The voice on the other end of the phone isn’t one I recognize.
“Yes, is this that dormitory located on Washington Square West?”
“This is a residence hall, yes,” I reply, remembering, for once, my training.
“I was wondering if I could speak to someone about the tragedy that occurred there earlier today,” says the unfamiliar voice.
Tragedy?I immediately become suspicious.
“Are you a reporter?” I ask. At this point in my life, I can sniff them out a mile away.
“Well, yes, I’m with the Post— ”
“Then you’ll have to get in touch with the Press Relations Department. No one here has any comment. Good-bye.” I slam down the receiver.
Brad and Tina are staring at me.
“Wow,” Brad says. “You’re good.”
Sarah gives her glasses a push, since they’ve started to slide down her nose.
“She ought to be,” she says. “Considering what she’s had to deal with. The paparazzi wasn’t exactly kind, were they, Heather? Especially when you walked in and found Jordan Cartwright receiving fellatio from… who was it? Oh yes. Tania Trace.”
“Wow,” I say, gazing at Sarah with genuine wonder. “You really put that photographic memory of yours to good use, don’t you, Sarah?”
Sarah smiles modestly while Tina’s jaw drops.
“Heather, you went out with Jordan Cartwright?” she cries.
“You caught him getting head from Tania Trace?” Brad looks as happy as if someone’s just dropped a hundred-dollar bill in his lap.
“Um,” I say. It’s not like I have much of a choice. They can easily Google it. “Yeah. It was a long time ago.”
Then I excuse myself to go search for a soda, hoping a combined jolt of caffeine and artificial sweeteners might make me feel less like causing there to be yet another death among the building’s student population.
4
Don’t Tell
I’m begging you
It’s a secret and if you
Don’t Tell
I’ll make you glad
You didn’t
Don’t Tell
No one knows
I’ve exposed my soul
To you
So don’t tell
“Don’t Tell”
Performed by Heather Wells
Composed by Valdez/Caputo
From the album Sugar Rush
Cartwright Records
The closest soda machine is located in the TV lounge, where all of the college’s crisis management people are congregated. I don’t want to risk asking Magda for a free one from the café when she’s already in trouble with her boss.
I only recognize a few of the many administrators in the lounge, and then only from being interviewed by them when I’d applied for my job. One of them, Dr. Jessup, the head of the housing department, detaches himself from another administrator’s side when he notices me, and comes over, looking very different in his weekend wear of Izod shirt and Dockers than he did in his usual charcoal suits.
“Heather,” Dr. Jessup says, his deep voice gruff. “How’s it going?”
“Okay,” I reply. I’ve already jammed a dollar into the machine, so it’s too late to run away—though I’d like to, since everyone in the room is staring at me, like,Who is that girl? Don’t I know her from somewhere? And what’s she doing here?
Instead of running, I make a selection. The sound of the can hitting the slot at the bottom of the machine is loud in the TV lounge, where conversation is muted out of respect for both the deceased and the grieving, and where the TV, which normally blasts MTV 2 24/7, has been turned off.
I retrieve my can from the machine and hold it in my hands, afraid to open it and attract more undue attention to myself by making noise.
“How do the kids seem to you?” Dr. Jessup wants to know. “In general?”
“I just got here,” I say. “But everybody seems pretty shaken up. Which is, you know, understandable, considering the fact that there’s a dead girl at the bottom of the elevator shaft.”
Dr. Jessup widens his eyes and motions for me to keep my voice down, even though I hadn’t been speaking above a whisper. I look around, and realize there are some administrative bigwigs in the TV lounge. Dr. Jessup is hypersensitive about his department being perceived as a caring, student-oriented one. He prides himself on his ability to relate to the younger generation. I realized this during my first interview, when he’d narrowed his gray eyes at me and asked the inevitable question, the one that makes me want to throw things, but that I can’t seem to escape: “Don’t I know you from somewhere?”
Everyone thinks they’ve seen me somewhere before. They just can’t ever figure out where. I get “Didn’t you go to the prom with my brother?” a lot. Also, “Weren’t you and I in one of the same classes in college?”
Which is especially weird, because I never attended a single prom, much less college.
“I used to be a singer” was what I’d said to Dr. Jessup, the day of my job interview. “A, um, pop singer. When I was, you know. A teenager.”
“Ah, yes,” Dr. Jessup had said. “‘Sugar Rush.’ That’s what I thought, but I wasn’t sure. Can I ask you a question?”
I’d twisted uncomfortably in my seat, knowing what was coming. “Sure.”
“Why are you applying for a job in a residence hall?”
I’d cleared my throat.
I wish VH1 would do a Behind the Music on me. Because then I wouldn’t have to. Explain to people, I mean.
But it’s not like I’m Behind the Music material. I was never famous enough for that. I was never a Britney or a Christina. I was barely even an Avril. I was just a teenager with a healthy set of lungs on her, who was in the right place at the right time.
Dr. Jessup had seemed to understand. At least, he’d tactfully dropped the subject after I mentioned the stuff about my mom fleeing the country with my manager—and oh yeah, my life’s savings—my label dropping me, and my boyfriend, too, in that order. When I was offered the position of administrative assistant to Fischer Hall, at a starting salary that equaled what I used to earn in a week on the concert circuit, I accepted without hesitation. I wasn’t seeing much of a long-term career in waitressing—which, for a girl who doesn’t even like standing up to wash her hair, can be brutal—and getting a college education seemed like a good idea. I have to wait until I pass my six months’ probation—just three more to go—but then I can start enrolling in as many courses as I want.
The first class I’m going to take is Psych 101 so I can see if I’m really as filled with neuroses as Rachel and
