6. Dane
6
DANE
Already a few weeks back at Belford U and I wish my ass had gotten expelled after all.
Saving face is doing me no favors. It’s doing nobody any favors. Belford should have just quietly given me the boot, so I can be free to go back to working on my cars like I’ve been itching to do all week.
“Yo, Dane!” Marco’s voice carries over the campus quad, and I glance to my left to see him trekking over at a koala’s pace. “Figured that was your sunshine ass glaring at everybody.”
I roll my eyes as we head to the Business Building, listening to him ramble on about the surf today. I haven’t been here since the first day of the semester to sign my name on the sign-in sheet just so I’m not dropped from the class, but there’s a quiz today. One that’s worth ten percent of my grade.
We part ways as I head into the large lecture room and he goes to the stairwell. The moment I step foot inside, the unease in the air is both instant and palpable. Guess that’s what happens when you’re forced to take a leave of absence while the school does a shit job of figuring out who’s at fault for what happened during freshman year.
I should be a junior right now, but it took good ol’ Belford U over a year to realize I wasn’t at fault for what happened despite the general consensus.
I bet that if the chancellor and my father weren’t golfing buddies, if he didn’t have an arsenal of the best defense attorneys he could ring up at a moment’s notice, or if I were a poor street urchin like the Walker family made me out to be, I would have been expelled immediately that March. No hesitation. No holds barred.
Belford U doesn’t take kindly to any scandals within its poorly maintained, run-down walls.
Life was much sweeter last year when I was still in limbo. My father was riding my ass about everything, but that’s nothing new. I had so much free time on my hand that I was able to do whatever the fuck I wanted, since it wasn’t as if he had the time to babysit me.
Now that graduating from BU is an option for me again, he’s been on my neck about passing my classes and not taking for granted how lucky I was that I wasn’t expelled.
My phone buzzes with texts from Marco as I grab a seat in the back corner and stare blankly ahead at the front of the room, waiting for the quiz to be dealt with, so I can go back to my regularly scheduled program of being left alone.
And as I glance around at the sea of undistinguishable, unfamiliar, and unremarkable faces stealing peeks or outright gawking at me with apprehension—in a finance class I’m retaking since all of my spring semester classes were marked as incomplete, no less—I definitely feel like the luckiest son of a bitch in a world.
“What are you looking at?” I bark at the guy in front of me.
He abruptly winces and whips his head around, sinking in his seat as if he's trying to get out of my direct line of sight. Grabbing my phone to distract myself, I catch a glimpse of my still-healing but still-injured face on the cracked black screen. I finally have an actual reminder of the one thing I should feel lucky about.
I should feel lucky my ass didn’t get curb-stomped to death behind some fucking coffee shop in some dingy neighborhood that reeked of stale piss and cheap detergent.
I hit up a sorority house later this weekend with Marco for the first time in years. As it turns out, having a face that’s still fucked up just enough brings out plenty of sympathy and attention from girls.
The music playing through heavy bass speakers is awful. The alcohol is abysmal. I want to leave, even more so when this angry blonde chick won’t stop glaring daggers at me and running her mouth about Walker’s arm to everyone within earshot.
A weak-ass punk would go scampering out the door with his tail tucked between his legs. I’m no weak-ass punk, so I sit there and enjoy the fuck out of the alcohol provided, even though it’s practically fruity beer-flavored water.
I toss a wink at the curvy blonde when she brings up Walker’s arm again, which seems to be her snapping point. She breaks away from her small group of sorority sisters, storms over to me, and throws her finger in my face.
“Careful, blondie,” I warn, and she leans forward. A sharp pulse of agitation flares through me from how her fingertip is so damn close to poking my eye out. It takes everything I’ve got to keep my teeth from gritting.
“What are you going to do?” she taunts with a sneer, crossing her arms. “Break my arm, too?”
Even though she’s standing, I stare her down from where I’m lounging on the sofa. I don’t miss the hushed murmurs. The pointed stares. Something bitter crashes over me as time drags on for a never-ending minute.
“Maybe I’ll finish what I started,” I say finally, allowing myself a sly smirk, just to piss her off. “What’s Walker been up to lately?”
She visibly snarls, and I have to fight my scoff. “Your ass should have been expelled,” she hisses at me, her jaw clenching tight. “I don’t know why your sorry ass even bothered to come back here, but you better stay away from my sister. If you know what’s best for you, Kingsley, stay the fuck away .”
Is this chick for real ? What can she even do? Stab me with the pointy end of her heel? Get her sorority sisters to give me the cold shoulder?
“Like I’m interested in any of them,” I grunt, glancing around the sorority house, bored out of my mind. I drain the rest of the fruity concoction in the red plastic cup in irritable silence.
This is why I knew returning to Belford U was a bad idea. There are idiots like this chick who think they know what happened that night since Walker was able to run his big fucking mouth and push his narrative out first.
I don’t give a rat’s ass about defending myself from people who can’t do anything but jump to fucking conclusions based on flimsy fucking lies.
Besides, I don’t even want to bother. I know the truth—I remember what went down that night. Every nitty-gritty detail has been committed to memory and seared into my brain.
Even if I didn’t, I’ve got the fucking scar to show for it.