Chapter 5
“Is this him?” Emily asked, turning her iPad to show me a picture of Logan. I took the tablet from her where she sat next to me on my bed, our backs against the cinder-block wall that was painted beige, not able to disguise the fact that it was the same basic material as in a prison.
“That’s him,” I confirmed. “Logan Fields. Sophomore. Defenseman. From Red Wing, Minnesota. Hmm. They called him Straw at the party. I assumed that was his last name.”
“Six-three, two hundred and ten pounds,” Emily said, reading further down the stats.
“They embellish those a lot,” I said, knowing that from my father’s comments on the Nebraska football roster every year.
“Is it embellished a lot?” Emily asked.
I thought about looking up at Logan when I’d slid off my barstool and stood next to him. And feeling the strength and bulk of his arms as I moved my hands up them to grasp his neck. “Not a lot, no. Maybe an inch or a few pounds, but not a lot.”
“And is this pic pretty accurate?” she asked.
I stared at it again. He wasn’t smiling, this being for the media guide and him wanting to look like a big, tough hockey player. But the dimple in his chin showed and the brown of his eyes seemed deep and smoky, even in a headshot. “Yeah, it is.”
“And why didn’t you stay, again? After he was fobbing the drunk girl off on her friend?”
I dropped my head against the wall. What had seemed like self-preservation (or at least pride-preservation) at the time, now seemed like a dumb decision. “I don’t really know. At the time it seemed…”
I sighed, and Emily just nodded. She spread her fingers on the screen, making Logan Fields’ handsome face larger, taking up most of the iPad’s screen. “Hmm. Not sure about that decision,” she said.
“Yeah, me neither,” I said.
I stared at the pic another minute, remembering the heat coming off him as he leaned his body over mine, not quite touching.
Enough. I may have blown it by not staying, but it was my first party at Bribury. Of many. There would be many opportunities beyond Logan Fields.
Just as I was drifting off to sleep, it hit me. And in my head, I hummed along to a song my Beatles fan grandfather used to sing.
Strawberry Fields Forever.
Straw.
* * *
We went to another party on Saturday night, this one in a dorm that was across the quad from Creyts.
I flirted with a couple of guys, but none of us hooked up with anyone.
The guys were fine, but I was seriously questioning why I hadn’t stayed at Logan Fields’ house.
The guys at the dorm couldn’t compare with his ruggedness.
They seemed like boys, which they were. And Logan was only a year older than my fellow freshmen, but his body was worlds apart.
Yeah, I’d missed the boat on that one, for sure.
On Sunday we all hung out in our suite. I looked over the paperwork about Chloe’s social media stuff.
I could have had a lawyer look at it, but it was pretty straightforward—what was “out of bounds” as far as what she could post, when she needed to ask permission to post, etc.
There was a nice clause that if there were a specified number of views of a post in which I (or Emily or Abby) was featured, a certain amount of dollars would be put in a “slush fund” for the suite, and we could all determine how to use it.
“Like pizza night, or a new fridge, or a TV, or whatever,” Chloe explained. “It’s not a lot of money. I’m still building up to the big sponsorships and collabs, but those view numbers will get me there a lot faster.”
“I didn’t realize this was such a lucrative thing,” Emily said as she read through the papers too.
She was flipping through her phone and sharing with me some of Chloe’s past viewer numbers.
And her number of followers for her Instagram and TikTok accounts.
She was a lot bigger on TikTok, but the Gram held its own.
“Wow, Chloe, this is really impressive,” I said. “I guess I didn’t realize what we were talking about.”
She beamed, her cupid mouth smiling wide. “The truth is, I’m still not really sure what we’re talking about. I’ve studied it, of course—how to get into the algorithms, how to have a signature smile or pose, or whatever, that drives the algo.”
“Signature smile?” I asked. I swiped through her page, and sure enough, the bulk of the thumbnails were close-ups of Chloe with a very toothy smile, her mouth open, and her eyes crinkling like she was mid-laugh.
“Huh,” I added. I looked at Chloe, and she gave me the algo-swaying look and then shrugged.
