The Fixer: New Wave Newsroom (3 page)

I honestly didn't know whether my graffiti runs were about expressing anger at society in general—I acted like they were, making stencils that called out the hypocrisy of the Reagan administration—or at this picture-postcard town, with its rich hippies and entitled, coddled college kids. I didn't much care, to be honest. I just knew the anger was there. And when I was done, when I slunk back to my room with my hood up and my eyes burning from exhaustion, it wasn't, and I could go back to another few days of getting my shit done.

So. Time to work.

As I strode across the quad that linked the dorms to the campus proper, a feminine voice pierced my bitter recollection of my session with Curry. “Get away from me, you pig.”

Shit. I hugged the portfolio that contained the stencil—Mickey Mouse Reagan again because I hadn't had time to make anything new—close to my chest. The campus at two in the morning was usually pretty deserted. If I ran into anyone, it was generally packs of drunk kids who either said something sneering or didn't notice me at all.

With any luck, the couple having a fight up ahead wouldn't either, and I could just slip by.

“No, sweetheart. Not a pig. I'm the big bad wolf,” slurred a second, masculine voice. Jesus. These rich fuckers and their melodramas. “You shouldn't be walking alone at night if you don't want to attract the big bad wolf.”

The girl, whose face I couldn't make out because she was swathed in some kind of neon-pink hooded sweatshirt, was trying to wrench her arms from the guy's grasp. Damn. Now I was going to have to find a pay phone and call campus security—this was evolving from a lovers' quarrel into something more sinister.

“Let me go, Royce, or so help me God, I will write about this in the paper. I will write about that other night, too. And I will name names. I will tell Nessa everything.”

My knapsack clattered to the ground, and the
clang
of the metal paint cans hitting the ground, even through the nylon fabric of the bag, drew the pair's attention. Two sets of wide eyes turned toward me.

“Well, well, well, if it isn't Art Boy,” Royce sneered. “You here to rescue your little cunt girlfriend?”

“No,” I said calmly as I walked toward them. The scattered, abstract anger that always propelled me on my graffiti runs had crystallized into a deadly laser beam. “I'm here to do this.”

I punched him so hard he toppled over.

Then I picked up my bag, pressed my hand against Rainbow Brite's lower back to give her a little shove, and said, “Run.”

We didn't stop running until we were in the lobby of my dorm. The whole way, I kept thinking,
I'm going to tell him about Royce
. I had no idea why. It didn't make any sense. I had never told anyone. Not my RA, not my dad, not Nessa. So why was I going to tell this sullen kid who didn't even like me?

“Come up to my room,” I said, still panting.

“What about your roommate?”

“She's gone home for the weekend, which I suppose is why her gorilla of a boyfriend is on the loose.” He was holding his right hand gingerly with his left. The crack of bone on bone as his fist connected with Royce's jaw had been sickeningly loud. “But first let's get some ice for that.”

I took off toward the dining hall, and to my surprise, he followed without protest. “Won't the cafeteria be closed?”

I shrugged, eyeballing the rickety gate secured with a padlock that looked like it had already given up the battle. I pulled a metal nail file out of my purse, and it only took a few seconds of jiggling for the lock to yield.

He whistled. “Damn. I never would have pegged you as a criminal. Do they teach breaking and entering at finishing school these days?”

“I didn't go to finishing school,” I said, not even bothering to turn my head toward him so he could see my eyes rolling. “I'm going to be an investigative reporter.”

“Of course you are.”

“Well, if I'm not, then I'm really going to regret all these late nights in the newspaper office that require me to walk home across campus at two a.m. straight into the sights of dudes who are a hundred IQ points dumber than I am but who are also, maddeningly, about a hundred pounds heavier.” I glanced over my shoulder at him. Was he…smiling? Not really, just the slightest hint of a smirk was tugging the corners of his mouth, maybe, and it disappeared the moment I registered it. But still. “Sometimes a crime in support of the greater good is justifiable,” I said.

