Page 8 of Love Immortal
Seven
T hat night I have a peculiar dream, and for once, it isn’t about Clay.
I’m wading through a thick fog. I can’t see anyone around me, but I know I am not alone. It’s as if someone is calling me from deep within the fog, a gentle whisper on my skin that tugs at the yearning in my rib cage. I find myself unwilling to resist and follow it into the silver shadows that swirl invitingly in the moonlight, beckoning me, waiting. My anticipation builds as I get closer.
Finally, I can see the silhouette of a man. He’s hidden behind the misty veil, but I’m so close. Warmth flushes my throat; my pulse quickens. I reach out, overcome with a craving to touch him, to make that ethereal presence solid. But before my fingers make contact, I wake up.
The next morning, my elation over working at the library is somewhat tarnished when I walk into my eight a.m. intro to accounting class and discover Mads Jr., Eric, and Grady Callahan there, sitting three rows back. And here I thought I had avoided taking any classes with them. They must have skipped the first week—probably partied every night and couldn’t be bothered to wake up so early. Today, Mads looks like a zombie, and Grady is wearing dark sunglasses—like that’s going to fly when the professor sees him. I growl inwardly, wishing they had ditched the class again so I wouldn’t have to be in the same room with them.
As I walk to my desk, Mads leans over and whispers something to Callahan, and even though Callahan’s eyes are hidden behind the dark lenses, I feel his gaze snap to me like a hunter stalking its prey. The skin on the back of my neck prickles. I battle the instinct to shrink away and stubbornly proceed to the first row to take my seat. As I pull my textbook out of my backpack, reluctantly turning my back to them, I try to convince myself that my jitters are irrational. These creeps aren’t likely to harass me out in the open. Even legacies can’t get away with starting a fight in class. At least, I hope not. But the tension in my shoulders doesn’t relax. I swear I can feel three pairs of eyes burning holes in my back, which is still sore from my run-in with Callahan at the party.
The seconds stretch on endlessly as I wait for the professor to arrive. As I contemplate leaving and switching my schedule around to avoid these three stooges, a girl walks in and passes me. She looks familiar. Her eyes are glued adoringly to someone behind me. When I hear a sugary-sweet “Hi, Grady!” I do a double take over my shoulder. I recognize her now—she’s the girl I warned about the drugged drink at the party.
I blink as though that can erase the disturbing image from my mind. I thought that after finding out the disgusting jerk was trying to drug her, surely she’d hate him. Both she and her friend sounded appalled at the time, if my memory serves me, so what the hell happened? I’m tempted to get up and ask her if she’s okay, but the professor finally arrives and I’m forced to pay attention to the small business ledger he projects on the screen. But I have a hard time keeping my thoughts in check for the next hour and a half, puzzling over what the heck that girl’s deal is and imagining Mads Jr. and company staring daggers at my back. When the class is over, I don’t stick around and give them an opportunity to corner me—better to avoid dealing with the legacies and their fucked-up relationships altogether.
At lunch, I meet up with Fiona and her very sociable Cali roommate in the dining hall. Apparently, Becky’s also in the psychology class Fiona has been complaining about.
“I don’t understand. How can it be this hard? It’s just an intro class,” Becky whines, looking sullen.
“Some professors don’t believe you deserve an A unless you’ve memorized the textbook from cover to cover,” I say, putting my tray on the table. The cheese pizza looks particularly good today, so I grabbed two giant slices. When I bite into it, I almost forget the unpleasantness of the morning. The cheese is hot and golden and exactly the right kind of gooey.
“The professor acts like we’re all PhD candidates,” Fiona says with a sigh. She looks down at her salad, then at my pizza. A sudden longing clouds her eyes. “Is it any good?” she asks hopefully.
“Very,” I practically moan with my mouth stuffed.
She considers her salad for another brief moment, then decides it’s time for radical change. “Want me to grab you a slice?” she asks Becky, sounding like the mere prospect of pizza has lifted her mood.
“Nah, I’m watching my figure,” Becky drawls.
I try not to laugh. Becky definitely does not look like someone who needs to count calories. It must be a California thing.
I continue to indulge in my heavenly pizza, but not five seconds after Fiona leaves, Alessandra Lucente enters my peripheral vision. Teased bangs, high heels, and full makeup—one would think it’s a Friday night party and not a Tuesday lunch in the dining hall. I fully intend to ignore her, except I can’t—she’s strutting straight toward our table with that tiny pixie girl Grady tried to drug. They stop a step away from me.
Alessandra folds her arms, then speaks loudly, clearly aiming to attract as much attention as possible from people at the nearby tables. “I would appreciate it if you stopped spreading vile rumors about Mads and his friends,” she says to me.
When I was rooming with Mads last year, Alessandra was a frequent guest in our dorm, but she always acted like I was an empty space not worth acknowledging. Suffice it to say I did not expect her to approach me today.
“Excuse me?” is all I can manage after a moment of blankly staring at her.
“You heard me,” she says, and then elbows the girl next to her. “Trish, tell him.”
Pixie Trish sneaks a nervous glance around, looking like she’s giving herself a mental pep talk. I take it confrontations are not her forte.
