I spread one of the dried slickspin sheets on the floor and went down as fast as I could get out of my clothes. Brown was in no hurry, and the frictionless sheet seemed to relax him. He smoothed his hands the full length of my body. “Tavvy,” he said, brushing his lips along the line from my hips to my neck, “your skin’s so soft. I’d almost forgotten.” He was talking to himself.
Forgotten what, for fucked’s sake, he couldn’t have been without any jig-jig all summer or he’d be showing it now, and he acted like he had all the time in the world.
“Almost forgotten… nothing like…”
Like what? I thought furiously. Just what have you got in that room? And what has it got that I haven’t. I spread my legs and forced him down between them. He raised his head a little, frowning, then he started that long, slow, torturing passage down my skin again. Jiggin’ Jesus, how long did he think I could wait?
“Come on,” I whispered, trying to maneuver him with my hips. “Put it in, Brown. I want to jig-jig. Please.”
He stood up in a motion so abrupt that my head smacked against the laundry-room floor. He pulled on his clothes, looking… what? Guilty? Angry?
I sat up. “What in the holy scut do you think you’re doing?”
“You wouldn’t understand. I just keep thinking about your father.”
“My
“Look, I can’t explain it. I just can’t…” And left. Like that. With me ready to go off any minute and what do I get? A cracked head.
“I don’t have a father, you scutty godfucker!” I shouted after him.
I yanked my clothes on and started pulling the other sheet out of the spin with a viciousness I would have liked to have spent on Brown. Arabel was back, watching from the laundry-room door. Her face still had that strained look.
“Did you see that last charming scene?” I asked her, snagging the sheet on the spin handle and ripping a hole in one corner.
“I didn’t have to. I can imagine it went pretty much the way mine did.” She leaned unhappily against the door. “I think they’ve all gone bent over the summer.”
“Maybe.” I wadded the sheets together into a ball. I didn’t think that was it, though. Brown wouldn’t have lied about a new boy in his room in that case. And he wouldn’t have kept talking about my father in that edge way. I walked past Arabel. “Don’t worry, Arabel, if we have to go lezzy again, you know you’re my first choice.”
She didn’t even look particularly happy about that.
My idiot roommate was awake, sitting bolt upright on the bunk where I’d left her. The poor brainless thing had probably been sitting there the whole time I’d been gone. I made up the bunk, stripped off my clothes for the second time tonight, and crawled in. “You can turn out the light any time,” I said.
She hopped over to the wall plate, swathed in a nightgown that dated as far back as Old Man Moulton’s college days, or farther. “Did you get in trouble?” she asked, her eyes wide.
“Of course not. I wasn’t the one who tossed up. If anybody’s in trouble, it’s you,” I added maliciously.
She seemed to sag against the flat wallplate as if she were clinging to it for support. “My father—will they tell my father?” Her face was flashing red and white again. And where would the vomit land this time? That would teach me to take out my frustrations on my roommate.
“Your father? Of course not. Nobody’s in trouble. It was a couple of fucked sheets, that’s all.”
She didn’t seem to hear me. “He said he’d come and get me if I got in trouble. He said he’d make me go home.”
I sat up in the bunk. I’d never seen a freshman yet that wasn’t dying to go home, at least not one like Zibet, with a whole loving family waiting for her instead of a trust and a couple of snotty lawyers. But Zibet here was scared scutless at the idea. Maybe the whole campus was going edge. “You didn’t get in trouble,” I repeated. “There’s nothing to worry about.”
She was still hanging onto that wallplate for dear life.
“Come on—” Mary Masting, she was probably having an attack of some kind, and I’d get blamed for that, too. “You’re safe here. Your father doesn’t even know about it.”
She seemed to relax a little. “Thank you for not getting me in trouble,” she said and crawled back into her own bunk. She didn’t turn the light off.
Jiggin’ Jesus, it wasn’t worth it. I got out of bed and turned the fucked light off myself.
“You’re a good person, you know that,” she said softly into the darkness. Definitely edge. I settled down under the covers, planning to masty myself to sleep, since I couldn’t get anything any other way, but very quietly. I didn’t want any more hysterics.
A hearty voice suddenly exploded into the room. “To the young men of Moulton College, to all my strong sons, I say—”
“What’s that?” Zibet whispered.
“First night in Hell,” I said, and got out of bed for the thirtieth time.
“May all your noble endeavors be crowned with success,” Old Man Moulton said.
