Chapter 5
There is nothing as relentless as a week on this campus after your entire identity collapses in on itself.
I know because I am living through it, hour by hour, seven days out from the party and still counting.
My dorm room smells like old ramen and the ghosts of every failed experiment, which is to say: it smells like home, if home was a cell block with mandatory cinderblocks and a single window the size of a mini-fridge.
I’m supposed to be studying for Monday’s chemistry midterm—Aromatic Substitution and Beyond—but the words are just a lattice of carbon rings, a meaningless blur in my brain.
I stare at the textbook until my eyes ache, then stare at the wall, then at the ceiling, then back at the book.
I make it three lines before my brain shorts out and replays the Halloween kiss, full HD, every time.
It’s always the same: total darkness, the warm crush of Aaron’s hands at my waist, the taste of orange Gatorade and cheap rum.
Sixty seconds that may as well have been sixty years, judging by how stubbornly my body remembers it.
I keep expecting the memory to fade, but instead it just gets sharper, burning away everything else.
The organized chaos that was my desk has devolved into a full-blown disaster zone.
Laptop with a bajillion tabs open, two half-finished lab reports on my iPad, a graph pad with scribbles and notes, a hardcover chemistry text, three lingering, not-quite-empty coffee cups, half a Powerade, and an open bag of Cheetos.
Every ten minutes my phone lights up with a new text from Hunter, usually a screenshot or an audio file of Aaron Thompson holding court in the quad, repeating the legend of Jessica Rabbit to an ever-growing audience.
It’s become a thing now. Aaron’s Search. Hunter thinks it’s hilarious, which is why he’s assigned himself as chief archivist of every development. He sends updates in real time.
8:04 am: Bro he’s still at it! This man is going to comb the entire campus in a week at this rate.
8:18 am: [photo of Aaron, blurry but still distressingly hot, at the campus cafe holding up his phone as if looking for mugshots]
8:26 am: He just asked the barista if she’s seen you lmfao
It’s not that Hunter knows, exactly. But he suspects, and he’s weaponizing it. I want to be mad at him, but mostly I just want to unplug my brain and hide it under the bed with the rest of my bad decisions.
I drum my fingers on the desk, then stop when I realize I’m doing it.
My left leg has been bouncing for the better part of an hour, a nervous metronome I can’t silence.
My back aches from hunching, but every time I sit up straight it feels like too much—like I’m standing at attention, waiting for the ax to fall.
My dorm room is aggressively blank. The university-issued furniture is arranged for maximum discomfort: bed against the wall, desk at an angle that catches the light and burns your retinas, dresser too small for anyone over the age of twelve.
There’s a single poster above my bed—an old diagram of the periodic table, color-coded by atomic radius—and three sticky notes on my closet door, all chemical formulas I once thought I would need to memorize for an exam and now keep because it’s the only thing giving my room any personality.
Inside the closet, beneath a layer of hoodies and forgotten gym shorts, is the wig. I don’t look at it. I don’t need to—it’s been branded onto my memory in such vivid detail I could reconstruct it atom by atom. It’s not even hidden well. I just shoved it into a paper bag from Sara’s Sephora haul.
I can’t get rid of it, either. Every time I think about walking it to the dumpster, I imagine some janitor finding it and holding it aloft like a trophy, or worse, turning it in to Lost and Found. If I throw it away, it wins. If I keep it, I lose.
I close my chemistry book with a dull thud.
I stare at my hands: chewed-up cuticles, faint lines of ink along the knuckles, a single scar on my left index from a run-in with a broken pipette last semester.
They don’t look like the hands of a person who could have changed someone’s life in a closet, but here we are.
My phone buzzes again.
8:36 am: [YouTube link] He’s gone public. This is not a drill.
I watch the video with the sound off, just in case my roommate—still asleep, somehow—has ninja-level hearing. Aaron is talking into the lens, earnest and unironically handsome in his jade green crewneck and perfectly tousled hair.
“If anyone knows the real identity of Jessica Rabbit from the Pi Omega Halloween party, please let me know. This is 100% serious. She is a legend. We need to find her for… scientific reasons.” He does finger quotes. There’s real desperation in his eyes, or maybe it’s just a trick of the lighting.
The view count is already over 200. I close the link, then set my phone face-down on the desk and push back in my chair so hard it nearly tips over.
