Privilege

by Mary Adkins

  “Right,” she said. It was a line he’d said at least four times.

  “Hey, let’s practice. What kind of support are you going to provide to this person?”

  “. . . emotional?”

  “Certainly. But I meant your best,” he said. “No less than your best.”

  SHE SAT, THE campus still and quiet apart from the birds now that classes were in session. She toyed with her phone, which was resting on her lap.

  She knew she shouldn’t skip lab, but at this point she was over twenty minutes late, and her lab partner was surely already well into the experiment. She’d missed the previous week’s lecture as well, after she had decided to sleep in following a late C.U.N.T. rehearsal. It was unlike her to shirk schoolwork, but the more immersed she’d become in Justice and improv, the harder she’d found it to care about physics. She wasn’t going to be a doctor. That was becoming more and more clear.

  She reopened the case file and located his contact information. She entered his number into her phone, considered saving him as a contact, and then changed her mind and just sent him a text.

  Hi, I’m Bea, your student advocate in the pending case against you. Please let me know when you’d like to meet.

  She leaned back and squinted in the sunlight, now peeking behind the chapel’s steeple. She closed her eyes.

  Her dad—or Lester, whether or not he was her dad—still hadn’t written back. It had been less than forty-eight hours since she messaged him, but that was an eternity on the Internet. (She hadn’t worked up the nerve to open the message to see if there was a tiny check mark indicating that he’d seen it.) Since he hadn’t accepted her friend request, he likely hadn’t seen the message, as it would be relegated to a separate, buried file of messages from non-friends. But why hadn’t he accepted her friend request? Was it because he didn’t know who she was? Or because he hadn’t signed into Facebook over the weekend? Or because, being his age, he didn’t know how to see and accept friend requests?

  These more innocuous possibilities fell flat to her. The more time passed, the more foolish she felt for having written to him. It was very likely he was not even her dad. Why would he be? Just because he worked with her mom during the proper time period, had the initials L(?)B, looked a little like Bea, and had fantastic eyesight?

  But . . . yeah. Those things.

  He had to be her dad.

  He could be her dad.

  Was he her dad?

  Was he embarrassed of her? Was he racist? Was she a secret he didn’t want to face, a Pandora’s box he didn’t want to open?

  As she spiraled, brimming with regret and anxiety, her phone vibrated in her lap—a text from Audrey to both her and Lorn.

  HI GIRLS,

  2 THINGS: 1) TGIVING HERE??? 2) ARE THESE SANDALS TOO YOUNG ON ME

  Attached was a photo of Audrey in a dressing room wearing heels with straps that climbed up the leg. Bea winced. They weren’t cute shoes. She’d let Lorn tackle that one. Before she set her phone down, she noticed she’d received another message—the boy had replied.

  Hi. Now is good. I’m in PiKa 112.

  So she was expected to go to his room. Sure.

  She was the emotional support person, she told herself as she gathered her things. It was only right to meet where he preferred.

  SHE LET HERSELF into the PiKa dorm with her key card and wandered down a hallway reminiscent of every other dorm hall she’d ever been in—brutally lit, cold, and uninviting—in search of 112. Behind the doors that stood open, boys in caps sat typing at desks. In one room, there were three lined up on a futon clutching game controllers and shrieking, “Go! Go!” She found his room at the end and knocked.

  “Come in,” a voice called. He was seated on a sofa, leaning forward, his elbows balanced on his open legs.

  “Hey, it’s the improv girl,” he said.

  “Hi,” she said, startled to see the bushy-haired guy from Saturday night. When she’d read that he was a fourth-year, she’d assumed he’d be a complete stranger. “I’m Bea.”

  “Tyler,” he said. “Help yourself to some tea if you like.” He nodded in the direction of an electronic kettle, a box of packaged tea, and a mug on the corner of his desk.

  “I’m okay,” she said, wondering where she should sit and deciding to pull over his desk chair. “Is it okay if I . . .”

  “Of course,” he said, lifting a hand to swipe it aggressively across his face. Only then did she notice he’d been crying, his eyes bloodshot and puffy and his cheeks still glistening.

