AM looked confused for a minute, then nodded. She took a deep breath and said, “Tomorrow.” With that last word, she allowed her friend to lead her away.

I walked slowly so it didn’t appear like I was trying to chase down and enjoy the last remnants of whatever show AM was referring to. When I got to the stairs, however, I jogged down and bypassed the food line to look for Noah and Grace. The two of them were seated at a table against the window, talking seriously. I went over and sat down. “So did something just happen here?”

Noah grimaced and Grace looked away. “Just some guys being assholes,” Noah said.

“No big deal?”

“Yeah,” Noah said unconvincingly, looking over at Grace.

“So if it’s no big deal then why can’t Grace even look at me?” I pointed at her turned face. She heaved a big sigh and turned toward me, scrunching up her nose as if something smelled terrible. I was pretty sure it wasn’t me, the shower being the reason I was late to meet the two of them for dinner.

“Just a lacrosse guy trying to prove the size of his dick,” Noah interjected before Grace could open her mouth. Grace and I weren’t great friends despite our mutual connection with Noah. I wasn’t entirely convinced that she was good enough for him, and she thought I was a bad influence. I tried to tell her that Noah wasn’t influenced by anyone but her, and she was slowly coming to realize that. But I wanted to hear how Grace had seen the events.

“Grace?” I asked, as gently as possible. Noah, ever protective, jumped in before Grace could say a word.

“It was ugly, just leave it alone,” Noah commanded.

“It involve a girl named AnnMarie?” I asked Grace, ignoring Noah. She nodded. “Tell me,” I asked, tacking on “please” so she didn’t think I was a peremptory jerk even though I was, kind of.

“Do you know her?” Grace asked.

“She’s my biology lab partner.” A day ago I’d have said that maybe we were on the road to a hookup, but based on the look she’d shot me on her way out of the commons, I was guessing less than nothing.

Grace frowned. Maybe she thought I was bad news for everyone, not just Noah. “I don’t want to spread rumors,” Grace said, casting a glance over at a table full of lacrosse guys, a table that was abnormally subdued. Usually these guys dominated the classroom, the lunchroom, everything with their loud talk. They were always acting jacked up, like a newbie at boot who thought he was ready to join Marine Force Recon because he achieved level sixty-five in Call of Duty. They annoyed the hell out of me. Noah met my gaze and rolled his eyes in agreement. Jackasses, all of them. Or, as we called all persons not infantry Marine, fucking POGs.

“I’ve heard all the rumors about AnnMarie, Grace,” I said impatiently. “Your pal Mike was a fountain of information. I couldn’t shut him up about it.”

Grace pressed her lips flat in clear distaste. Great thing about Grace was that every emotion she had you could read on her face. I couldn’t understand why she was such a mystery to Noah, unless love truly did make you blind.

I knew love made you stupid, which was why I shied away from it, but I had a feeling I was in too deep with AnnMarie already for either of us to come out of it unscathed.

“Mike’s wrong,” Grace said. “AnnMarie is a nice girl.”

“I don’t care if she’s slept with a platoon of Marines, Grace,” I said. “I just want to know what happened so that when I see her in the morning I don’t make her feel worse than she already does.”

“How do you know how she feels?” Grace tipped her head to the side.

“Because I ran into her as she was leaving and she looked like someone took out her insides, stomped the shit out of them, and tried to make her eat them.” What little patience I had was quickly eroding.

Noah sighed and leaned forward, speaking softly, “Some lacrosse guy grabbed her by the arm, called her a cunt, and implied she had a venereal disease.”

Noah clamped a fist around my arm as I half rose out of my seat to go and annihilate the entire table. I resisted for a moment.

“Think, man,” Noah said, pressing down. “Do you want to make this worse for her? For once in your life, use your head before you follow your gut. You destroying that table of jerkwads will only provide fuel for whatever rumors are going to spill out tonight. It’ll make it harder for her to forget about what happened.”

“I think Noah broke the table trying to prevent himself from adding to the scene.” Grace pointed to the edge of the table where the black plastic edging was crumpled and separated from the side of the wood.

I bit my tongue hard until the pain overrode the desire to go turn someone into a pretzel. Nodding at Noah to let him know that I’d gotten it under control, I asked, “The entire room heard this?”

Noah nodded and let me go. “Affirmative.”

I turned to Grace. “What do you know of this?”

She shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know much. AnnMarie rushed our freshman year, but I don’t think she joined a sorority. She lived in a different hall than I did. About two months into our freshman year, rumors started that she had a thing for lacrosse players. She dropped out of campus activities and moved off campus with her friend Ellie after Christmas break. You never see either of them anymore. I think her showing up at the café surprised everyone. She always seemed nice.”

“She is nice. Niceness doesn’t change depending on how many people you sleep with. Assholes are assholes regardless of the number of their sexual partners,” I said sarcastically. Noah shot me a warning glare but I ignored it. “Take, for example, our lacrosse table. They only talk shit like that because they’re a club sport. They don’t get the recognition they think they deserve, so they bray like jackasses in hopes that people will look their way. Guys who’re getting it regular never act like that.”

Grace looked surprised, as if this had never occurred to her, but Noah just grunted an agreement. “Act like you’ve been here before and that you’ll be there again.”

Grace smiled at Noah like he’d said the most amazing thing. “Homer?” she asked him.

“No, Barry Sanders,” I said.

“Barry who?” She looked at me with some confusion.

“Running back. Detroit Lions. The quote is from him.” I rubbed a hand down my face. “Noah, let’s take the guy out back and beat the shit out of him. You know you want to.”

