In My Dreams I Hold a Knife(14)

A chorus of groans and What the fuck, Frankies echoed around our small group. And that was definitive proof the situation was dire, because normally the whole dorm loved our resident football star.

“Frankie, you and your big mouth.” Jack blew out a frustrated breath. “One secret, man. I dare you to keep one secret in your whole entire life. Do it, and I’ll die of shock.”

“Do you see?” Heather was transitioning into her favorite mode: high theatrics. I could picture her striding across a stage, lifting a sword, bellowing Now we are at war to a rapt audience. “They knew we were the dorm to beat, and they knew where to find our float. This is sabotage.”

One of the guys who lived a few doors down from Mint and Coop had drifted to the back of the float. Now he started laughing, pointing at the crumpled castle wall. “Mint, you gotta see this. They left you a message.”

We moved en masse to look. Drawn across the back of the float in lurid red paint, lines marred by drip marks, was a stick-figure boy cradled in the lap of a stick-figure woman. They were surrounded by crude dollar signs. The boy had a dialogue bubble protruding from his mouth: My mommy bought me this float. Underneath the stick figure, in ragged letters, were the words and all my friends, followed by East House cheats. Love, Chapman.

“How do we know that’s supposed to be Mint?” Caro whispered.

“Please,” Heather scoffed. “Of course it’s Mint.”

I chanced a look at him. Even though we were friends now, looking at him hadn’t stopped feeling dangerous, like each time I was skimming too close to the sun. But he wasn’t looking anywhere except at the painting, even with Courtney standing so close behind him, her shoulder brushing his every time he moved. It seemed Mint and Courtney were an inevitable pairing—like to like—so I tried to ignore the way their closeness rubbed at me, stirring old, bitter feelings.

But something was wrong with Mint. In the two months I’d spent watching him, I’d never seen his face look like this, with tracks of scarlet blooming down his cheeks and neck. His skin looked painful, hot to the touch. His eyes darted around, taking in the snickers and soft laughter.

Coop rested a hand on Mint’s shoulder. “You’ve been immortalized. And here I thought it’d be your name on a building or something.” His mouth quirked. “The likeness is chilling, you have to admit. I told you to double down on leg days. Those calves are looking a little thin, man.”

Mint wrenched his shoulder away. “Get the fuck off me.”

His anger was a lightning strike, completely unexpected. Coop took a half step back and raised both hands in surrender. “Okay, easy.” Behind Mint’s back, he found my eyes, and a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.

It was a message for me alone, a look to make a private space between us. He was always doing that. It didn’t matter if we were at a party, packed wall to wall; or if I was leaving a lecture hall, adrift in a sea of people, only to spot him reading on a bench; or if we were having lunch and he was the last to arrive, setting his tray at the opposite end of the table. He always found me, and for that first, single moment when our eyes met, we existed in a separate place. A private room he’d built to tell me something I could never parse before the moment was over.

“It’s not funny,” Mint said sharply. I looked away from Coop, drawn to Mint’s hands, which he’d clenched into fists. “It’s a lie.”

“Obviously,” said Frankie, ever loyal.

“Fucking losers.” Mint kicked the float, right in the center of the painting, and it cracked, wood splintering. “Liars.” A hush fell over the group as he kicked again, still red-faced. And then Frankie was kicking, too, until the side of the castle gave away completely and the painting turned into a gaping hole.

For a few seconds the only sound was Mint’s hard breathing. Then Jack said, “I guess we’re not salvaging the float.”

One of the girls from my floor sighed. “I can’t believe I wasted so much time on this. What a disaster.” She tossed her hair, turning to walk away.

“Where are you going?” asked Caro, her face the portrait of betrayal.

The girl gave her an incredulous look. “It’s the night before Homecoming, Caro. I’m not missing parties just to cobble together some pitiful makeup float and lose tomorrow anyway.”

“Me either,” someone else said, and that was the death knell, the curtain falling. There was murmuring, and then everyone was shifting, adjusting backpacks over their shoulders. In twos and threes they walked away, muttering about Chapman Hall and dick-swinging contests and pranks gone too far.

It left only the eight of us, doing our best not to look at the hole in the float.

“Can you believe them?” Caro asked. “One setback and they jump ship. Where’s their loyalty?”

Jack sighed and sank to the ground, perching among the dead leaves. “I hate to be the one to say it, but I think we’re screwed.”

Heather dropped beside him and leaned in close. Jack’s cheeks turned rosy, and he glanced around to see if we were watching. After two months of being friends, I knew that particular shade of pink meant Jack was happy with Heather’s affection but would melt if anyone mentioned it. Heather called this shyness Jack disentangling from years of repression, a line she’d cribbed from one of her Intro to Psychology books. At night when she and Caro and I sat around talking, waiting for our face masks to dry or watching mindless TV, Heather told us secrets Jack had told her, like that he’d never been kissed, never been allowed to have a girlfriend. But she was patient; she made the first move with him, over and over, fresh each day. Heather was like that. She was a girl who did things I’d never known were an option.