9. Elle
9
ELLE
L oud pounding comes from my door. I jerk upright. Blinking sleep from my eyes, I throw out a hand and fumble for my phone on the white nightstand next to the bed. The screen reveals that it’s only six o’clock.
The door vibrates as someone pounds on it again.
“Campus police,” a man’s voice calls from the other side of the door. “Please open the door.”
Alarm crackles through me. Oh God, has something happened?
Jumping out of bed, I scramble over to the door. It’s not locked, so I simply push down the handle and throw it open. Panic still courses through me as I look between the three people standing in the corridor outside. Two men and one woman. All with serious expressions on their faces.
“Has something happened?” I blurt out.
The man at the front looks back at me with hard brown eyes. The name tag on his uniform says Davidson .
“We have received an anonymous tip,” Davidson says, his tone clipped. “Please stand aside while we search your room. ”
For a few seconds, I simply cannot comprehend the words that just came out of his mouth. An anonymous tip? Search my room? For what?
In the end, all I manage to say is, “What?”
He just heaves an exasperated sigh and starts forward.
I’m forced to scramble to the side to avoid getting mowed down by him. The other two follow Davidson into my room as well.
From outside in the hall, I can see several of my sorority sisters. All of them are still wearing pajamas, and they linger close to their own doors as they stare at me with eyes filled with both suspicion and worry.
I suddenly become acutely aware of the fact that I’m still only wearing tiny shorts and a thin top with spaghetti straps, and no bra underneath. Yanking up my arms, I cross them over my chest as I turn back to the three people now spreading out inside my room.
“Please,” I say, dread lacing my voice. “What’s going on?”
None of them reply.
The woman starts going through my closet while the second guy searches through my desk. Davidson stops in front of my set of drawers and pulls out the topmost one.
My heart leaps.
“No,” I blurt out, and lurch forward.
Davidson whirls around, his eyes flaring with suspicion. Raising a hand, he holds it up to stop my advance. “Stand aside.”
“Please.” Mortification crashes over me, turning my cheeks flaming red, as I motion towards the open drawer. “Not that drawer.”
“Why not?”
Next to us, the woman pauses her search of the closet and twists to look at us. Then she rolls her eyes at her colleague. “Jeez, man, can’t you tell? It’s her underwear drawer.” Stepping away from the closet, she flicks her wrist at him. “I’ll take that one.”
Davidson scowls but steps back and lets her search it while he moves to the closet instead.
“Thank you,” I say quietly.
She nods while efficiently searching through the drawer. When she finds nothing, she moves on to the next one. And then the next.
After pushing aside a stack of sweaters, she pulls out several small bags made of clear plastic.
My mouth drops open.
Utter incredulity clangs inside my skull as I watch her hold up those bags.
Drugs.
There are drugs in my drawer.
“That’s not mine,” I press out, but the words stumble over my tongue.
She gives me a look that says, that’s what they all say .
“No, please,” I continue. “I swear. They’re not mine.”
Davidson and the other guy turn towards us. Both of them scoff at my explanation.
“Alright, come on,” Davidson says. Shutting the closet door, he spins his hand in the air and gives me a commanding look. “You need to come with us.”
“What? No, I…” I look between the three of them, but they all just stare back at me with stern expressions. Desperation washes over me. “Please, this is a mistake.”
“Drug use is strictly prohibited at Bercester University.”
“I know. Please. I know that. I swear, I don’t do drugs.”
“Then why were you hiding them in your drawer? ”
“I wasn’t!” I look from face to face while panic sears through me. “I’m telling you, they’re not mine.”
Davidson heaves a sigh. “Save it until after the drug test.”
Hope flares in my chest. A drug test. Yes. That will clear me.
I nod enthusiastically. “Yes, of course.”
That only seems to make Davidson more suspicious, but he doesn’t comment on it. Instead, he just jerks his chin at me to get going. I flick a glance down at my flimsy pajamas. Heat sears my cheeks again.
Clearing my throat, I look between Davidson and his colleagues. “Can I please put some clothes on first?”
It looks like Davidson wants to refuse, but the woman nods and replies, “Of course.”
She waits in my bedroom with me while I change into proper clothes. As if they’re worried that I’m going to try to flee. The thought of it is so absurd that I almost laugh. What do they think I’m going to do? Climb out the window and scale the side of a building?
Once I’m wearing a skirt and a button-down shirt, I feel better. This will all be resolved in no time. They will do the drug test and realize that I was telling the truth. And then they will apologize and let me go. No problem.
Giving myself a nod, I walk out the door and into the corridor.
The moment I have left my bedroom, my newfound confidence crumbles like a castle made of sand.
Brandi and half of the other girls are standing there in the hallway, watching me.
Suddenly, it’s difficult to breathe. I try to swallow past the desperation clogging my throat, but it barely works .
“This is just a misunderstanding,” I say to Brandi while Davidson starts us down the hall.
