Privilege

by Mary Adkins

  “Sorry we haven’t talked much,” I said. “Things got really weird this fall.”

  “What happened, anyway?” he asked. “I know something happened. But Mom and Dad won’t tell me. They’ve been acting so fucking weird.”

  Cory didn’t normally use the F word. It was a new thing. I wondered if he was doing it to impress me or if he was just that upset.

  Of all that had been difficult about the fall, this was the worst—telling my little brother.

  “In September I had a date with this guy from school. And he turned out to be a pretty bad guy.”

  “How so?” he mumbled, and I could tell that he knew.

  “You know how,” I said.

  He set his remote on the couch next to him and looked at me.

  “I want to kill him,” he said.

  “Me too,” I said, thinking of Loretta telling me not to pretend I wasn’t full of rage. “But I’m okay. I promise.”

  “Fuck that guy,” Cory said loudly as my mom appeared in the adjoining kitchen holding a box of Betty Crocker.

  “Cory!” she said. “Watch your language!” But we could tell she didn’t mean it.

  OVER BREAK, CORY and I finished off an entire pumpkin pie while bingeing Queer Eye. On Black Friday, I went to Dance Fit Aerobics at church with my mom and tried not to smile as a gaggle of gray-haired women in wind suits gyrated to eighties pop. And though I almost skipped the reunion dinner that night at Corona’s Mexican Grill with my high school friends, in the end I had gone and had had a much better time than I’d expected. Although I suspected some of them had heard, no one brought up what had happened to me.

  And there was the cotton-ball pillow fight. Whenever I returned home from college, even if only for a few days, I’d colonize the bathroom, populating every surface, just as I had in high school, with my makeup, hairbrush, hair dryer and wand, nail supplies, and skin-care products. Cory, meanwhile, had now had the bathroom all to himself for the first time in his life.

  On the Sunday morning I was to return to Carter, I was sleeping in when my bedroom door was flung open, light flooded my vision, and something delicate and soft began hitting my face.

  “Get your cotton balls out of my bathroom!” he yelled, pegging me with round after round until I was awake and throwing pillows at his head. We fought until we were breathless, and I was tickling him until he begged me to stop, because even though he was bigger than me, he was also more ticklish.

  It felt so good to laugh that hard that, taking a shower later that morning, I kept going.

  BACK IN MY room at Carter that evening, I was unpacking when my phone buzzed.

  Can I come by and say hi? wrote Henry.

  Hey Henry, I wrote back. Sure!

  I hurried to the bathroom, where I brushed my teeth and washed my face, then reapplied my makeup and gathered my hair into a bun that I made look properly messy with three bobby pins. When I turned the corner headed back to my room, he was already at my door. He must have been waiting outside my dorm when he texted.

  “Hi. I read everything,” he said.

  The load that had lifted back at home swooped down, and it occurred to me, standing there, that perhaps I could transfer, too. I could transfer to somewhere where I wasn’t known for this heinous thing. Regardless of what Henry had to say about the fall, I could leave all of this, including him, behind. Start over, maybe in Indiana. Indiana sounded like a place with nice people.

  “I wanted to say that you’re the bravest person I know,” he said. “But more important, I’m so good at the bassoon now. You will not even believe how good I am.”

  WITH EACH DAY, Henry made me feel more and more as if it was all going to be okay. Together, he and I were drawn to activities to which, pre-Henry, I’d have turned up my nose: putt-putt, a video arcade, the latest animated Pixar movie in 3-D. We did silly things, things that made me feel like a kid again. We drank a beer or two on occasion, but mostly our fun wasn’t centered on alcohol, not in the conscious way it was by default for many people at college. But nor was our time spent moping in reaction to that social scene, the way Matty and Samantha and I had been our first year.

