“This is disgusting.”
“It’s efficient.” He flashed me a crooked smile.
Ethan challenged Rory to a game of beer pong on the dining table. The window opened to the courtyard in the dorm building, and high-pitched shrieks of laughter penetrated the optimistichits from the early 2000s they were playing from the speakers. Someone turned on the disco lights. A few more people had arrived and the room filled with chatter and the clinking of liquor bottles. I didn’t know any of the newcomers well, so I invested myself in Ethan and Rory’s game, cheering and making sarcastic comments whenever someone’s ball just barely made it or just barely missed. Ethan had scored another point; Rory scooped out the Ping-Pong ball from the plastic cup and gulped down the beer, a few drops spilling down his chin to his flannel shirt.
I went to the kitchen to dump out half my drink, then returned to watch the game of beer pong. Rory’s ball made it into the last cup on Ethan’s side, and everyone cheered.
Ten minutes later, Rory found me in the line to the bathroom. “Where’d you disappear to?” he asked. “I tried to message you to see if you left, but I realized I don’t have your Instagram.”
He wasn’t smooth and we both knew it. I asked for his handle and followed him, upon which I immediately received his request to follow me back.
“By the way, I keep trying to talk to you, but it’s so loud here that I’m finding it super difficult. Do you want to come to my room?”
I said yes, not because I was attracted to him, but because I saw at that moment that Rory was wearing a Columbia Moot Court T-shirt. Harrison, the guy I had seen Laura flirting with at the library, was also on the Columbia Moot Court team. Moot Court only had a few members and was notorious for everyone on the team hooking up with the same people, so Rory and Harrison must’ve hooked up with the same girl at least once. That meant that if I hooked up with Rory, I would be closer to Laura in the giant web of everyone at Columbia whohooked up with each other. I kind of liked being closer to Laura in that small but biologically meaningful way.
Rory was grinning at me. I realized I was smiling. Oh. He thought I was smiling at him. I definitely was not, but I didn’t correct him. I followed him to his room. He had those crusty navy blue sheets that were in every guy’s bedroom. I tried not to think about how long it’d been since they were washed. The door was closed; the lights were off except for the lamp on his desk. Then there was wet slobber on my face and warm hands on my back, and I realized he was kissing me. I thought I was going to throw up, possibly in his mouth. I pushed him away. Before he had a chance to react, I threw myself out the door and squeezed past drunk bodies until I reached the fluorescently lit halls outside of the suite.
The door closed behind me, and suddenly it was quiet with the exception of the vague thumping of bass from inside the dorm. The nausea subsided. A couple of women walked past me laughing. They looked like they were on their way out, maybe heading to some club downtown. It would take ten minutes or so to walk back to my dorm. I checked my bag to make sure that I still had my pepper spray. I headed down the hallway toward the elevators and pressed the button to go down. I could hear the ping as it stopped at a floor close to me, but I waited five more minutes and it still didn’t arrive. I was only on the seventh floor, so I guessed I could just walk down the stairs. I pushed open the emergency exit. By the time I reached the fifth floor, I thought that I heard a familiar voice. A few seconds later, Laura was walking up past me with Madison, the same friend I had seen her eating breakfast with at Community. They were at least a few drinks in. Laura’s face had flushed to a rosy shade of pink.Madison tripped on a step, then Laura tripped and almost fell into Madison, and the two of them couldn’t stop giggling.
“Did the elevator not come for you either?” Laura asked as we crossed paths. I waited just a second too long to answer, as I was too distracted admiring her makeup, the crisp line of her winged eyeliner and the dewy highlighter on her cheekbones that caught the fluorescent light. And the smell was so lovely too—was that Laura’s perfume or Madison’s? Or perhaps they were both wearing perfume and I was actually smelling a pleasant amalgamation of both. It was floral and fruity, perhaps a hint of gardenia and peach.
