People Like Us(6)

She pulls her cell phone out of her pocket, dialing as she speaks. “She isn’t picking up. She sleeps late on Saturdays.” Justine is Brie’s girlfriend. Brie and I never date Bates students as a rule, so we mostly end up with students from Easterly, the local public high school. I recently split with my Easterly Ex, the eminently unfaithful Spencer Morrow. Tai had come up with that moniker while passionately disavowing him after we heard that he’d cheated, and for some reason it had cracked me up and become his nickname. I hear a faint, gravelly morning voice on the other side of the line, and Brie’s face brightens. She pushes me off her and the room suddenly feels colder and emptier as she scrambles up, grabbing her coffee and darting into the hall. I wish Justine would sleep later on Saturdays. I wish she would sleep all weekend. I pick my way over to the window, careful not to trip on the land mine of clothes and textbooks and practice equipment. Laundry day isn’t until tomorrow.

Outside, people swarm like it’s moving-in day, but it’s not just students and their families. A row of news vans lines the curb, beside which a handful of women holding clipboards pace anxiously and bark orders at tall guys with Steadicams strapped around their torsos. There are dozens of people wearing matching bright-blue Tshirts with a logo that looks like a cross between an infinity symbol and two linked hearts. Throngs of disheveled, homeless-looking townies mill around, bleary eyed, some of them crying. It’s total chaos. It looks like the T-shirt people have set up a table and are providing coffee and bagels. Maybe I should head down to them instead of to the dining hall. It will be impossible to get to it in this mess, anyway.

I take the stairs two by two, hoping not to run into Jessica’s family, who I assume are here to clear out her room. At the front door I find Jenny standing guard and I flash her a smile. “Get any sleep?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “Be safe, Kay.”

“You want a coffee or anything?”

She smiles weakly. “That’d be great.”

I hop over to the table where the people wearing the blue shirts are pouring coffees and handing out bagels and I grab two empty cups. I’m about to fill them when a guy standing behind the table yanks the cups out of my hand. I stare at him in shock. I know his face, but not his name. He’s a student from Easterly, like Spencer and Justine, and a regular at their cast parties. Since Justine stars in most of their theater productions, I’ve seen him around quite a bit, but never onstage. He’s probably a techie.

Sleeve tattoos cover his bare, muscular arms from wrist to elbow. His lower lip is pierced and his wavy dark hair tumbles over his eyes like he’s just rolled out of bed. In skintight jeans and a torn-up black sweater, he looks like a washed-up rock star, complete with coke-chic sniffle and bloodshot eyes. Then I notice the balled-up tissue in his hand and wonder if he’s not so much doing lines bright and early on a Saturday morning as he is crying.

My momentary sympathy dissolves the moment he opens his mouth.

“Bye-bye, now.”

“I’m sorry, was I supposed to pay for those?”

He just glares. This guy’s antisocial, a complete weirdo, even if he would be kind of hot without the tortured-artist vibe and holier-than-thou attitude. “They aren’t for you,” he finally says.

I look around, confused. “Who exactly are they for?”

He gestures wordlessly to the crowd.

“What?”

He sighs and his dark eyes narrow. He leans in close to me and whispers, looking embarrassed. “We’re here for Jessica’s people. The homeless.”

“Oh.” I straighten up. “I thought this was because of the crowd.”

“That is the crowd,” he says.

I look around again, and realize he’s right. The people filling the parking lot don’t just look homeless, they are homeless. Most of the people here are probably from shelters. I look back to sleeve-tattoo guy. “Why?”

“They’re mourning a lost friend. Unlike some people.” He flicks his hands. “Back to your lair.”

I eye the coffee cups he took from me and then glance back at Jenny. “Could I just have one of those?”

He looks at me with contempt. “No. You can’t. Go to Starbucks.”

“Starbucks is a five-mile walk. And it’s not for me.” I point to Jenny. “That’s Officer Jenny Biggs. She was on duty when the body was found. She hasn’t slept since then. Can you imagine being up that long after finding a girl dead, a girl you’d sworn to protect?”

He sighs and pours a coffee, then hands it to me. “Fine. If I see you drinking that, I’ll blacklist you.”

I roll my eyes. “From your shelter?”

“Luck flips hard, Kay Donovan.”

“Okay, Hank.”

He looks confused. “My name is Greg.”

I wink. “Now I know. And pull your sleeves down, it’s freezing.” I weave through the crowd and hand the coffee to Jenny, who knocks it back like a shot.

“I hope they figure this one out fast, kiddo.” She flashes me an encouraging smile but doesn’t look me in the eye, which is a little unsettling. I notice her tapping her phone against her thigh and wonder if she got news while I was talking to Greg.

“Is that likely?” I ask, knowing she won’t answer.

She shrugs and gestures to the dorm. “Thanks for the coffee.”