  One afternoon, I was shelving new inventory at the bookstore when I received a text flagged “Urgent” from Matty (the only person I knew who ever actually used that function, which seemed superfluous, given that we all lived on our phones and responded to all texts immediately). His text was in all caps: CHECK INSTAGRAM NOW: ERIKA DIPATRI. He’d attached a screenshot of an Instagram post. Erika Dipatri, a student at the University of Arkansas, had posted a text image in loopy cursive—“Believe Survivors.” The caption read:

  Over fall break, while in St. John with my a cappella group, I was raped by someone I’d just met. He was there with a group of guys from Carter. I was very drunk so I don’t remember his name, but he had this tattoo of different size squares. It took me weeks to share what happened, and when I did, fortunately I was believed. Many aren’t. #believesurvivors #thesquaresIllneverforget #metoo

  “WE OBVIOUSLY CAN’T make him show us his torso,” Dean Sharon said.

  “You don’t have to make him. I’m telling you that he has it.” Dean Sharon studied me sadly. I sat across from her in her office, holding my phone, the screenshot pulled up.

  “Even if it’s true,” she said, “even if she was writing about him, it didn’t happen here.”

  When I didn’t respond, she said, “Listen Annie, I know you have reasons to be sympathetic to this woman’s situation, but why are you here? What do you want to have come out of this meeting?”

  She wasn’t going to help me. She did not actually care if Tyler was raping people. Earlier in the fall I’d realized it, but in the interim I’d forgotten. I’d convinced myself that my expectations for a different outcome based on my word alone were unreasonable.

  “I don’t know why a known rapist gets to remain on campus,” I said.

  Dean Sharon stood and went to the window overlooking the quad. Peering out, she said, “People are fighting all kinds of battles on this campus, stuff you can’t imagine.” She turned back to me. “Do you know that there are students here who have no family? No one to go to when something happens to them. No one to visit during breaks. Then there are students who don’t go home during breaks because it’s not safe to be there. There are students who are completely alone in the world and students who have made it into this university in spite of all the odds stacked against them, and I don’t just mean poverty. I mean no support system or luck or easy breaks. I mean fighting their way through schools without enough teachers to staff the classes, with addicts as parents, with siblings who raised them. You don’t often hear from these students, but they’re here. They’re in Wiggins Library till three in the morning.”

  She came over and took a seat next to me in the other chair facing her desk, as she had the time before. Our knees touched.

  “I am not playing down your situation. I get it. It’s shitty.” She said “shitty” as if it were the first time she’d ever uttered the word. “But you know what? The world is shitty. Do I wish we were better at preparing our students to enter it? I truly do.

  “I wish I had better advice for you. But this is not the hill for you to die on, Annie. You are bigger than this. Your life is bigger than this. This is one sad, messed-up rich kid out of a hundred sad, messed-up rich kids. They don’t know what they’re doing, because they have never had to take responsibility for anything. And then they come here, and they have freedom and alcohol and dangerous ideas that they’ve absorbed from culture, the Internet, poor role models—and they do a bad thing. Or bad things.

  “Say they get kicked out of Carter. What does that do? I’ll tell you what it does. They go to the University of Mississippi, and they’re the same person. They go to UNC, and they’re the same person. Where was she a student again?”

  “Arkansas,” I said.

  “They go there.” She paused. “You must learn this sooner or later, so you might a
s well now. Some people aren’t good. They won’t ever be. The best thing you can do is learn to recognize them and do your damnedest to stay away.”

  “I’m not saying expel everyone who does something wrong,” I said. “I’m saying expel the rapists.”

  She stood again, drifting back to the window. “Expulsion,” she said, facing the quad, “isn’t always an option. Not when people have paid exorbitant amounts of money to the university.” She turned back to me. “I’m being very frank with you here, Annie, because I think you deserve honesty, and I don’t want to patronize you by giving you any less.”

  “Do those people include women? Because we pay tuition, too,” I said, wondering what my etiquette-conscious, southern mother would make of my insubordinate tone. Normally she’d not have approved, but maybe in this situation.

  A look I couldn’t identify crept across her face.

  “You don’t pay tuition,” she said.

  But we did—we paid a quarter of it. By that point my dad had spent over seventy weekends hunched over a Kaplan SAT tome at Starbucks, toiling the weekends of his life away with someone else’s kids, not me or Cory, helping them get into college so that I could afford to go here.

