Four-Letter Word

by Christa Desir

  I thought he was going to pass out safety condoms again, but instead, he slipped his hands under Holly’s shirt to encircle her hips. She blushed as if being manhandled in front of everyone was the most charming thing in the world. I remembered what she’d said in the bathroom, about being new and how she thought I’d been cold to her, and then she accused me and my parents of being perfect. It made me wonder about Holly, about how hard she was trying to fit in and be liked too. Maybe it was what we were all after.

  I glanced at Eve and saw her cross to Aiden’s side. Her too-short skirt popped up with each step, but at least she was wearing Converse instead of platforms. Same color Converse as Chloe Donnelly. Though her BEST FRIENDS charm bracelet was back on her wrist. Eve leaned in to Aiden, and because I was studying his expression, I was probably the only one who saw the flinch. I shifted my gaze to Josh, and his nostrils flared a little like he was smelling wet-dog burritos. Maybe I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed the flinch.

  “Aiden,” Eve said, pulling out her most seriously flirty voice. “Don’t hide so well this time. I was so bummed not to find you again last Friday.”

  Her words sounded forced and awkward, and for a second I couldn’t believe we’d ever been best friends. But then I remembered how she’d taken me home after that drunk wide receiver got pissed I wouldn’t have sex with him freshman year, and covered for me with my parents—who later told me they knew I was wasted but felt I was exploring my own adolescent rebellion in a healthy way, which translated to: We’re planning for the Spirit Corps and can’t be bothered—and I knew the version of Eve hanging on Aiden was really just as scared and insecure as me. I wished we could admit that stuff to each other like we used to.

  Aiden fake-laughed and said, “Yeah, sorry, Eve. It’s too bad you had to deal with my brother instead. I heard you offered him treats too.”

  It was like dropping a flare in the middle of a dark forest. Eve stepped back. Cam snorted. Holly looked confused. And Josh grinned. But when Aiden caught my eye, my feelings must have shown on my face, because he looked immediately repentant. He may have been an ambitious guy who was hiding a secret that could compromise his future with the Naval Academy, but I’d never heard him be outright cruel before.

  “Well,” Chloe Donnelly said, dousing the flare and directing attention back to her by strumming her ring-covered fingers on her thigh. “Hopefully tonight someone will actually win the platinum favor. It’s sort of a waste if no one wins. So let’s huddle up, girls. I have your letters.”

  She held a folded slip of paper up and tucked it in her bra strap with a giggled “oops, no pockets.” Then, she pulled each of us to the left of the library entrance, ducking into the shadows to whisper in our ears. When she said, “E,” in my ear, I started to walk away, but she pulled me back toward her. “Don’t forget what I said. Go get what you want.”

  Mateo was too far away for me to see his face, but it almost felt like his gaze was on me. I let my hair curtain drop, and Chloe Donnelly laughed. “Good luck, Other Chloe.”

  When Cam had his word in his back pocket and everyone had their letter, Chloe Donnelly told the guys to give us a five-minute head start again. “We’ll meet back here at ten. My parents took my cell phone because I got a D on my first English paper, so no one can text me, but I promise I’ll be here at ten, grinning pink with the rest of my winning team.”

  Her parents took her cell but let her go out? I hadn’t ever been to her place, so I didn’t really have any idea what they were like, but it seemed like screwed-up logic. Though maybe Chloe Donnelly got a lot more use out of her phone than I did. And what did “grinning pink” mean? I kept grasping to get myself onto Chloe Donnelly’s level, but I was constantly reminded how out of my league she was. Did she really tell Eve we were best friends?

  The girls broke off, and I followed Holly and Eve toward the academic buildings, not wanting to venture out on my own, until Holly turned and glared. “Do you mind, Other Chloe? It’s a little hard to play when we’ve got a creepy shadow hovering around.”

  Eve gave me a look of pity but didn’t say anything. I shook my head, anger pulling my shoulders back and making me want to lash out, but instead, I turned in the opposite direction, heading for the train tracks.

