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My slowly simmering anger is on the verge of boiling over when I finally find Olivia in the recreation hall. This building is so seldomly used that I had no idea it even existed until a helpful freshman with hearts in his eyes pointed me in the right direction.
Inside, there are foosball tables on one side of the room next to a row of ancient vending machines. The place smells like used gym mats and the florescent lighting garishly shines on all the chips in the wood paneling along the wall. It’s no wonder that most people never bother coming in here.
Until today.
About a dozen people gather on the cracked leather couches at the far side of the main room. The ancient flatscreen television mounted on the wall is turned off so it can’t be a movie that has their attention. I’m only halfway across the room when I see the focus of their attention.
Olivia sits on the arm of a chair. The position puts her head slightly above everyone else. She looks like a queen on her throne, holding court with her adoring subjects. Someone says something, and she laughs. A wide smile lights up her face in a way that I haven’t seen since we were kids.
She actually looks happy.
I recognize more than a few of the people here from parties at Havoc House. People who have barely spoken to me since the sextape came out and only tolerate me now because I’ve got status as a pledge, for as long as that lasts.
The crowd is thick enough that I have to push my way through to get to the center. I hear grumbling as I force my way past a guy that doesn’t want to move, but he doesn’t say anything loudly enough for me to hear it.
Olivia’s voice floats over me before I reach her. “And then I was living in Detroit for a while. That’s where I got most of my tattoos. I was crashing with this guy who would give me free ink if I let him practice on me.”
“That’s so cool,” Serena gushes, her voice so syrupy-sweet it makes my teeth hurt. “My mother wouldn’t even let me take a gap year. She would flip out if I did anything that adventurous.”
Serena couldn’t take a gap year because she would lose her scholarship if she did. I doubt her mother had anything at all to do with that particular decision.
“You weren’t scared to be on your own?” Maisie asks.
“Not at all,” Olivia replies flippantly. “You meet the most amazing people when you’re couch-surfing. For a little bit, I stayed at an abandoned warehouse that a bunch of squatters turned into an art collective. This one girl would make sculptures out of totally random things, like stuff she got out of garbage. She did this one where she made a full set of living room furniture out of like a hundred pounds of human hair and matchsticks. Then she set the whole thing on fire during a showing. It was supposed to be a commentary on the inherent instability of a capitalist system, or something like that.”
She makes it sound like I spent all those years on my own for fun and not because I had literally nowhere else to go. I deliberately push my annoyance aside. Given the circumstances, I can’t exactly fault her for playing down the bad parts of my life story.
“That’s so cool,” Maisie gushes. Several others make noises of agreement. “You must have dozens of cool stories.”
“Oh, way more than that.”
Olivia’s smile widens when she catches sight of me. For a second, I almost have myself convinced that she is happy to see me.
Then she opens her mouth and that illusion shatters into little pieces.
“Hey, Via. I’m so glad you’re here. Help us settle a debate.” She points to the dark television screen. “No one can decide what movie we should watch, but I heard you were the girl with the most film experience.”
A nervous titter goes up around us, everyone a little too shocked for outright laughter.
Despite a sick sort of feeling, I’m not as surprised as I probably should be. I knew when she walked into my dorm room that Olivia came here to play hardball. Even if I wasn’t expecting it to be this hard.
Blustering through this is the only way forward that makes any sense.
“Girls just want to have fun.” I reply with a careless shrug, like I don’t realize I’m the butt of a terrible joke. That it isn’t actually me on that tape doesn’t matter, as long as everyone thinks it was.
Olivia is the actual victim, but that doesn’t stop her from turning right around and playing the villain. Something about it is just brutally ironic. Part of me wants to be surprised that she would even bring up that sextape, but I know that I shouldn’t be.
Olivia just stares at me, her malicious smile only wilting slightly. “What?”
“That movie from the 80s starring the lady from Sex and the City.” I deliberately keep my tone neutral, as if I don’t have any idea I’m being mocked. “It’s what you were talking about, right? Because you know it’s my favorite?”
Serena and Maisie regard me with identical expressions of distaste. That sentiment seems to spread through the crowd until everyone is looking at me with a mix of surprise and disgust, like a roach just crawled out from under the couch and started reciting the national anthem.
“What does she even want?” Someone asks, but I don’t look to see who it is.
Every religion on earth has something to say about pride. It’s the deadliest of sins. The human foible that the gods most often sought to punish. Philosophically speaking, hubris never takes you anywhere good.
So I have to wonder if this is my cosmic punishment for daring to think I had a right to interfere here. I might have come to St. Bart’s with the best of intentions, but the fact remains that the extent of my self-confidence was suicidal in its scope.