I can’t take this. I can’t take the not-knowing, the waiting for it all to implode. I am the last person on earth equipped to handle even one person’s attention, let alone that of an entire campus.
I grab my phone and text Sara. She’s the only person I know who might understand. Or at least, the only one who won’t make it into a reality show.
Me: If I drop dead in the next 48 hours, please erase my hard drive. Also, do not let Hunter speak at my funeral.
She replies instantly.
Sara: You’re not going to die. And if you do, I’m putting the wig on you before the casket closes.
An involuntary laugh escapes me, and the tension in my shoulders goes from knife-blade to paper cut.
For a moment, I think maybe it’ll all be fine.
Maybe Aaron will lose interest. Maybe the world will spin on, and I can go back to the way things were—quiet, predictable, ruled by logic and the occasional panic attack, but never this.
I stand and pace the perimeter of my room, counting the steps: eight to the door, five to the window, six to the closet. I circle twice, then collapse onto the bed and stare at the ceiling.
My phone buzzes again. This time, I ignore it.
I close my eyes and let the memory of the kiss roll over me—uninvited, unstoppable, a chemical reaction that refuses to run to completion.
I want to blame the party, or the anonymity, or the weeks of pent-up academic stress, but that’s just cowardice.
It was me. I did it. And now it’s my problem to solve.
—ΠΩ—
Sara’s “studio” is technically half her bedroom converted, but it’s somehow more alive than any other space on campus.
The light is always artificial, cycling through soft gold and sharp white from a ring lamp she got for free on Craigslist. The air is a solid, breathing thing, saturated with the sharp chemical sweetness of paint thinner, the undertow of cheap coffee, and, if she’s been at it late, the plastic snap of microwave popcorn.
It’s late enough tonight that the campus outside is more shadow than light, the windows reflecting the bright little world she’s built in here.
I hover at the doorway, not wanting to disrupt the geometry of it: canvases stacked along the wall, floor tiles freckled with drips of indigo and blood red, three sets of brushes fanned out on the workbench like surgical tools.
Sara doesn’t look up. She’s layering oil onto something abstract and menacing, her hair scraped back in a bun and streaked with pale green pigment.
She senses me anyway. “You look like you’re about to give blood,” she says, glancing over her shoulder. “Come in, Spence. You’re making the hallway look desperate.”
I edge inside, hands in my pockets. “You got a minute?”
She keeps painting, but her eyes track me in the ring lamp. “For you? Always.”
I take a circuit around the studio, picking up a brush, setting it down, then drifting to the far wall where her senior project—six feet of stretched canvas, mostly black—looms like a warning.
There’s nowhere to sit except a folding chair with duct tape on the seat and a plastic crate full of gesso buckets.
Sara finally sets down her palette knife. “So, are you going to pace until you wear a hole in my floor, or do you want to tell me what’s up?”
I stall. “I just… needed to get out for a while.”
“Bullshit,” she says, but kindly. She grabs a mug from the window ledge and gestures with it. “Decaf. Want?”
I shake my head and scan the shelves for something to focus on. The best I can do is an empty Red Bull can.
Sara waits, not with impatience, but with a kind of gentle stubbornness. She starts cleaning her brushes, working the bristles through a jar of turpentine, then wrapping them in a blue shop towel with hands that are steady and stained from years of practice.
I take a breath, open and close my mouth a couple of times, but nothing comes out.
Sara’s lips twitch in a not-smile. “Is this about Aaron?”
I sigh. “Yeah.”
“Spill.”
I fold in on myself, perching on the edge of the crate. “It’s just… He’s still looking for her. Me. Whatever.” I make a vague gesture, as if that explains the entire cosmology of my problem.
Sara’s expression doesn’t change. “And this bothers you because?”
I pick at the tape on the crate, unspooling a loose end. “Because it’s not going away. Hunter keeps texting me every time Aaron posts something new. It’s like—” I can’t find the word. “—like the more I try to ignore it, the more it gets under my skin. I can’t even study without thinking about it.”
Sara leans against the workbench, arms folded. “So, you’re worried he’ll find out it was you?”
My mouth goes dry. “Yes. No. I don’t know.” I squeeze the tape and feel the glue go tacky on my fingers. “He’s got everyone talking. People keep tagging me in group chats like I was even at the party as myself.”
