Pretty, Nasty, Lovely

by Rosalind Noonan

  “I don’t know when I’m going to find the time to do it,” I said, “but I’ll e-mail Dr. Finn and get the details.”

  “Cool.” When Rory slung an arm around me and pulled me close, it seemed so natural, as though we’d been together for years. He looked down at me to make sure it was okay, and I stared back with that warm, tender feeling that made my knees go weak.

  Sam used to hate public displays of affection. He wouldn’t even hold my hand when we were walking on campus.

  His pissy behavior made me appreciate Rory’s kiss that much more.

  * * *

  When we got to Theta House, all hell was breaking loose. I could hear the panicked voices from the front porch.

  “You’d better go,” I told Rory. He’d been planning to come in—his confidence tended to calm people, and all the girls liked him—but I hadn’t expected such a big reaction. “Sounds like they’re freaking. You don’t want to have to play big brother to forty girls.”

  “No thanks.” He kissed my cheek. “I’ll call you later.”

  Inside, it was like a bad funeral parlor scene. Some girls were huddled together on the sofas in the living room watching a handful of freaked-out sisters egg one another on into meltdown phase.

  “It isn’t safe!”

  “I want to go home!”

  “Do you think he’s watching us now?”

  “What if he wants to kill us? We’re like sitting ducks.”

  My quick assessment revealed that these were all freshmen and sophomores. Yes, I was a sophomore, too, but because of my gap year and birth date, I had two years on most of these girls.

  “There is no random killer out there watching us,” I said. “Think about it, girls. Lydia was killed out on the bridge. Rory saw her there, talking. The killer didn’t break in here and pluck her from this house in the middle of the night. She went out there on her own. She knew her killer.”

  “That doesn’t make me feel any better!” Mia wailed.

  “Where’s Mrs. J?” I asked. It was her day off, but this was an emergency.

  “Defiance went to find her,” Isabel answered from the sofa, where she was sitting with an arm around Patti, stroking her sandy-brown hair while Patti dried her tears.

  “And Tori? And Violet?” I asked. Where were the seniors?

  “Up in Violet’s room, I think,” Chloe said. “They said something about a Rose Council meeting.”

  I rolled my eyes. They were probably drinking shots and laughing about the poor frightened freshmen. That crew seemed to think they were immune to the problems of the rest of the world, but they might be at risk, too.

  My mother’s pragmatic, nurturing streak kicked in as I turned to the frightened girls. “All right, listen, guys, everyone needs to calm down.”

  “But we’re so scared,” Patti sobbed.

  “And he could be out there!” Mia pointed to the windows. “We don’t know why he killed Lydia. Maybe he hates sororities. Maybe he hates Theta Pis!”

  I stood my ground. “Maybe he does, Mia. But if we freak out and give in to fear, we’re not going to be prepared to protect ourselves, are we?”

  “But I can’t stop shaking,” she said.

  “I know that feeling, but we can’t give in.” I put my hands on her shoulders and guided her over to a chair. “We can’t let him win. We are going to stick together on this. We’re going to support each other and stay safe. Right, girls?” My gaze passed over all of them, willing them to calm down. Maybe I’m not a natural leader, but I wasn’t going to look the other way while these little lemmings dashed off a cliff.

  The front door thumped and Mrs. J came in with a bag full of books. “Oh, my goodness, I just heard. I can’t believe the police didn’t give me a heads-up.”

  “Lydia was murdered, Mrs. J,” Mia moaned. “And he’s out there. Any one of us could be next.”

  “Mia, please, calm yourself. We don’t need your drama at this moment in time.” Mrs. J unwrapped her scarf as she scanned the room. “Really, girls, this is not such an unusual situation. We’ve had discussions about date rape, about things getting out of hand with a guy. I’m not saying that happened, but you girls know what you need to do to stay safe. This was not some random strike at Lydia. The assailant probably knew her. And not to blame our dear Lydia, but she did go wandering at night. Alone. I hope none of you take a risk like that.”