“It’s early stages, and there are a lot of college influencers, or wannabes, anyway, so there’s competition. But I like doing it, and my income through the last two years of high school was enough to pay for my room and board this year, so yeah, I’m going to keep at it.”
“Wow,” Abby said. “That’s amazing. Good for you.”
Emily and I both agreed and then put our signatures on the papers saying Chloe could film and post us with stipulations and permissions.
“Great. I promise it won’t be too intrusive. And I don’t do stuff just for the feeds, because people can smell thirsty a mile away.”
We all nodded, being experts in the disdain of the thirsty.
“But you never know, one of you may say or do something insane, and if it goes viral, our little slush fund could get us some bennies for the room.”
“Like a cleaning person to come in?” Abby asked. I’d noticed her side of her shared room with Chloe was a bit of a clutter zone. I imagined Chloe wouldn’t be including that side of the room in her posts.
“Maybe. Whatever. We could all vote on that,” Chloe said. She gathered the papers and brought them to the room she shared with Abby. When she returned, she offered to treat for pizza out to “seal the deal.”
Lily had texted me the name of a pizza place in Schoolport, and we Ubered there and had really good pizza while Chloe filmed a few short spots to maybe use later.
Close-ups of the string of cheese trailing from my mouth to my retreating piece of pizza probably weren’t going to get us the views and followers needed for a cleaning service or huge TV, but it seemed harmless enough.
We talked about our classes that started the next day.
There was a lot of overlap, but not so much on the sections of the classes.
Chloe took a lot of early morning classes.
She said this freed up her afternoons. Never a morning person, I’d gone the opposite route, and my first class didn’t start until ten.
We all had a life science class, but none together.
Emily and Abby shared the same section of pre-calc.
Abby and Chloe had the class that Syd’s boyfriend taught, though I held that personal detail back from them.
I had a psychology class no one else did, and a chemistry class that I wanted out of the way, as it had never been my strong suit in high school.
Comparing our schedules, it seemed we’d be crossing paths mostly at mealtimes out on campus, so we made a loose arrangement to meet at our dining hall to have lunch together on Mondays and Wednesdays and dinner together Tuesdays and Thursdays.
I was happy with that arrangement because I had plans every Wednesday night that I wasn’t quite ready to share with my roommates.
“And, of course, subject to change based on…”
“Something better coming up?” Abby said what we were all thinking.
We laughed, and I found that even though my roommates were not the girls I’d thought I’d be spending my freshman year with, I was beginning to genuinely gel with each of them.
By the time I was ready for my first class on Monday, the other girls had all left the suite. That was another reason for my later start—more space and quiet to get my thoughts together each morning.
I got through chemistry easily enough, though it confirmed I didn’t like the subject any more than I had two years ago on my first day of my senior year in high school. Whatever. Get some of that required science done.
We met for lunch and compared how things were going. Chloe was almost done for the day; Emily and Abby were off to their shared math class. And after scarfing down a turkey sandwich (after Chloe had shot each of our different lunch selections—BLTs, bitches!), I went on to my psychology class.
It was in a lecture hall that was about a third full, and our instructor was a woman named Marlo London. She gave us the class overview spiel and log-ins and info to get the syllabus and assignments online, prompting everyone to go to their laptops.
“Okay, now. I want all of you to close your laptops for a moment.”
Most of us did, though a few of the people around me seemed reluctant to do so. I understood it. A lot of people were probably multitasking and doing other things than actual note-taking or looking at the docs for this class.
“Trust me, it’ll still be there in a few minutes,” the professor said. The reluctant holdouts closed their laptops.
She was a white woman in, I’d say, her late fifties.
Her dark brown hair was short and tucked behind her ears with a wave of bangs, and her makeup was subtle, but had been done with care.
She wore taupe linen trousers that were wide bottomed and high waisted, with large white buttons on the hips, which looked cool as hell paired with her cream sleeveless sweater.
Gold bangle bracelets jangled when she motioned, and an interesting chunky necklace lay on her flattish chest. In a last gasp of summer, she wore wide-heeled espadrilles.
Tall and thin, and very polished, she looked like what I would envision of an East Coast college professor.