Nice Girls(66)

There was a headline that hung limp over my picture: cornell senior expelled after alleged attack.

I had just been exposed.



I never meant to attack her.

Carly.

She was one of my freshman residents on the sixth floor. She was only eighteen, and she was pale and pretty with long red hair. A walking porcelain doll. Carly wanted to study art history, and she hoped to work in a museum one day. She wore a knapsack to class, a hand-me-down made of real worn leather. She was sharp and funny, and the other freshmen flocked to her during their first few days on campus. Carly had presence.

But the best thing about her: she admired me.

I met her during Welcome Week, when she knocked on my door.

I had a little bucket outside my room with free condoms. The RAs had to make sure that the freshmen weren’t spreading chlamydia as they screwed about, untethered. But as liberated as they were, they were also shy—the freshmen were discreet about the condoms they took.

But that day, Carly sat on my floor with a large handful of candy-colored condoms in her lap. Carly asked me about my own life, where I was from, what I studied, what I wanted to do in the future. When she laughed, it sounded breathless and charming.

“I think I’m gonna bug you from now on,” she said, grinning. “You actually know what the hell you’re doing.”

“I don’t think anyone does,” I said, but I was flattered.

Carly often stopped by my room to talk to me, no matter how late the time. She was an avid listener during her nightly visits, the two of us sitting on the floor in my room, talking about current events and books and pop culture and our everyday lives.

As laid-back as she was, Carly was shrewd. She was unbothered by the fact that I was a senior and an authority figure. I had none of the awkwardness toward Carly that I had with the other freshmen. I gave her advice, and she was my confidante at the dorm. I almost viewed her like a little sister. No one had ever tried to mentor me before, so I decided to do that for someone else.

By the time September ended, Carly had already accomplished so much. She’d slept with two boys from different frats and secured an internship at the college art museum. She’d found a reliable drug dealer on campus. She’d rushed during Greek Week and had five of the school’s top sororities make a bid on her. Carly had dumped them all, saying she couldn’t deal with the commitment. And somehow, she was studiously keeping up with her classes.

In the span of a month, Carly had done more than what I could’ve dreamt in my first year. She was going places. I told her that, too.

And she thought I was interesting, smart, funny. She loved to hear about my own experiences in high school, college, Liberty Lake. She empathized with me about my past. I was spellbound. My friendship with her was the equivalent of love at first sight. We weren’t friends because we’d gone to the same church or school. We hadn’t settled for each other. There was no unspoken distance or rivalry between us. I adored Carly, easy as that.

She looked up to me. I was flattered that someone like her was interested in someone like me. She was three years my junior with twice the life experience. I suppose deep inside, I was still the same fat Mary from Liberty Lake, who just wanted to be liked. And Carly did. She admired me.

I thought so, at least.

Then, late one Wednesday night, I was drying off in a shower stall in the dorm. I heard the bathroom door open, laughter spilling in, Carly’s breathless voice among it. A pair of footsteps rushed past, heading for a toilet stall.

“God, you’re such a lightweight,” called Carly.

The person in the stall made no answer.

“Is it stupid that I’m worried about the RAs?” asked another girl, her voice scratchy. “I don’t want my shit getting confiscated.”

“You shouldn’t,” said Carly. “Fucking sucks, though. The RA system is so archaic. I didn’t go to college to get babied by some prudes.”

The other girl seemed to laugh in disbelief. I squeezed the towel in my hands, willing myself to stay still.

“Aren’t you friends with one?” asked the girl.

“Yeah,” said Carly. “Mary. She’s nice. Super sheltered, though.”

“She seems like a try-hard.”

Carly giggled.

“You don’t even know the half of it. She was like, rough, back in high school. Super rough.”

There was suddenly silence from the two of them. I tried peering through the crack in the shower door, but the girls were out of view. After a moment, the two of them burst out laughing, their voices bouncing in the bathroom.

“Oh my God, who the hell calls themselves ‘Ivy League Mary’?” said the girl breathlessly.

“They did her dirty with that picture.”

“God, she was like twice your size, Carly. It’s like she didn’t even try.”

I was cold standing naked in the shower, but my face was burning. Carly had showed the newspaper clipping of me back in high school, when Liberty Lake had announced my college acceptance. I only mentioned it once—Carly had gone out of her way to find it.

She was ripping me apart.

“Poor girl’s overcompensating,” said Carly, sighing. “I do feel really bad for her, though. First the weight, now this. If I was working as an RA, I’d be so depressed. Like if that was all my life had amounted to? God, I’d slit my wrists.”