What the Tarnation?
Gray clouds collected in the Carolina winter sky, casting gloom onto the campus landscape. Handing the taxi driver a crisp twenty, I slid off the plastic taxi seat and stood in front of Grogan Hall. Having one semester under my belt, I’d learned a few things:
1. Avoid wet riverbanks—breeding grounds for chigger patches. And chiggers can lead to a whole lot of trouble.
2. Don’t fool around with Mitch. Despite his cute looks and smooth-talking southern, he’s too young.
3. Never sip a drink Bridget offers.
4. Avoid contact with Nash Wilson and Billy Ray.
5. Refocus on Clay Sorenson.
Being a seasoned freshman, I was ready to navigate my way through semester number two. Carrying a duffel on my shoulder, I raced down the twenty-six steps toward the lobby. I’d missed the girls and wanted to hear details about their holiday breaks.
Inside the dorm elevator, I pressed number seven and wondered what my chances were of having another class with Clay. Probably the same odds as winning the jingle bell scratch card jackpot.
With a jolt the metal doors opened, delivering a rancid stink. Holding my hand on the door, I poked my head into the hallway and hoped that it was the wrong floor. It wasn’t. Hustling toward my room, I searched my database of disgusting to identify the smell. My best match: old tennis shoe inserts splashed with sapsago cheese. Some aspects of dorm life I hadn’t missed.
Before I unlocked my door, I knocked on Macy’s. Giving her a hug, I asked, “What’s that smell?”
“It’s not me. We’re lucky we’re on the far end of the floor. It’s worse near the elevators.”
From behind us, Katie Lee said, “Y’all are lookin’ marvelous.” Out of breath, she asked, “Can I get a hand emptying my car? Mom sent me back with groceries, and I got a new boom box for Christmas.”
Near the elevator Katie Lee pinched her nose. “Good Lord.”
“Gross Grogan,” Macy said.
“Something is seriously decayed. Has anyone looked for a dead animal in the stairwell?”
“That’s creepy,” I said. “How would anything get past the lobby and into an enclosed stairway?”
“I don’t do basements or stairwells,” Macy said. “I’m certainly not checking.”
Big Blue’s back seat and trunk heaved. Katie Lee had brought back more than groceries and a boom box. Her stash also included an overstuffed upholstered chair, a beanbag, a coffee table, and all her sweaters, coats, and winter gear. The armchair, covered in a psychedelic stripe, poked out from a bungee cord lock system meant to keep the trunk closed. It took us three trips to unload. When we finished, you couldn’t see floor in our room.
Making an excuse about a phone call, Macy said, “Good luck with all that.”
Trapped behind a mound of stuff, I stated the obvious. “Katie Lee, we don’t have room.”
Leaving her coat on, she grabbed her car keys. “Rach, we need to build up.”
I looked at my chest. “Mine will never look built up.”
“Not boob implants, a loft. Come on.”
BEHIND A QUICKIE MARKET, Katie Lee kept the engine running while I stuffed milk crates into Big Blue.
“Try ‘n’ get all gray ones,” she’d said.
I ignored her and rushed to fill up the car. I just wanted this loft built so I could get to campus and look for Clay Sorenson. He had to eat, and I guessed the cafeteria was the best location for a sighting. I planned to linger there as much as possible, and building a loft cut into my surveillance work.
I’d filled the car with crates when the employee door of the convenience store opened. I leapt to the front seat. “If I’m going to get arrested, it better not be for this.”
Katie Lee jammed the gas pedal. “Buckle in,” she said and gunned us out of the alley.
It took three more trips to the parking lot to carry the milk crates into our room. Somewhere in the hallway, I heard Hugh say hey to Macy. A knuckle rap clunked our wood veneer, and we watched the door inch open a quarter of the way before it nailed the pile of furniture and crates.
Half of Hugh’s face jutted around the door, and he shimmied in. “Y’all look hotter than jalapeño corn bread.”
Not initially recognizing him, I squealed.
“Oh my Lord,” Katie Lee said.
“You shaved it off!” I shouted, unable to resist touching Hugh’s smooth upper lip.
“I like the look,” Katie Lee said.
An appreciative grin raised his cheeks.
We gave him respectable hugs in exchange for help building the loft. By dinnertime, my bed towered above Katie Lee’s on two four-by-six pieces of lumber that rested on a foundation of vertically stacked milk crates.
“Is it sturdy?” I asked.
Lifting me up by my waist, he said, “There’s one way to find out.”
A muffled “eeew” and a scream erupted from down the hall.
Hugh lowered me to the floor. “Someone got a birthin’ goat?”
Macy bounded into our room. “That sounded like Bridget.”
Already in the hall, Katie Lee said, “C’mon.”
A herd of Lookie-Lous, including Francine, pinched their noses as they gathered outside Bridget’s room. After a quick snoop, dorm residents made speedy exits. The open door released an aroma that overpowered what had lingered in front of the elevators. Francine waved her hand in front of her face. “Lord, girl, your room has more stink than the public park porta-potties on the Fourth of July.”
Bridget’s bags lay in a heap on her floor. Something I didn’t want to identify had been splattered across her baby-blue cement block walls. The cranberry and donut cream goo had dried in a design that reminded me of my dad’s painter’s apron. Paralyzed, she cupped her hands over her mouth and nose. Under rapid blinking, tears welled above her reddened cheeks.
On tiptoes, I peered from behind Hugh’s shoulder. “Your room is trashed.”
