Privilege

by Mary Adkins

  I put the pillow back on the bed, went to the mini fridge, got out a can of beer that had been in there forever, and took a sip.

  I wanted to break something.

  Maybe I should go exercise. Go to the gym, get on the elliptical or something.

  “No!” I yelled, startling myself. No! I was sick of being responsible, sick of handling things well, of being mature and good and cooperative and understanding and compliant.

  I threw the nearly full can of beer into my small metal trash can. It fizzed and sloshed and filled the room with its thick man smell. I grabbed a notebook and pen.

  I’d tried it all: to move on, to accept that I’d never move on, to feel my feelings, to save others. Now that I’d passed through these stages, I found that on the other side of them there was only one thing left, a new desire: I wanted vengeance.

  I wanted to hurt him in a way from which he would never recover. I wanted to scar him.

  Seated on my bed, I started a list.

  call/email law school admissions offices to ruin his prospects for next year

  ruin all of his jobs forever by always calling/emailing

  paint bridge again

  The first idea wasn’t scarring enough, the second required too much work over too long a period of time, and the third was too easily reversed. Plus, it had been done.

  burn something

  Yes. In fire there was permanence. But what? He’d actually told me that he didn’t care about his stuff all that much. What was his phrasing? “Everything is replaceable.” I’d died a little when he’d said that was why he left his door unlocked, and now I remembered how glad I’d been in that moment that Matty wasn’t around to hear it. He’d never have stopped making fun of Tyler.

  Then he’d shown me the one exception to his indifference. The dancers. His watercolors.

  His paintings were irreplaceable, he’d said.

  THE SKY WAS undulating yellow and gray as I made my way across the empty expanse of grass in my rain boots, armed with an umbrella and my waterproof jacket.

  It was six o’clock, dinnertime, which I hoped meant he’d be out or leaving his room soon. If so, I’d go in and take the portfolio and then find a place to burn it that wouldn’t draw attention, maybe one of the lots near the soccer fields that were usually empty or behind a dumpster somewhere. I just had to beat the rain.

  I passed the entrance to his dorm and made my way around the corner of the building to the side where his window was last in the row of windows, the most distant on the first floor. If it was dark, I would go in.

  It was glowing. Dammit.

  But he would have to leave eventually.

  I found a spot in a stairwell at ATO, the frat housed in the adjacent building. Being in an isolated spot in frat territory sparked a flicker of fear, but I sat down anyway. Everyone was hunkered down inside their dorms and would be until the storm passed. I was prepared to wait as long as it took.

  29

  Bea

  MONDAY, DECEMBER 11

  5:54 P.M.

  Pull. Pull. Pull.

  After leaving Veronique in Dr. Friedman’s hotel room, Bea had gone straight to her room, where she’d changed and headed to the gym. She needed to sweat and not just a light jogging kind of sweat.

  As she rowed, she thought about Dr. Friedman. He was gross. And disappointing. And maybe, all those times he’d complimented her, he’d only wanted to sleep with her.

  She fumed, yanking at the arms of the machine. She loathed him.

  After a half hour on the rower, her purple top soaked through, it occurred to Bea that while she loathed him personally, she still respected him professionally. Still furious, she almost chuckled. Conflicting ideas—what he’d taught her.

  She wasn’t going to miss nationals. If it meant she failed physics and got kicked out of the program, so be it. Maybe she didn’t care.

  But she did care. She wanted to remain in the program, very much so.

  She climbed off the machine, wiped it down with the wipes from a small canister on the wall, and walked out into the cold sunlight, racking her brain for how she could somehow circumvent this ridiculous requirement that she retake physics before spring semester. She wasn’t going to ask Dr. Friedman, of course—not now.

  And then—she passed the gargoyles.

  IT WAS A long shot. Tyler would have to agree to call his parents, who she knew terrified him. He’d have to ask them to do a favor on her behalf, someone whom they didn’t know, someone whom he hardly knew. She hadn’t spoken to him since his case was decided, but she knew he’d found her work helpful. Dr. Friedman had told her that he’d told his parents so.

