I rolled onto my side and looked her in the eye. “Oh, well, if Lex told you that, then it must be true.”
A flash of confusion crossed her face, but she recovered. She sat up and wound a lock of inky hair around her index finger.
“I’m not trying to be nosy, you know. Everyone’s a little bit crazy, right? I just thought it was interesting. Guys don’t usually—”
I cut her off with a dark look.
She laughed nervously. “You’re funny.”
“Am I?”
The girl nodded. She inched even closer and put her hand on the bed next to mine so that our fingers were almost touching. Then she breathed deeply, the round swell of her breasts lifting on inhalation, and I knew what was coming.
I knew what she was going to do.
I simply closed my eyes and waited for her soft lips to touch mine.
*
Lex saw her leaving as he came back. I don’t know what she said or what she didn’t. But he knew. I could tell from the moment he slammed the door shut. From the snow melting in his hair and the tears melting on his cheeks. From the way he wouldn’t meet my gaze.
I lay belly-down on my bed, reading Robert Cormier.
“Well, now I know why you didn’t want to come.” His words slurred together. “Too bad the party got snowed out, huh?”
I said nothing.
“Asshole move, Win.”
Still I said nothing.
“Did you fuck her?”
“No.”
He swiped at his eyes. “All I’ve done is kiss her.”
“Well, it’s not like I forced her,” I said. I rolled over and stared at the ceiling. A water stain in the shape of Japan stretched from the far corner above me.
“I don’t get it. I thought you were a virgin, man. Like totally inexperienced. You won’t even touch Brynn’s tits, but you’ll let the girl I like do that to you?”
My head felt very dark. Black. I had no answer for what he was asking. He didn’t want to know. I never said I was a virgin.
“She said you knew what you were doing. You told her what to do.”
“You have to take charge with girls. Tell them what you want.”
“What’s wrong with you?” he whispered.
“I’m not a good person.”
“No shit.”
“I mean it.”
Lex lurched across the room toward me, eyes bloodshot and wild. He lost his footing on the slick covers of his own rock magazines and went down hard on his side with an oof. He tried but couldn’t get himself up again. Still on his knees, he raised one arm and pointed at me. “I. Hate. Excuses.”
“I don’t have one,” I said.
“Then why’d you do it?”
“Oh, so now you want an excuse?”
“I want to know why!”
“I told you,” I said. “There’s nothing good about me. Nothing at all. I—”
“Shut up.”
I shut up.
He sat back. Shook his head vigorously like he had water stuck in his ear. “Why did you say that?”
“Because it’s true.”
“God, I hate you!” Lex turned and crawled toward his bed. He hauled one arm onto the twin mattress and put his head down. It sounded like he was sobbing.
My heart pounded. I had lots of thoughts, too many. I thought, Go to him. I thought, Apologize, make a joke, say something, say anything. I thought, That’s what a real friend would do.
I did none of those things.
I rolled over and went to sleep.
*
I have good instincts. Very good instincts. It still took a minute to register that Lex wasn’t in the same place when I woke up. He lay on the floor, but not in front of his bed where I’d last seen him. Instead he was slouched beside my desk, face slack, arms splayed. My nose wrinkled. It smelled like he’d gotten sick. I didn’t want to know where. My alarm clock flashed 3:15. In the morning. The world around me was black. And silent. Utterly silent. What had woken me up?
I swung my feet to the floor. My heart leapt into my throat when I saw that Lex had touched my desk. For a second, I thought he’d found my photo album. The one I kept hidden in the bottom drawer. Besides the pictures of my family, I had other things in there—like clippings from the newspapers and the magazines. Like my brother’s and sister’s obituaries and all those articles about me. With my face. My real name. But as I got closer to Lex, I saw I was mistaken. Snow layered my desk, not memories. He’d opened the window before passing out.
He’d let in winter’s end.
They wouldn’t let me ride with him in the ambulance, but I raised hell to drive over to the medical center with Mr. Galveston, our dorm parent, after I called 911. The ER physician and the police asked me a lot of questions. What he’d taken. When. Why. With whom. Had I seen him at all? My legs shook and I answered as obliquely as I could. I knew nothing.
I crept into the hospital room hours later. Lex might be angry with me, but he was alone and I couldn’t just abandon him. His parents were three thousand miles away. Who else would visit him? I sat by his bed. I saw the bruises on his face, the IV in his arm. I hated myself.
His eyes fluttered open, very blue. He saw me. He couldn’t talk.
“They pumped your stomach,” I told him. “But you’re going to be okay.”