“Yeah,” I said. “I waited so long and it didn’t arrive.”
“Ugh. That’s so annoying,” Laura said. “Well, good luck.”
I wondered if Laura was going to Gina’s party. How had I not thought of that earlier? I hadn’t seen them together recently, but I knew that they were good friends. I waited in the stairwell between the fourth and fifth floors to hear whether they’d open the door at the seventh. Their voices grew fainter with each second; as I listened closely the thump of their sneakers approached the sixth floor, then the seventh, and indeed, the door swung open and their voices disappeared out of earshot.
My first thought was to return to Gina’s party so I could observe Laura in an environment I was usually not able to observe her in. What would she drink? How quickly would she drink? How would she react to someone hitting on her? Would she hit on anyone? Did she dance or did she prefer to socialize? Would she try to meet new people or would she just talk to the friend she went to the party with? None of this information would necessarily be useful to me in a vacuum, but maybe it could lead to something useful. She could drink too much and confess thatshe had cheated on an essay sophomore year. Or maybe I’d snap a picture of her snorting coke and send it to the Harvard Law School admissions committee—but who was I kidding, I bet lawyers did a ton of coke.
The proximity to Laura made my body buzz with adrenaline. I spent so much time looking at photos of her online that when I saw her in person, it was like seeing a celebrity. She always looked smaller in stature than I expected and slightly less polished, but that didn’t mean she looked less pretty. In fact, I thought she even looked prettier in person, standing next to all of the others who looked average. I headed back up the stairs to the party.
“I thought you left!” Gina yelled in my ear. We were standing in the kitchen. She grabbed a cup from the counter, dumped out its contents into the sink, and poured straight vodka into it.
“We’re out of cups, but don’t worry, alcohol is sanitizing!” she yelled again, handing me the cup.
I pretended to take a sip, then stood on my tippy toes to scan the crowd for Laura.
“Who are you looking for?!” Gina asked.
I figured she would be too drunk to remember this conversation anyway, so it couldn’t hurt to get her help.
“Laura Kim.”
“Laura Kim?! She’s not here.”
“I saw her walk in when I left.”
“That can’t be. That cunt is here? You saw her?”
I nodded. I wasn’t sure if I’d heard her correctly. Did she call Laura the c-word? I hadn’t met anyone who disliked Laura as much as I did. I was about to clarify that I only saw Laura headed to this floor, so I was going to ask whether there was anotherparty nearby, but Gina was already starting to make her way through the crowd. I followed her but couldn’t keep up. She was far better at pushing people out of her way than I was. A few seconds later, I spotted the two of them talking by the door. Laura looked worried, almost like she was going to cry. At least, that’s what I thought during the second when the disco lights hit her face. Gina’s back was to me but she seemed to be in the middle of a passionate speech, judging by how her arms were moving. I started pushing myself in their direction, but by the time I reached the door, Laura was walking out. I was about to follow her but Gina grabbed my arm. “Hey, not so fast,” she said. “You can’t leave just yet.”
—
I tried asking Gina whatshe had been arguing about with Laura, but someone had turned the music even louder. Gina kept mishearing my question and shouting “what” in my ear. The vodka smell of her breath made my stomach churn. Finally, I gave up and managed to slip out ten minutes later when Gina told me she was going to the bathroom. On the way home, I checked social media for any clue to Laura’s whereabouts. Just five minutes ago she had posted a story to her Instagram of a neon sign at a bar. I checked the tagged location. It was downtown, in the East Village. The next post was a blurry image of six shot glasses. “Suitemate night,” the caption read.
Suitemate night. Six shot glasses for six people in her suite. There had been six name tags on the door. That meant all of them were out, all of them were at that East Village bar. Right now, the suite was empty.
It was like the universe was giving me a sign. A brilliant ideahad come to me at the exact right time for me to execute said brilliant idea. I started walking back to EC. There was no time to think, only time to act. I called the number for housing services.