  I walked up and down the tracks for twenty minutes, equally hopeful and terrified someone would see me. Trains rarely came through Grinnell, so I wasn’t worried about getting hurt. When they did come through, they were freights that moved at a snail’s pace and caused everyone in town to stop and watch them. My dad told me he knew a guy when he went to college there who used to hop the freights and travel all over the country hitching rides on various trains. I couldn’t imagine having the courage to hop onto one even once.

  I bit one of my nails to take my focus off how cold I was getting, but after a while, even that didn’t help. I needed to warm up somewhere, whether it was against Gestapo rules or not. No way could I last till ten standing outside dressed like I was. I headed along Eighth to the entrance of JRC. At least maybe there I could blend in.

  Two steps into the building and I spotted Holly sitting at one of the tables. She stood and walked toward me, all dancer graceful even with her face looking mean like it did.

  “You’re not supposed to be inside,” I blurted.

  “Well, no one would even know if you weren’t stalking me.”

  “I’m not stalking you.”

  She folded her arms, staring at me as if I were twice-baked garbage on a plate and she’d just eaten a four-star buffet. “Then why are you here?”

  “I got cold.”

  She huffed. “Not here, here. Here . . .” She arced her arm in a wide circle. “Playing the game with us. We could find a way better girl for our team than you. I told Eve she should’ve dropped you from the start. You’re a gross third wheel that brings down all of our worth.”

  My mom always told me that anger and venom—particularly from other girls—were usually rooted in insecurity. That I needed to approach an angry girl with compassion because I had no idea what she was going through and hadn’t walked in her shoes. But Holly’s words felt like a body blow, and I couldn’t muster up an ounce of compassion.

  “What happened to all your accusations about me and my perfect parents?”

  She practically sneered. “Perfectly boring and a big fake. You don’t fool me, Other Chloe. You’re plain and uninteresting and a cling-on.”

  Holly had always been little more than a notch above horrible to me, but this was worse. She was off the rails, and I wasn’t completely sure why all that rage was directed at me.

  And she kept going. No end in sight. “You’re Eve’s pity project and it’s about time she shook you off and realized what a lost cause you are.”

  The truth of her words burned through me. I snapped, “Oh, really? You told your best friend Eve that I was a lost cause and to ditch me? The same Eve who had her tongue in Cam’s mouth during the last game? The same Eve who took off with him after school on Tuesday? That best friend? You know what? You two deserve each other.”

  Then I slammed out of the JRC and into the freezing night air, which felt colder and even more biting after being inside. I ran toward the North Campus dorms, pulling oxygen into my lungs and kicking myself for lashing out like that. I usually was so much more patient and tolerant of Holly. Even when she was being catty, I tried to remember when she started at our school and wasn’t so horrible, when she was obviously insecure and messed up about her parents’ divorce or whatever it was that made her treat me so terribly. But she had never been so blatantly harsh to me before, and all Mom’s “insecure girl” platitudes didn’t work when I was pushed against a wall of cruelty. I kicked myself for letting her get to me. I knew I was on edge and should’ve considered the fallout of my words. Crap. Crap, crap, crap.

  I needed to find Eve. I needed to throw myself on the altar of our past friendship and apologize for what I’d told Holly and explain how it’d been an accident.
A blurt.

  I pulled out my phone and texted her. Where are you? I need to talk to you.

  Then I waited, staring at the unanswered text. Another unanswered text to her. Just like spring break. Maybe it served her right if Holly found her first and blindsided her. But that was an ugly, horrible thought. That was the game talking, not me.

  I headed back toward South Campus, staying visible beneath the sidewalk lights, not worried if anyone would see me. Sort of hoping someone would and whoever it was knew where Eve was.

  A girl and a guy were walking—stumbling—toward one of the dorms.

  “Where did you say your room was again?” she said—slurred.

  The guy laughed. “James, honey. James. Like my name.” He laughed again. “Oh, Jesus, we started drinking too early and are way too wasted already to be doing this.” Then they both laughed and stumbled into the loggia.

  I texted Eve again. Hello? Where are you?

