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“What do you see? Somebody suspicious?”
The picture is taken from the aisle, about three rows up from where I am sitting. Wow, my hair looks crazy from the back. People think natural curls are so great, but I really need to be looking at myself in a mirror a little bit more. It looks like a bird’s nest back there.
“Well, see this empty seat? Eventually, Seattle sat next to me. This was before that.”
“Who is Seattle?” Zeke asks.
“My roommate,” I answer. “You guys already saw her. At the M Club?”
“I don’t remember another girl there,” Trevor shrugs.
“You mean the woman in the booth? With the old guy? The one taking all the pictures?” Diego says.
“Oh, no shit,” Spencer quips knowingly.
“Oh, wow,” I sigh, the air going out of my chest. “But, no. I mean, she’s my roommate. She could have been taking pictures of me sleeping all this time. There isn’t anything like that. And… she’s my roommate. You guys. That’s just too horrible to contemplate.”
Spencer stares at me sympathetically, but with a fierce concentration. “But you are saying it’s possible,” he reminds me.
I shrug one shoulder, feeling kind of sick. “Anything is possible. There were two hundred people in the auditorium that day. This picture just happened to be before Seattle—who I am pretty sure called herself Stevie then—came to class. She’s late all the time. It takes a long time to be Seattle.”
The guys look at each other for a while, kind of ignoring me.
“Hey! Hello? Remember? You are not going to leave me out of things?” I interrupt, feeling rather sulky.
“No, you’re right,” Diego quickly agrees.
“If it was her, where are the pictures from M Club?” I point out. “You all saw her doing it. I mean, does that seem obvious?”
Diego nods tightly, but I can see that his mind is made up.
It does look pretty bad.
“Okay, I am tired of thinking about this,” I announce, snapping the laptop closed. “Can we do something else now? This feels… weird. Bad.”
They all stand up, their chair legs scraping along the floor as though I have just released them from class or something. It is kind of funny like that.
“Actually, we have practice now,” Spencer says. “Are you ready?”
I swallow. “What do you mean? Am I ready for what?”
“Apparently, for your very first football experience,” Diego smirks.
I swallow, hard. It hadn’t occurred to me until just now that I have been sort of a jerk about football. Kind of brushing it off as a dumb thing to do. And all this time, they have been more than interested in me. Suddenly I feel a little bit embarrassed and ungrateful.
“You know what, I’m really looking forward to it!” I smile weakly, happy to think about something else. “Can I wear this?”
“You can wear whatever you want,” Zeke says.
“You can go naked if you want to,” Diego shrugs, wiggling his eyebrows.
“Okay, let’s do it! But I won’t get naked until later, okay?”
They glance at each other again. What, I am not allowed to make jokes about getting naked?
Crossing campus is a lot like going to the dining hall in the fraternity. People watch us with a combination of surprise and amusement. First they see the guys, because they are really hard to miss. Football stars. Celebrities. Then, they see me in the middle. Very close to them. Very close to all of them.
It’s college. People can add two and two.