“You said Grady put something in my drink, and that’s a total lie,” she finally says, crumbling under the pressure from Alessandra. “You should be ashamed of accusing a good guy like Grady of something so terrible.”
If Alessandra striking up a conversation with me was a shocker, this leaves me practically scraping my jaw off the floor. “A good guy ?” I ask, dumbfounded. “Are you kidding me? He tried to drug you.”
“No, he didn’t,” Trish says defiantly. “You made it up.”
I can’t believe I’m hearing this. I tried to help this girl and got beaten up for it, and now she’s accusing me of lying in front of a whole bunch of people. “Why on earth would I do that?” I demand, trying to curb my anger.
“Because you’re clearly jealous of him,” Alessandra butts in.
Fiona has just returned with her pizza, and upon hearing the absurdity of that statement, she bursts out laughing. “Are you off your meds, Lucente? Why would Jonathan be jealous of some stuck-up jerk who drugs girls at parties?”
Alessandra doesn’t hesitate; her response is fast and full of poison, like a viper. “Nobody asked for your opinion, affirmative action.”
“Hey!” I snap. The temperature around us plunges.
I’m ready to give Alessandra a piece of my mind, but Fiona doesn’t need a knight in shining armor to defend her. She puts her plate on the table and fires back, “Let’s see who has the right to express their opinion here. You show up at our table, spouting garbage on behalf of your loser boyfriend and his bestie, who would be kicked out of this school for failing every class if not for their rich donor parents. Where is Grady, by the way? Is he not even man enough to speak for himself? Then again, when do any of the legacy boys ever deal with the consequences of their actions? Those cowards always hide behind someone, even if it’s just a pair of skirts.”
“Grady is not a coward!” Pixie Trish squeaks in protest. “He’s dangerous and rad and drives a Ferrari. So what if he has weird kinks and a bit of a temper?”
“Ummm, TMI?” Becky chimes in, grimacing. I can’t help but agree. How much denial is this girl in?
Alessandra throws a nasty scowl at Trish.
“I think it’s time for you both to leave. You’re ruining our lunch,” Fiona says icily.
Alessandra scrunches her nose, seething, but she doesn’t try to prolong her stay. “Let’s go, Trish,” she says, flicking her long hair back arrogantly. “Like anyone would wanna eat at this trashy place anyway. It stinks in here.”
The two of them leave, strutting toward the exit.
I look around. Students at the nearby tables are whispering, pointing, and sneaking glances at us.
“Oh my gawd, this drama is, like, worse than high school,” Becky grouses as Fiona reclaims her seat.
“Why the hell did she do that?” I say, frowning.
“Wait, you didn’t hear?” Becky asks.
Fiona narrows her eyes. “Hear what?”
“It’s damage control,” Becky replies sagely. “Half of South Hall saw Callahan fight Jonathan last Friday. Some of them heard him accusing Callahan of slipping something into a girl’s drink. News spreads fast. Even the girls in sociology were talking about it. I think there was some kind of a fallout at their mansion party afterward. Now Alessandra is trying to fix their reputations, I guess.”
“By publicly accusing me of lying?” I deadpan. “Also, there is no fixing those jerks’ reputations. You’d have to invent a time machine to unbirth them.”
Becky shrugs. “There are plenty of girls who are eager to believe Callahan did nothing wrong because they want to hang out with him. Someone just has to reinforce that fantasy. It’s called confirmation bias.”
“Sucks to see women undermining other women, though,” Fiona says with disappointment. “Makes me sick.”
I nod and get back to my pizza. I find Alessandra’s behavior atrocious, too, but sadly, it’s very common. People do all kinds of things to fit in.
I remember when Clay said that we should start being extra careful not to be seen together. We never hung out to begin with, only exchanged letters, but Clay grew increasingly paranoid about even those few short moments when we handed them off. I understood why he’d said what he said. We belonged to completely different strata of the high school hierarchy. Being pen pals gave us an excuse to interact in the open, but that was only twice a week, and otherwise, I had to keep my distance. No matter how much I wanted to go cheer for Clay’s team or linger in the hallway to say hello when he was leaving class, Clay thought it would be too suspicious, so I was never allowed.
I felt so jealous of all those couples who could drive to school together or walk around holding hands or sit at the same damn table at lunch. Clay and I had to live by a different set of rules.
Clay said some of his teammates made fun of him for taking the pen pal assignment too seriously. He didn’t give details of what they said, but I bet the words loser and dweeb were in heavy rotation. They probably laughed at me. And Clay probably laughed with them. I understood why he felt pressured to do that, but a part of me still felt like it had been clawed out and left to bleed on the floor.
That was when I realized something profound: every person who keeps up appearances, who goes the extra mile just to be a part of a group, has something to hide. Maybe it’s just their own diminished view of themself, or maybe it’s something darker, something that would destroy them if it were ever forced out into the light. A person like that has no choice but to hide their secret, shove it deep within themself until it starts to corrode them like acid. When you have nothing to hide, you don’t care whose company you are seen in. You simply want to be seen.
In the end, Clay and I wanted opposite things.