by Cindi Madsen
I tapped her on the shoulder again, and she gave an exasperated sigh before glancing at me.
“How about you and I get a drink? You know what they say…” I winked, which I didn’t think was part of my usual repertoire, but it came out anyway. “Three’s the charm—I’ll make sure of it.”
“Look, buddy, the amount of alcohol it’d take for me to sleep with you tonight would kill me. So you might as well move on.”
I laughed, which was apparently the wrong move, because she said something about how she never should’ve come, then grabbed her friend’s arm—even though the girl had been talking to someone else—and walked away, melting into the crowd.
I wasn’t sure how long I stood there staring at the place where she’d disappeared, but the next thing I knew Dane was all up in my grill, waving his hand. “Bro, you’re so wasted. Remember how we agreed to go easy so we wouldn’t be totally hung over at tomorrow’s practice? Coach is going to kill us.”
“Be fine by practice,” I muttered, not sure if the words had come out right.
“Do you even know where you are?”
I knew where I was, but the rest of my mind was pretty blank, which was exactly what I’d wanted since the start of this sucky day.
Chapter Three
Whitney
I readjusted my bra so the push-up pads had maximum effect and then felt to check that my jeans weren’t gaping in the back. Thanks to my Kardashian-esque booty that exercise didn’t touch, finding the right pair of jeans was like finding a college guy who wanted to be in a long-term relationship.
I wanted to believe they existed—the commitment-ready guys, that is, since I’d discovered that for the right eye-bulging price I could find jeans with cool designs on the pockets which hugged and flattered and came pretty damn close to perfection—but right now it felt like I’d have a better chance at running into a unicorn on campus.
It’d been just over a week since Trevor had shown his true colors. Going to the party with Lyla and Beck only showed me there were more guys exactly like him ready to take his place. The intoxicated, tattooed dude who’d hit on me might’ve been ridiculously hot, but for once I hadn’t fallen for a cocky smile and a line. At the time I’d been too involved in my personal pity party to appreciate my fortitude, but by the time Lyla and I had our girls’ night, the thought buoyed me up and led me to a huge decision.
Until I could figure out how to break my habit of falling for guys who hurt me, I was taking a sabbatical from dating and sex to focus on my professional future. When I’d first come to Boston College, all I’d been thinking about was how I was that much closer to becoming the hard-hitting journalist I’d always wanted to be. Guys and parties had gotten in the way, but I vowed now to correct that.
Step one: meeting with my journalism professor after class. I planned on finding out what I needed to do to ensure that when I graduated, I’d have a foot-up on the rest of my competition.
No more letting life happen to me and then wondering why it’s going so wrong. I’m taking my future into my own hands. Without the stress and worry guys inevitably brought, it’d be so much easier to focus, and the thought of being in control of my life again sent a swirl of excitement through me.
I saw a flash of my future self, living in New York City and working for some big time publication. People would open their paper and look for my byline, knowing they were in good hands with me.
Holding on to that motivational image, I grabbed a Coke out of the fridge and unwrapped a package of Strawberry Pop-Tarts—the breakfast of forever-running-late champions.
Einstein mewed from his spot near my feet and then rubbed against the bottom of my jeans. “Hey, buddy. Do you need breakfast, too?”
Despite being in a hurry, I set down my Coke and checked his bowl. It had some dry cat food in it, but there was a tiny place in the center where the blue plastic showed through, which I’d learned meant “completely empty” to Einstein.
I poured more of the fish-shaped pieces into his bowl, until there was a giant mound where the hole used to be. Before Lyla and I moved in together, she’d asked if I was cool with cats. I felt neutral about them, so I said I was fine with her having one. The more I got to know the little gray and white furball, though, the more I realized I was a cat person. I didn’t talk about him with my dates, like Lyla used to, but during the dateless times, I was always glad to have him curled up by me on the couch.
Since I had a lot more of those nights in my immediate future, he and I were about to have a lot of one-on-one time. “Okay, I gotta go now. Wish me luck.”
Einstein was too busy eating to bother with well-wishes. Okay, now I’m talking to the cat and making excuses for him. Maybe I am getting to the crazy cat lady point. Dang, Lyla’s wearing off on me.
I retrieved my Coke and rushed out the door, refocusing on my mission: find out how to be the best journalism student ever, so that every major news outlet would want to hire me the second I graduated.
That way I could focus on blowing the lids off of scandals instead of how stupid guys were. Once I was living in a big city, reporting on huge stories, I was sure that my guy problems would be nothing but a distant memory.
“I just want to do everything I can to ensure that I’m ready for real-world experience once I graduate.” I finished up my spiel, taking my first full breath since I’d sat down with Professor Jessup. A cough lodged in my throat, my body rejecting the stale, Old-Spice-scented air. I forced it to stay put but glanced longingly at the window and the blue sky beyond. Cracking a window wouldn’t kill him, would it?
Professor Jessup slowly leaned forward in his seat, and I leaned forward, too, waiting for him to impart his wisdom—after all, he’d worked for a national paper for twenty years before becoming a journalism professor.
“Now, I’m going to give you some advice that’s going to make your college experience and the rest of your life a lot easier,” he said.
