Slowly, we worked through the alphabet. There was one guy with a Q and a lot of R’s before we got to Salter, Sanchez, Sandler, and Saylor. I mounted the two steps behind Marc Anthony Sbrocco. He must have had a big family because there was an explosion of clapping and yelling when he bounced across the stage. I sawthe dean frown as Marc Anthony pumped his fist in triumph and grinned at the bleachers.
It was finally my turn. I was going to do it. I made myself smile, in spite of the fact that I was standing in front of hundreds of people who had watched and shared the video of me puking and saying that no, I hadn’t yet had sex but I wanted to in the future. I had also explained that one time in high school, I given a blow job to a guy but had thought it was a little weird and not very fun. After he’d finished, he had opened the spit valve from his trumpet over my head so I had bitten him and it had ended badly.
“Molly Antonia Scheffler,” the dean read aloud. I started to walk across the stage to the sound of some polite claps, which was nice. But all of sudden, ear-splitting whistles rained down—like, they could have shattered crystal.
“Let’s go! Let’s go, Molly!” I heard Shane shout.
The fake smile I had put on turned into a real one. “Congratulations,” the dean told me.
“Thank you.” I looked into the crowd but it was all a blur and I couldn’t see the guy yelling for me. But he was there.
He waited for me afterwards, too, and when I walked into the meet-and-greet area, I hugged him. “Thank you for coming,” I said. I was careful not to crowd too close to him, even though I wanted to.
“You’re not crying, are you? I didn’t bring my T-shirt. You can use my tie,” he offered. He didn’t push me away, either. Hehugged back with his one arm and just for a moment, he rested his cheek on my hair.
“No, I’m ok. I heard you whistling.” I stepped back, pretty much forcing myself.
“You could hear me all the way down there?”
“They probably heard you in Canada,” I said, and he laughed. I wiped my index fingers under my eyes.
“Your makeup looks fine,” he assured me. It was a lucky thing for him to have grown up with sisters. “Who’s this?”
He was looking at someone behind me, and I turned to see Corbin standing there. “Hi, Molly,” the little louse said. His eyes flicked to Shane and back to me. “Congratulations.”
“What are you doing here?” I asked. I was sorry to see that he wore an impeccable suit and was still cute.
“Some of my brothers, my fraternity brothers—”
“I mean, what are you doing here, talking to me? I hate you,” I informed him. “I don’t want your congratulations.”
“Who the heck is this?” Shane wondered.
“This is Corbin. He made the video to humiliate me,” I explained.
“Wait a minute, I—”
“Move on,” Shane ordered. He glared down at the shorter guy. “Move on or I’ll make you sorry that you didn’t.”
“Wait! I’m here to apologize,” Corbin said, the words fast and stuttered. “I didn’t make that video—ok, I did participate—it wasn’t my idea and I’m sorry. I’m sorry about that.”
“I don’t forgive you,” I told him. “You purposefully invited me to your party so you could humiliate me.”
“No, I didn’t,” he said. “I asked you to come because I used to watch you in class and I thought you were cute and spunky.”
“Spunky?” I asked doubtfully, and he nodded.
“There was that girl who sat in the front row who raised her hand all the time. She’d say, ‘In my opinion,’ and then she’d make some stupid comment that didn’t relate to the discussion at all. One time, you told her that no one was interested in her opinions.”
“That wasn’t very nice of me,” I said. I remembered it well. That morning we’d found out how much my dad really owed, meaning what we owed, as a family. It had staggered me.
“She deserved it and I liked how you were tough like that,” Corbin said. “When you came to the party at my fraternity house, I thought we would get together. But you pushed me away.”
“I did?” I didn’t remember that part. There were chunks of the night that existed only as video clips for me.
“You said that we didn’t even know each other so you weren’t going upstairs with me,” he explained. “I looked like an idiot in front of my friends and I was mad about it. That was how it started but I didn’t mean for it to end—”
“Grow up, little boy,” Shane told him. He put his uninjured arm around me and we walked off. As we did, he nudged Corbin out of the way. He nudged hard enough that the dumb baby guy stumbled and almost fell.
