Chapter 2 #3
Evie nodded, reassured. “I know. Maybe I’ll try to make him jealous.”
She began dating other guys from Sigma Chi, but she didn’t draw Adam’s attention.
Instead, I did, as if seeing Evie in someone else’s embrace released Adam from any obligation to her.
Sometimes the back of my neck would get hot, and I’d find Adam staring.
He met me at the studio after his hockey games, so I wouldn’t have to walk home in the dark alone.
He brought me broken glass and buttons and polished granite, tiny treasures that he found, for my mosaics.
It made me think of the robin’s nest outside my window when I was little; how before there were eggs, the birds would flit back and forth with tinsel and twigs to fashion into a home.
One day, when the three of us were studying in our room, and Evie left to go to the bathroom, Adam grabbed my book. “Hey,” I said, reaching for it. “Give it back.”
He grinned. “Make me.”
He was bigger and stronger than I was, and even as I dove for the textbook, he easily managed to keep it away. I lunged for it, and he wrapped an arm around my waist and tackled me, rolling us over so that I was lying down and he was braced above, the book completely forgotten.
His body was pressed along the length of me. I felt my heart start to beat against his, like a conversation.
“What are you doing?” I managed.
“Ellie,” he said, his nose bumping into mine. “You have to know how I feel.”
Every emotion I’d tamped down since Evie introduced me to Adam in the bathroom at Sigma Chi flooded me.
When he’d touched my arm that night, it felt like he’d filled me with light.
But I knew better than to trust a boy. In Evie, I had a substitute sister, and there was no comparison.
So I had carefully kept a buffer zone of propriety, one that was exactly the width and depth of my friendship with Evie.
“Oh.”
The syllable was hardly even a breath, just a puff of understanding from Evie, who was standing in the doorway. She turned and ran.
“Evie,” I called. I shoved Adam off me and started after her, chasing her into the dorm stairwell. Her feet rang down the steps like gunshots.
Finally, I caught up to her and grabbed her wrist. “Stop,” I said, panting. “I didn’t know he was going to—-”
Evie laughed, completely without mirth. “Grow the fuck up, Eloise.” She sank down on a stair, pulling her knees to her chest. “Well, I guess now I know why he wasn’t interested.”
“Evie,” I said, sitting next to her. “I don’t want this. I don’t want him.”
She slid her gaze toward me. “Didn’t look that way.”
“I’ve never done anything to make Adam think that I .
. . that I’m into him. I would never do that to you.
It’s you and me against the world, right?
” No matter what electricity coursed through me when Adam was close by, this was girl code.
Evie was my ride--or--die, my best friend. I would choose her over everything.
She rubbed her palms on her knees, silent. Then a crooked smile broke over her face. “Doesn’t matter which one of us he wants,” Evie said. “He gets neither.” She bumped her fist against mine. “Chicks before dicks.”
“Sisters before misters,” I agreed.
Evie went to get us a bottle of wine from the place that didn’t card, to celebrate our cemented friendship. I returned to the dorm room to find Adam zipping up his backpack, already wearing his coat. He had the grace to look chagrined. “That was bad timing,” he admitted.
“That was a mistake,” I corrected.
“Why?”
“You know why,” I said. “It’s not fair to Evie.”
Adam looked at me, hands in his pockets, and when my gaze locked with his I saw a thousand words he’d never say to me, a thousand nights we’d never have.
I held out my hand. “Friends?”
“Friends,” he said after a moment, and he pressed his palm against mine.
For a while, it worked. Adam no longer met me after his practices to walk me home. Evie stopped sleeping with his frat brothers. We still met up, but we were a triumvirate.
Adam never so much as brushed my arm by drifting too close to me.
One night in March, Adam invited us to the Sci Li challenge that he and his Sigma Chi brothers were doing.
It was a Brown tradition—-participants had to go to each of thirteen floors in the Sciences Library, find a table, stand on it, and take a shot—-all without being evicted by a librarian.
If you mastered the challenge, you went to the basement stairwell and initialed and dated the wall.
Needless to say, if you succeeded, you were also piss--drunk.
I think Adam invited us because he didn’t trust his frat brothers to get him safely home after it was over.
On the Friday that this was to happen, I came home from an evening studio session to find Evie sick as a dog, her face shining with sweat. She was lying on the red shag rug we’d bought at Walmart that we called Dead Elmo. “I think it was the sushi.”
