
At least until you looked at the walls. Articles printed off from digital newspapers, e-zines, and blogs fill the wall space, bits of tape or blue adhesive gum peeking out from the corners. A handful of pages are glossy with ragged edges from where they were torn out of print magazines. Highlighted lines jump out between furious scrawls of bleeding red ink. The headlines, especially, show these angry corrections.
WOMAN SHOT BY PINING EX WILL RECOVER has been written over to read CLINGY, VIOLENT MAN SHOOTS WOMAN IN FACE; SCARS WILL BE PERMANENT.
COMPETITIVE SWIMMER LOSES SCHOLARSHIP, SENTENCED TO THREE MONTHS has become CONVICTED RAPIST SENTENCED TO SLAP ON WRIST AND DISAPPOINTED HEAD SHAKES.
As far as journalism goes, the “new” headlines aren’t great, but they’re more honest.
Aside from the windows and the closet sliding doors, the only break in the morbid, infuriating decor is over the bed on the right side, where a poster-size photo hangs above a tiny Plexiglas shelf with two LED candles. The girl in the photo has a brilliant smile, her eyes crinkled at the edges, and a crown of orange blossoms rests askew on a cloud of sunset-orange hair spilling over one shoulder.
Kacey Montrose.
The bed is filled with Kacey’s mountain of throw pillows. Kacey used to come home from classes and simply collapse on the cushions, and if she got cold, she’d just burrow under them like she was burying herself in sand at the beach. After the attack that left Kacey in a care facility, Ellie took the cushions home with her over winter break and brought them back when the new semester started, to preserve Kacey’s space. Several of the girls in the suite were nice—or nice enough—but Kacey was the one who was kind. Kacey was good.
The yearbook of national assaults wasn’t here when Kacey was still with them. Rebecca touches the edges of the framed photo and closes her eyes, praying for Kacey and her family. Please let her wake up. Please let her recover. Letting out a slow, deep breath, she turns away from the photo to look at Ellie.
Ellie is sprawled in the bed on the left side of the room, under a pale-blue sheet with the blanket shoved down around her feet. Judging from the clothes neatly folded on the nearby chair, Rebecca’s pretty sure that her friend is some degree of naked she’d rather not think about just now. She sets both water bottles down on one of the nightstands and, passing the sleeping girl, rifles through the closet and baskets of clothes.
The wonderful thing about being the same height and general build as Ellie is the ability to borrow clothes from each other. The terrible thing about being the same height and general build as Ellie is the ability to steal clothes from each other. While Rebecca feels guilty if she doesn’t get borrowed clothing returned as soon as it’s clean, Ellie has a habit of putting things away with her own stuff. It means Rebecca has gotten used to staging periodic raids in order to reclaim her clothes. Somewhat to her surprise, it’s not too bad: four shirts, two pairs of shorts, one pair of jeans, seven socks, a lightweight hoodie, and two pairs of underwear she’s going to write off because that’s not actually something she shares back and forth. Piling her clothes on the end of Kacey’s bed, Rebecca turns back to her friend.
Her hair is a mess around her, tangled and frizzy and thankfully a few shades too bold to look like blood where it spills across her bare back and the bottom sheet. The top sheet drapes around her waist, one arm flung out over her head, the other tucked in close against her side and cradling a nearly empty bottle. Frowning, Rebecca carefully tugs the bottle away, reading the label that’s sweating away from the glass.
Rebecca’s never been thrilled about keeping booze in the rooms. Bringing it in for immediate consumption is one thing. Still against both the rules and the law but unlikely to have longer repercussions because inspections, as rare as they are, happen during the day. Keeping it, though, is just asking for trouble. She’d rather not risk expulsion from the school or dorms just because a suitemate is experimenting with alcohol. She grimaces at the label and sets it on the nightstand. She’s pretty sure gasoline would taste better. If Ellie’s going to risk getting caught, she could at least get something that tastes good.
Opening one of the water bottles, Rebecca pours some of the cold liquid into the cap, then sprinkles it over Ellie’s bare back.
Ellie comes up swinging and swearing and gets so twisted up in the sheet that she falls back to the bed before she can manage to open her eyes. She blinks blearily at Rebecca, her eyes slowly focusing. “Baby, that was mean,” she whines.
“I know,” Rebecca says with a satisfied smile, “but you’ve napped long enough, and you’re almost definitely dehydrated.” Rebecca holds out the bottle.
Shoving herself up to sitting, Ellie huffs but takes it, sipping carefully.
There’s a part of Rebecca that marvels at Ellie’s complete lack of self-consciousness. She might even be a little bit envious. Not enough to ever want to hang out naked, but she does admire the confidence. Being that secure in your own skin is a very different kind of confidence than knowing you have the answer in class. Retrieving the other water bottle, she drops back onto Kacey’s bed and takes a long drink. The water’s cold enough to hurt her throat and stomach, sloshing painfully for a moment. “You ever heard of a guy named Jordan Pierce?” she asks once Ellie looks a little more awake.
“He’s one of the fucknut pantie thieves,” she answers with a scowl. “You remember the September pantie raid?”
“No, given that I wasn’t there, but I remember picking you up from the police station for trespassing in one of the Row houses.”
“We got caught dismantling their scoreboard. You’ve heard about the scoreboard?”