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Chapter Text

Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story
of that man skilled in all ways of contending,
the wanderer, harried for years on end...

│ 1111 │

"THE MUSES  were nine in number, the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, Memory. At first, like the Graces, they were not distinguished from each other. "They are all," Hesiod says, "of one mind, their hearts are set upon song and their spirit is free from care. He is happy whom the Muses love. For though a man has sorrow and grief in his soul, yet when the servant of the Muses sings,  at once he forgets his dark thoughts and remembers not his troubles.  Such is the holy gift of the Muses to men ."

" One day the Nine appeared to him and they told him,  "We know how to speak false things that seem true, but we know, when we will, to utter true things."

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" ...the God of Love,  EROS . Homer knows nothing of him, but to Hesiod he is fairest of the deathless gods."

" In the early accounts, Eros was not Aphrodite's son, but merely her occasional companion. In the later poets, he was her son and almost invariably  a mischievous, naughty boy, or worse."

" Evil his heart, but honey-sweet his tongue. No truth in him, the rogue. He is cruel in his play. Small are his hands, yet his arrows fly far as death. Tiny his shaft, but it carries heaven-high.  Touch not his treacherous gifts, they are dipped in fire."

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"The God of Wine  could be kind and beneficent. He could also be cruel and drive men on to frightful deeds. Often he made them mad ."

" The worship of  DIONYSUS  was centered in these two ideas so far apart—of freedom and ecstatic joy, and of savage brutality. The God of Wine could give either to his worshipers. Throughout the story of his life, he is sometimes man's blessing,  sometimes his ruin."

" ...Wine is bad as well as good. It cheers and warms men's hearts; it also makes them drunk. The Greeks were people who saw facts very clearly. They could not shut their eyes to the ugly and degrading side of wine-drinking and see only the delightful side. Dionysus was the God of the Vine; therefore  he was a power which sometimes made men commit frightful and atrocious crimes."

-  Edith Hamilton , Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes

│ 1111 │

Friday, August 15, 1997

UNITED STATES ATTORNEY ANNOUNCES CHARGES AGAINST STATTEN FINANCIAL CORP. FOUNDER JARED FITZPATRICK

Fitzpatrick Charged in Eight-Count Indictment with Fraud, Money Laundering, and Campaign Finance Offenses

Audited Release — U.S. Attorney's Office, Southern District of New York
NEW YORK, N.Y. — David Prado, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Michael F. Evans, the United States Attorney General, and Robert G. Johnson, the Assistant Director in Charge of the New York Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation ("FBI"), announced today the unsealing of an indictment charging JARED FITZPATRICK, the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Statten Financial Corp., with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, money laundering, conspiracy to commit securities fraud, conspiracy to commit commodities fraud, and conspiracy to defraud the Federal Election Commission and commit campaign finance violations.

According to the indictment, Fitzpatrick engaged in a wide-ranging scheme to misappropriate billions of dollars in customer funds entrusted to Statten Financial Corp., a brokerage house headquartered in Manhattan. The defendant and his co-conspirators allegedly diverted client assets for unauthorized personal and political use, including the financing of campaign contributions and the acquisition of luxury assets.

The investigation was conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Criminal Division's Fraud Section, with assistance from the Internal Revenue Service's Criminal Investigation Division and the Federal Election Commission.

If convicted, the defendant faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison on each count of wire fraud and money laundering, and 5 years on each conspiracy count.

Assistant United States Attorneys Rachel H. Lin and Thomas P. Eldridge of the Securities and Financial Fraud Unit are in charge of the prosecution.

The charges contained in the Indictment are merely accusations. The defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law.

Tuesday, February 10, 1998

SEARCH FOR MISSING YALE STUDENT CONTINUES

Family Offers $50,000 Reward for Information on Henry Lieberman's Whereabouts

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — The search continues for Yale University student Henry Lieberman, 20, who has been missing since February 4.

