Jessica had been sneaking around, even longer than since Christmas.Caro, the idiot, had all the clues in front of her and couldn’t piece them together.
“How long?” he asked, raw as an open wound. “How long has she been like that?”
“It’s got to be…I don’t know, a year at least.” Caro squeezed his arm. “I knew you’d want to help.”
His girlfriend had been cheating on him with a professor for an entire year. An entire year of humiliating him. The fire inside him surged.
“Yo, Prez.” Harris, the Phi Delt vice president, popped up between him and Caro, eyeing Mint cautiously. He must have heard about Trevor. “It’s time to crown the Sweetheart and kick off the party. Crowd’s insane upstairs. Probably our biggest year ever.”
“You’ll help, right, Mint?” Caro looked at him with pleading eyes. “She’ll listen to you. The seven of us have to stick together.”
Thatwas a cruel joke. “Where would Jessica be, if you had to guess?”
“No idea. Maybe she never left her room? She’s been sleeping a lot since her dad…since Christmas.”
Harris tugged Mint forward. “Come on, you have to kick off the show. We couldn’t find our Sweetheart anywhere, so we’re going with the runner-up. It’s either that, or no Sweetheart, and I think the crowd would riot. You’re crowning Courtney Kennedy, by the way.”
Mint let Harris pull him through the crowd and up the stairs, far away from hopeful Caro. He felt the eyes on him, the whispers. But all he could think about was Jessica, what she’d done, this person he’d trusted, this girl who should have been grateful he’d chosen her. Harris led him to the room with the dance floor, where they’d set up a stage for the band. Peeking from behind the stage, Mint could see a mass of people waiting on the other side. Courtney and some other Chi O seniors stood in the middle of the crowd, Courtney’s smile wide, her eyes shining bright. The room hummed with anticipation. Did they all know? Not just that his family was ruined, but that Jessica had cheated? In an instant, all the faces in the crowd seemed to flip, and everywhere, they were jeering, pointing, laughing.
No.He shoved his hands over his eyes. Where was Jessica? She was supposed to be here so he could teach her a lesson, punish her and redeem himself. But she was denying him the chance, taking away his control, his only opportunity to be the humiliator, not the humiliated. He couldn’t walk out on that stage until he’d done it.
He needed to find her. Mint dropped his hands from his face and squared his shoulders, feeling the blaze of fury fall into a sense of order, purpose.
From the crowd, a camera flashed as someone took his picture.
“All right, time to shine,” Harris said, nudging him. “I’ll announce you as you walk up.”
“No, actually—” Mint forced himself to grin. “Why don’t you do the honors?”
Harris blinked. “Why?”
“Well, you know what happened earlier with Trevor. I might not be everyone’s favorite person right now.”
Harris nodded immediately, as if it was obvious. Mint hated him for it, but he sealed the deal, put the cherry on top.
“Besides, you’ve earned it. It’ll probably be you up there as president next year. Might as well get some practice.”
Harris smiled. “Thanks, man.”
“I’m just going to run to the bathroom—too much beer. But then I’ll be back to watch. Break a leg.”
Mint slapped Harris’s shoulder, then turned and sprinted away from the stage. But instead of keeping left for the bathroom, he kept going, out the side door, into the night.
***
He needed and he wanted to hurt her. It consumed him, became an ache deep in his bones. He would take everything that was burning inside him and unleash it on her, put the pain where it belonged.
He strode with purpose across the Bishop Hall lobby—a ghost town on Saturday night—and punched the elevator button. Everything went slightly blurry then, like it was someone else in the driver’s seat, and he was just watching what happened.
Up, up, up.He was going to climb the walls of the elevator if it went any slower; he was going to claw his skin off. The ding of arrival, the doors sliding open, and then he was moving, finally gliding down the hallway. Everything grew a little hazier, the walls closing in. He couldn’t tell if it was the alcohol or the drugs or the idea of confronting her that was making him slightly delirious.
Punching the code to her suite, twisting open the door. All the lights were off. But even in the dark, he could see the living room was a mess, dark objects laying like booby traps on the floor, the couch cushions ripped up and left sideways. The aftermath of two people struggling, or roughhousing, or—the thought scoured him—having sex.
So it was true. He could see it with his own eyes, the traces of where they’d been. It was the final straw that unleashed in Mint somethingother, something animal.
He shoved open the door to her room, panting. So dark inside, the only moonlight coming from a tiny sliver of window uncovered by curtain. He stared at her bed, where he’d spent countless nights by her side before he’d known.
There she was: a dark figure, lying stretched out under the blankets. Asleep, as if she hadn’t promised to meet him at the Sweetheart Ball and then stood him up, as if she enjoyed embarrassing him, as if she hadn’t a care in the world.