She tilts her head. “But you were there as… her.”
“Don’t say it like that,” I snap. “It was a joke. A dare. I didn’t mean to—” I trail off, the words congealing in my throat. I don’t have a good finish, just the memory of that closet, the heat of Aaron’s hands, the way my knees almost buckled. “It wasn’t supposed to matter.”
Sara is quiet for a minute, just the sound of her brush swirling in the solvent. “You know, you’re not just worried about being found out.”
My shoulders stiffen. “Am I that transparent?”
She shrugs. “Only to me. But you’re acting like a guy who’s been hexed.”
I want to argue, but I know she’s right. My face flushes, a slow crawl of heat up my neck and into my ears.
Sara sets the mug down and walks over, close enough that I can smell the coffee on her breath and the faint hint of shampoo that never quite washes out the paint. “You like him.”
I say nothing.
She nudges my foot with hers, a gentle prod. “You do. Your whole vibe changes when you talk about him. You go from Spence the human science robot to, like, Spence the disaster human.”
“That’s not true,” I protest, but even to me it sounds weak.
She gives me a long look, eyes steady. “It’s okay to like him, you know. Even if you think he’s an asshole.”
I sputter. “I don’t think he’s an asshole.”
Sara raises both eyebrows. “Last time you were here, you said he was a ‘walking defense mechanism with a protein shake addiction and the emotional range of a Keurig machine.’”
I wince. “I may have been exaggerating for effect.”
She smiles, but it’s soft. “You’re allowed to want things, Spence. You don’t have to explain them away.”
I scrub my hands over my face. “This is a disaster.”
Sara sits on the crate next to mine, our knees almost touching. “It’s only a disaster if you keep lying to yourself. Or if you let Hunter run out of memes.”
I snort, and for a second, the tension breaks. “He’s going to get so bored once this blows over.”
Sara shakes her head. “Not likely. The legend of Jessica Rabbit is only getting bigger.” She says it gently, but I can feel the warning.
I look at her, really look. I want to ask her what she would do. She’s always known who she is, even when the rest of the world didn’t. She never hides, never hedges, just walks into every room like she was born to own it.
I envy that.
“Should I tell him?” I ask, the words barely audible.
Sara is silent for a moment. She picks at a fleck of paint on her jeans, then meets my eyes. “That depends. Do you want him to know?”
I shake my head, then nod, then shake it again. “No. Yes. Maybe. I just don’t want it to get worse.”
She shrugs. “Secrets have a half-life, Spence. The longer you let them sit, the more toxic they get.”
I sigh, the sound echoing in the tiny studio. “If I tell him, it’ll be social suicide. I’ll never hear the end of it.”
Sara pokes my shoulder. “Or maybe he’ll think it’s cool that you punked the whole campus. Maybe he’ll see you.”
I stare at the ring lamp, the way the light bends around her and makes everything else look dimmer by comparison. “You’re more optimistic than I am.”
She laughs, the sound low and warm. “That’s why you come to me, Monty. To borrow some hope.”
I let myself laugh, and it feels weirdly good. Maybe the world won’t end if Aaron finds out. Maybe I could survive the fallout.
Sara stands, brushes off her hands, and offers me the mug. “Drink. You look like you’re about to faint.”
I take it, the handle warm from her grip. “Thanks.”
As I leave, the smell of paint thinner trails me down the hallway. I don’t know if I’m any closer to a solution, but for the first time all week, the air feels breathable.
—ΠΩ—
Back in my room, I sit at the edge of the bed and stare at my closet. The wig is still there, still daring me to pick it up and own it. I don’t. But I don’t hide it better, either.
I lie back, close my eyes, and replay the conversation with Sara. The words stick to me, tenacious as acrylic. It’s okay to want things. You don’t have to explain them away.
I think of Aaron, of the heat in the dark, and the way his voice always sounds like he’s challenging the universe to prove him wrong. I think about how it would feel to be seen by him—not just as a joke or a dare, but as a person.
Maybe that’s what I want.
I sit up, grab my note pad, and start to write. Not chemistry notes this time. Just a list:
1. Tell the truth, eventually.
2. Survive until then.
3. Don’t let Hunter make a TikTok about it.
It’s a plan. Not a good one, but better than nothing.
Somewhere outside, the world goes on. In here, I feel a little less alone.