“I have something for you,” I say before she loses me in the crowd.
That stops her. She turns back to me, confused. My throat constricts with nerves, but after a minute, I realize that’s not it.
“Can we go somewhere private? I’m allergic.” I point above us at the giant balloon structured into a DNA molecule. We’d paused right under the archway over the doors.
“To balloons?”
“Latex.”
“Oh. You know, guys would give their nuts up for a girl like you.”
Lovely mental image.
“Fine,” she says, gesturing for me to follow her into the hallway. “But make it quick.”
I follow her down the hall, around a corner to a janitorial supply room. As she grabs a package of napkins, I pull out a plastic container from my purse.
Summer stares at it. Wordlessly sets down the napkins and takes it when I hand it to her.
“Your birthday’s tomorrow, right? Well, happy birthday,” I say. It had come up during one of our interviews, the time we discussed her trust fund.
“A cupcake?” she asks with an expressionless look. I know how it looks, a round blob of yellow with cream smeared haphazardly over the top. Nothing like the table of precisely decorated cupcakes in the atrium. I already grabbed one claiming it was Boron. It tasted divine.
“Honey lemon, with a chamomile buttercream. My roommate baked it. It’s really good. Oh, yeah, Natalie likes doing stuff… like that,” I trail off when Summer opens the container. Holds it up to inspect the arrangement of yellow and black pipe cleaners and googly eyes sticking out from the middle.
“It’s a bee,” Summer states.
Yes. Because that’s what I told Natalie to make. I shrug. “You name a sea turtle after me for my birthday, I get you a cupcake for yours. Fair trade and all that.”
She doesn’t stop staring at that tiny craft project.
I grab my camera out of its bag. Now that that’s out of the way…
I find the photo I’m looking for, then hold out the viewer screen for her to see. Summer’s nose wrinkles. “Your idea of a follow up present is a dick pic?”
“It’s not a real dick,” I huff, zooming out a little.
When she sees the Prescott Hall Penis in its entirety, she says, “Walsh, I’ve dealt with this shit enough this week.”
I zoom in again on the original part of the vandalism. To the squiggle on the ball sack, the one Spencer and I had thought was hair. Then I hold up another image on my phone. A similar squiggle. On a different painting. This one, a signature.
“This is from a painting in the administration office,” I nod to the phone image. It’s where I’d gone after ditching Spencer yesterday, since the building closes early on Fridays and stays locked through the weekend.
“So?”
“Elijah Davis painted this.” I shake my phone. Then repeat the motion with the camera. “And he painted the dick, too.”
The sorority girl snaps the lid back on the cupcake container. Folds her arms over her chest. “Way to go, Walsh, you intrepid reporter, you. Glad to see you putting that college education to good use.”
“Summer, I talked to Elijah.” Emailed him last night to meet me after my Busy Beans shift this morning, which made me late getting to the fundraiser. “He said you paid him to vandalize Prescott Hall.”
Summer doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. She stares at me with a blank face, not giving anything away.
“Why’d you do it?” And I remember, months ago, her asking me the same question. Wanting to know the reason that compelled me into dumping beer on Spencer. What it was that could have driven me to that extreme of a reaction.
I remember last week, the day she’d caught Spencer and me. How stunned I’d been she hadn’t commented, right there in the moment. And I recall her red-rimmed eyes. How upset she’d seemed. Frazzled, like she is today.
“Is it because of your dad?” Because she’d gotten a phone call. From Nolan. And by the end of that weekend, the building had been vandalized with a crude image. An image put there by an art major, one I’d inadvertently introduced Summer to, when she crashed our date over a month ago.
Summer clears her throat. Holds up the cupcake container. “Is this your way of buttering me up?”
“What? No—” I stammer. “That’s a gift.” Because she’d given me so many already. Small presents, here and there. Things of little to no meaning, things she thought I might like, even if she always flippantly denied she’d gotten them on purpose.
“Because I don’t like being manipulated, Walsh—”
“It’s a gift, Summer!” I stress. “I’m not manipulating you. I just want to know what Nolan did to make you—”
“Nolan—” Her voice raises. Echoes in the room around us. She closes her eyes, takes a breath to calm herself, and when she speaks again, there’s a strained edge to it. “Nolan isn’t here, Walsh.”
Her words give me pause. “Wait, he’s not here?”
The man who made such a big donation to the university. Whose name graces this building. He couldn’t be bothered to take time out of his schedule for this occasion? For the event his daughter’s been working herself ragged on putting together?
He’s not visiting for her birthday?
“Nope.” With a sharp pop. “Sorry you missed your chance to impress him with your little photo matching game, but news flash—he wouldn’t have given a shit, even if I told him I spray painted that dick myself.”
She pushes past me, storming out of the supply room. Leaving me whirling, because that had not gone how I’d envisioned at all.
The door opens as I put away my camera, and I look up, ready to excuse myself. I smile, the tangle of emotions in my gut unfurling, just a little, at the sight of Spencer. He closes the door behind him. Locks it. Already, my hands stretch towards him as he walks over to me.
I need his arms around me. To be comforted by
