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These guys have plans for the rest of their lives that don’t include me. I’ve known that from the start. What the hell did I expect by making that declaration?
I open up my calculus book for something to fill my head rather than the dissonance of why’s and what if’s that are currently swirling there. Just as I begin to concentrate, no easy feat, there is a pounding at my door.
“Hello?” I call.
“Rose, it’s Ken. Can I come in, please?” he says.
Oh my. What does the Resident Assistant, the not-so-secret police of campus life, want with me?
Small and imperious, I always figured him for the kind of kid who was a crossing guard in elementary school and later a hall monitor in middle and high school. Someone ready and willing to wield the small bit of power their volunteer position granted them, always eager to get another kid in trouble.
I avoided him because of this, and now he’s not only a grown-up hall monitor, but also gets paid for it in the form of a free dorm room or something like that. Everyone around is nice to him, like we have any choice, but when I see him in the dining hall, let’s just say I usually head for the other side of the room.
I pull my door open. “Hi Ken.”
He looks down at his shoes like he’s about to tell me someone died. Like he’s overwhelmed with grief. Like during RA training he was instructed to come across as sympathetic and regretful when delivering bad news on the days he gets to throw his RA weight around.
I know his type, however, and he regrets nothing, instead relishing the ‘hard work’ he signed up for on behalf of the university.
And, strangely, I know what he’s going to say before he says it.
Should I just come out and confess that yes, I had boys in my room? That yes, I went to their rooms too? And that yes, I’ve walked around campus holding hands with any of the three of them, and that I don’t give a damn?
“Um, Rose, looks like I’ve got to turn you in to school authorities over something you did. An indiscretion,” he says, like it’s a dirty word that feels good in his mouth.
Creep.
I could beg him for forgiveness, to please keep my bad behavior a secret, as well as promise to change my ways. That I had a momentary lapse in my usual good judgement, but that I’ve already come to my senses with deep regret for having behaved so recklessly.
I don’t, though. I can’t give him the satisfaction, the delight he’d surely feel in lording something so unseemly over me.
I also don’t feel like lying.
So I shrug. What’s done is done. Can’t take it back even, not that I want to.
“Alright, Ken. What’s next, then?”
He looks at me with an incredulous stare, apparently expecting or at least hoping I’d fall to my knees and beg for mercy, screaming and crying like a sinning Mary Magdalene.
He hadn’t banked on the dead stare I’m wearing, nor my lack of giving a shit.
Guess I’m ruining his day.
“I need to file a report on you,” he says.
“Okay. Anything else?”
It takes him a moment, but he clears his throat. “Uh, no. I guess not.”
“Sounds good. Thanks for stopping by.”
I shut the door in his face and a moment later, I’m kicking myself for not asking if the guys are in the same deep shit I am.
Whatever. Their situation has no bearing on mine. I could get kicked out of school. My dad will freak, my mother will be thrilled, and all the creeps in my hometown who said I couldn’t do it will be vindicated. Thrilled. Smug. Self-satisfied.
I will be looking at a summer of waitressing or babysitting because the paralegal internship I was gunning for will be so far out of my reach I might as well forget it was ever even on the table.
The irony is, that in trying to improve my calc grade, I get myself kicked out of school, the exact opposite effect of what I intended.
