Emma
Emma decided not to follow her roommates for three very simple reasons. One: her feet hurt. It was too close to Uber and too far to walk in her Converse, and the number two reason occurred to her as she headed toward the train station—there was nowhere to hide. If they’d been closer to campus, it could have been an accident, running into them, but how would it look now? Still, as she wove through the terminal at Suburban Station, joining a small parade of students and business people, all of them ignoring the homeless men sitting near the walls, lumpy and smelly and dark as bags of trash, a third smaller, stupid, completely annoying reason roared through her, inflaming her cheeks with embarrassment and anger. Her hair had always had a tiny hint of red in it, mixed with the mostly gold highlights that came out every summer, and when she blushed, as she was too prone to do, it just made everything about her look red. Red as a slap, red as a scab.
She flushed not from effort or fear or flirtation—all of these caused it, too—but from hurt. They were all together without her. Shopping. Having fun. Eating lunch. Talking shit about her. They were hanging out without her, and it didn’t matter if one of them was a slut or they were all basically sluts, if Fiona had recruited every single one of them. It stung. How stupid she’d been to think they just all had their own busy lives! What a freaking idiot to think they were just busier than she was! She felt like an absolute fool, the youngest always, still behind in the ways of the world.
Riding the train, the truth of it all sunk in hard, filling her chest with a tight kind of dread. What else were they hiding from her?
When she got home, she deleted everything on her iPhone that wasn’t essential, disabled the GPS, and put it in the top drawer of her bureau, underneath her pajamas. She’d only open Snapchat from the dorm from now on, to find information, not to give any away. They would never know when she left or where she was going or what she was doing. They could be secretive? Well, she could be, too.
On her laptop, she disabled iCloud, turned off location services. She taped over her camera, disabled the microphone, cleared her cache and her search history, and emptied the trash permanently.
She’d never had a long-term boyfriend to hide something from. Not a parent. No one. Her mom never snooped; she didn’t believe in it. Maggie wasn’t a pushover, she wasn’t a fool, but as Emma had overheard her telling her aunt Kate before carpooling kids to a concert on the Parkway, she wasn’t going to look through her daughter’s stuff like it was evidence. Kids needed some privacy, too.
Emma was unpracticed at something most teens were good at, but she was about to get very, very good at covering her tracks. She would use the library computer and her burner phone. No one would know what she was really up to. This was an investigation now, and it was important that no one around her had any idea what she was doing until she knew what shape it was taking. Especially because, despite Taylor’s gossipy half-drunk confession, which, when she recalled her exact words, “she’s your roommate, so I just assumed that you knew,” she realized could simply be a way of her lording it over her. I’m closer to her than you are. You sleep next to her, close enough to hear her prayers, yet don’t know what’s in her fucking heart. They clearly were sticking together. Four against one was crappy odds.
Then, as she started to Google the owner of Beck’s and look up the Facebook profiles of everyone named Cara Stevens, another sickening thought crept in. That none of her roommates cared what she was or wasn’t doing. She wasn’t a threat or a problem. No one would ever think to search her computer or phone. If they were worried about what Emma thought, would Fiona even have the guts to dress how she dressed and come and go as she did? If Taylor cared, would she have told her what she’d told her? Well. She’d show them, wouldn’t she, she thought as she messaged the Cara Stevens in Vancouver first.
As she was reading all about Brian Beck, the owner of Beck’s, and his mission to make Philadelphia the best-dressed city in America—a goal Emma thought, based on her childhood in South Philly, where the men tended toward bowling shirts, and her adolescence on the Main Line, where the fathers wore wool sweaters with patched elbows, was an impossible dream—she got a message back from one of her Cara Stevenses. Yes, she was the author of that article, and yes, she’d be happy to talk. Bingo. But she had to call Emma back from a pay phone.
A pay phone? Emma thought with horror. Did they still have those? Well, maybe in Vancouver they did. Vancouver seemed about as far away and foreign a place as Croatia or Tasmania.
