“Hey!” I said. He raised his eyebrows. “Five minutes,” I mumbled.
I looked down at my pajamas and ran my tongue along my top teeth. I threw my hair in a ponytail and slid on jeans to keep out the morning chill. I looked like I hadn’t slept, which wasn’t surprising, but at least I brushed my teeth.
I was almost smiling when I pushed through the door to the lounge, but I quickly stopped. Because Jason was the closest person to me. And second closest was Krista. They sat in adjacent cushioned chairs, leaning forward, their heads bent toward each other. Whispering secrets. Their worth skyrocketing.
Jason looked up first. Then Krista. Then they looked to the front door, where Reid stood in the entrance, walking toward me, in jeans and a black T-shirt.
“Careful, Reid,” said Jason, with his big cocky smile.
I froze.
“Come on, Mallory,” Reid said, acting like he didn’t hear Jason at all.
I didn’t move.
“You know I didn’t get to her room.” Jason was standing now, and Krista had that hideous grin. “Everyone was at the game. Everyone. You know who had time to do it?” He extended his arm outward and pointed his finger and smiled. “Her.”
My mouth dropped open. I know it’s ridiculous, and I’d never believed it actually happened in real life, but there it was. My mouth just dropped. And Jason didn’t stop then. He seemed really pleased by my reaction. “For the attention. Even the security guard thinks it.”
I looked to Reid, but he was looking out the window, and his forehead was creased like he was thinking really hard. Probably doing math calculations or something. Time for me to get back to my room. Time for him to get back. Time enough for me to slash my own shirts.
Shit.
Reid held the door for me as we left, but I kept my distance, arms crossed over my stomach. It was colder than I thought. September mornings have a chill in New Jersey on the shore, but it was even worse here. Too many trees. Not enough sunlight getting through.
We walked to the lot behind the student center, and he led me to a black Honda.
We drove out of campus in silence. We got closer to civilization a mile or so down the windy road—a pharmacy and a gas station, potentially the ghetto one, but it didn’t look so bad—and then a diner. In a tin box on wheels. For real.
He pulled onto the grass next to a blue BMW, downtrodden weeds as parking spots, and turned toward me. “I know you didn’t do it.”
I cocked my head to the side. “How do you know?” I was hoping the security guard would come to the same conclusion.
“Because I know you. I know you were scared. I know you are scared.” I opened my mouth in protest but he waved me away and continued. “I know you’re not faking it.”
He was remembering the old version of me again. He couldn’t possibly know what I was capable of. I was betting he didn’t even know the things he was capable of. There was a time when I didn’t know what I was capable of either. But I knew now. I knew I was capable of anything. Anything.
“You don’t know that,” I said.
He shrugged. “Fine. Then I am choosing to believe you. See? It’s not so hard.” Except from the way he slammed his car door, it looked like it was exactly that hard.
Taryn and Bree were huddled in the back booth, leaning over the center. Taryn was nibbling the end of a piece of toast. Bree had scrambled eggs, but she was just moving the pieces around the plate.
Reid and I slid into a booth at the opposite end, and I read over the menu. Reid took it from my hands and shook his head. “Don’t bother. Only thing worth eating here is the burger. Cheese at your own risk.”
“Um, it’s breakfast time. And why are we here if it sucks?”
“I like it because it’s away. And, like I said, good burgers.”
I pointed behind us, to Taryn and Bree. “She got eggs.”
“Bet she’s not eating it.”
I craned my neck. He was right. Taryn was still holding a barely eaten piece of toast, whispering across the table, and then Bree backed up against the booth and hissed, “Why didn’t you tell me before?”
Then Taryn reached out her hand and Bree ignored it. I heard another car pull up, but the engine idled as a car door opened and slammed shut, and then drove away. Krista walked in and slid into the booth beside Bree. She pushed Bree’s untouched plate to the side and started using her pointer finger to trace something out on the table, or make a point, or clean up crumbs. Unclear which.
The waitress arrived, too skinny for her uniform, her black hair in a tight bun. “What’ll it be?” she said.
“Two burgers,” I answered. “No cheese.”
Krista walked past us to the napkin dispenser and pulled out a thick stack. The corners of her mouth were turned down, and she looked painfully bored.
“What’s up with her?” I asked.
“Don’t know. Don’t care. She and Jason share the same DNA for sure.”
“They seem like more than cousins, if you get what I’m saying.”
“Yeah. They’re close. In a weird way. But I don’t think it’s like that. I don’t know. Maybe it is. I don’t really get her. She’s . . . she’s from someplace else.”
“Someplace else?”
“I think the Dorchesters adopted her, but it was kinda recent. So wherever she’s from, it probably wasn’t good. And that’s a secret that surprisingly hasn’t made it into circulation, so it must be worth something to Jason.”
I watched her walk back to her booth and hand Bree the stack of napkins. She dabbed at her eyes, and Krista rubbed her upper back, whispering into her ear.
I ate all the burger I could, then pushed the rest to Reid. As he finished off my leftovers, I drummed my fingers on the table and said, “What did Jason mean? When he said you go for girls when they’re down?”
Reid swallowed whatever was left in his mouth and coughed into his closed fist. “What he means is that he’s jealous.”
I could feel the rest of the answer hovering in the air, waiting for Reid. He rolled his head around and cut his eyes to the table of girls behind us. “And he meant Taryn,” he whispered.
Not the answer I expected. “You were with Taryn?” I whispered back.
“Kind of. Not exactly. Almost. Jason and I were roommates last year, and they were together, and then they weren’t, and . . . it’s complicated.”
I knew there was a bunch of information left out of that sentence, skipped over in the long pause, replaced with the word complicated.
But I was stuck on one thing. “Taryn?” I asked again.
Reid set his jaw and leaned forward. “She wasn’t always like that. She never even talked to Krista until . . .”
I was shaking my head to myself. If he liked girls like her, how could he possibly like girls like me? When I looked back at Reid, he was watching their table.
“You still like her,” I said.
Reid looked at me and shook his head. “No. And I don’t think I ever really did. It was just the situation, you know?”
“Yeah,” I said, but I also decided right then that I definitely did not like Taryn.
Reid grinned and said, “So don’t be jealous.”
“I’m not jealous,” I said. Which made him smile. Which made me furious. “I’m not.”
He smiled, and I couldn’t help smiling back. He said, “Can we get the check?” but he was still looking at me. I knew exactly what was about to happen. We’d leave and walk to the car and I’d stop beside the door and he’d kiss me. An inevitable string of events, set in motion right now.
“Be right back,” I said, off to the bathroom to check for sesame seeds in my teeth.