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Except that I’ve spent a lot of time in the bowels of Fischer Hall with the exterminator, and there’s nothing under there but mice and a lot of old mattresses.
Someone picks up the phone in Amber’s room. A girl’s voice says sleepily, “Hello?”
“Hello,” I say. “Is this Amber?”
“Uh-huh,” the sleepy voice says. “This is Amber. Who’s this?”
“No one,” I say. Just wanted to make sure you were still alive. “Go back to sleep.”
“Okay,” Amber says groggily, and hangs up the phone.
Well, Amber’s still alive, anyway. For now.
“So are you and Jordan getting back together?” Rachel wants to know. She doesn’t seem to think my calling students and waking them up for no apparent reason at all strange. Which actually says a lot about the weirdness of the place where we work, and our jobs there. “You make the cutest couple.”
Fortunately I’m saved from having to reply by my phone, which begins ringing right then. I answer it, wondering if Amber has caller ID and wants to know what the hell I’m doing, waking her up at nine in the morning on a school day.
Only it isn’t Amber on the other end. It’s Patty, going, “Okay, tell me everything.”
“About what?”
I’m not actually feeling very good. All I wanted to do when I woke up this morning was pull the covers back over my head and stay in bed forever and ever.
Jordan. I slept with Jordan. Why, God, why?
“Whadduya mean about what?” Patty sounds shocked. “Haven’t you seen the paper today?”
I feel my blood run cold for the second time in twenty-four hours.
“What paper?”
“The Post,” Patty says. “There’s a photo of you two kissing right on the cover. Well, you can’t really see that the woman’s you, but it’s definitely not Tania Trace. And it’s definitely Cooper’s front stoop—”
I say a word that sends Rachel skittling out of her office, asking if everything is all right.
“Everything’s fine,” I say, placing a shaking hand over the receiver. “It’s nothing, really.”
Meanwhile Patty is busy squawking in my ear.
“The headline says Sleazy Street. I guess they mean because Jordan’s scamming on his fiancée. But don’t worry, they call you the ‘unidentified woman.’ God, you’d think they’d be able to figure it out. But it’s obviously an amateur shot, and your head is in shadows. Still, when Tania sees it—”
“I don’t really want to talk about this right now,” I interrupt, feeling queasy.
“Don’t want to?” Patty sounds surprised. “Or can’t?”
“Um. The latter?”
“I gotcha. Lunch?”
“Okay.”
“You are such a dope.” But Patty is chuckling. “I’ll swing by around noon. Haven’t seen Magda in a while. Can’t wait to hear what SHE has to say about this.”
Neither can I.
I hang up. Sarah comes in, full of eager questions about—what else? Jordan. All I want to do is curl up into a ball and cry. Why? WHY? WHY had I been so WEAK?
But since you can’t cry at work without seventy people coming up to you and going, “What’s wrong? Don’t cry. It’ll be okay,” I pull out a bunch of vending machine refund requests and started processing them instead, bending over my calculator and trying to look super busy and responsible.
It isn’t like Rachel doesn’t have plenty to do herself. She found out earlier in the week that she’d been nominated for a Pansy. Pansys are these medals, in the shape of a flower, that the college gives out to staff and administrators every semester when they’ve done something above and beyond the line of duty. For instance, Pete has one for ramming this girl’s door down when she barricaded herself behind it and turned on the gas in her oven. He completely saved her life.
Magda has one, too, because—weird as she is, with the movie star thing—the kids, for the most part, just adore her. She makes them feel at home, especially every December, when, in disregard of all campus regulations, Magda decorates her cash register with a stuffed Santa, a miniature crèche, a menorah, and Kwanzaa candles.
I personally think it’s nice that Rachel got nominated. She’s dealt with a lot since she started here at Fischer Hall, including two student deaths in two weeks. She’s had to notify two sets of parents that their kid is dead, pack up two sets of belongings (well, okay, I did that, both times), and organize two memorial services. The woman deserves a pansy-shaped medal, at the very least.
Anyway, because of her Pansy nomination, Rachel is automatically invited to the Pansy Ball, this black-tie affair held annually on the ground floor of the college library, and she’s all aflutter about it, since the ball is tonight and she keeps insisting she has nothing to wear. She says she’s going to have to go hit some sample sales at lunch to see if she can find something suitable.
I know what this means, of course. She’ll be coming back with the most beautiful gown any of us has ever seen. When you’re a size 2, you can just pop into any store and find hundreds of totally stunning options.
When I’m finished with the refund requests, I announce that I’m going to disbursements to get them cashed, and Rachel waves me away, thankfully not commenting on the fact that I hate waiting on line at Banking (which was Justine’s favorite place) and usually send a student worker to do it.
Of course, on my way to disbursements, I swing by the café to see Magda. She takes one look at my face and informs her supervisor, Gerald, that she’s taking a ten-minute break, even though Gerald’s like, “But you just went on break half an hour ago!”