She’d eaten a dragon roll someone had left at the computer lab with a sign saying up for grabs. For the past hour, she’d been in the bathroom throwing up.
Evie buried her face in the fake fur carpet. “I have puked out my guts,” she moaned. “I have puked out my very soul.”
“Do you want me to take you to Health Services?” I asked.
“No, I want you to write my eulogy,” Evie said.
I dragged her into her bed and set the trash can next to the bed, just in case. “I’m going to get you some ginger ale and then I’ll call Adam and tell him he’s on his own.”
She grabbed my wrist with surprising strength. “You have to go. Someone has to keep him safe.”
It felt like a trick, like a test. I peered at Evie carefully, but her eyes were closed and she was moaning.
I found myself outside in a driving rain, huddling under an umbrella with a broken spoke.
I made my way to the Brown campus. It was only when I got to the Sciences Library that I realized I had no idea how to get in, since I was not a student.
I was standing outside the building, trying to come up with a plan, when one of Adam’s fraternity brothers recognized me.
Chad was the reigning beer pong champ at Sigma Chi. “Yo,” he said. “You here for Adam?”
I nodded.
“I got you.” Chad shrugged, then slung his arm around my shoulders and dragged me into the library. He grinned at the work--study student at the front desk swiping people inside. “She’s my guest,” he said.
“Thanks,” I said to Chad, turning toward the main reading room.
But he reached out and grabbed my wrist, hard. He pulled me into the dark stacks and yanked me up against his chest. “How about a little gratitude?” he said.
He’d been pregaming; I smelled it on his breath. “Thank you,” I said. “I’m going to go find Adam.”
“What’s the rush, babe? Every time I see him, he’s got two of you to keep him company. So you already know how to share.” With that, he slammed his mouth down on mine.
He was stronger than I was, and no matter how hard I pushed against him, his grip tightened. Finally, I bit down on his tongue, until I tasted blood. “What the fuck?” It was enough to shock him, but he didn’t let me go. “You little bitch.”
I brought my knee up between his legs, hard. He doubled over, keening, and I ran.
I stumbled down the staircase, glancing quickly at every floor while also checking over my shoulder to see if Chad was following me.
It wasn’t until I got to the eighth level that I found Adam.
I was nearly hysterical, teary, and all I wanted to do was collapse into his arms and get the hell out of the library.
But Adam was glassy--eyed and flushed and didn’t seem to see my panic or my disheveled clothing.
“Ellie!” he shouted with drunk delight, and then, remembering he was in a library, he whispered my name.
“This is my shixth sot,” he said, like he was telling me a secret.
His hair was falling over his eyes, boyish. He looked loose and happy, and it unknotted everything that had gotten tangled inside me. I shivered, thinking of Chad.
Adam noticed. He jumped off the table, staggered a little, and then draped his coat—-a heavy hockey fleece that said brown bears—-over my shoulders. It smelled like pine and Old Spice. Like him. He pulled the drawstrings of the hoodie, bringing me a little closer.
“How about we just get out of here?” I suggested.
“Winners never quit and quitters never . . .” Adam’s voice trailed off, and he frowned.
“Win?”
“Exactly.” He let go of me and lifted the bottle in a toast. “Six!” he bellowed.
“Evie’s sick,” I dutifully reported.
“Sucks.” He smiled at me. “That means you’re my wingman tonight.”
Since I couldn’t convince Adam to leave, I decided I’d rush him through this stupid challenge as fast as I could.
By the third floor, I was surprised Adam remembered my name.
By the second, another fraternity brother who’d been keeping pace with him had jumped off a table and simply collapsed on the floor, out cold.
Finally, we reached the basement, where Adam carefully initialed the wall. “Lesssgo,” he slurred.
I pulled on the back of his shirt. “Hang on,” I said. Taking the Sharpie, I added the date, like all the other initials in the hallway.
He put both hands on my shoulders. “This is why I like you. You never do what I think you’re gonna do.”
We stepped out of the library into the driving rain. When I tried to open my umbrella, it gave up the battle and folded in on itself, useless. “Lessget a drink,” Adam said.
“You’ve had plenty.” I tried to pull him toward Wriston Quad, but he refused to move. We played tug--of--war until a security guard started toward us.
Adam panicked. “I can’t get stopped by campus police. Coach Gaudet will bench me.” He grabbed my hand and we started running away from the library and the guard.