The next track begins to play.
Tate’s voice pipes through the speakers.
“I once drank piss. And I liked it.”
The entire room goes dead silent.
I shriek and pull away from Tate. “What the fuck? You’re pissing yourself!”
“I thought it was juice! But it tasted better!” the track plays.
“Oh my god, are you doing this on purpose?” I shout.
Tate shakes his head, bewildered. “No! I’m not, I didn’t?—!”
But the smell of piss rises even in this room filled with people. The ones who were standing closest to us back away, and another person shouts, “Gross! Tate is pissing himself!”
More of Tate’s frat hazing confession plays, some of the lines repeated over and over.
“That’s not true!” Tate shouts. He tries to run, but there are people in the way.
People who are all laughing and shouting now, pointing at his piss-stained shorts.
I slip away from everybody, reaching into my pocket to clutch my lucky charm.
Mission accomplished.
“Proud of yourself?” a voice asks from nearby.
River.
I turn to look at him and nod. “Very. Honestly, Tate should thank me.”
“Thank you?” he repeats, shoving his hands into the pockets of his gym shorts. “Why’s that? Because he’s still in one piece?”
I smile widely. “Yeah. I could have done so much worse. As you know.”
River doesn’t return my smile forsomereason. “Pretty neat trick you accomplished.”
“Ithought so.” I turn to leave, but River grabs my arm. I glare at him as his fingernails dig into my skin. “You want something, River?”
“You aren’t supposed to be here,” he snaps. “For obvious fucking reasons.” He gestures in the direction of the DJ, but he never takes his eyes off of me.
“I didn’t see a‘No Medusas allowed’sign anywhere.” I reach up to stroke his jaw, but he yanks back. “Relax. Everyone’s having fun. Except Tate, I guess, but does that matter?”
“You going to go through every member of the frat and air their dirty little secrets?” River asks.
“Sounds like a plan. Thanks for suggesting it.” I step away from River, but he doesn’t let go of my arm.
“You plan on kissing them, too? Is that part of your plan?” he asks, and while his voice is tightly controlled, I know him well enough to know he’s at the edge of bursting.
“Why shouldn’t I? It’s not like anyone else around here wants to kiss me.” I pull harder on my arm, but he only squeezes tighter.
“Maybe there are good reasons for that,” he replies. “Did you ever think about that?”
“Maybe there are good reasons for what I do, too,” I answer. “But you didn’t have a problem breaking your poor frat brother’s hand, did you? Are you the only one who gets to have revenge?”
Over by the DJ table, somebody shouts, “I don’t know! I can’t fucking change the music!”