Magda and I walk out into the park, sit on a bench, and I pour out the whole stupid Jordan story.
When she’s done laughing at me, Magda wipes her eyes and said, “Oh, my poor baby. But what did you expect? That he was going to beg you to come back?”
“Well,” I say. “Yes.”
“But would you have gone with him?”
“Well… no. But it would have been nice to be asked.”
“Look, baby, you know and I know that you are the best thing that has ever happened to him. But him? He just wants a girl who will do whatever he say. And that is not you. So you let him stay with Miss Bony Butt. And you wait for a nice man to come along. You never know. He might be closer than you think.”
I know she’s talking about Cooper.
“I told you,” I say, miserably. “I’m not his type. I’m going to have to get like four degrees just to compete with his last girlfriend, who discovered a dwarf sun, or something, and got it named after her.”
Magda just shrugs and says, “What about this Christopher you were telling me about, then?”
“Christopher Allington? Magda, I can’t date him! He’s a possible murderer!”
When I reveal my suspicions concerning Christopher Allington, Magda gets very excited.
“And no one would suspect him,” she cries, “because he is the president’s son! It’s like in a movie! It’s perfect!”
“Well, almost perfect,” I say. “I mean, why would he go around killing innocent girls? What’s his motive?”
Magda thinks about that for a while, and comes up with several theories based on movies she’d seen, like that Chris has to kill people as an initiation rite into some kind of secret law school society, or that possibly he has a split personality or a deranged twin. Which brings her around to the fact that Chris Allington is probably going to be at the Pansy Ball, and if I really want to play detective, I should wrangle myself a ticket and go observe him in his natural element.
“Those tickets cost like two hundred dollars, unless you’re nominated for a Pansy,” I inform her. “I can’t afford one.”
“Not even to catch a murderer?” Magda asks.
“He’s only a potential murderer.”
“I bet Cooper could get a pair.” I’d forgotten that Cooper’s grandfather was a major New York College benefactor, but Magda hasn’t. Magda never forgets anything. “Why don’t you go with him?”
I haven’t had much to smile about lately, but the thought of Cooper putting on a tuxedo does make me kind of laugh. I doubt he’s ever even owned one.
Then I stop smiling at the idea of my asking him to go with me to the Pansy Ball. Because he’d never agree to it. He’d want to know why I want to go so badly, then lecture me for sticking my nose where it doesn’t belong.
Magda sighs when she hears this.
“Okay,” she says, regretfully. “But it could have been just like a movie.”
I spend my time at Banking carefully not thinking about the night before—which had definitely been nothing like a movie. If it had been like a movie, Jordan would have showed up this morning with a big bouquet of roses and two tickets to Vegas.
Not, you know, that I’d have gone with him. But like I said, it would have been nice to be asked.
I’m walking back across the park, toward Fischer Hall, mentally rehearsing the “I’m sorry, but I just can’t marry you” speech I decide I’m going to give to Jordan in case, you know, he does turn up with the flowers and the tickets, when I look up, and there he is.
No, seriously. I practically bump into him on the sidewalk in front of the building.
“Oh,” I say, clutching an envelope filled with dollar bills to my chest protectively, like it might be able to ward him off. “Hi.”
“Heather,” Jordan says. He’s standing beside a black stretch limo parked—not exactly unobtrusively—in front of the dorm. He’s obviously just come from his press junket. He doesn’t have any roses with him, but he does have on multiple platinum chains and a very hang-dog look.
Still, I don’t feel too sorry for him. After all,I’m the one with the rug burns on my ass.
“I’ve been waiting out here for you,” Jordan says. “Your boss said you’d be back within the hour, but—”
Oops. It’s eleven-thirty, and I’d left the office at ten. Rachel probably hadn’t anticipated my heading out to the park to chat with Magda.
“Well,” I say. “I’m back.” I look around, but I still don’t see any flowers. Which is fine, since I’ve forgotten my speech anyway. “What’s up?”
You are not getting back together with him, I tell myself, firmly. You are not getting back together with him. Even if he crawls on his knees…
Well, maybe if he crawls on his knees.
No! Not even then! He’s the wrong brother, remember? The wrong brother!
Jordan looks around uncomfortably. “Listen. Can we go somewhere and talk?”
“We can talk right here,” I say. Because I know if I go off somewhere alone with him, I might do something I’ll regret later.
Might? I already had.
“I’d feel better,” he says, “if we could talk inside the limo.”
“I’d feel better,” I say—stay strong, stay strong—“if you’d just say what you have to say.”
Jordan looks surprised at the firmness of my tone. It surprises me, too.
That’s when I realize that he probably believes I think we’re getting back together or something.
Ahem.
Next thing I know, he’s spilling his guts right there on the sidewalk.
“It’s just that… I’m… I’m really confused right now, Heather,” he says. “I mean, you’re so… well, you’re just great. But Tania… I talked it over with Dad, and I just… well, I can’t break up with Tania right now. Not with the new album coming out. My dad says—”
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