Emma
Emma didn’t mind that she’d wasted three evenings in a row following a man who was doing absolutely nothing wrong or odd or unusual—he was merely taking the train home to the suburbs. Three times, she’d watched him not get off at Suburban Station, not get off at Thirtieth Street either. Three times, she’d hoped he’d get off at one of the right stops to walk to the club, which was located between those stations, and three times, she’d been disappointed. She’d waited until the last possible second, then jumped off with the gaggle of other college students and Amtrak travelers switching at Thirtieth Street. She did not want to be stuck on his train line and pay for another ticket back to campus.
She knew Professor Grady was heading out to Wayne, where he lived, to mow his tidy lawn or rake the leaves that were starting to fall now or relax in the huge renovated space she’d seen on Google Maps. No, she was becoming used to the wasted time and effort. What she minded was paying for the train tickets. She hated wasting the money and hated that she cared about it, thought about it. Sometimes she felt like she was the only girl on campus with limited spending money that she’d earned herself. Everyone else got money transferred every month from their parents. They called it an allowance, as if they were five years old and buying gum.
Emma knew Maggie would send her money for anything she needed if she ran out. Books, fine. New shoes, gloves, a charger for her laptop, anything like that, anything with a name, Maggie would pay for. But not just a random ask. She wasn’t built that way. It defied the way her family worked, and Emma wasn’t going to start changing that now and become one of those girls who whined and begged and said everything was sooo expensive, even though it was. Ubers, public transportation, bike rentals, food, and yes, alcohol—all cost more than she expected. Not to mention Magic Markers or crepe paper or poster board, things other girls bought from the school store without a moment’s thought whenever they needed to decorate or celebrate. And sweatshirts and sweat pants, purchased whenever theirs were ripped or vomited on or too nasty to deal with. In the garbage bag, out the door. No one took care of anything. The same girls who carefully recycled cans and wouldn’t drink from a plastic straw, like, ever, because it hurts the animals, threw away their stained clothes in a dumpster whenever vomit or blood touched them. Emma was stunned the first time she’d seen this, Taylor drunk, wobbly, hitting her chin against the table and then vomiting. The blood and vomit mingling at the top of her sweatshirt, staining the fuzzy embroidered S of Semper. Fiona yanking her clothes off her, wadding them up, putting them in the trash. Emma wanted to ask her how she’d gotten through life with her period. Had she thrown away every pair of underwear she’d soiled?
Later the next day, she’d fished out that sweatshirt, holding her nose. She’d rinsed it in the sink, rubbed the stain with a bar of soap, then thrown it into a hot water wash cycle with another load of clothes. All the stains came out; all the school colors stayed true. She’d dried it, folded it, and put it in Taylor’s room before the other girls had even woken up. But Taylor hadn’t even noticed.
The small ministrations that had made Emma beloved to Sarah Franco and other kids she knew in high school meant nothing to her college friends. It hadn’t taken too many instances before she got the message and vowed, No more. I’m done taking care of you assholes. The last time, when they’d been at a party and all had too much to drink except her (she’d wisely started throwing her last few shots of vodka into the soil of a plant), on the walk home, she’d dug into her small cross-body purse and doled out Advil to everyone.
“Thanks, Mom,” Annie had said, and they’d all laughed except Emma. No one wants to be the mommy in college. They want to be a hot girl or a powerful woman. To hop from child to mother was the absolute worst, and Emma vowed to be more careful from then on. She would try to fit in without taking care of anyone. No, she would only take care of herself.
She switched platforms, going down one escalator, across the main concourse, weaving through a thick throng of commuters. Coming to Thirtieth Street always meant a weird confluence of people—travelers from the airport switching trains, lost, clueless, not knowing where they were going; commuters, hurrying, working on laptops, reading materials for their meetings the next day; and students, since this was the stop for Drexel and Penn. Emma didn’t look out of place here, but then the mix of types, of locals and out-of-towners, meant no one did. And that was why, as she finally got to the up escalator, brushing elbows, avoiding luggage slung on people’s shoulders, that at first she didn’t think twice about the man in the beige windbreaker on the platform off to her left. She sensed him more than she saw him, smelled something familiar—cologne? the woody pulp of old books?—then turned abruptly, jostling a woman standing too close behind her, apologizing. Below her, the man darted away, behind a partition, then gone. Brown hair, beige jacket, and she wasn’t sure precisely what he looked like. But he was wearing exactly what Professor Grady had been wearing. Had he been watching her? And jumped off at Thirtieth Street, too, to follow her?
There was no path to get up the escalator faster; no one was walking up the left or moving to the right. Too many people. When she finally got to the top, she ran back down the stairs, back to the concourse. She looked left, right, scanning, her mind chanting beige beige beige like a mantra. She’d never seen so much black, blue, and red in her life.
She crossed, ran up the platform where she’d originally jumped off. If he’d been heading back to his home, that’s where he’d be. But she heard the train as the stairs rose, and running didn’t help. The faster she ran, the more the train seemed to accelerate, pulling out of the station. She stood, staring at the back end of it, half expecting his face to appear, half wishing she’d been wrong. She was just being jumpy, she thought. She was just a number in the lecture hall to him. She might be onto him, but he, she was certain, had no idea who she was.
