“No,” she says, looking frightened. So I sit with her for a long time until her head drops back and she begins to snore loudly. I try to position a pillow behind her head, but she’s sitting at such an awkward angle that I can’t do it.
I get up quietly, leaving the trash can next to her. I open the door and look around. At the far end of the hallway, on the opposite end of the staircase, two guys are standing by the radiator. Both of them are wearing Sigma Delta Tau shirts. Dizzy informed me tonight that Delta is the coolest frat on campus. I worry that if I lock the door, January won’t be able to get up to let me back in. I consider shutting it and leaving it unlocked, until I hear one of the voices from down the hall say, “Some of these whores are so wasted. It’s not even funny. Scoring isn’t even work. It’s just like tackling midgets or sneaking up on deaf people.”
“Yeah,” says the other voice. I wonder if these guys have been tested by PROFILE. Could we make them wear giant P’s so we’d know?
I go back in the room, quietly close the door, and lock it. January is half-awake again, rolling her head around. I look around the room for a phone, but there isn’t one. It drives me nuts that I don’t have a cell phone. Recently, I saw someone on TV say that the pope has an iPhone. I’m truly behind the times. The pope is probably updating his blog from some remote village right now, and I’m holding a puke bucket.
“January,” I say. “I need to use your cell phone.” It takes her a while, but eventually she wakes up enough to point to her purse—an odd-looking satin pouch—which is thrown halfway under the bed. I have to get on my stomach and extend my arm to get it.
I search January’s contact list, looking for familiar names, trying to decide who to call.
“I have to throw up again.” January interrupts my search. She says fro up, like a little girl. I know I should help her, but instead I get up and move to the other side of the room. She retches so violently that I wonder how she doesn’t regurgitate an organ or something.
“Ohhh,” she moans. “Take me home, please.”
I flip through the contact list and find one number I recognize: Jesse. I hesitate for only a second. And then I flip the phone shut. I can’t call him.
I could drive her home myself, but I don’t know if I could even get her to stand up, let alone walk out of the frat house all the way to the parking lot. And what about Dizzy? I can’t just leave her. I think briefly of calling Melissa, who would help me. And she wouldn’t lecture me about it either—she would just come and take care of things. But I don’t want her to see me at a frat party. Even though I haven’t been drinking, I’m sort of embarrassed for even being here in the first place. Melissa thinks parties are for people who have no goals in life.
I close the phone, and then open it again and search the contact list again. I have no choice.
“I need to ask you a favor,” I say without even saying hello.
“Daphne?” he asks. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s January. Can you come and get us?”
He doesn’t ask why. He simply says, “Where?”
I tell him Delta House and give him directions to the room upstairs. “And bring five bucks,” I say, remembering that they won’t let him in otherwise.
I’m almost asleep when I hear footsteps outside the door. “Jesse,” I call.
“Shhh,” January says. “My ears.”
“Jesse,” I call again, louder.
The footsteps stop outside the door, and I hear it open. I gently push January’s head off my lap harder than I intended, and then I have to reach to catch it before it cracks on the hard, uncarpeted floor. I try to stand up, but I fall back on the bottom bunk as soon as I do because my leg is so numb. A million pins cut through it, and I’m in so much pain, I hardly notice that the person standing in the doorway isn’t Jesse.
“Hey,” he says. I look over from my odd position—one leg on the floor, one leg out as I shake it all about, just like that old song from kindergarten. It’s Josh Heller, wearing the same plaid shorts from that night at the diner. His red hair is expertly gelled into a perfect polygon. “Is Jan still alive?”
“How’d you know she was here?”
“Just ran into her new boyfriend. Cody. Looks like she’s had a rough night.” We both glance at January lying on the floor, looking sick and miserable.
“I got it from here,” Josh says, a smirk on his lips. “You can go.”
Even though January is not really my friend, I don’t want to leave her with anyone who won’t make sure she gets home safely. It’s the right thing to do. “I’ll just wait here,” I say. “Someone is coming for her.”