  No answer. A dozen different scenarios played out in my mind. Maybe she was with Cam again. Maybe Holly had already texted her and found her. Maybe she was with Chloe Donnelly. Maybe she’d found Mateo.

  My feet froze as if they were controlled by someone else. Would Eve do something with Mateo? No. No. I was being ridiculous. Paranoid. She wouldn’t look for him. She knew how I felt about him. She was the one who pointed him out to me in the beginning of the year. He seems like good boyfriend material for you, Chloe. She’d said it like she meant it, before Holly had totally poisoned her against me.

  I started walking again, staring at my phone. I headed back toward the library. My heart jackhammered in my chest, and I wished I had a Jack Daniel’s syringe to make all of this go away. Where was Eve?

  I crossed over from the library to near where the old bookstore used to be, frustration and worry rolling off me, making me forget about the cold. How many minutes had it been since I’d seen Holly—ten, fifteen? I stepped out of the shadows and into the light from the street lamp, and felt a hand on my shoulder. I spun and screamed at the same time, but the sound died in my throat.

  Mateo. Mateo Mateo Mateo Mateo. I collapsed into his chest and he wrapped both arms around me. Tight.

  “Whoa, Chloe, what’s going on?”

  16

  “Oh, Mateo, this is such a mess.”

  “What is?” he asked, arms still banded around me like I might fly away if he let go. Like he actually cared and wanted me to know it.

  I peeked up at him, his face serious with concern. “I’ve screwed everything up. I don’t know if it’s the game or me, but so much has gotten out of hand.”

  He touched my hair and shifted my head to look at him. He was so beautiful. All those words I’d thought were dumb and overdramatic when describing guys poured into my brain: soulful, intense, protective. God, my stupid brain could not be reasonable around him. And he still held on to my hair. It had to be a move; I knew better than to think it was real because what guy actually gripped a girl by the hair, but I liked it. I wanted to sniff him and lick him and do dirty things I’d never considered before. Things that had scared the crap out of me when Holly mentioned them or when Mom had gone all scientific in describing the mechanics of them to me when I was younger. The longer Mateo stared at me, the more my stomach muscles got tight and my legs squeezed together and I wanted to squirm, closer or farther away, I wasn’t sure.

  “It’s the game,” he whispered, his low voice seeped in defeat. His Adam’s apple bobbed as if he had something stuck in his throat. He swallowed and I waited for him to explain, but he just said, “Come on.”

  He let go of my hair, probably realizing it was a bit much too, and pulled me toward the benches by the academic buildings.

  “How did Chloe Donnelly get your letter? Was it sex stuff?” I blurted, too wrecked and too raw to clamp down on the racing thoughts that wanted to escape my brain and be dealt with in the open. “She said you just gave it to her, but I don’t believe that anymore. Tell me.”

  He laughed once, a sharp and bitter bark.

  “I didn’t just give it to her, but it wasn’t sex stuff.” He shifted closer to me and I could feel his warmth. He was my own personal outdoor space heater, like the ones they had on the patios in the fancy restaurants on cold nights in Iowa City or Des Moines.

  “Does she . . . does she know something about you? Something personal about your family?”

  He looked down and leaned toward me even more, so his thigh pressed against mine, the soft denim brushing my bare knees. “It’s complicated. I’m complicated. I’ve wanted to tell you. . . . I know I can trust you.” He looked up and his eyes had almost gone totally black. My heart beat so fast and so loud. I felt like a frog pinned to a dissection board. Three more deep breaths. “My family, me, we work here, but there’re issues with our status.”

  My face scrunched up. “Your status?”

  “Yeah. Our paperwork. Documents. . . . You know.”

  My eyes went wide. He was undocumented? “But . . . but . . . you work at Beau’s.”

  He shrugged. “We’ve been doing this a long time. I’ve been in the country since I was two. My family, people like me, we do things a certain way. We know how to do things a certain way to stay under the radar. Even in a small town like this.”

