Nice Girls(2)

But as he worked on the computer, Mohamed didn’t say much. He almost acted like I wasn’t there.

“One final thing,” he said. “I need your master key, Mary.”

Mohamed was uneasy, his face taut. He looked at me as if horns had sprung out of my head. In reality, he might have been looking for a bruise or a scar on my face, some sign that I had gotten into a fight with a freshman girl. Yet somehow my face had been spared. Carly had terrible aim.

I felt my cheeks start to burn, that rush as I contemplated running out of the office, away from campus and Mohamed and Carly and everyone else who knew. Everyone who would know.

I fumbled in my backpack. Dug past the laptop and the wires and the wallet. I yanked out the master key to the dorm and chucked it on the desk. Mohamed stared at it.

“Well, that was the last thing,” he said, unsmiling. “You can go.”



The drive back home was slow. Soul-crushing. Dad and I were cramped together in the cargo van that he’d rented. We listened to whatever Dad could find on the radio—usually any station that played classic rock from the seventies and eighties.

We wove past large red oaks and birches. In the third week of October, their leaves were now fiery red and deep orange. They were a staple in Ithaca. Later, we reached miles of flat plains. The roads and highways started to blend together: impatient drivers speeding by, a stranded car, ugly soundproof barriers that flanked the sides of the road, little highway shrines for victims of roadside violence. Or it was more grass, endless stretches of grass. I offered to take over the driving, but Dad shook his head.

“You can barely keep your hands to yourself,” he said dully.

I felt a lump in my throat. I knew Dad was angry, bitter, but I realized there was something else. He didn’t trust me anymore. I hadn’t kept my hands to myself. I hadn’t behaved like he’d known me to be. I was a liability now.

Everyone else I’d left behind—my peers, my professors, my coworkers at the dorm, the boys I’d slept with—what did they now think of me? Was I unhinged to them, frightening? Were they even shocked? Maybe they’d sensed it all along. Maybe that was why few of them ever got close.

And the friends I’d made, the people I’d found throughout college—we’d connected so quickly, like kids in a sandbox. Our past three years together had flown by: crying over finals, only to laugh in hysterics at two in the morning; going out and getting drunk, or staying in and getting high; making out with guys right after puking at a party. We even shared alcohol that I’d confiscated from the freshmen. We’d been through all of it. In college, it was shared mayhem.

But this was a different mess that I’d gotten into. Something darker, more convoluted. I couldn’t justify myself to anyone. Any friends I’d had at school were gone.

Any way you looked at the situation—I looked like a monster.

Around eight, Dad and I stopped for the night in Holiday City. Despite the cheery name, the place was run-down, mostly a cluster of seedy gas stations and motels that served the truck drivers who passed through. Dad booked us a motel room with double beds. We had dinner there, dry hamburgers and stale french fries. Dad watched the news, then fell asleep soon after.

I stayed up in my bed, looking at the new texts on my phone. I’d finally opened all of them, but I hadn’t sent a single reply. I felt like I’d been ripped open.

I was “trash” to people. I was a “fucking bitch” for terrorizing a weak freshman. I needed to “eat shit.” The news had spread—it always did on a college campus.

Next, they would pry for gossip. They would ask Mohamed about my move-out. They would discuss my time at the dorm, my behavior over the fall. Since I was no longer there, the only explanation would come from Carly.

Then they’d go online. They would search for me, deciphering my pictures, my comments, my posts for any hint of what I would do. Of what I was.

I knew this because I had done the same. I had watched other people burn before. Like the sorority girl from last year, who had been photographed making a Hitler salute at a G.I. Joes and Army Hoes party. By the time I saw the photos online, she’d already been suspended and stripped of her Fortune 500 internship. It was a mesmerizing train wreck. There was satisfaction in watching someone else suffer for their sins.

But now I was the one being watched. And if they prodded, I was afraid of what they would find.

I went through my social media—Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tinder. I deactivated everything and scrubbed myself off the Internet. After a cursory search, I no longer appeared online, no posts nor pictures. No one needed to know anything about me.

My reputation might’ve been over at school, but I would protect it everywhere else. After I was done, I turned off my phone. Placed it on the nightstand.

I gulped down a glass of water and my escitalopram and tried to fall asleep. Instead, I kept thinking about the lovely old buildings at school, the first hint of snow coming in the next few weeks, and the smell of coffee as I walked to class with a friend, musing about theses and grad school. Madison and I had talked of backpacking through Europe after graduation. But now I had no reason to go.

When I woke up the next day, my eyes were sticky with dried salt.





2




After an early breakfast, Dad and I hit the road. We drove past more small towns in the middle of nowhere, more empty hovels, more stretches of highways. Dad refused to let me drive, so I plugged in my earbuds and listened to podcasts on my phone.