“Seriously,” Josh says. “I got it.” He sits down on the ratty armchair that’s positioned about three inches from a TV. “Jan’s practically family.”
The thought still makes me uneasy. I’m trying to figure out what to do when January’s cell rings. Josh is closer and snags it before I can. He looks at the display and hangs up, then turns off the phone and pockets it.
By this time, my leg is coming back to life, so I stand up. “Let’s just get January out of here and back to her house so she can go to bed.”
“Aw, she’s fine,” he says. “She’s a pro at this. In fact, I bet she’ll be just like this next weekend too. Right, Jan?” He gently pokes her in the side with the toe of his shoe.
“Screw you,” she whispers.
Josh abruptly turns his attention back to me. “Listen, there’s something I wanted to talk to you about anyway.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Really?”
“Yeah. I think what you did to me was totally shitty.”
His blunt tone catches me by surprise. What is he even talking about? “Me? What did I do to you?”
“Someone told my parents I pushed you into that diner window. They took away my car for a week!”
“Maybe someone was right. But how could I know? I was too busy having my head shoved through glass to see.”
“I told you—it was an accident.”
“Either way,” I said, “it’s over now. Whatever.” He looked desperate for me to believe him, and even though I wasn’t quite sure he was totally innocent, he also seemed genuinely upset that I’d been so hurt.
“I’d really appreciate if you didn’t mention anything to Dizzy about last Friday night.”
So he was there when Jesse had to rescue January in the middle of the thunderstorm. “Why were you hiding?”
“I don’t think it’s necessary for Dizzy to know that I was with January, do you?”
I do that thing again, that thing where I think about what to say, which I can see makes Josh nervous.
“Did you tell her already?” he asks with just a hint of desperation in his voice. “Is that why she’s being such a bitch?”
I take advantage of my position. “I’m sure she has plenty of things to be mad at you about. January might even be the least of them. But who knows?” The idea of Josh and January together seems almost…comical. Without warning, I accidentally conjure up a picture of her skinny arms wrapped around his freckly shoulders. Ew. Then my mind shifts to her arms around Jesse. I erase the picture quickly. “Do you really think I’m not going to tell Dizzy that you’re playing her?”
He cracks his knuckles and then looks at me imploringly with his big green eyes. “I would never hurt Dizzy. I promise you. Mistakes happen, but I swear to you that I love Dizzy. I don’t want to hurt her.”
There’s nothing I hate more than being wrong, but I’m starting to think it’s possible that I’ve misjudged Josh. I watch him fiddle with his broken shoelace. He reminds me of J. R., a dog that Melissa and I dog-sat for two weeks over winter break one year. I thought Melissa was going to explode when he ate her flash drive. J. R. just sat there looking penitent, like he deserved every newspaper whack she threatened him with. I have the sudden urge to scratch behind Josh’s ears.
“Let me tell you how it’s going to be. Whatever is going on between you and January is over
,” I state. “It will not happen again. Or I will tell Dizzy.”
Josh holds out his hand for me to shake. “I swear, it’s over. And I hope we can manage to be friends?”
“I think I can manage to avoid throttling you or tampering with your brakes,” I say.
“I’ll take it,” he says. He heads for the door. I watch him clomp down the narrow stairs.
I’m still standing in front of the open door when the two vultures emerge from the end of the hallway. “Can we come in?” one of them asks.
“Ah, no. Absolutely not.” I stand with my back blocking the door.
We hear January moaning again from inside the room. “I think I’m going to die,” she says.
“Aw, come on,” the taller one says. “We just want to hang out with y’all.”
I cross my arms and stand with my feet apart, as if I’m a military guard. “No chance,” I tell them. “This room is off limits.”
“Pretty please?” the shorter one says, and he leans forward until his elbow is resting on the door frame.
“Just for a minute?” the other says, and then he leans in on the other side of the frame. I feel trapped with both of them breathing on me. They smell like beer and cigarette smoke.
