I had no idea what she was talking about. The door to Janine’s office opened, and she walked out in a clear raincoat.
“Look at your timing,” she said to the girl. “I was just on the phone with your lousy father.”
I looked between them, trying to make sense of this.
The girl said, “Are you ready? I’m starving.”
I stepped in Janine’s path. “Hi, sorry, I thought you had office hours now?”
“Did you see that online? My hours are all messed up there. I need to get Marshay to fix those. You’re not my student.”
“Oh, actually… I was at your reading the other week. I’ve been trying to get into your spring course? I’m working on a novel. Well, I’m writing a couple—”
Janine raised a gentle hand. “Email me, dear. Right now I could eat a whole pig. Come, Nia.” Her tiny red pumps carried her toward the elevator.
Nia turned, cupping her mouth like she was relaying a secret to me. “Oh, she likes you.”
I sat on one of the puke-green sofas in the library and opened my laptop. Stretching my sleeve over my hand, I wiped my screen, which made it dirtier. I had no idea what Janine wanted me to say in this email. I googled “how to beg a professor to let you in their class.” Several porn sites appeared. A group of students laughed at a loud TikTok playing on a loop. Someone opened a soda can; it hissed, fizzing. A guy lugging a black backpack collapsed onto the couch beside mine, yelling, “Fuck!” when all his papers fell out.
I typed “The Narrator by Noah Davis” into the search bar. A painting appeared of a drowsy-looking woman in a prim lavender cardigan, clinging to a man’s forearm. Why was it calledThe Narrator? The woman looked like she was holding a Metro grip, or like she was trying not to fall out a window. The more I looked at the painting, the more it bothered me. What was she the narrator of? What story was she in? I wanted to shake her: Explain yourself, reveal yourself. Make yourself legible.
My phone rang. It was my dad.
“… Uber in Arkansas, you hear about that?”
“What?”
“I said: SOME. WOMAN. WAS. ATTACKED. IN. ARKANSAS!”
“It wasn’t an issue of volume, Daddy.”
“If you watched the news you woulda heard about it.”
“Okay.”
The campus lanterns blinked on, illuminating the lawn.
“You taking Uber home?”
“Metro.”
“It’s dark.”
“It’s not even nine.”
“What’s that got to do with anything? Don’t make me come get you.”
It was suffocating, being the endless subject of his paranoia. I didn’t need him to tell me I wasn’t safe, that understanding had already been beaten into me.
“Fine. I’m leaving now.”
He paused for a long time. “Remember what I say: If they got a gun, you make them shoot you in front of everybody. Don’t go nowhere ’cause they’ll really shoot you once they get your butt in some shed, eat you too. You know people are crazy. You make them shoot you right in the open so everybody can see.”
Chapter 12
Tristan texted me later that night:
Tristan:We’re prbly gonna have to c each other when jay’s here could we just tlk?