  “So you have a Social Security number?” Everything my parents had ever told me about the plight of the undocumented flooded my brain. They can’t report crimes, Chloe. Not really. It’s difficult for them to go to the hospital without risk. They can’t ever fly out of the country. So many things we take for granted leave them exposed to deportation.

  “I have a Social Security number that works for Beau’s. It might not hold up under intense scrutiny if the ICE guys came sniffing around, but I don’t usually stay working at one place for longer than a year. I don’t want to put Beau’s at risk, so I’ll find something else soon.”

  I nodded. “You’re a good worker.”

  He raised a shoulder again, but I could tell he was a little proud. Or maybe it was because I believed in him. Hopefully.

  “And Chloe Donnelly somehow found out about your status?”

  He raked a hand through his hair. “Yeah. I don’t know how. My family is guarded. I haven’t told anyone, not even Josh.”

  “But she found out?”

  “Yeah. And she used it against me for a game. A goddamn game named after Nazi police. I’m not even sure what she’s playing at, but you can’t trust her. None of us can.”

  I thought about Aiden and Josh. About how she’d manipulated them. Then I thought about Nan and how Chloe Donnelly had so smoothly ingratiated herself to my grandparents. How she’d worked her way into the circle of Eve and Holly and me. God, she was good. I could almost admire her if I didn’t think she was so terrible. How could she do that to Mateo? I could only imagine what my parents would think about something like that.

  “How come you agreed to play the game in the first place?”

  He lifted a shoulder. “It was a calculated risk. I figured I’d draw more attention to myself by refusing to play. Plus . . .” He shifted and I looked at him. “You were playing.”

  I thought back to how he’d been about the game, how breezy and casual, but also how he looked at me as if trying to tell me something. “You played because of me?” I squeaked out.

  “A little, yeah.”

  I bit the inside of my cheek to stop a stupid grin from erupting on my face. It wasn’t the time. I didn’t know what to do with this information, and it didn’t seem like Mateo was going to do anything about it either, so I asked, “Do you think Chloe’s lying about everything? Do you believe her Chicago story? I mean, who starts junior year at a new school after spring break? And all that stuff about her friends . . .”

  “. . . Sounds made up,” Mateo finished. “I know. At first I thought she was just posing, wanting to make friends, but now . . . It’s more than that. I don’t trust her.”

  “She knows a lot of secrets. I don’t know how, but she
seems to be very tuned in to everything that’s going on. Always in the right place at the right time, as if school and her life come secondary to discovering secrets to use for the game.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I studied him, wondering if I could trust him with what I’d seen between Eve and Cam. I wanted to trust him, same as he’d trusted me. He didn’t give up my letter, after all. He didn’t trust Chloe Donnelly and seemed legitimately worried about me. Yes. I was positive he was on my side. I inhaled and counted to five, then blurted out everything about Eve and Cam.

  I told as much as I could about the first Friday of the game—I blushed when I explained the part about me watching Cam and Eve make out from around the corner of the arts building—then I finished with, “I’m not sure how much of that Chloe knows, if Eve’s told her anything, but she did watch Eve get into Cam’s car on Tuesday. I saw her standing in the second-floor window at school. Standing there like she was waiting for something. Or maybe like she was a queen looking down on all her subjects. That sounds dumb, doesn’t it? But I saw her.”

  Which maybe made me look really stalky, so I added, “I wasn’t following Eve or anything. I was going home late that day and happened to leave through the side exit.”

  “There’s something off about that Chloe,” Mateo said, leaning back now so I couldn’t feel his warmth as much. But he said that Chloe, which made me smile a little, as if she was the other one instead of me.

  “I know. There’s definitely something off. And the game is pretty horrible. It didn’t start that way, really. Not during the practice game. But with the platinum favor? It’s bringing out all the grossest parts of everyone. Or maybe she is.” I gnawed on my nail; Mateo reached out to pull my hand away from my mouth. I blushed again. “Sorry. It’s a really bad habit.”

  “I don’t mind it. It’s part of you, like all your blushing, but you stop talking to me when you’re biting your nails and I don’t want you to stop talking to me.”

  My breath caught and wheezed out of me on a soft “oh.”