My heart quickened, and I poised my pen over my notebook, ready to jot down every word. Who needed air? Not the girl who was about to get the secret to landing her dream job.
“You’re a pretty girl, and while it’s a competitive field, you have a good shot at landing an anchorwoman position. The TV would love you—you just have to network and meet the right contacts. Stay in shape, work on your people skills, be willing to start at the bottom. I think you’d even do well in the entertainment industry.”
Everything inside me deflated as I pictured the overly-coiffed women who reported the daily news. “Anchorwoman? Nothing against those women, but that’s not what I want to do. I want to do the digging, and write hard-hitting articles that inform and inspire. Not just read a teleprompter.”
The smile he gave me was so patronizing that I went from deflated to incensed in two seconds flat. “Would you say this to any of the male journalism students?” I couldn’t believe it’d come out—usually I avoided confrontation at all costs. Probably why I usually assumed a guy and I were exclusive instead of asking him if we were.
But I wasn’t going to think about that right now. This was about me and my future, and how the guy in front of me had just brushed me off like I was some ditzy girl who only cared about being on TV.
Professor Jessup held up his hands. “Like I said, I’m only trying to make your life easier. I should’ve known you’d get emotional.” He arched eyebrows heavy with the implication that this was why I wouldn’t make it.
Well, I’d show him.
I shot to my feet and my notebook fell to the floor—so much for my dramatic show of how in-control I was. “Thank you for your time. I guess I’ll have to talk to someone still in the field about what I need to do.”
Someone who’s been introduced to the twenty-first century. I wished I had the guts to add that, but for me, what I’d said had been plenty bold. I scooped up my notebook and backpack and strode out the stuffy office.
I was afraid if I stopped I’d lose momentum, so I marched myself ove
r to the Heights newspaper office. It was Part Two of my plan originally, but since Part One just went down in misogynistic flames, it had been promoted.
As I neared the brick building, my feet slowed and nerves rose up, making me regret my Coke and Pop-Tarts breakfast. Honestly, I should’ve done this at the beginning of the semester, not a month into it. I’d tried to get on staff last year, but they’d passed me over so I hadn’t bothered submitting again, and now I regretted it.
That just means I’ve got to really bring it right now.
I clenched and unclenched my fists a few times, jerked open the door, and went inside, determined to not take no for answer.
Chapter Four
Hudson
“Bro, you’re slipping into old habits,” Dane said. I wasn’t sure he knew how to start a sentence without “bro” in front of it. In our ten plus years of friendship, he’d probably only managed it a handful of times.
I didn’t bother looking away from the TV, even though I wasn’t that interested in whatever crime show was on the screen. “Yeah, apparently it’s going around.”
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing,” I muttered, and turned up the TV.
Of course Dane wasn’t deterred. He stood in front of the screen and crossed his arms. “I’m sure you remember from freshman year what happens when you fail your classes. You end up on academic probation, with Coach breathing down your neck. They threaten to not renew your scholarship. Your life sucks, and all of those things make my life suck, too. Not to mention the team would suffer without you.”
Distraction had been my constant companion the past week, which wasn’t helping with the almost-failing problem. Homework assignments might keep me afloat, but that meant getting through them, and lately it all seemed so pointless. What was I trying to prove, anyway? At one point it had been that I could get through college—I even had dreams of being able to change the lives of kids who had to deal with what I’d had to growing up, but it turned out that McCaffrey, the team’s academic advisor, had been right about my major. It was hard, possibly too hard, to manage on top of playing hockey.
I prided myself on proving people wrong, but at this rate it would take me ten years to graduate—I wondered if they’d let me play hockey for all of them? Then maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.
Or maybe I’d get recruited, and then I could at least earn enough money to try to make a difference, even if I wasn’t working directly with the kids. Of course, getting recruited required playing, and playing required grades good enough to stay eligible and keep my scholarship.
Which meant Dane had a point—he was going to continue to stare at me and block the TV until I gave in, too, I could tell. “Fine, I’m on it.”
“I can see that from the way you’re pulling out your books to study,” he said.
He was my boy and all, but sometimes he didn’t know when to shut his mouth. I gritted my teeth in an approximation of a smile, reached for the backpack I’d dumped next to the coffee table, and dug out my stupid statistics book.
I opened it to the homework assignment and scribbled down an answer that I was pretty sure wasn’t correct.
Dane frowned at it. “Bro, you know you’ve got to read the chapters to get the answers, right?”
There he went, not knowing when to shut his mouth. We’d grown up in the same neighborhood in the Bronx—his house was a couple of streets down from the low-income apartment complex my mom and I lived in. I’d ended up in countless fights because he had no filter, but even when he said something dumb, I couldn’t not rise to his defense.
“You think you can do better?” I shoved my book at him. “Go for it.”
Dane poked a finger into the spine, sliding it back to me. “No way. There’s a reason I signed up for all the classes with teachers known for going easy on hockey players.”
I’d tried to register for classes with those types, too, but I’d found that thanks to their studying social behaviors, sociology professors had this superiority complex about treating everyone equally. Now I was in a class with a teacher who probably didn’t even know what hockey was, much less cared about it.
