Her hair had been lighter and shorter, and that had been before her discovery of eyeliner, but she was right: hard to forget an orange dress with a giant bow.
“The chocolate fountain,” I said, because that wasn’t something you could forget, either. Especially since I got it all over my dress. Actually, Reid had gotten it all over my dress. Chocolate-covered-strawberry handoff gone wrong.
Chloe smiled. “Exactly. My mom told me you were enrolled this year.” I wondered what, exactly, her mother had told her, but I could tell from the way she didn’t ask that she already knew. “Come sit with us at Preview?”
“Preview?”
“Yeah. Fall Preview. It’s like a dinner-dance thing in the dining hall the day before classes start every year. Kinda lame, but, you know, tradition.”
“Oh, I can’t go,” I said, because I was fairly certain I’d never go to another party again.
She scrunched up her mouth. “All right. Well, I’m in 233.” She pointed straight up. “Come visit sometime.”
“Okay,” I said, and Chloe left through the front door. I walked down the hall toward my room. I wished it was that easy. Walk up the stairs to room 233 and talk about her hideous bridesmaid dress. Be friends in that easy, simple way. Talk about easy, simple things.
Think about easy, simple things.
My dorm room was empty—emptied. I guess this was just another part of consequence, like my grandma had warned me. Everything we do has consequence. This was just another.
My bed was piled high with my stuff, but the other side of the room, where Bree had been, was now consumed with an emptiness. Her bed was stripped. Her desktop was bare. The lights were gone. The posters were down. The only thing remaining was the sticky tack where the posters used to hang.
I unpacked and set up my room, trying to spread everything out so the emptiness wasn’t so overwhelming. It wasn’t a big room, and it hadn’t felt empty when I’d first arrived. Only after Bree came. And left. People are funny like that.
I booted up the laptop and followed the instructions to set up the Internet connection and a school e-mail account. Then I composed a message to Colleen:
1 ex-roommate.
1 creep.
2 bitchtastic girls.
79 days till Thanksgiving break.
I hit send, pressed my thumbs into my temples, and felt this chill along the base of my neck. I squeezed my eyes shut and thought No, but that doesn’t do anything either. My laptop made a tiny ping—a message from Colleen: Miss you too. Will come as soon as detainment is over.
And that was just like Colleen. She didn’t send cryptic messages, saying anything but what she meant. If she loved you she said I love you. If she hated you she said I hate you. She said what she meant.
And she did what she wanted.
We were a block away from the party that night when she stopped walking. She’d put her hand on my arm while I was re-tying a ponytail that I’d just undone. “You’re nervous,” she said.
“My hair won’t cooperate.”
She reached up behind me, pulled out the elastic, and threw it to the ground. “It’s perfect.” Then she put her hands on her hips and lowered her voice. “Mallory, it’s no big thing. You do what you want to do and you don’t do what you don’t want to do. No biggie.” Then she shrugged her shoulders and fluffed my hair with both hands.
Easy for her to say. Turns out Colleen mostly wanted to do everything anyway.
“Hey,” she said, her hand on my elbow. “We don’t have to go.”
“But Cody Parker.” I grinned.
“I like you better,” she said.
Then I was laughing and not as nervous anymore, which I guess was her point, and we continued walking down the alley.
She hung an arm over my shoulders and pulled me in close for a few steps. I could hear the smile in her voice. “Dylan’s gonna freak,” she said. “You know he dumped Danielle last week.”
No, I hadn’t known.
People in the dorm were getting ready for Fall Preview. Whatever that meant. Were they previewing the new kids, like some meat factory? Did they bring a pen and take notes for later? All I knew was the bathrooms were overrun with girls spending hours trying to look like they hadn’t spent any time getting ready.
I saw Bree skip across the hall, following Taryn into her room at the other end, near the lounge. I guess they were roommates now. If she noticed me, she didn’t let on. I went back to my room and made a list of things I’d have to buy at the campus store tomorrow. First on the list: lights.
I thought about sending Colleen another e-mail about this ridiculously pretentious school that calls their lame-ass dance a Fall Preview, but I couldn’t concentrate enough to compose a coherent sentence. Something was scraping my outside window. A tree branch, probably. And there were footsteps. Quiet, shuffling back and forth. Some guy waiting outside his girlfriend’s window, probably.
Probably.
But in the back of my mind—no, in the front of my mind—I kept picturing that car. It was somewhere nearby. And if the car was nearby, so was Brian’s mom.
My room was nestled into the corner—far enough so the noise from the hall didn’t really bother me. Also far enough so nobody in the hall would hear me either. So I left the room, locked the door behind me, and walked through the cluster of girls streaming back and forth down the hall. I pushed through the door leading to the lounge and found a couch tucked away in the back corner. I watched the people waiting for their friends to show up, or waiting for their friends to come out of their rooms. So they could walk over together, I assumed. Like Colleen and I would’ve done.
Krista and Bree came through the hall door, side by side. And Taryn came tagging along right behind them. Jason barreled through the front door, pushing the wooden doors so hard they ricocheted off the wall and bounced back toward him. He stopped them with his open palms held out at his sides.
He stood in the entrance, scanning the room, scanning right over me, until his eyes landed on Krista. “Lovely, as always.”
Krista curtsied and Bree smiled her nonmysterious smile.
“Who’s this?” Jason asked, scanning Bree from head to toe.
“Bree,” said Bree, even though I’d already introduced her as Bree not half a day earlier.
He looked between Krista and Bree and rocked back on his heels. “So are we going or what?”
“We’re going,” said Krista, with Bree on her arm and Taryn trailing behind.
But as they crossed the threshold, I saw Krista reach behind her and take Taryn’s hand, pulling her along.
And for a second I thought that Krista was all right. It’s the kind of thing Colleen would do for me. Making sure I was included. Making sure I was with her. Making sure I knew she was thinking of me.
She’d done it that night. When we left the alley and stood on the corner of Brian’s street, she took my hand and pulled me toward the front steps.
Chapter 5
I didn’t know Brian at first. First, there was Dylan. My lab partner in chemistry, and something else, something lingering under the surface, waiting to bubble over.
Which it eventually did.
Dylan liked me. I liked him. He knew it. I knew it. But there was the small issue of his girlfriend. Even she knew it, which is why she scowled at me whenever she passed me in the hall. Colleen told me to be bold. But I thought I already was.
I spent the semester giggling at his jokes, purposely bumping into him, and leaning too close while he used the dropper to fill a test tube—like it was the most fascinating thing I’d ever seen.
And he spent the semester looking me over. And over. And over.