After filling a bowl with ice from the soda fountain, it occurred to me that since we were in a cafeteria, I should probably nab some food for my cranky, always-hungry knight. Besides, my late night at the newspaper office had made me peckish, too. “Come on,” I said, leading the way into the kitchen hidden behind the buffet where we always lined up with our trays. “I'm starving.”

I started opening cupboards, looking for something portable. “How about sandwiches?” I said, pulling out an extra-long loaf of Wonder Bread and moving to a wall of refrigerators. “We just need to find something to put in them—aha!” I held up a laughably large package of turkey cold cuts. “Oh, and industrial cheese, too!”

He had opened the next fridge but popped his head out from behind its door, doing the almost-smiling thing again. “Would madame desire some mustard?”

I burst out laughing at the enormous jug he held out. It must have been a gallon at least. “I'm more of a mayo girl,” I said when I recovered myself. But then he silently produced an even bigger container of Hellmann's, and I totally cracked up again.

“Shhh,” he said. “I admit, I didn't peg you as a criminal, but if you are one, I'm going to bet you're not a stupid one, so shut the hell up.”

I clamped my mouth shut, hefted my groceries in one arm, balanced the bowl of ice in the other, and gestured with my head for him to follow me. I about lost it again when he did so carrying both supersize condiments with an unnaturally straight face. How he managed them with the backpack and oversize portfolio he also had, I don't know.

Somehow, we managed to make it from the crime scene to my second-floor room undetected. I dumped the food on my desk. “You want to just dunk your hand in this bowl?”

“Nah, I'm okay.”

“You are not okay. Did you hear the sound when your fist connected with his face?” I started rummaging around in my half of the closet for something to use for a makeshift ice pack, settling on an old T-shirt that had seen better days. I spread it flat on my desk, dumped the ice on it, and tied up the opening at the bottom to fashion an ice pack. “You saved my ass out there, so humor me.”

He rolled his eyes, but he took the homemade pack and wrapped it around his hand as he lowered himself onto my bed, sitting across it perpendicularly with his back against the wall it was shoved against. “Things did seem like they were about to get a little dicey out there.”

There was my opening. I still wanted to tell him. And not because I hoped it would somehow make him want to help me with the art building. It was more just a strange compulsion to tell
someone
coming over me gradually but inexorably, like a tide. I had been keeping this secret for three and a half years, and I didn't want it anymore. And Matthew, as unsettling as he could be, made me feel safe. And that was…really, really weird. But if I examined the thought too much, I would lose my nerve, and more than anything, I needed to let my secret out.

“Yeah. Royce was one of the leaders of my freshman orientation group. I… God, this is so embarrassing now.” I turned my back and started making sandwiches so I wouldn't have to look at him while I talked. “For about a millisecond there, I thought he was cool.” I braced for the incredulous reaction I deserved, but it didn't come, so I kept going—with the story and the sandwich. “He kind of…fixated on me. Assaulted me with his charm, if you will. And I didn't know anyone at Allenhurst. I'm not from around here.”

“Where are you from?”

The question surprised me. I think it might have been the first time Matthew had asked me something about myself. “Oregon. Just outside Portland.” I turned and handed him a sandwich. “I was nervous,” I said, returning to my story, trying to tell it without sinking myself back inside it. Usually when my mind went back to that night, I felt the emotions as strongly as ever. Now, though, I wanted to recount what happened in a detached way. I took a deep breath. “I was trying to make friends. I had been kind of…straitlaced in high school.”

“You don't say.”

He was grinning, so I perched on the bed next to him with my sandwich and used my free hand to punch him in the shoulder, but I made sure it was his uninjured side.

The teasing actually helped—a lot. It grounded me in the present, allowing me to stay outside the story as I told it. “Yeah, so Royce seemed…cool. Which, again, I realize makes me seem like an idiot.”

“Nah. Royce seems like a master manipulator. If you didn't already know him, I'm sure he could seem appealing.” He cocked his head. “Actually, no, he couldn't. But go on.”