  Guilty, but I wasn’t giving myself up.

  Another hour of soothing the panic was about all I could take. I went upstairs to the suite and found Defiance painting her toenails as she took an online quiz in Earth Science. Defiance has a cerebral side that’s a little scary; she can ace tests and quizzes. Her downside is public speaking. I think her accent bothers her, and she gets nervous when she has to do a presentation.

  “You missed the crybabies.” I sat on the love seat, then stretched out, propping my feet on the armrest.

  “I had enough of them earlier. I sent a text to Mrs. J. That’s all I can do.” She clicked the cursor, scrolled down, and then went back to the nail polish. “I told them not to worry. They’re not in danger.”

  “Well, they should be cautious.”

  “This person is not dangerous to them. But you? I’m worried about you, Emma.”

  A small boulder might have hit me in the chest. I sat up. “Am I in danger?”

  “Not from Lydia’s killer. It’s something else. Something about the ravine. I keep seeing you down there, crying.” She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head, as if that would cast the image away. “I can’t stop seeing you there. I’m sorry.”

  That damned gorge. Sometimes I couldn’t stop seeing myself there, but I’d never told Defiance about it.

  “Am I going to be okay?” I asked. “Do I get out of the gorge?”

  She frowned, her dark eyes shiny with tears. “I can’t see that far. There’s trouble, Emma. I can feel it, but I can’t see who it is. I don’t want to scare you. It’s just what I see.”

  “Okay.” Was she reading my mind, or just picking up on my thoughts? You got on the same track when you lived with a person. I lay back down and stared at the ceiling, tracing the cracks along the edge as I tried to clear my mind, tried to wipe away the details of that day in the gorge. Trauma burns a deep scar. Yes, it might last forever, but I believed that one day I would wake up healed enough to forget that it was there.

  * * *

  I had known that Dr. Finn was a man of action, but I didn’t know just how fast he could move until he asked Rory and me to meet him that night.

  “Hey, guys.” He moved from his desk to an upholstered chair as we sat down on the sofa. “I just heard about Lydia’s autopsy results. That’s awful news. You don’t want to think about something like that happening at Merriwether, but no one is immune.”

  “In some ways it makes sense,” I said. “Lydia seemed a little too proud to kill herself. A little bit of a narcissist.”

  “That’s insightful. Narcissists don’t commit suicide often. When they try, it’s usually a half-assed ploy to manipulate someone or get attention.”

  “Interesting.” My mind flashed to the bridge scenario. Had Lydia threatened to jump to scare or manipulate someone else? Maybe they had argued and the guy in the hoodie had snapped. Infuriated. Reaching for her throat . . .

  Rory was gracefully changing the subject. “How long do you think it will take to pull enough students together for this committee?”

  “Here’s the thing,” Dr. Finn said. “If we wait for the university to set our task force up nice and pretty, we’ll be waiting until next semester, maybe next year. I told them we need a meeting space and some stipends for the students on the force. Face it, you’ll be taking away from time when you’re working. They sent me these.” He held up a stack of forms. “Bureaucratic bullshit.”

  “So you need help filling that stuff out?” Rory asked.

  “Hell no.” Dr. Finn tossed the papers over his shoulder. “We’ll work around them. We’ll t
hrow some folding chairs in my office. And I’ll lean on Dean Cho to get some stipends for you out of the health center budget. If that doesn’t work, I’m sure she’s got some emergency fund to draw on. She’s all about supporting you guys on this.”

  “Are we talking about the same Dean Cho?” I asked. “The one who designed the policy that dismisses students when they ask for help?”

  “That was a mistake, though it is one way of dealing with campus suicides. You’ll see from the literature. We’re going to give you guys a hurry-up condensed course in suicide counseling. Actually, I’ve got some handouts for you here.”

  He handed Rory and me each a thick packet of articles.

  “Thanks,” Rory said. “Some light reading.”