  I didn’t bother telling her this.

  I left Dean Sharon’s office and headed back to my dorm, a fresh, simmering layer of outrage rising up within me. The temperature was dropping rapidly, and I hadn’t worn a jacket. As I walked, shivering, it suddenly occurred to me what I’d been doing wrong.

  I’d been trying to fight through the university, when I could simply go around it.

  The Carter Chronicle

  Thursday, December 7

  In which I not so humbly celebrate/reveal my identity

  by the Irreverent Rooster

  C.O.C.A!a H.Y.H.Y!b C.U.N.T.c has won the southeast regional improv championship!

  What does that mean?

  Your SAT reading comprehension skills are not required here. This means exactly what it sounds like: the roosters are the baddest, cleverest, funniest improv team in the region. A whole chunk of the country. Dozens of schools. Hundreds of improvisers. Millions of awkward hookups. Whatever. It’s math.

  Listen, I can say this without worry that I’m bragging, because I’m not one of them.d

  I might be one of them.

  Are you really that surprised?

  Please imagine me clutching a metallic elfin statuette and weeping.

  First, I’d like to thank Chris, our tireless leader, whose devotion to the team is astonishing and sometimes concerning. We will miss you next year.

  Correct, I’m not a fourth-year.

  If you’re prelaw and actually care about my identity, this has just become a great LSAT warm-up. Grab a pencil!

  Second, I’d like to thank you, readers, fellow students, for showing up to our shows night after night and laughing your faces off. Might I call you—this is going to be cheesy—our thirteenth member?

  Awwwwwwww / what is happening?

  Third, and finally, because rule-of-threes, I’d like to thank the Brand family, the alumni association, and the Carter Construction Committeee for continuing to provide endless delight and material with that one horrendous decision you made to adorn the new dorm with those god-awful Brandgoyles. Gargands. Bragoyles. First-year Bea Powers’s monologue on the story, which set up our show, is 100 percent why we won.

  Alas, exams start next week, which means this is my last column of the semester. I know. It’s okay. You’ll have the comfort puppies they bring into Wiggins Library from the puppy mill to make you feel happier while also guilty at your joy.

  It’s been fun, y’all.

  xo—

  L.E.S.L.E.Y.f

  Glossary

  a. C.O.C.A.: Obv come one, come all.

  b. H.Y.H.Y.: Hear ye, hear ye.

  c. C.U.N.T.: In case you don’t live on this planet, our acronym-obsessed improvisers.

  d. I’m not one of them: This is a lie.

  e. Carter Construction Committee: I made this up but it’s got to be close. Whoever builds stuff around here.

  f. L.E.S.L.E.Y.—Wasn’t quite ready to let go of the joke.

  26

  Bea

  FIRST WEEK OF DECEMBER

  You tell yourself something isn’t true, and then it happens to you.

  There had been moments—quick flashes—when Bea had wondered if what Early had said about Dr. Friedman was true, if he was interested in college girls. At times she’d asked herself if it was why he had been so supportive of her from the beginning. But he never acted inappropriately, and eventually she’d stopped wondering. She was often in his hotel room with him, and nothing had ever gotten weird.

  Then, one week before regionals, she was doing laundry when he called.

  “Come to San Diego with me next weekend,” he said as she folded her towel in thirds, the way her mother had taught her (because “everyone needs to be able to properly fold a bath towel”). The offer was casual, as if they were buddies on a road trip and he was suggesting a slightly ludicrous but not dangerous detour to see some special sight. He spoke as if he was confident she’d accept, as if there was no question. “There’s a conference on sexual misconduct and Title IX that I think you’ll find fascinating, given your recent work.”

  She set the towel down on her bed, unable to speak. Was he hitting on her? Or just inviting her to a conference?

  “And my favorite restaurant in the world is there. It has amazing views of the water.”

  “I can’t,” she said rapidly. “I have an improv show.” Because she didn’t want to hurt his feelings or seem ungrateful by implying it was just any show, she added, “Regionals. In Virginia. I can’t miss that.”