  She hadn’t spent twelve years at elite schools without picking up on the power of money to make problems go away. From peers who got time and a half on exams, to the senator’s daughter who never came to class and somehow was inducted into the Cum Laude Society for academic achievement, to Lorn’s public drunkenness charge’s disappearance from her record, Bea suspected that if anyone could pull a move to get an exception made to a policy—a very minor exception at that, for one otherwise above-average student—it was the Brand family.

  SHE DECIDED THAT, rather than texting or emailing, she’d stop by to see if he was in his room. She told herself it was because she was close to his dorm, but in truth she didn’t want to give him any opportunity to turn down or ignore her request.

  The sky had blackened, and a carpet of clouds stirred ominously as she hurried from the gym to his building, damp in her workout sweats under her jacket. She made her way down the hallway, where she found his door ajar. She tapped and lightly pushed it.

  He sat at his desk, his laptop open in front of a larger monitor. His eyes were threaded red, bloodshot.

  “Look who it is,” he said, venom in his voice.

  “Hi,” she said, hiding her alarm at his tone. “Sorry to just show up unannounced. I came to ask you a favor.”

  He sneered. She kept going anyway. Standing in the middle of the room in her workout clothes, she made her plea.

  “Basically, I’m failing physics. Which . . . I don’t care about. But what I do care about is that it means I’ll lose my scholarship and my spot in the Justice program unless I retake physics. They’re trying to tell me I have to retake it over winter session, but if I do that, then there’s no way I can make it to the national improv championship in Portland at the end of January.”

  He’d become distracted, bending over to search the floor around his desk for something.

  “I was thinking maybe you could ask your parents to make a call. Like, pull strings. It’s a really small ask. I’ll take physics in the spring. I don’t care. I just can’t take it this winter.”

  It had made so much sense in her head, but now that she was saying it aloud, it sounded foolish.

  “Fucking unbelievable,” he muttered. He’d stood and gone to his mini fridge. He opened and shut it.

  “Would you please just do me this one favor?” she said with a sigh. “I helped you with your case, and I would really appreciate it if you helped me now.”

  “Why would my parents do anything for you when you embarrassed them publicly? Then your friend wrote about it?”

  She didn’t follow.

  “There.” He pointed to his coffee table, where a copy of the Chronicle lay. She’d stopped reading the paper after the series of op-eds on Tyler and his case had unnerved her. It was open to a column about her team. She picked it up and read as he watched her intently from his chair. It was silly, just as her monologue had been. She laughed.

  “Oh, please. We weren’t making fun of your family, and neither is Lesley. Everyone’s just making fun of the school.”

  His face had grown vacant, as if he’d forgotten what they were discussing. He stood, stumbled to his closet door, reached into the pocket of a Carter jacket hanging there, and pulled out a set of keys.

  “You’re not going to drive, are you?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”r />
  “You’re drunk.”

  “I’m also out of booze.”

  “Give me the keys. I’ll take you to the liquor store.”

  She stepped into his path, blocking the door. He squinted at her, amused, swaying. Then he held the keys in front of his face and dropped them. She lunged forward to catch them. He didn’t move.

  “You are so dumb,” he said. “You have no idea.”

  For a long moment, they stared at each other. Then he said, “You think it’s a coincidence that suddenly you can’t go to nationals after you humiliate me and my family?”

  “What?” Bea said. What was he talking about?

  “It’s not,” he said with a smirk, enjoying her confusion.

  But that didn’t make any sense. She saw the grades policy, and she’d violated it. It wasn’t as if the policy had changed overnight suddenly just to punish her.

  “My physics grade is too low. That’s my own fault,” she said.

  “But no one cared about it until today, did they? And do you know why that is?” He leaned in close, his hot, boozy breath in her face. “Because I already made a call. To my mom. Who called . . . that dude. The program dude.”

  “Dr. Friedman?”