  “How are you doing?” she asked.

  And at that, this boy, this fourth-year boy, began to sob. His sobs were irregular, jolting. He covered his face with his hands completely, muffling the sounds jerking from his body. She didn’t know whether to touch his shoulder, try to comfort him. She decided to stay put. Finally, he lowered his hands.

  “I don’t know . . . I don’t know what to do. I can’t tell my dad. I cannot fucking tell my dad. But I feel like I . . . don’t I need a lawyer?”

  He covered his eyes again, but this time, he was silent.

  “You don’t necessarily need a lawyer. Some people get them,” Bea said, reciting what she’d learned in the training.

  “My dad is going to lose it. He’s going to . . . He’ll never talk to me again.”

  “How do you know?” Bea asked.

  “He told me. He said if anything like this ever happened again . . .” Bea’s breath caught in her throat. He picked up on her stiffening. “Not like that. Not like this. I mean, if I got in trouble again, he said I could consider myself no longer his son. I had a DUI once. But this is . . . fucking worse.”

  Relieved, Bea said, “But you’ve only been accused. There’s no outcome yet.”

  Tyler shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. He won’t care.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “You don’t think your dad will believe you?”

  “He won’t care,” Tyler said, sighing. “He’ll be pissed I let this even happen. He’ll find a way that this is my fault no matter what. I shouldn’t have gone out with someone I didn’t know better. Or I shouldn’t have been drinking. Or I shouldn’t have let her lie down in my room. Or I shouldn’t exist.”

  He began to weep again. Bea stood and made her way around the coffee table to perch next to him on the couch. She softly placed a hand on his shoulder.

  “It’ll be okay,” she said, because she didn’t know what else to say.

  “You don’t know that,” he said.

  He was right. She didn’t.

  At once, he seemed to realize the inevitability of the situation: that his father was going to find out about the accusation. He stopped crying and sat up straight.

  “It’s going to happen,” he said. “He knows everyone in the administration.”

  “That’s a bad thing?” Bea asked.

  He looked at her meaningfully, seeming almost irritated.

  “You don’t know my parents,” he said.

  “Even if you’re found innocent?” The technical terminology wasn’t “innocent,” but “not responsible” didn’t yet feel comfortable on her tongue.

  “With my parents,” he said, “it’s not about what is and isn’t. It’s about how things look. This looks as bad as it gets.” He clasped his hands behind his neck, closed his eyes, and sighed.

  “I don’t have parents,” Bea said.

  He looked at her.

  “My mom’s dead, and I’ve never met my dad.”

  After a moment, he said, “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not telling you for sympathy. I’m saying . . . if the worst happens and you’re right, well, you’ll survive. I have.”

  His gaze flitted across the room, then back to her. He was unmistakably calmer; the panic had drained from his face.

  “Okay,” he said. “Thank you.”

  “Let me clarify what my role is as your advocate,” she said, following instructions. “I’m here for you as an emotional support and as a r
eference if you have questions about how it works, that kind of thing. I’m also supposed to remind you that the campus judicial process isn’t a legal process. Any possible outcomes are restricted to what the university can do—have you been told this?”

  He nodded.

  “I’m also available to help you gather witness testimony. We’ll have to get names of witnesses in by the end of the week.” The trainer had explained that the new judicial process, which included hard deadlines on a tight time line, was all about expediting case outcomes. Under the old system, cases would languish unresolved for months or even semesters, with students walking around campus together, going to class together, all while they had a case pending.

  “Can’t I just talk to her?” he asked suddenly, urgently.

  Bea knew she had to advise him against this idea, but that it was his first instinct disarmed him for her.

  “Isn’t it weird that you saw us together? At your show?” he said distantly.

  Wait, what? Bea thought, then realized: it was the girl with the scars. How had she not thought of it as soon as she’d seen him? She’d not only seen him before; she’d also seen the girl he was with that night. The night in question. Having a face to associate with the claim, with the story, made Bea’s stomach tighten. She shoved the image of the girl from her mind.