“Don’t tempt me. You know I can’t do that.” Which was his unspoken way of saying he’d hold the towel while I pummeled the guy. I just had to arrange it.

“So basically this one douche bag and his friends have driven AM off campus into some kind of self-imposed exile?” I concluded.

“I don’t think it’s so much self-imposed,” Grace said with a shudder. “I wouldn’t want to face that kind of confrontation.”

Why didn’t you do anything, then? I wanted to ask but I knew that question would only cause friction between Noah and me. Noah thought Grace was perfect and wouldn’t tolerate anyone questioning her behavior. I looked at her hard, though, and hoped she read the message.

I stood to leave, but Noah stopped me. “You can’t save everyone.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” I said and threw off his hand. I didn’t want to save everyone. I wanted to save AnnMarie. I wanted to save myself. Somehow it seemed the same thing at that moment and surely that wasn’t asking for too much.

Chapter Seven

AM

ELLIE LOOKED AT ME AS if I were a recently cracked windshield, just waiting for me to collapse into a million broken pieces. But I’d survived Central campus and its rumor mill for months. I was still standing even if I was still shaking from the encounter with Clay.

“I wish I could come up with better insults on the fly,” I complained. My heart was bruised, and I was pissed off that I shook like a frightened kitten facing a bathtub filled with water. I’m not sure if it was his size or just the confrontation, but I never felt like I got the better of Clay. “You’d think that I would’ve rehearsed one. All I can think of is ‘You’re an asshole.’”

“That’s because he is an asshole,” Ellie replied.

“True.” Then I added tentatively, feeling Ellie out on the subject, “But Ryan seemed to be bothered by Clay’s comments.”

“I would never date a laxer!” Ellie cried. She sounded like I’d inflicted a mortal wound or insulted her mother.

“He seems different than the other guys,” I pointed out. I didn’t want my issues to be infringing on Ellie’s interests. She’d already taken on far too much of my drama as her own, and it wasn’t necessary.

She strongly believed in the “an enemy of yours is an enemy of mine” theory, which made her a great friend but also made me feel guilty. Ellie murmured something unintelligible into her scarf that I mentally translated into “don’t be an idiot,” so I just changed the subject. “Do you really think taking Rocks for Jocks is going to be better than biology?”

Ellie merely shrugged her shoulders, dipping her face deep inside the well of her jacket. “I think math should serve as a science requirement. I mean, it’s more important to know how derivatives function than it is to know what rocks come from what region.”

“You should know that I got the syllabus and there’s very little about natural disasters in biology,” I urged. I could kill two birds with one stone. Bo would be forced to partner with someone else, and I would get a best friend back. “Come back and we can be lab partners.”

Ellie peered at me from behind her scarf. “No, I’m stuck now. I went and changed my schedule at the admin office and the lady there gave me an angry glare like I was asking for a grade change or something.”

“Given that nearly everyone in the class gets a B or above, it kind of is,” I pointed out.

Ellie huffed. “I’m a math major. I deserve one cake class.”

“Maybe I should switch, then.” It didn’t matter to me what science class I took.

She didn’t reply immediately and when she did her voice showed strain. “Yeah, I don’t think you’d like it.”

Translated: there were too many jocks there, and I’d be miserable.

“Plus,” Ellie added, “even if you wanted to, I don’t think Dr. Highsmith would allow it. He told me he was only approving the transfer because he didn’t think it was healthy that we were joined at the hip.”

“Fucking Highsmith. Who does he think he is, our advisor?” I joked. It was weak, but I felt better for making the effort.

By the time we had arrived at the apartment, hunger was overriding anger. “Should we order a pizza?” I suggested.

Ellie hadn’t eaten much of anything either. She nodded her agreement, and I ordered while Ellie sank into our couch and flicked on the television. The entrance buzzer sounded thirty minutes later to announce the arrival of the pizza delivery person.

By the time I’d returned with the pizza, Ellie had pulled out napkins and forks and laid them on our coffee table. It was one of those oak things that had curved edges and was designed, I think, for families with small children. Ugly but functional, the table was safe for toddlers and drunken college students. Ellie and I’d spent more than one night passed out in our living room, and never once had we suffered a coffee table-induced injury.

“What was it that Clay said as you walked by him?” I asked her, remembering hearing an odd murmur behind me.

“He called me a carpet muncher,” Ellie said, pizza slice halfway to her mouth.

“He’s so original. Like eating pussy is some kind of insult,” I scoffed.

“It is for him. He’s probably the most selfish lover ever. Girls start thinking about being a lesbian because their sexual experience with him was so horrible, they can’t stomach the idea of being with another man.” Ellie waved her pizza at me, a pineapple cube flipping dangerously on the end.

I sat back. “It’s a good thing I turned him down, then, or I’d be after you hard.”

“You should seduce Bo and then when he’s in your thrall, point him toward the laxer house. By the look of him, he’d be able to take down at least five of them in the first go around. Yum.” Ellie licked her lips and I knew it wasn’t because the pizza tasted so good.

I avoided the Bo topic and told her instead, “I wish we were lesbians. We’d make a great couple.”

Ellie gave a genuine shout of laughter. “Would we take turns wearing the strap-on?”

“No, I’d be the top,” I insisted sternly. This only made her laugh harder.

When she finally stopped rolling on the ground, she sat up and wiped the tears from her face. She rearranged her expression into a faux serious look and leaned toward me. “You know what might suck as a lesbian?”