“Come in,” January says weakly from behind the door.
I turn around and yell, “No!” at her.
“Hey,” a voice from the stairway calls. “Daphne!” We all turn to see Jesse standing there. “I tried to call you back,” he tells me, “but I got Jan’s voice mail. Where is she? Why do you have her phone?” He walks toward the three of us and between the two guys, who are both smaller than he is. They move away from me. “The guy downstairs wouldn’t let me in. He said the kegs are dry. No more guys allowed. I had to sneak in.”
The Sigma guys are still standing there dumbly, so Jesse turns to them, “Don’t you all have someplace to be?” They nod and move toward the stairs. “Jerks,” Jesse murmurs. “I hate frat boys.”
Jesse is wearing dark jeans with a tight black shirt. Over that, he’s wrapped in a roomy leather jacket, even though it’s pretty warm outside. He looks different—older, sadder, less Oklahoma. Sexier. A little bit scary.
“I thought you were sick,” I say to him. He touches my cheek, but I move away. I haven’t forgotten about the cafeteria debacle. “We’ve got to get her home.”
January has managed to sit up on the bottom bunk, and she looks miserable. “I look like hell,” she mumbles glumly and only somewhat coherently. Maybe she really said something else. But I look like hell would have been appropriate.
“What happened?” Jesse asks me.
“I found her here drunk, halfway unconscious, and pretty much a sitting duck with those frat boy Neanderthals looking for someone to take advantage of.”
Jesse turns to January. “Janny,” he says sadly, “Why do you do this to yourself?”
“Y’all know why,” she says. “PROFILE.” They look at me as if it’s my fault that Melissa’s stupid scientific advancement is ruining people’s lives. She’ll probably win a Nobel Prize, and I’ll spend prom night organizing my sock drawer. I hang my head.
Jesse helps January off the bed. She leans over like a rag doll, and he practically has to carry her under his arm. “Come on, Jan. I’ll take you home.”
I reach the end of the narrow stairs first. Jesse descends awkwardly behind me with January attached to him, and I immediately catch sight of Dizzy. She is standing near the banister, dancing by herself, a weird little disco/riverdance that makes her look a tiny bit spastic. When she sees me, she yells, “There you are! I’ve been looking all over for you. Let’s go. I’m starving. Let’s get pizza or something.”
Josh is standing near her. He moves closer and puts his arm on her shoulders. She purses her lips and says in a baby voice to him, “I just might let you come along, Mister.” When she sees Jesse, her tone changes. “Oh, who invited him?”
Jesse is still slowly hauling January down the stairs. He stops and looks at Dizzy. “I’m sorry about that day in the cafeteria. I shouldn’t have said that to you.”
Dizzy turns her nose up in the air. “Whatever,” she says. “I don’t care.”
“And,” Jesse says, turning to me, “I owe you an apology too. For everything.” His forehead wrinkles as he looks at my foot. “I don’t know what to say.”
“We’re cool,” I say calmly, although I feel something else. I feel…sad. Like I’ve lost something I never quite had.
“I got this,” Jesse tells us all, pointing at January. “Y’all go. Have a good time.”
“Sure,” Dizzy says brightly. She looks at me. “You better drive.”
“Go on,” Jesse says to me, as if I’m waiting for his permission. Now I’m really annoyed.
I ignore him and look at January, who smiles weakly at me. “I owe you,” she says. Her eyes focus for just a second, and in them, I see something calculating, a glinting glow that tells me she’s plotting. And then, in just a millisecond, her eyes glaze over again. She droops into Jesse’s arms, a pile of bones and skin and alcohol-curdled blood.
“Thank you for doing this for her,” I say coldly and formally to Jesse. I nod in January’s direction. He moves her away from him gently, and she grabs hold of Dizzy like she’s a drowning woman.
Dizzy staggers backward. Jesse leans into my ear and whispers, “I did this for you too.” His lips brush my cheek, and I feel a shiver run through me.