Her drawers and closets had been hastily emptied. Clothes and bedding lay strewn across the room. Two twin mattresses spilled from their frames. When I noticed the slits in them, I wished I hadn’t made the insensitive comment about her messy room.
Forgetting to turn on his word-filter device, Hugh said, “It looks like someone hurt themselves jackin’—ouch, Macy.”
Macy hadn’t smacked him quickly enough.
Bridget gasped. “Oh God, I’m going to be sick if that’s what’s on my walls.”
Wondering whose boyfriend she fooled around with now, I asked, “Did your roommate do this?”
“She wouldn’t. We were friends. Besides, she left for break before I did.”
Katie Lee pushed buttons on Bridget’s phone. “I’m calling campus security.”
It must have been a slow night, because Tuke Walson arrived just minutes after Katie Lee hung up. Ironed creases ran down the center of his pants, and a white undershirt applied pressure to the buttons that held his shirt together.
“Any idea who could’ve done this?”
“No sir,” Bridget said.
“Did you lock up before break?”
“Of course she did,” Katie Lee said.
Asking questions, taking Polaroids, and jotting notes, Tuke poked around the room. He stopped in front of the electric heater and pulled a sweat shirt off an open container of calcium-fortified milk. “Leave an open container of milk near a heat source, and you got yourself a carton of nasty.” He crinkled his face and put the sweat shirt back. “That there is one cooked quart.” It didn’t take him long to tell Bridget, “I’m finished. Someone from the janitorial staff will contact you.”
Exasperated and looking at the disarray, Bridget didn’t know if anything had been stolen. He sympathized with her and said, “If there’s anything missing, you can file a supplemental report.”
“Is this going around?” Katie Lee asked. “Has there been a rash of milk-bomb break-ins?”
“No, ma’am. This is the first I’ve encountered, but college kids never cease to amaze me. Exploding toilets, now that buggers things into a real mess. My guess is that you know who did this. An ex-boyfriend?”
Pulling a pen from his pocket protector, he scraped at the crud on the wall.
Hugh lifted his nose from under his shirt to say, “You’re a brave man.”
“That there’s condiment,” Tuke said.
“Is that what you call it?” Hugh asked.
He shrugged. “It’s all-American. Everyone puts ketchup and mayo on popcorn shrimp and hush puppies.” After placing a business card on Bridget’s dresser, he said, “Ladies, be sure and lock your doors. And call me if you notice anything out of the ordinary.”
Macy liberally sanitized the seventh-floor hallway with an entire can of Lysol. Katie Lee borrowed fans, and I disposed of the foul milk in the outside Dumpster. When I returned, Hugh had refilled the mattress stuffing and placed them back in their frames. He motioned Katie Lee and Bridget outside the door, and I heard him offer his escort services to accompany them to the basement washing machines.
“I’m totally freaked out,” Bridget said. She asked Katie Lee, “Can I sleep in your room tonight?”
Without asking me, Katie Lee said, “Of course.”
Hugh huddled with the two, wrapping them in his arms. “If y’all feel you need extra protection…”
“Forget it, Hugh,” Katie Lee said. “You’re not sleeping in our room.”
“I was going to say I have a Smith and Wesson snub nose you can borrow. It’s compact. Help ya sleep soundly.”
“Keeping a firearm in a dorm is so illegal,” Bridget said. “You realize you could get expelled.”
“Let’s just say I take self-defense seriously.”
“Where is it stashed?” Bridget whispered.
“It’s not welcome in our room,” I shouted.
Hugh was crazy to loan Bridget a firearm. She’d probably get wigged out with dorm noises and accidently shoot someone on their way to the hall bathroom. He lowered his voice and said something else to Bridget.
I moved toward the door to further protest the gun thing, but he distracted me when he said, “Hey, I know some guys who are throwing an off-campus party tomorrow night. Y’all wanna come?”
“Definitely,” Katie Lee said before she left with Bridget to throw in a load of laundry.
Francine emerged from the room across from Bridget’s. She’d put a relaxer on her hair and warmed the gelatinous conditioner under a Saran Wrap shower cap that was secured with a gigantic rubber band. Lingering in Bridget’s doorway, she said, “Hugh, I need someone about your height to help me hang a shelf in my room.”
“That’s what all the women say.”
“Are you daft?” she asked. “If I needed somethin’ personal taken care of, I wouldn’t be dressed like this.”
Francine dragged Hugh down the hall, and the two disappeared. Macy shut Bridget’s door.
“Are you crazy?” I asked. “It still stinks in here.”
Bridget’s phone rang. We both looked at it, and on the third ring Macy picked it up. She told the person on the other line that Bridget wasn’t around and asked if she could take a message. When she hung up, she wore a look I’d seen before. It was the “this is fucked-up” look.
“Who was that?”
Macy scrunched her nose. “The accent was thick. I think he said Billy Ray.”
“You’re kidding? Why would he call her?”
Macy shrugged, “Maybe I misunderstood.”
“This vandalism thing is weird.”
She stuck her head out the window. When she brought it back in she asked, “Who could get in here over break and do this to her room?”
“I don’t know,” I said. My mind went into overdrive, and Bridget’s behavior toward Katie Lee nettled at me. Why did she continue to hover in a deceitful friendship with my roommate? Why not spill what she’d done or cut ties? It could only be one of two reasons: a cheater high—having gotten away with naughty sex—or Katie Lee had something that Bridget wanted.
NOTE TO SELF
Buy a jingle bell scratch-off lotto ticket at the quickie mart.
Vandalism on the seventh floor. Completely disturbing.
Bridget is sleeping in our room. I didn’t agree to a loft so our room could accommodate three.