  “Yeah, that was her. You saw her. She’s so nice. See? It has to be a misunderstanding, so I think maybe if we just talked . . .”

  He let the thought linger unfinished. After a moment, Bea said, “I don’t think that’s an option for you, given the rule that you aren’t supposed to contact each other.” But she was relieved he’d suggested it. Maybe she could be on his side. Maybe it was a misunderstanding. “Can you tell me what happened? Maybe I can help you figure it out.”

  12

  Stayja

  FRIDAY, AUGUST 25

  “He’s got abs. I am not kidding. Actual, rippled, model abs,” Nicole said on their drive to work at dawn. Nicole was now sleeping with Chet-the-lawyer, who was indeed representing her for free.

  “So those are, like, a perk of trading sex for favors?” asked Stayja. It came out meaner than she intended.

  Stayja was now working a double on Fridays. Frank, who ran all the campus eateries and the bookstore, had moved the girl who worked the Rooster morning shift to the coffee shop on the other campus, which opened earlier. And just this Friday, Nicole, too, had offered to cover for her coworker at the QuikMart because she had a date. It surprised Stayja to see Nicole taking on extra work, even for a single instance, and she figured her cousin must have an ulterior motive—it being easier to steal cigarettes on Friday nights or something when Frank was off.

  “You talking about you or me?” Nicole asked.

  “Tyler doesn’t do me favors, and we haven’t had sex.”

  “So you’re dating now?” Nicole asked snidely. “He’s your boyfriend?”

  Stayja didn’t answer.

  “Does he take you to parties with his friends?”

  “Shut up.”

  Stayja thought about the one party Tyler had mentioned, one that he was planning. It was a mixer (the word he’d used). She hadn’t bothered asking—she knew she wouldn’t be invited. And wasn’t that reasonable? The school was funding it; it was a party for students who paid tuition. It wasn’t as if Tyler could just invite the whole damn town of Cartersboro.

  They parked and headed their separate ways, Nicole to the QuikMart and Stayja to the Rooster, where she discovered that nothing had been delivered—not coffee, not breakfast or lunch platters, not pastries. Apart from the black rubber mats along the floor that remained sticky no matter how hard or often she mopped them, it was barren.

  “Excuse me,” a voice behind her asked, “are you open? Or not until seven? Could I go ahead and get a coffee?”

  “I don’t know if I have any coffee,” Stayja said, peering over the end of the counter to see if a box was hidden there.

  “You don’t have coffee? Isn’t this a coffee shop?”

  “One second,” said Stayja, opening cabinets she knew held nothing but supplies she never used. The Rooster had had a few lives before its current iteration—once as a smoothie bar, then as a sushi bar, then as a smoothie bar again. The remnants of these past lives crowded the cabinets, which Stayja continued to open and shut mostly for the sake of the impatient student scrutinizing her every move. Once she’d combed the cupboards, she took her phone from her back pocket. The girl performed an exasperated sigh. Stayja pretended not to hear it as she texted Frank: no coffee or anything . . . where is delivery? She placed her phone on the counter and opened the tall door behind which she hung her apron. As she tied it on and spun back around to see her phone lighting up, she saw the girl was still watching her, eyebrows raised.

  Shit ok. Am investigating, Frank responded.

  “No coffee yet. Sorry,” she said to the girl, who huffed away just as Tyler entered the shop.

  “Hi!” Stayja said.

  “Hey,” he said. “Got a minute?”

  “Well, we don’t have any coffee, so there’s nothing for me to do till it gets here.”

  “Weird,” he said.

  “I know.” She followed him through the side door. He turned, slid his hands into his pockets, and smiled.

  “Idea,” he said. “Why don’t you try to go to medical school?”

  He paused. She gave him her best are you crazy? look.

  “Why be a nurse when you could be a doctor?” he said.

  “Um . . . a million reasons?” she said.

  “Like?”

  “Like . . . I’m twenty-three? And can’t even find the time and money to get an associate’s degree? Like med school costs a million dollars, literally, and first you have to have a bachelor’s?”