Brandi says nothing. Only looks back at me with hard blue eyes.
The other girls watch me with expressions varying from confusion to disappointment to wariness as I walk past them and continue down the stairs with three members of campus police around me. I have never been more embarrassed in my life.
“It’s a misunderstanding,” I call back up to them as panic shoots through me again. “It will be cleared up in no time. I promise.”
Turns out that it was in fact not cleared up in no time. I spent most of the day sitting at a table in an otherwise mostly empty room while Davidson stared at me from the other side of it and tried to get me to admit that the drugs were mine.
Even when the drug test came back clean late that afternoon, he wouldn’t accept that I was innocent. It almost felt as if he had a personal vendetta against me. Or against people like me, at least. He kept insisting that I was at least guilty of owning drugs.
Since I’m pretty sure that I know who the drugs came from, though I still can’t figure out how he got them into my room, I wanted to just scream to the whole world that it was Tristan Kane. But I couldn’t. Because I don’t have any actual proof of it. It would just be my word against his. And the moment Davidson asks me to explain how Tristan managed to plant the drugs in my room, my whole argument would fall apart. Because I have no answer to that question .
But I know that it was him.
Somehow it was him.
So I latched onto that anger and used it to sustain myself while I kept repeating over and over again that the drugs weren’t mine.
In the end, I was released with a warning.
The fact that I now have a drug incident on my university record makes me want to throw up. But at least they didn’t report it to the actual police.
Now, I just have one more awful thing to do before I can go to bed and pretend that this mortifying day never happened.
Face my sorority.
I draw in careful breaths to calm the panic pulsing inside me as I close the final distance to our front door. I have barely eaten anything today, and right now, I’m glad I haven’t. Because my stomach is rolling.
After taking one more moment to compose myself, I push down the handle and open the door.
My heart drops.
Ice spreads through my veins as I stare at the items waiting for me in the short hallway beyond.
My suitcases.
All packed up and waiting.
Standing there frozen on the threshold, I simply stare at them. My pulse pounds in my ears. This cannot be happening. Please tell me that this isn’t?—
“You’re back.”
The sound of Brandi’s voice startles me out of my rising panic. Blinking, I drag my gaze up to her face as she walks into the hallway. I glance behind her in search of Mei, who has been the kindest one here, but there is no sign of her or any of the others. Only Brandi’s unforgiving eyes meet me.
“I, uhm…” I glance between her and my suitcases before meeting her eyes again. “It was a misunderstanding. They let me go.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Brandi replies. Her tone is final. “You do not uphold our values.”
“I was set up. I?—”
“And you do not uphold our reputation,” she continues, cutting me off. “You swore that your personal… issues would not affect our sorority. But they have.”
“I’m sorry. I’m so?—”
“Which means that you are no longer a part of our sorority. We have cleaned out your room.” She motions towards my suitcases. “Please take your things and leave.”
I can’t breathe. Throwing out a hand, I brace myself on the wall as I try to draw oxygen into my lungs. My head spins.
“Where am I supposed to go?” I whisper, my voice coming out sounding just as desperate as I feel.
Brandi presses her lips together and crosses her arms before saying, “Mei was kind enough to call up to the dormitories and arrange a room for you there.”
I nod, because I don’t know what else to do. They’re kicking me out of the sorority. After less than a week. Oh God, what is my mom going to say? This was her sorority. I was supposed to continue her legacy. And instead, I have been banished in less than a week.
“Do not approach us,” Brandi continues. “At lunch or at any other time. You are no longer welcome at our table or in our home.”
With my hand still against the wall for support, I curl my fingers into a fist in an effort to suppress the mass of emotions assaulting me. Dragging in an unsteady breath, I raise my head again and meet Brandi’s eyes.
“Please.” I don’t even care that I’m begging right now. “Please, don’t do this.”
“I do empathize with you,” she says, but there is no empathy in her tone. “And I do feel sorry for you that you have gotten caught up in something unpleasant. But I refuse to let my reputation, and all of my fellow sisters’ reputation, get tarnished because of you. It’s nothing personal. It’s simply a matter of protecting ourselves and our futures.”
I swallow.
For a few seconds, we just watch each other in silence.
Then she takes my two suitcases and rolls them towards me. The sound of the tiny wheels rolling across the floorboards is deafening in the thick silence. I stare at the two suitcases as they come to a halt in front of me. There are stickers of cheerful pink and yellow flowers on them. Normally, I like the sight of them. They make me feel happy. Now, I just want to rip them off and set them on fire.
Drawing in an unsteady breath, I reach out and grab the handle of the suitcases. The breath doesn’t get past my throat, so I abandon my effort to draw it all the way into my lungs and instead simply turn around and walk away.
My suitcases scrape against the asphalt as I start in the direction of the dormitories.
I have been kicked out of my sorority and sent away like a homeless dog with fleas.
And it’s all his fault.