  At this point in the semester, that much reading was daunting, but as I leafed through, the titles caught my interest: “Healing from a Friend’s Suicide”; “Debunking Suicide Myths”; “Guns, Depression, and Suicide.” There were also numerous accounts of college students who had killed themselves.

  “Back to Dean Cho,” I said, winding back. “You’re good at working around obstacles. Is there any way we can do this without her participation?”

  Dr. Finn grinned. “Ha! You’re not a fan.”

  “She revamped the health center so that they treat depressed students like criminals.”

  “I’m not here to unseat Dean Cho, but the health center—that’s a problem for us to tackle,” Dr. Finn said. “Don’t shake your head at me, Emma. You’ve got to trust me on this. We will make it happen. We will change things for the better. Dr. Cho has been tasked with an important mission, and she knows her program has been missing the mark; she’s on board now, and ready to move ahead.”

  * * *

  Although the hysteria at the house settled down after the first day or two, the sisters tried to travel in packs, especially at night. When that wasn’t possible, we took Mrs. J’s advice and used the campus escort service. Sometimes we had to wait for them, but everyone was frightened enough to accept the inconvenience.

  On my recommendation, Dr. Finn and I met with Stephen Kim and begged him to join us. Stephen brought along Suzie Yamaguchi, another student who had helped organize the Faith in Action group.

  “Last year, before finals, things got very intense and people were all strung out,” Stephen said. “They don’t talk about it, but I can feel it. People are ready to pop. They really need to talk. So we started a support group.”

  “Only no one came,” said Suzie. “Just Stephen and me.” She had creamy skin, lips that seemed to be in a permanent smile, and a blunt haircut with the ends dyed orange, as if they had been dipped in fire. “We didn’t understand it, because many of our friends, when we see them in the pool hall, they want to talk and let off steam. They would seek Stephen out for one-on-one conversations about more personal things.”

  “But no one wanted to be associated with a support group. They thought it sounded bad, like they were in therapy. Maybe crazy.”

  “Many Asian cultures have a stigma about mental illness,” Suzie said. “You can’t even talk about it. Stephen and I did some research, and we learned that Asian-Americans have a higher suicide rate than non-Asians. Seeing our friends and other students battling depression, that concerned us.”

  “So we started a prayer group that really acts like a support group,” Stephen explained. “We pray together and that’s good, but most of the time we talk.”

  Their biggest concern was the health care center, which people in their group had learned to avoid. “No one wants to take the chance of going there for help and getting kicked out of school.”

  “Exactly,” I said, turning to Dr. Finn, who had no argument with that.

  * * *

  Twenty-four hours later, we had our first meeting. Dean Cho was absent by design. Dr. Finn explained that he wanted the group to get its footing before the intimidating university rep got involved.

  Fine with me.

  Dr. Finn took notes, his fingers moving rapidly over his laptop as Stephen introduced us to Calliope Daniels, one of the students who had organized protests against the university health center at the beginning of the year. With straw-blond hair cut short and fairies tattooed on her lower arms, Calliope had a rapid-fire way of speaking that would have been impressive in a courtroom, but she also could hold tight and listen. She was the head of the Buddhist society on campus, and she invited us to join in their chants for peace. “This mental health issue is my thing. I am all about it,” she said. “But in full disclosure, I’m not going to sell out to the university to stay on this task force.”

  “That’s exactly what we’re looking for,” said Dr. Finn.

  The evil Dean Cho had recruited a grad student who was working on a doctorate in psychology. I wanted to dislike Kath Schwartz because she came through Dean Cho, but her acerbic sense of humor won me over. “Me in a nutshell? I’m a gorgeous Jewish lesbian babe looking for a low-paying but rewarding career as a therapist. But don’t hate me because I’m beautiful,” she said. “I’ll just be here in the background, profiling all of you for my doctoral thesis.”

  An awkward silence filled the room. “Seriously?” Rory asked.

  “Only in my head,” she said. “The curse of the psych doctoral candidate.”

