Chapter 44
Ilena
Harvard University
Twenty-One Years Before the Outing
Ilena stepped into Harvard Yard alone. Her mom had dropped her off at the gate right on Mass. Ave. Her sister hadn’t come
along for the ride. Lexington was only forty minutes away. It wasn’t like she couldn’t see them again. Besides, she knew exactly
where she needed to go.
She rolled her suitcase into Straus, breathing in the smell of cleaning products and the must and mildew they didn’t quite
cover. The building was named after the co-owner of Macy’s in New York and his wife, both of whom died in the sinking of the
Titanic. Quite the prophecy that Harvard laid out for the class of incoming freshmen.
Ilena checked her assignment. First floor, roommate, Mallory Latham.
Ilena breathed, practiced a “Hey, Mallory” under her breath.
The way her hands were shaking came as a surprise.
It wasn’t like she didn’t have friends in high school, but that’s what they were.
Friends in school, not outside of it. SAT prep, a full slate of AP classes, debate team, and her internship at the top PR firm in Boston didn’t leave time for much else.
And though Ilena was never good enough for her mother, her mother also thought that no one was ever good enough for Ilena.
Her mother’s judgment laced the air in their home, seeped into every throw pillow, lived in the walls like tobacco from a lifetime of chain-smoking.
“Did you see those tits?” an excited boy’s voice said.
It came from farther down the hall.
“See it? Felt it. Right here!” a second male voice shouted before the sound of something large and heavy hitting the floor made Ilena flinch.
She hugged her arm around the white ceramic lamp her mother had allowed her to bring because she always thought it was a bit too pedestrian anyway and continued down the hall, arriving at the room that was supposed to be hers. It didn’t face the idyllic front of Ivy Yard
but instead was on the side that bordered the street. It was louder and less private than Ilena had imagined. And also, full
of two boys.
“Uh, you do know that’s someone’s stuff you just dropped,” the first said.
“The faster I drop that someone’s stuff the closer I get to stuffing that someone—you know, with my dick. Up high! Aw, fuck it, you snooze, you lose, roomie.”
A boy in a white T-shirt and baggy shorts raced out of the room, into the hall, flying past Ilena and adding a whiff of sweat
and some woody cologne to the already nauseating miasma. A piece of paper, the same size as Ilena’s room assignment, fell
out of his pocket.
She released her grip on the handle of her suitcase, hating that she wished her mom was here.
She pocketed the paper and peered into the dorm room.
The remaining boy’s back was to her. His hair, a dirty blond, skated down the back of his neck toward the hood of his sweatshirt.
He was tall, though Ilena could tell she was still taller, her height the one thing her father gave her that her mother couldn’t take away.
She was about to clear her throat when she saw him reach into a cardboard box at his feet.
Stealing? He was stealing? She should do something or tell someone, shouldn’t she? Or maybe not. Maybe this wasn’t her room
after all. Maybe there had been some mix-up with the room assignments. She reached into her pocket for the paper the first
boy had dropped, when the one inside the dorm room arched his back. Pressed to his face was something lavender. A cloth. No,
panties.
He turned. His face was still covered. But his eyes shone with shock and fear. When Ilena remained mute, he began to relax.
“You’re even hotter than she is.” Then he shoved one of his hands down his pants.
Ilena fled. She clutched her pedestrian lamp and grabbed her rolling suitcase and ran down the hall and through the yard and
onto the street as if her mother would still be there. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not here, not at
Harvard, the school her mother had made known for the past five years was the only one Ilena could attend to gain her mother’s
respect—gain, not keep. Hot tears pooled in Ilena’s eyes as she gathered both the nerve to report the boy and the words to
explain what he did to the roommate she hadn’t even met.
Cars honked as an SUV too big for these small, windy Cambridge streets failed at trying to parallel park, and Ilena realized
she was standing opposite Straus. She ambled along the wrought-iron fence until she found the window of what she now knew
was her first-floor dorm room. The glass was raised, the shade lowered only halfway.
The boy faced her, hoodie drawn low, as he masturbated into that pair of purple underwear. Too arrogant or too oblivious to
care that his pumping arm was perfectly visible from the street.
“I’ll need those back when you’re finished,” she heard a distant female voice say.
The boy’s arm stopped pumping. His eyes widened, and this time, when he saw Ilena right before he turned around, he didn’t
smile.
The girl inside Straus, a blur of light brown hair and black shirt, flopped onto the bed with her back to the window. “You
can go now,” she said, flatly, as if bored.
“I wasn’t . . . you can’t tell—” the boy stammered.
“You were, and I can anytime it suits me. Oh, and thanks for carrying my stuff from the T station. I just did my nails so . . .”
Ilena hears a zipper and watches as the boy flings the underwear to the ground.
“Crazy bitch,” he said.
“Now, now, no snap judgments. You don’t know me well enough to ascertain that.” She held out her hand to assess her fingernails.
“This is going to be a spectacular year. I can just feel it, can’t you?”
The boy kept his hoodie low, but his hands tightened into fists. Ilena drew in a sharp breath. He’s going to hit her.
“Uh, I’d be careful, if I were you,” the girl said, jutting her chin toward the doorway where a small group of bodies had
clustered.
The boy seemed to take in the gathering crowd before storming out of the room. And then, before this audience of brand-new
Harvard freshmen, the girl picked up the underwear with a tissue. “Dammit. My favorite pair. Anyone have quarters for the
laundry?”
The titters of nervous laughter couldn’t stop Ilena’s heart from pounding. This girl—Ilena’s new roommate, Mallory—appeared
unfazed. Inside, she might have been raging or fighting tears or both, but outside, she was calm.
Admiration twinged with sadness for Mallory wound through Ilena as she started for the entrance to the building.
Then she remembered the boy’s room assignment.
She dug the piece of paper out of her pocket.
Harvard’s practice was to list the history of everyone who’d lived in the room before you.
As Ilena read the list and compared the location of the room these two boys were assigned to against her own, heat rose in her chest. And then a prank she and her dad had pulled using Ilena’s little sister came into her head.
Holding her lamp and the handle of her suitcase, Ilena headed for the hardware store.