  He pulled his phone from his back pocket.

  “What if I told you”—he tapped it once and handed it to her—“that all of that didn’t matter?”

  The screen read Gibson College Linkage Program. She’d never heard of Gibson College. She looked up at him. “I’m confused,” she said.

  “If you can get in there or somewhere like it, you basically start college now, and it goes right into medical school. It’s faster. And I bet it’s not that much more than what you’re already paying. And I bet you’d get in because you make good grades. I mean, you’d have to move. That one’s on the coast, but who doesn’t want to live at the beach?”

  She skimmed the website.

  “How’d you know about this?”

  He shrugged.

  “I knew there were med-school linkage programs because my cousin did one. So I just googled ones in North Carolina.”

  She scrolled on his phone, skimming, trying to process it.

  Tyler’s comment a few days earlier about her being in the category of the poor had continued to trouble her. It had left her wondering if she was making the kind of choices poor people made and rich people didn’t make. Should she have tried to take out student loans to go to college? Should she have applied to Carter? Should she encourage her mom to work under the table? Should she try to get a different job that paid for health insurance? The poor, he’d said. She’d been defensive. But in the intervening days she’d found herself wondering—was the way she thought different from the way people like Tyler thought?

  “For phase one it’s like no work at all. You just have to”—he grabbed the phone from her—“write an essay. One essay. Write an essay and fill out the application. Then, if they invite you for an interview, you can deal with the rest at that point.”

  Her phone buzzed.

  “Just think about it?” he said.

  Here with coffee where r u Frank had written.

  “Thanks. I’ll think about it,” she said, turning to go back inside.

  “Want to come over tonight after work?” he asked.

  How would Nicole get home? Stayja hesitated. She could take the bus. She wouldn’t be happy about it, but she would live.
<
br />   “Yes,” Stayja told him.

  ALL DAY, SHE found she’d break into a smile at the thought of him and the evening ahead. No more just sitting on the curb or in the lot—she was going over to his room. Even being on her feet for five, seven, nine hours, her heels aching, her lower back beginning to groan, she found her giddiness was impenetrable. As dusk approached, she was filling the milk canisters when Eric Gourdazi, clean-cut, towering, and, as ever, dressed in an ironed collared shirt, entered the café behind a girl who approached already holding out her student ID with one hand while typing on her phone with the other.

  “Tuna salad, please,” the girl said without looking up. Stayja took the card and swiped it, then fetched a tuna plate from the fridge, her heart pounding. She handed the plate to the girl, who frowned and brought it to her nose without even lifting the lid.

  “I think this has, like, gone bad,” she said. “I mean I could smell it without even opening it.” She held it out to Stayja to sniff. Stayja opened the lid to smell it; it smelled like tuna always smelled: bad. Donna loved when she brought home the uneaten, expired plates; she had come to expect them as her lunch staple many days. But Stayja had never seen the appeal of stinky canned fish.

  The plates always arrived chilled, but the day before, she’d been on break when they arrived, placed out of her line of sight left of the counter. Then the café got busy, and she’d forgotten about them. By the time she’d loaded them into the fridge, they were room temperature. But that didn’t seem as if it could possibly have made a difference. Tuna was tuna.

  “It smells normal to me,” Stayja said. The girl, who had scrunched up her face, shook her head. “No, it’s bad. It’s definitely bad,” she said, turning to Eric Gourdazi and lifting the plate to his nose. “I mean, tell me I’m not crazy.”

  When he shook his head instead of taking a whiff, the girl continued, “This is not safe to be serving people.” She shoved the open plate across the counter as Stayja heard Eric Gourdazi say the thing that changed him for her. The thing that made her feel lower than anything anyone had ever said to her at Carter—and she’d been the subject of some truly nasty, truly predatory comments over the years. Sweet Eric Gourdazi, whom she’d once watched push a child in a wheelchair—a relative? a mentee?—into the Rooster and play checkers with her for a full hour, whispered to the girl, as if Stayja didn’t have ears: You’d probably know better than her.