She gave Cara the number of her new burner phone, packed up her laptop, and headed all the way across campus to the one place she knew Fiona and all her roommates would have absolutely no interest in going after their little shopping or lunch date. The synagogue, B’nai Sholom. She sat on a low wall outside, alone. The only time she’d seen it busy was on a Saturday or during a Jewish holiday, and even then, it was quieter than anywhere else.
She gathered her thoughts, made a few coded notes in a doc that she named “Lunar Eclipse,” and buried it in a folder called “Science Labs.” Then she copied it onto Dropbox for later use at the library.
Five minutes later, Emma’s phone rang.
“Cara,” she said breathlessly.
“Yep,” she replied. Her voice was deep and scratchy, as if she’d just woken up. Emma realized there was a time difference; she had to think of that kind of thing.
“Sorry for the subterfuge, but we don’t know each other.”
“Right. I could be…the police, or—”
“If you were the police, I’d be thrilled. Shocked but thrilled. I was more worried that you’re a professor. Or a horny man out for revenge.”
“I am neither.”
“Doesn’t sound like it.”
“But full disclosure: I’m a female student.”
“I know.”
“You do?”
“Saw you on Instagram. Cute sunglasses, by the way.”
Of course. Crap! She’d have to change her privacy settings on social media, maybe delete her accounts. She’d have to think about that carefully, though; her mother would freak out and worry that something was wrong.
“So, what, you’re helping out with sexual assault research, interning at Rolling Stone or Teen Vogue or something? Somewhere that still gives a tiny shit about investigative journalism?”
“No.”
“Well, what story are you working on then?”
“I’m working for the student newspaper.”
There was a brief pause, and Emma heard a sharp exhale of breath. It occurred to her that she’d rarely heard anything so clearly and wondered if pay phones had better microphones than cell phones. If technology was actually going backward. Whoa, that would be a cool story, too.
“You have got to be kidding me.”
Crap, she was about to lose her! She had to defend herself and Jason. If not her, Jason.
“I know our paper is, like, nothing to a real reporter like you, but I feel the evidence I’ve found—”
“No, that’s not it.”
She paused. “What is it then?”
“Well, is Leandros still in charge at Semper?”
“Yes.”
“Ha, yeah. Well, more on him later. Or you can just Google it and find out how in bed he is with all of Philadelphia. So who knows about your story and your research? Just your editor?”
“Yes,” she lied.
“So the story hasn’t been killed yet?”
“Well, no, that’s why I’m calling you. I’m just starting really.”
“So you’re a freshman and don’t know shit about the history of this, right? Your editor a junior or a senior? I can find out. You’ll just save me some time.”
“He’s a senior.”
“Well, neither of you was on campus when my story broke, but he might have been aware of it if he was on the newspaper staff his first year. Okay, never mind. So. What do you want to know? Where do we start?”
“I guess my biggest question is, why wasn’t this a series? It felt like a five-parter, or three. I kept waiting for…I don’t know, other shoes to drop.” She winced as she said this—it was one of her mother’s favorite phrases. After her father was killed and she found out about his mistress, that’s what she’d said. That the other shoe had dropped.
“Yeah, well, it was supposed to be. Till the second installment was killed.”
“Killed by who? I mean whom?”
“Technically, by a pansy-ass editor. But officially, by the owner of the Inquirer, who threatened to fire him. He had three kids in college, so I understand to some degree, but he’s still a pussy.”
“Did he give you a reason at least?”
“Oh sure. Said I used too many unnamed sources that they couldn’t substantiate. But the real reason was I was about to name some of the clients and one of the restaurant owners and dared to call out Semper University for not protecting its students. I had one of the girls on record. Someone who was about to graduate. But that wasn’t enough.”
“Did that restaurant owner happen to be Brian Beck?”
“Close. His brother, Sam.”
“Brothers?”
“Yeah, imagine how proud their mommy must be. Two pimps in one family. What a gene pool. So how’d you find out about Brian?”
“A bit of intuition, a bit of luck, and a lot of proximity.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, Beck’s store is next to this private club. They use the same valet parking service. And the valet parking guys have big mouths.”
