Undecided(71)

I laugh in spite of myself. “Shut up.”

“Fine. What’d you do?”

I sigh and hold up two fingers.

He gasps. “You got arrested twice?”

“Once. Two charges.”

He covers his face. “Nora!” He’s practically squealing with joy.

“Don’t tell Kellan,” I say sternly. “Don’t tell anyone.”

“Who knows?”

“My parents. The Dean. The probation officer who monitored my community service.”

“This keeps getting better.”

“One night in May…” I try not to laugh at Crosbie’s enthusiasm. As many times as I’ve replayed that dreadful night, I’ve never once found it funny. But now I suppose I can sort of see it from where he’s standing. I clear my throat. “It was the morning I learned I’d failed two of my five classes and was borderline failing the other three. To cheer me up Marcela suggested we go to this party she’d heard about. The point, of course, wasn’t the party, but the free booze. We drank everything we could get our hands on, danced around, and acted like idiots.”

“Or college students.”

I smile ruefully. My parents certainly hadn’t seen it that way. “Anyway, we decided we simply had to have donuts and left the party to go to Beans. Marcela had keys and we knew Nate would have already locked up, so we walked into town. Then we realized Main Street was completely deserted. It wasn’t quite eleven, but the street was empty. So we decided to go streaking.”

Crosbie’s mouth falls open. “Naked?”

“Yeah. We dropped all our clothes right there—” I point behind us to the barber shop on the corner, “and sprinted as fast as we could toward the other end.”

“And you were naked? Together?”

“Well, we were together for the first few blocks. Then Marcela stepped on a rock and stopped and I ran ahead.” I pause. “Then the police came. We both hid, but they only found me. I was hiding behind a compost bin near the hardware store—”

Crosbie’s laughing so hard I’m not sure he can hear me.

“The policeman had to get a blanket from the trunk so I could sit on it in the backseat. They’d found our clothes so they knew there were two of us and he kept asking where my ‘friend’ was. I said I didn’t know and eventually he drove me to the police station.”

“And they charged you?”

“I was the only person in the holding cell! They had nothing else to do.”

He gives up the pretense of walking and bends over to hold his thighs as he roars with laughter, tears gathering at the corner of his eyes. My parents had had a very different response.

“Anyway,” I continue primly, “they charged me with two misdemeanors: public intoxication and indecent exposure.”

Now he just kneels on the wet sidewalk and laughs his ass off.

“I got three hundred hours of community service and had to collect trash on the side of the highway all summer. That’s why I stayed at Burnham.”

I kick him when he doesn’t stop laughing, and eventually he sobers up and gazes at me, almost worshipfully.

“I like you so much more now,” he says, slowly getting to his feet.

“Funny. I’m liking you much less.”

“I mean, don’t get me wrong—I really like the cardigan-wearing, library-obsessed Nora who doesn’t jump on beds, but this… Well, I like the criminal side of you. It’s hot.”

“Stop.”

“I mean, the Burnham Police Department also saw it…”

“Crosbie!”

He teases me the rest of the way back to the apartment, even though it means passing the Frat Farm so he’ll have to double back later. We’re not at the point where we spend every night together, and I’m definitely not ready for a sleepover at the frat house, anyway.

“Remember,” I say, sticking my key in the lock. “Not a word to Kellan. This is a secret.”

“Got it.” He mimes zipping his lips. “Top secret.”

Suddenly the door is wrenched open and Kellan’s standing there. “What’s a secret?”

“How long have you been waiting?” I exclaim.

“I saw you through the window. Come in here—I want to show you guys something.”

Crosbie and I exchange bemused looks but follow him inside, stepping out of our boots and climbing the stairs to the living room…where Kellan has erected a giant easel with a huge sheet of paper with the numbers forty through fifty printed on it. There are eleven spots for entries: seven have actual names, four have descriptors. That bathroom wall is burned onto the back of my eyelids: the last time I saw it, forty-one and forty-two were blank. Now forty-two reads “BJ at May Madness party” and forty-one reads “Red Corset.”

Fuck. Me. Aka “Red Corset.”

“What’s this?” I ask, trying to hide my terror.

“I’ve eliminated sixty-two through fifty-one,” Kellan answers. “They’re all clean. This is the next batch.”

“Good job,” Crosbie says, studying the list. “You’re making progress.” He taps the blowjob entry. “I’d forgotten about this.”