Chapter Nineteen

It was like being in a dream. Not necessarily a bad one, more like one of those strange ones where everyone spoke the same language except for her. Stacey blinked for a few seconds, hoping the night before would skitter back from where it had come from and help her process what she was looking at. But she had drunk too much again, and every little brain cell was calling “uncle.”

“You can’t what?” Stacey asked, her tongue a bit smarter than her brain at the moment. Denise had just made a statement. Something about how she just couldn’t do something. And her face—it was so red and raw, even more so than the times Stacey had spied her in the union. Denise had been crying.

“Nothing that would matter to you. Why are you here? Can’t imagine you have no life either.” Stacey didn’t know how to answer that. She very much had a life but wasn’t sure it was the one she wanted. Even though she lived only one floor up from Denise, they never crossed paths in Reid Hall. In fact, the only reason Stacey was there was because she had snuck some guy up to her room the night before, and she was hoping if she wandered around long enough, he’d be gone by the time she got back.

“Try me,” she said. Stacey lifted her hand to the pain in her temple. She wanted this mental image to last—Denise McGovern in all her acne-ridden glory so she could transfer the details to Whitney. She felt bad telling her friend that there was something going on between Jamal and Denise even though she had no proof. But a part of her needed to know someone was in as much pain as she was. She wanted to know she wasn’t alone.

“My parents are as good as dead. And I’m not even sure I mean that figuratively. They very well could be dead. I have no idea.” Denise lifted her chin at the fluorescent lighting, pausing for confirmation. When she didn’t receive any she said, “Anyways, Whitney’s boyfriend’s gay.”

“And you’re sad about it,” Stacey said, half her brain in the bathroom, the other half assessing whether the random guy in her bed had gotten the hint yet and left. “Because you love him.” She hated that she felt for Denise. Her friend, Samantha, was Denise’s roommate. She was rushing with Sam, two of the few sophomores to do so, and heard stories about the freak who practically hoarded jars of Noxzema. And Stacey loved to fuel the fire, talking about Denise’s “better” years, when she stalked her prey with a fresh face and heart of stone. The girls couldn’t believe it was the same Denise whose face looked like Mount Vesuvius,

“I’m sad about a lot of things,” Denise said to her jar of acne cream. Gay, Stacey thought, but really couldn’t think. The word was hazy inside her brain. She didn’t know anyone who was gay. Her mother once told her that people who were gay burned in hell, but then she left and never came back so what did she know? And her father, her father definitely wasn’t gay. He was wired too much the other way, to the point that he left, too, but not permanently, which was almost worse.

“Maybe we should start a club,” Stacey half-joked. She knew what she looked like to everyone on campus. Fun-loving, beer in one hand, boy dangling from the other. Last night was “The Sock Hop,” Sigma Chi’s big fall party before Thanksgiving break. She had worn a pink poodle skirt she had found at Good Will and a pair of saddle shoes she had borrowed from Barb, Kappa Delta’s fearless leader. “Look the part ladies,” she had said as Stacey and a few others who still roomed in the dorms got dressed in Barb’s room at the KD house. “Don’t want to come off too slutty like the Chi O’s.” The girls all giggled, but Stacey had choked a little on hers. There was something inside her that liked the attention, that closed its eyes to the darkness when the lights were turned off. It was what she imagined a bong hit was like, a strong toke that took over every inch of her until she was no longer in control. It was the shame that made her think twice sometimes. But fortunately, the alcohol kept that at bay, for the most part.

“I doubt you’re sad. You have people. I see you out with my roommate and all your other lackeys. What could you possibly have anything to be sad about?”

Stacey just smiled and shrugged. “Nothing, I guess,” she said, taking a stall and trying to remember Random Guy’s name.