  “Whoever. She told him to shut you the fuck up.” He stumbled over to the coffee table and sat on it. “Don’t make fun of us,” he mumbled again.

  “Why would Dr. Friedman listen to your mother?” Bea asked, still clutching his keys.

  He let out a drunken cackle. “Who do you think funds your program?” He was yelling now, leaning forward onto his knees, heckling her. “Not you! You don’t fund your program, do you? You fucked with the wrong people, dude. People like you are only here because people like us allow it.”

  “People like me,” she said, daring him. “Meaning what?”

  “You know what I mean,” he said, not backing down. “Like. You.” Then he swayed forward and caught himself. He sat up and rubbed his eyes, like a baby or a cartoon. When he brought them down, the whites were even redder than before. “My family doesn’t pull strings. We are the strings.”

  She stood frozen as Tyler studied her.

  “You’re sad because you don’t have a family,” Tyler said, his tone suddenly softer. “I’m sad, too. I’m sad I’ll never be good enough for mine.” His eyes had grown vacant, and his gaze rested on the middle distance between them, on nothing. He sounded almost tender when he said, “You’re not funnier than me. You’re not better than me. We’re the same.”

  Bea dropped his keys on the coffee table, and he flinched as they landed with a crack.

  She walked out, her rage trailing behind her.

  SHE PUSHED OPEN the door to find that the rain was coming down now in thick sheets. She pulled up the hood of her light wool coat and charged through it, not caring that she was getting soaked. She made her way past Tyler’s dorm building, which seemed to go on forever, then darted into a covered stairwell to button up her coat.

  “Hi.”

  She turned to see Annie Stoddard sitting on the steps.

  “Hi,” Bea said. She shook the water off her arms and took a seat next to Annie.

  “This is gross,” Annie said.

  “Nasty,” Bea said.

  “I’m Annie,” Annie said.

  “I know,” Bea said. “I’m Bea.”

  “You know because I’m rape famous?” Annie asked. Bea turned to see that she was smiling a little.

  “Ha,” Bea said. “No, because we were in abnormal psych together this semester.”

  “Ah,” Annie said, looking ahead into the dark rain.

  After a moment, Bea said, “Actually, that’s not true. I was Tyler’s student advocate.”

  “Oh,” Annie said quietly.

  “I told him to say that stuff about you. About your legs. And what you were wearing. And wanting his money.”

  Annie was staring at her rubber boots, picking at a loose strip of rubber along the edge of one of them.

  “I’m really sorry,” Bea said.

  Annie turned to Bea. But before she could say anything, they heard the sound of a car trying to stop.

  30

  Stayja

  MONDAY, DECEMBER 11

  6:23 P.M.

  Again, Stayja looked down at her phone. Still nothing. It was past six, when she usually took her evening break, but she’d been waiting to take it in case he wrote back and she could dash over to talk to him.

  Maybe she just hadn’t gotten an alert.

  She opened the text thread again and reread her last two messages.

  Oh no, she thought. How had she missed it before? Back to back like that, her texts made it seem like she needed help. “Fuck it,” she said under her breath.

  She had preferred to tell him about Annie’s plan face to face, but she’d just do it over text.

  -I just got approached by Annie. She is trying to out you in the newspaper. She is looking for other girls to sign her letter. I thought you’d want to know.

  -What?? How do you know this?

  -She came to the rooster to talk to me

  -Why?

  -I don’t know.

  -You don’t know why your friend calls me a rapist on the bridge. You don’t know why Annie tries to get you to call me a rapist in the paper. What aren’t you telling me Stasia?

  -It’s Stayja.

  -What are you after? Just fucking say it.

  -I’m not after anything. I’m telling you what happened! That’s what I’m doing! Are you in your room? I’m coming over.

  She took his lack of response as a yes. She grabbed her jacket and rushed out the door. It was just beginning to sprinkle, but the wind was already ferocious, ripping leaves from the trees and spiraling them through the air. She pulled up the zipper as she jogged to his dorm.