Her heart rate slowed finally, and she headed back to her platform to wait. She sat on the metal bench and waited for the next train. This platform was full of students, all going the same direction. She didn’t recognize anyone, and no one noticed her looking, glancing around. She sighed. Why couldn’t it be a male student she needed to follow instead of a grown man? That would be a piece of cake. She thought of the easy obliviousness that propelled her roommates through the world—leaving digital clues, inviting attention. Professor Grady sure as hell didn’t show up on any Snap Map, that was certain.
She boarded the train and rode back. She was the only person in the car without earbuds in, and she found herself cocooned in the buzzy, tinny sounds of their leaking music. She wondered what they could and couldn’t hear with all that in their heads. Would they hear her scream or laugh or speak? She smiled at the thought of acting crazy and being ignored. Then she realized she was going a bit stir-crazy. She thought of her father saying once that police work was ninety percent waiting, ten percent listening. She felt that now and wondered how her father, with his constantly jiggling legs, itching to get up and go, handled it. He wasn’t built for it yet managed to do it; she, more motherly and patient, should be better at it. She just needed to cut herself a break and give it more time.
But how much time? Emma walked back to her dorm, trying not to think about her homework and her laundry and all the things she wasn’t doing while she was out chasing theories that weren’t playing out the way she wanted them to. She didn’t have months to let her theories play out. Her story had to come together, or she had to let it go, work on something else. She could almost hear Jason telling her that. And if following her professor wasn’t working, she needed to switch tactics. She could watch the club, not the professor. Who knows who else she’d see? All she needed was a car to wait and watch in. Or a job as a hostess, waiting for him to come in the door.
She texted Michael and asked him if he could ever “borrow” a car for a night.
She texted Sam Beck and offered to work a shift for free.
Then a call came in, making her jump, and it wasn’t from either of them. It was Jason. She was so excited, she almost declined the call, fumbling while trying to answer. She finally picked up, and he asked her if she could update him on her progress. Asked if she was somewhere private, somewhere she could talk.
“In a minute I will be,” she said. There were students all around her, and all she could think of was finding a door to lock. She ran into her dorm, up the stairs. No one was in the kitchen, Fiona wasn’t in her room, but she went into the bathroom anyway, locked the door, and, just for good measure, ran the water in the shower full force. She told Jason about Fiona and the account at the store. She told him about the valet trying to get her a good source. She told him about Sam Beck and trying to get a job as a hostess. She told him about Professor Grady being a former patron of the earlier club and the over-the-top renovations on his house. She said it all in a rush, and he didn’t say slow down, didn’t say wow, good work, didn’t say anything. For a second, she thought he’d hung up, that they’d lost their connection and she’d have to explain all over again. In those seconds, all her fears came forward. She realized she didn’t know him either, that he was a stranger, that phones have recording devices, that his father could be a patron of the university, for God’s sake, and she felt about as vulnerable as she had on the train platform. She wished she could see his face. Not just because it was a pleasant face, not just because she wanted to see him, but because, her father’s words about listening aside, she realized she wasn’t good at it. She needed to watch, to see, to know if someone was lying or angry or interested or fascinated. For her, it was all about movement and body language.
Finally, he spoke. “Are you…in a hot tub?”
“No, I’m in the shower,” she replied quickly, then promptly wanted to curl up and die. Would he picture her naked now? Jesus! “I mean, I’m near the shower.” Then “Wait, is there a hot tub on campus?”
“There’s a Jacuzzi in the gym.”
Ah, the gym. Another place she wasn’t going while she was chasing the story.
“Okay, so, Emma, you’re definitely onto something here. But unless you nail down a source and get more facts, figures, dates, you can’t write anything. You need to find more girls to talk or become one of the women yourself. I mean forget working as a hostess. You need to go on one of those dates and prove what actually happens.”
She exhaled loudly. “I don’t think I can do that.”
“I know it’s scary as fuck, but you either have to find a girl to talk or become a girl, or else the story isn’t about the girls, it’s about the men.”
“No.” She shook her head violently. “Jason, it’s not about the girls or the men, don’t you see? The story is about the school!”
“I know that’s what you think it’s about, Emma, but—”
“No, I know. I know it.”
“Well, knowing it and proving it are two different things. And we can’t print it until you prove it.”
The knock on the door was loud.
“I gotta go.”
“Okay, keep me in the loop.”
“Are you almost through? I need the shower,” Annie called.
Emma hung up the phone, turned off the water, and wrapped her head in a towel.
“Going out tonight?” she asked Annie breezily as she passed by.
“Possibly,” Annie replied. “You?”
“I have homework due.”
She laughed. The same laugh that had charmed Emma so on move-in day, a childlike laugh that rose and fell over something silly Morgan had said. She thought she could be friends with someone who laughed like that. But now it sounded hollow, forced.
“Okay, Mommy,” Annie said, and as she turned away, Emma felt all the red in her skin, rising, burning.
She went to her room, shut the door, and started going through Fiona’s things. Fuck them, she thought. I’m not doing this for them. I’m doing it for me.