  Dr. Finn brought in a teaching assistant named Chase Cruz, a dude with thick biceps and the tendrils of a tattoo climbing one side of his neck. Low-key and calm, Chase told us he felt in tune with the LGBT community on campus, and, as a teacher, was always trying to be sensitive to issues of depression and anxiety among students. He had transitioned from being a female during his freshman year in community college, and although he’d received a lot of support, there were a few haters, too. “People tend to be afraid of that which they don’t understand,” he said in a quiet voice.

  “Tell me about it,” Evers Garner said. He had high cheekbones, skin the color of warm cinnamon, and a booming voice that captured attention in a reassuring way. He talked about the isolation he’d felt after losing a friend to a drug overdose. “Whether it was suicide or not, the take-away for me was that a lot of people backed away after Monty died. They didn’t know what to say, so they avoided his family and friends. Half of them didn’t come to the funeral, and the other half came just to get the day off from school.” Something about Evers seemed familiar to me. Later I learned that he was in the theater program and had starred in many of the campus productions.

  In the first meeting we got to work outlining the ways we wanted to address the problem of suicides on campus. The student health center was at the top of our list.

  “The treatment of suicidal students is despicable,” said Calliope.

  “And what about students like Evers? People who’ve lost a friend to suicide?” Rory pointed out. “When you’re trying to pick up the pieces and sort things out, there’s nowhere to go but your friends.”

  “And they aren’t trained in grief therapy,” Evers pointed out.

  “Statistics indicate that a large percentage of students turn to their friends,” Kath said, serious for the first time. “We think that fewer than twenty percent of students considering suicide reach out to a campus health center.”

  “Even if the health center offers anonymous counseling?” I asked.

  “Seems to be that way.” Kath pushed back a sheath of dark hair with one beautifully manicured hand. “This is what’s published, but there’s a good chance that suicidal thoughts and attempts are grossly under-reported on campuses. When an at-risk person gets talked out of it by a friend, it doesn’t go into the stats. And since most students say they would confide in friends, we don’t really know the scope of the problem.”

  After that, there was the issue of reaching out to all students with a positive mental health program. And then the issue of the bridges on campus. We wanted to make the bridges safer, “more challenging for suicidal students,” Chase suggested. “Some of the footbridges are so open, it makes my knees shake. It ju
st feels like an invitation to fall, and, believe me, I have no desire to go over the edge.”

  By the end of the meeting we had split into three committees, designed so that we could move faster in smaller groups with gatherings that catered to our schedules.

  “But please, when you send out e-mails with content, copy the entire group,” Dr. Finn said as the meeting broke up. “We want to keep everyone in the loop.”

  CHAPTER 26

  From the cement plaza outside the health center, Sydney Cho could pick him out from among the students and teachers walking along the path between the two Edwardian brick buildings. Leather jacket dangling open in the cold. A slight limp that one might see as a swagger as he walked at a fast clip. Known by students for his enthusiasm in class, Dr. Finnegan had become a ball of energy since he’d jumped into the task force.

  As he approached, she thought of the e-mail he’d sent her after the group’s first meeting.

  The health center must die. From the ashes a new program will rise.

  So flipping dramatic. At least he wasn’t boring.

  Sydney turned to the center, gold brick and mortar with brown buttresses that leaned out over the windows like prison bars. The building was typical of the Brutalist architecture that appeared on campuses in the 1970s. The building had a coldhearted appearance, but was it truly a house of horrors as students were depicting it to be? Students didn’t like the aggressive line of questioning from counselors or the quick removal of at-risk students from the campus. Kids didn’t understand that those measures were taken for their own protection.

  And the way Cho had been vilified for the program . . . The student activist Calliope Daniels had called her Cruella de Vil, suggesting that she killed puppies in her spare time. A bit of research would have enlightened them to the fact that Cho had not created this program out of thin air. She had modeled it after programs at Ivy League institutions and competitive universities across the country. Programs that reduced the suicide rate on campus.