“Wait, I don’t follow. The Beck brothers opened a club on Chestnut Street?”
“Yes. Why? Is it new? I haven’t checked it out thoroughly yet.”
“Must be new in the last few years. When I was working on this, Sam Beck had just renovated a big restaurant on Broad Street, near the old Philadelphia Inquirer building, if you can believe that. Like he was just daring one of us to figure it out. Anyway, the second floor was a private space, and he ran the operation out of there. All by invitation. Only one bartender and one server allowed to even set foot up there. The rumor was it was his brother’s idea, and he had something on him, but still.”
“Must have been small if there were only two people working.”
“No, it was huge. Half a city block. But they only served champagne, vodka, scotch, and these miniature desserts. Macarons, petit fours.”
Was this to keep the girls from eating too much? Was that why Fiona stopped for Thai food afterward? Because she was starving? Emma felt her lack of experience acutely. Maybe sex felt best on an empty stomach. Or, ew, this might have to do with oral sex. She felt suddenly nauseated.
“So it was really just a meeting place, and the arrangement went from there?”
“Funny you should say that. That’s what they called it internally. Privately. The arrangement. And that formed their excuse, too: ‘The arrangement between two people is up to them. We just introduce friends to friends of friends.’”
“Ugh, I know. I’ve seen the websites and the apps. So what was the name of that restaurant?”
“Sparks.”
“Ugh again.”
“So I guess the new location is better for girls from Drexel and Penn. As well as the guys from the store.”
“Wait, what?”
“Oh, you didn’t think Semper had the market sewn up, did you?”
“No, but it’s a state school, and it’s bigger and…well, you know all that, but it’s also—”
“Trashier? Sluttier?”
“Uh, I didn’t say that.”
“Sorry, I have to work on my political correctness. Too much time in newsrooms.”
“Well, I was going to say, maybe less moneyed.”
“There are girls on scholarship juggling student loans everywhere. And believe it or not, some girls do it for other reasons.”
“For the sex?”
“Well, that’s what they’ve convinced themselves. ‘I like sex. I like to experiment.’ But it’s really the thrill, the danger, the wrongness.”
“I noticed you didn’t say illegal.”
“See, this is the problem. It skirts the law. Talk to a lawyer. Talk to a psychologist.”
“Oh, I will. I’m planning to,” Emma said, although she was taking notes so furiously about all the people she’d have to call next, her head was spinning.
“And keep meticulous records and notes. Try to get people to go on record. That way if your story gets killed, you can take it somewhere else, somewhere young women’s perspectives are valued, like the Cut, or Lenny. You’d know better than me. Your editor must have balls of steel to let you pursue this.”
“He does,” she said firmly. And hadn’t she felt that about Jason? His calmness, his cool head? That was a kind of strength and certainty. She was sure of it.
“I assume you have a girl on the inside? Is that how this started?”
“Yes,” she said. A half lie. She wondered if Cara Stevens had been sitting in front of her, a tough and seasoned professional, if she could tell how much bullshit was propping up her side of the conversation.
“Because that’s the most important thing. The girls are being manipulated and harmed, whether they see it that way or not. Especially if they’re freshmen. The younger, the better, in my view.”
Good, Emma thought. Now if she could just get Fiona to share what was going on with her, she’d have a story. Especially since Fiona was trying to recruit Taylor. Collusion!
“Yes, my, um, source is a freshman.”
“Good.”
“Well, this has been great, wow. Thank you, Cara. You’ve given me a lot to think about.”
“You’re welcome. Let me know if you need anything else. And promise you’ll be careful.”
“I will.”
“And one more thing?”
“Yes?”
“When you have a second, DM me a list of your professors.”
“My professors?”
“Yeah, just in case.”
“In case what?”
“Well, I always suspected that students weren’t self-selecting. Someone was recruiting.”
Emma’s stomach dropped to the floor. No wonder Cara told her to be careful. No wonder she’d been working on a series. She was beginning to understand why Cara had called her from a pay phone. And maybe, just maybe, why she’d left town.