“Okay, well, the second night of orientation, there was a party in Hannover House. A bunch of guys with adjacent rooms opened them up for the party. They were all freshman pledges to one of the frats on campus, and lots of the older brothers were there, too, including Royce. I…drank too much.”

“As I'm sure everyone did.”

I shrugged, the casualness of the gesture belying the fact that I was actually clinging desperately to my vantage point as a detached storyteller. “I didn't have a lot of experience with drinking, and it kind of came on me all at once. I got up to leave, and Royce noticed I was unsteady on my feet. He asked if I wanted to come to one of the empty rooms and watch a movie.”

“And you said yes.”

“Of course I said yes,” I didn't even bother trying to keep the self-disgust from my voice. “He was the coolest guy in our class.” I didn't know what was worse, actually, what happened that night, or the fact that I walked right into it.

“I'm sorry, Rainbow Brite.” I whipped my eyes to his face. He'd spoken so quietly, so…sincerely, that it startled me. I don't know why a genuine, calm expression of sympathy was such a shock, but it was.

“It wasn't…what you're thinking. I wasn't adverse to a little, um, experience.” I cleared my throat because my voice had become embarrassingly scratchy. “But not, you know, much beyond first base.”

“I fucking hate that metaphor. But I'm guessing Royce had different ideas about things.”

“Yes. And when I kept pushing him away, he tried to force me.”

“But you said it wasn't—”

“Well, I was drunk, but not so drunk that I couldn't knee him in the groin.”

“Ha!” He barked a triumphant laugh. “Atta girl.”

“And that's it, pretty much.” I sagged back against the wall, and though I hadn't maintained the detachment I'd been going for, strangely, the story didn't have the same power over me it'd had just minutes ago. In fact, now that it was out, I wasn't sure why this had been weighing on me so much. I was embarrassed even. Some dumb freshman got her boobs groped by a jerk. What else was new? “Sorry. I know it doesn't seem like a big deal, but—”

“I think it's a big deal.”

My breath caught. I wanted to kiss him for saying that, for understanding. But that would be stupid. Plus, I was having trouble meeting his eyes. I didn't know how to be with this Matthew, the sympathetic, nonconfrontational one.

The phone rang. I didn't know whether to be relieved or annoyed, because I knew who it would be. No one else called me in the middle of the night.

Matthew curled his lip. Ah, there was the surly boy I'd come to know. “You have a
phone
in your room?”

I sighed and picked up said phone. “Hi, Dad.”

Who was this girl? The fucking queen of Portland? I thought of all those phone messages she had left me. For some reason, the idea that she had been making those calls from her room
on her own personal phone
riled me. Reminded me who she was. I had been starting to feel a little sorry for her, with all this Royce stuff. She was vulnerable under all her bluster. She was kind of funny, too. But she was also—like everyone else at this school—a rich kid with no idea how the world actually worked. It was good, though, because it reminded me who
I
was and why I was at this school. It snapped me back into my place. In two months, she'd be using her trust fund to cushion herself while she willed her way into an entry-level journalism job, and I'd be in a vermin-infested shithole room in Boston trying to hold out as long as possible before I caved and got a restaurant job.

“Listen to me. Dad. Listen.”

She'd been talking this way to her father for a few minutes. It was hard to figure out what was going on. She would listen for a while, then start lecturing him, but then seem to get interrupted.

“The little white pill, Dad. Did you take your pill at breakfast?”

There was a long silence, during which she looked at the ceiling and—goddamn, was she
crying
? She wasn't making any noise, but a few tears were leaking from the sides of her eyes. I'd been eating my sandwich while she talked, planning to get up and go once I was done, but dammit, I didn't think I should leave her like this.

“This is a manic episode, Dad. It will pass.”

More silence. She shook her head as she listened to him. “Dad. Listen to me. This is the last thing I'm going to say. You are going to hang up the phone now and go to bed. If you can't sleep, you're just going to lie there until the sun comes up. If you don't promise me, right now, on Mom's grave, that you are going to do what I'm telling you, I'm going to call an ambulance.”