I shake it off quickly. “Please,” I say loudly. “How dumb do you think I am?”
Even Dizzy looks surprised. “Whoa, Daph,” she says. Josh moves closer—he doesn’t want to miss this. He smacks his fists together.
“Come off it, Jesse. I’m not an idiot. It’s pretty clear that you don’t have much time for anyone but January.”
January tries to speak, but Dizzy tells her to shut it.
“Daphne,” Jesse says softly, looking around him. He wants Josh and Dizzy gone. “Can we talk about this later? Alone?”
“I really can’t see that there’s anything to talk about.”
Josh laughs obnoxiously, enjoying every second. “Shut up,” I say without even looking at him. “Nobody wants to hear from you, Josh. Come on, Dizz,” I say. “You must be hungry.”
Dizzy grabs my hand. “We don’t need them,” she says, nodding at Jesse and January.
“Of course not,” I respond with enthusiasm that sounds false even to me, but I forge ahead. “Hope you and January have a great night.” I wave at Jesse with two bitchy fingers. “And please don’t call me,” I add.
“Yes, don’t call us,” Dizzy says as if she is an extension of me.
“Ladies,” Josh says, putting one gross arm around me and the other on Dizzy. “I think we have a threesome.”
I manage simultaneously to not vomit and walk out the side door without a backward glance at Jesse.
I remember Melissa’s first rule of science: Always go with your gut. Unless your gut is wrong. Not a very helpful maxim, actually.
And what happens when your guts are a twisted heap of anger and indecision and confusion and false hope?
And maybe even love?
PART III
one of them
chapter 15
Each student will receive his or her PROFILE report in the mail prior to the public announcement. We ask that individuals refrain from sharing their status until we have time to adequately prepare everyone for the news.
—Mrs. LeAnn Temple, principal of Quiet High
He is a person of interest. That is true. But let me be clear: he has not been charged with anything. At this time.
—David Witt, chief of Quiet City Police
I wake up before dawn with the kind of headache that starts within your skull and radiates throughout your entire body. Little electrical pulses of pain shoot from my cranium to the bones in my toes. I lie awake for a long time curled up with my head under the blanket. I must eventually drift back to sleep, because the next thing I kno
w, I’m back there. Back at school. I am right back in that cupboard again, folded away, hidden from the dark shadow pointing a gun at me. When I wake up, I feel like I’m suffocating. My heart is racing, my ears stinging from someone screaming loudly.
“What?” Melissa comes running into the room. “What in the world is wrong?” She pulls the covers down from over my head. I blink my eyes. It takes me a second to realize that I’m the one screaming.
Melissa is smoothing my hair down now. “What’s wrong, Daph? Are you sick?”
I’m embarrassed. “Just a bad a dream,” I say, shrugging it off. “No big deal.” I lift the edge of my bedroom blinds and peer out at the street. It’s long past sunrise, but the day is so gray and soupy that the streetlights are still on. Rain drools from the ominous clouds. “Ick,” I say.
When the phone rings, both Melissa and I jump. I pick up the handset next to my bed.
“They found her.” It’s Dizzy.
“Found who?” I ask. Melissa is still sitting with me. I motion for her to go, but she doesn’t move.
“January.”
“She was lost?” I shoo Melissa again, and this time, she gets up and leaves—reluctantly.
“There’s bad news.”
“Dizzy, what’s going on?”
“I don’t know if I should tell you.”
“Then why did you call?” I say impatiently.
“Daphne, listen to me. I have to tell you something.”
I rub my head, squint my eyes, and sigh heavily. I just want to take a long shower, eat some breakfast, and then go back to bed. “What?”
“Someone attacked her last night. When she didn’t come home, they called the police. The cops found her early this morning.”
“Oh, my gosh,” I say, sounding like my grandmother. I don’t know what else to say. “Is she all right? What happened?” I ask quietly, but Melissa’s radar hearing hones in anyway.
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