Strike that. She probably thought it was overly violent and bad for society in general. The thing was, as challenging as they were, I’d loved my classes last year. Even the ones that highlighted the many ways my family fit into the screwed-up dynamic—at least I better understood some of my motivations, as well as my mom’s.
Professor Hummel seemed to be teaching with the sole purpose of weeding out the weak. All the statistics bothered me, too. Like every life and problem was just a statistic, and more data for us to analyze, not a person with problems that were consuming their world, unique or not. Plus, adding math to anything was just extra evil.
Half the time I felt like a fraud attending a college like this anyway, and sitting in that class just accentuated the fact that I didn’t belong—not only because I struggled to keep up, but also because the materials we covered made me either want to hide or defend myself. Hell, I’d even internally justified my mom’s actions from time to time, despite telling myself I was done doing that. Those types of reactions would allow everyone to see right through me for sure. As it was, I suspected several of my classmates thought the only reason I was here was because I was good at hockey. Which was the truth, but I’d told myself that if I earned a degree, how I’d ended up at BC didn’t matter. What mattered was becoming something more than a sad statistic.
Too bad I didn’t understand how to calculate statistics or when to use them, just that most of the numbers suggested I’d fail.
“What about the TA?” Dane asked. “Male or female?”
I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about working that angle. “Feminist. The preachy kind.”
Dane made a sour face. “A bi-curious male would’ve been better. But still. Don’t tell me you can’t work some of that Decker charm on her? Maybe make her see the light?”
I didn’t want to admit she might be beyond my charms, but I’d had a conversation with her that proved she was—when she’d handed back my test with the big F on the front, she’d seemed pretty damn gleeful about it. There were other girls in class, but I hadn’t had time to feel them out. It was just run from one class to another, then to the rink. Not to mention extra cardio and weight-lifting sessions.
The door swung open and our other roommate came in and tossed his backpack aside. “Who’s ready to hit the weight room?” Ryder grabbed the duffle bag that held his gym clothes and hiked it up on his shoulder. Everyone called him “Ox” because his last name was Maddox, he was the biggest guy on the team despite only being a sophomore, and when he charged a guy, you could practically see the steam coming out of his nostrils.
He worked harder than any of the other guys to remain a starter, too, which made me feel lazy, and I spent at least half of my day training. “Spot me, Decker?”
I glanced at my book one last time. Frustration rose and hitting the weights seemed like the perfect way to work it out. “Let me grab my stuff.”
Dane gave me a look. “So you’re going to do your assignment when?”
“When I get to it. Jeez, with you riding me all of the time, it’s no wonder I haven’t had any time to work my charms on a girl who can help me with my studies.”
“Ass,” Dane said, adding a middle finger to punctuate his statement. But then he grabbed his gym bag and headed out the door with us. It was nice that he cared so much, I suppose. When he’d first started harping on my grades in high school, I’d found it suffocating. It wasn’t until he’d practically carried me through an algebra class we’d had together that I’d learned to appreciate his big brother complex. Guess that happened when you were the oldest of five.
With his help, and with hockey as motivation, I’d pulled my Ds and Cs to mostly Bs with a few Cs. Unfortunately, after we made it through our college gen eds, our classes diverged—mine focused in sociology and his, along with most of my other teamma
tes, in management and leadership classes.
On the way to the gym, my phone rang. When I saw the number across the display, I muted it. For someone who couldn’t be bothered with me for the last twenty-one years, Mom had certainly worn out my phone number this past week.
I would’ve killed for her to try to talk to me this much when I was a kid. Now… Well, now I didn’t want to deal with it at all.
Chapter Five
Whitney
So far, the meeting with the editor of the Heights wasn’t going so well. Lindsay Rivera, editor-in-chief, had given a snort of laughter when I said I wanted a spot this semester.
Any other day I might’ve taken that as a sign and given up. Not today. “Yes, I screwed up not coming here earlier, but I’ll take anything. I might look like a ditzy blond sorority girl, but I’m not looking to be an anchorwoman or to spend my life reporting on celebrity gossip for an entertainment channel. I want to do the actual investigating. I want to write hard-hitting stories, not be patted on the head and told to focus on keeping in shape and looking pretty.”
Lindsay’s finger froze on the mouse she’d been clicking—a dismissive gesture I’d decided to ignore. “Let me guess. You have Professor Jessup?”
“Yeah. How’d you know?”
“Because he gave me that same bullshit speech when I took his class.” Lindsay pressed her lips together and narrowed her eyes on me, and I held my breath.
Then I realized I shouldn’t hold my breath. This was my opportunity—really it was everything to me right now—so I was going to take it.
“I understand what I’m asking for is a big deal. I know the Heights is ranked in the top twenty of college papers and has been selected as an ACP Pacemaker Finalist several times.” It was one reason I’d chosen Boston College, and I couldn’t believe I’d given up so easily on trying to get a spot. “I know that it’s been editorially and financially independent from the college since the seventies, which I think keeps it much more fair and balanced and is super cool. I want to work at this paper, and I’ll work hard. I’ll do whatever it takes, and I won’t disappoint you, I swear on, like, a thousand bibles.”