Wrecked(21)

When he unscrews the vodka and begins draining whole bottles into the can, they take notice. Low whistles, laughter. The can slowly fills. He calls for someone to bring in the first case of beer.

He pops a can, pours.

“Stand back and watch the doctor at work, boys,” Exley says.

. . .





8





Richard


When Richard hears the soft knock on his door late that night, he doesn’t move. Seated at his desk, his hands freeze above the keyboard of his laptop where he’s been tapping out a paper. The handle turns, and his door opens a crack.

Seriously, though?

It’s Jordan. Who looks awful.

“Can I come in?” Jordan asks. As he walks in. Space is tight, pretty much just a rectangle with enough square footage for a bed, chair, desk, and dresser. Jordan sits on the bed.

“What’s up?” Richard asks. This is not Jordan’s usual Wednesday night face. For one thing, he’s sober. Wednesday is pool shots at Taylor: full shot glasses positioned at each of the six holes of their basement pool table, and your opponent had to drink whenever you pocketed a ball. You had to drink two shots if you scratched.

Richard hardly plays anymore. At the beginning of the semester he’d made a point of heading down to the basement on Wednesday nights after he returned from tutoring. A treat, he told himself, following hours helping frosh with their problem sets. But a month into it, with Thursday morning classes a hungover torture, it didn’t feel like much of a treat. Felt more like an expectation. Especially since if he decided to pass he had to endure rude comments the following day about his absence. Especially from “the Doctor.”

He’d used Carrie and Wednesday nights at her place as his excuse. “I know you want me, Exley, but she’s hotter than you,” Richard fired back one morning when Exley’s smack talk was too much to handle. A bunch of the other guys were around and they laughed. The Doctor backed off after that, but they both knew: lines had been drawn.

Jordan had never joined in with Exley’s goading, but he’d never defended Richard, either. Jordan was a Wednesday night regular, scheduling no class on Thursday before ten a.m. Richard suspected he chose his major based on which ones offered the most afternoon classes.

“Shots canceled tonight?” Richard asks.

“Shots?” Jordan looks puzzled. “I didn’t go. My parents are in town.”

Parents Weekend is still a ways off. “Is everything okay?”

Jordan runs his hand through his hair. “Listen, I have to ask you something. Do you remember last week, when you and I were talking about the Conundrum party?”

“And finishing off that Blue Moon we found in the fridge,” Richard says.

“I told you about that girl I met? The freshman?”

Richard nods.

“Did you repeat that to anyone?”

Richard tries to remember what Jordan said. Something about fish. Something about Country Time lemonade. He definitely remembers Jordan bragging about getting laid that night.

“I don’t think so.” Richard doesn’t tell him he’s been too preoccupied licking his wounds over Carrie to get around to publicizing Jordan’s sexual exploits.

“Well, did you or didn’t you?” Jordan demands. “I need you to be sure.”

“Whoa.” Richard puts his hands up. “I’m sure I did not repeat what you said.”

Relief spreads over Jordan’s face.

“Mind telling me what’s up with you tonight?”

“I just need to know, okay? Something’s going on.”

A boulder of dread thuds in Richard’s gut. More damage, this time at Conundrum? His parents can’t handle another fat bill arriving in their mailbox. Or maybe the college heard about the party and decided to kick them all out of housing. Would it help that he wasn’t there, or would they not care?

Then Jordan surprises him.

“So that girl,” Jordan says, “the one I told you about? She’s telling people I raped her.”

Richard’s shock feels cold. His brain goes numb, processes in slow motion. Responding, in words, is not an option.

“Late last night, I’m checking my e--mail,” Jordan continues, “and I see a message from the Dean of Students Office, telling me I need to be at a meeting there at eight o’clock this morning. Didn’t say why exactly, just that I had to be there to talk about violating community standards or something. I assumed it was more stuff about dorm damage. But I asked a few of the other guys and none of them got the e--mail. Just me.

“So I go there and they send me in to see this woman named Carole Patterson. She tells me I’ve been reported for sexual misconduct. She says I have three days to respond to the charges, and then the college is going to investigate.” Jordan tosses his hands up. “I was like, what? I mean, it took a minute for this to sink in. The woman’s, like, blah blahing at me, talking about process or something, I don’t know, I just keep hearing the word ‘process,’ and finally I say to her, ‘Hold on. Somebody is accusing me of rape? I thought this was more about the dorm damage!’ And she basically says yeah, and I’m scrolling back in my mind to what I’ve been doing and who I’ve been with the last few weeks, because you’d think if you raped somebody, you’d kind of know it. But I’m drawing a complete blank, so I ask her, ‘Who the hell is saying this?’ And she tells me it’s that girl who came to our party last weekend. She’s telling them I forced her to have sex, and now the college is doing this whole investigation.”