  She’d hoped someone would be at the door to let her in, but there wasn’t anybody in sight. She huddled against the wall, waiting. A minute passed. Four minutes. The rain grew harder, toppling over her like a wave crashing.

  Her car, visible from the entrance to his building, was a better place to wait. She hurried to it and threw herself into the driver’s side, letting in several buckets of water before slamming the door behind her. She turned on the engine and flipped the heat to its max setting as her phone buzzed.

  -Why’d you fucking put me on Instagram?

  -I did it to help you out. For your benefit. If you’ll just talk to me I’ll explain.

  -Fucking take it down.

  -Can you just come let me in? I’ll explain.

  -Take it down!!! There’s nothing to discuss. I don’t want to be in a photo on your Insta. I want nothing to do with you. Leave me alone.

  Stayja’s phone rested on the steering wheel, and the rain pounded against the windshield as the meaning of his words sank in.

  He was ashamed of her.

  He’d always been. It was why he’d never invited her to anything, any parties. Had never introduced her to any of his friends.

  It was her teeth or her clothes or her grammar or the fact that she was a barista. Whatever it was—he thought she wasn’t good enough.

  Her whole body quivered despite the hot air blasting. She opened Instagram to delete the post and saw that there was already one comment on it. She clicked on it.

  It was from AStod2017. It took her a moment to identify the profile.

  Annie.

  Annie had left a comment with no text, just a single tag—someone named Erika Dipatri.

  Before Stayja tapped on the girl’s name, she knew who she was. Sure enough—it led her to the account, where she promptly found the post Stayja had refused to read in Annie’s presence.

  It was a text-only photo. Believe Survivors, it read in a white, swirly font on a hot pink background. In the caption below the photo, the girl wrote about being assaulted over fall break in St. John. While she didn’t mention Tyler by name, she did say that he was a student at Carter and described his tattoo.

  The tatto
o of the squares, featured in her own post, alongside his face.

  Slowly, horribly, it dawned on Stayja that, in trying to stand up for him, she’d backed up the girl’s story.

  Her dismay was swiftly followed by a surge of hope—perhaps that was why he’d wanted so desperately for her to delete the post. Perhaps it wasn’t the shame of being associated with her but that she’d unknowingly provided identifying information about him.

  Then, an unwelcome thought: One person, Annie, having a misunderstanding was one thing. But two? She didn’t know what to believe, didn’t know what was true. Staring into her phone screen, she found she couldn’t delete the post. She couldn’t.

  STAYJA DIDN’T KNOW how long she sat. Long enough that she began to wonder if she was going to walk back in to find Frank there, ready to fire her. After his warning about pushing the lengths of her breaks earlier in the semester, she’d known he’d been watching her more closely.

  As the rain pounded on the windshield, she reflected on all that had happened recently.

  Perhaps she’d been unfair to Nicole, especially if it turned out Nicole was right about Tyler.

  But if Nicole had been correct, why hadn’t Stayja seen it before? Why had it taken a post by a stranger to make her suspicious of him?

  But no, that wasn’t quite right. He’d rejected her. That had also happened. She hadn’t been willing even to look at the post before that.

  Was Stayja so infatuated that she hadn’t been able to see what was right in front of her?

  But wait, no, she thought, I didn’t have bad experiences with Tyler. It wasn’t crazy behavior to trust someone who hadn’t given you a reason not to trust him. She didn’t even know Annie Stoddard. Why would she trust someone she’d never met over someone she knew?

  The logic applied to Nicole as well: Nicole knew Annie, not Tyler, and so Nicole trusted Annie over Tyler.

  And then Stayja had a sinking feeling, a startling realization that squeezed her insides: Nicole had never met Tyler because Stayja was embarrassed of her.

  It had been devastating for Stayja to imagine that Tyler had felt this way about her. How must her cousin have felt?

  She checked the time. 7:02. She’d been gone from the coffee shop an hour, and Nicole was just getting off.