  “That’s too bad,” he said, professional and upbeat. “Well, good luck in the show. I’ll let you know how the conference goes.”

  As she pulled the warm sheet over the corners of her mattress, she fluctuated between horror, confusion, and disbelief. Had he been hitting on her, or had he just wanted her to experience the conference? He’d mentioned her work, but then he’d also mentioned his favorite restaurant.

  Should she go? Where would she stay? Certainly he hadn’t expected she’d stay with him. Anyway, she couldn’t miss regionals. She pushed it from her mind as she put away her clothes.

  THE UVA AUDITORIUM was twice as large as the one at Carter.

  “How many people do you think this place seats?” Bea said to Lesley during sound check, her voice sounding small and childlike in the vast space, the rows upon rows of empty, maroon chairs. “A thousand?”

  “Fifteen hundred?” Lesley said.

  At Carter, they performed for packed rooms of two hundred, maybe three hundred at the most, and those crowds felt enormous.

  Three hours later, they stood in the wings, the fourth team of nine to perform. They had watched none of the first three groups, abiding by Chris’s philosophy that to do so was bad luck. Good improv was fearless and playful, not competitive, and so they spent the first part of the show warming up backstage, goofing off, and generally stirring up their pool of collective effervescence in the hope that it would erupt at just the right moment.

  When they received the five-minute warning, they circled up and placed their hands in the center, pin-wheel style. “C! U! N! T!” they chanted before jogging to the wings, which Sam—know-it-all Sam—unintentionally referred to as the “sidelines,” inspiring a giggling frenzy. The UVA third-year manning the curtain had to shush them.

  Then they were being introduced, and the light was blinding, and Chris was asking the audience for a favorite adjective. The students shouted words and more words, and then Chris was saying “bonkers.” He swiveled to face the team and mouthed it again, making eye contact with Bea: bonkers.

  Bea made her way to the front of the stage and stood at the mic that had been placed onstage temporarily for the monologist; tiny mics hanging from the ceiling would amplify the remainder of their Harold.

&n
bsp; “So this crazy thing happened this fall at my school,” she began, “involving some very rich donors and some gargoyles.”

  An hour later, they were going to nationals in January.

  IN THE MEANTIME, there was school to finish. Back at Carter, Bea suffered through her three-hour physics exam and cringed only a little at the D-exam grade that arrived in her in-box two days later. She tried to focus on preparing for her other classes’ final assessments: an exam and two papers. When yet another note arrived from Dr. Toast, asking her to swing by his office, she figured it had something to do with selecting courses for spring semester.

  She stopped by his office on her way to meet Early at the gym and found him seated just like the last time she’d seen him, in the same glasses, with the same expression, possibly wearing the same clothes.

  “Have a seat,” he said and began chomping on a thumbnail. “It has been brought to my attention that you have made a D in your physics class. Is that correct?”

  “Yeah,” she said, sighing. “Unfortunately.” So he was going to scold her? Since when did that happen? She thought college was about making mistakes and no one stopping you.

  “Well, yes, it is. But I have some good news for you. The academic advising office has determined that you may retake Physics during the January term and as long as you make a C or higher, you can keep your scholarship and remain in the Justice program in the spring.”

  She blinked, confused.

  “You realize you are in violation of the terms of your scholarship, correct?” he said.

  “I thought I just had to maintain over a 3.0.”

  He reached for his computer monitor and pivoted it to face her. On the screen were several open windows. He hovered the cursor over one of them containing a block of fine text.

  “A 3.0 and no individual course grade lower than a C.”

  She couldn’t take physics in the January term. Nationals were in January—in Portland. And three days long. Plus travel days.

  “Do you have the schedule?” she asked.

  He happily handed her a sheet. “Already printed it for you. It’s important to note that for all January term courses, perfect attendance is mandatory owing to their abbreviated nature. If you miss a class, you’ll fall behind and will struggle to catch up. Obviously that’s especially true for a course like physics, with a lab.”