Authorities were first alerted on February 7 after a fellow student reported Lieberman missing to the Yale Police Department. According to officials, Lieberman was last seen leaving his dormitory at Pierson College at approximately 5 p.m. that evening.

The New Haven County Sheriff's Department confirmed that a search of his room yielded no signs of a struggle. However, investigators have ruled out the possibility that Lieberman left voluntarily. His personal belongings — including his wallet and identification — were found in his dorm, along with evidence suggesting he intended to return after leaving campus that Wednesday.

In a press conference Monday, Sheriff's Department spokesperson Lt. Dana Morrell said that while there are "no immediate indications of foul play," the investigation remains open to all possibilities. Officials have acknowledged receiving information linking Lieberman to the sale of controlled substances among Yale students, though they declined to provide further details.

Lieberman's family has offered a $50,000 reward for any information leading to his safe return.

Authorities urge anyone with relevant information to contact the New Haven County Sheriff's Department or the Yale Police tip line.

Friday, November 20, 1998

CONNECTICUT BUREAU OF CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIONS PLEDGES TO REVIEW DISAPPEARANCE OF YALE STUDENT

Nancy Anh, 21, Becomes Second Yale Student to Go Missing This Year

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Public concern is mounting after authorities confirmed the disappearance of Nancy Anh, 21, a political science student at Yale University.

Anh was reported missing last Wednesday by the head of her residential college after failing to attend classes or respond to messages for several days. While there are conflicting accounts regarding when she was last seen, investigators said there is currently no indication of foul play.

According to university staff, Anh had been under significant academic pressure in the weeks leading up to her disappearance. Most of her belongings remain in her room at Berkeley College, though her purse, schoolbag, and passport have not been recovered.

This marks the second reported disappearance of a Yale student in under a year. In February, 20-year-old Henry Lieberman was reported missing from Pierson College. Authorities have not said whether the two cases are believed to be connected.

In a press statement released Monday, Yale University Dean Alfred Milburn called the situation "deeply distressing," adding that the institution "is working closely with law enforcement to ensure the safety of all students."

The Connecticut Bureau of Criminal Investigations announced it will be reviewing both cases. Officials declined to provide further comment at this time.

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"TIME IS THE WISEST OF ALL THINGS THAT ARE; FOR IT BRINGS EVERYTHING TO LIGHT."
— Thales

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Chapter Text

01. NATE

" The excess of a virtue is a vice ."
—GREEK PROVERB

I was seldom truthful. I didn't know how to be. Truth just wasn't something I wanted to look in the eye. I preferred hiding, twisting, and manipulating it. I lied and smiled and plotted my way into every room and out of every situation. I was an entertainer of all kinds. My entire life had been a performance. I fear I very much took after my father in that regard.

Strangely, it was only around him that I felt I could drop the act. I was never one to bother with formalities and facades when in his presence. I always made sure he saw the depths of my discontent, perhaps only to see if he felt any guilt.

We were dining at The Marchese that Wednesday evening, just us two. An unprecedented event. I don't think we had ever shared a table, or a room, or a moment, that was devoid of other people's presence. He'd never liked me that much. I didn't like him either.

He had come down from New York to see me, and I could tell from the way in which he was playing up his efforts that it was all done as a poor attempt to make me feel special. In all honesty, it hadn't been necessary. I had known from the very moment he called that he wished to ask a favor of me. There was no other reason why he would willingly reach out.

He was a man on a business venture. For that evening, I would get to be his prey.  

Chandeliers and scones cast a dim golden glow over the vaguely crowded room. A mellow jazz melody lingered in the background. The sound of chatter around us only made our silence feel all the more prominent. 

I could see in my father's eyes how he was stringing together the perfect catchline. He was thinking of ways to reel me in. To captivate me. He'd wine and dined me, now he was putting on his most appealing smile, forcing it to reach his dead eyes. 

My father had always been great at selling ideas, and I'd always believed the first idea he ever sold was that of himself. Because when you looked at Jared Fitzpatrick you saw a formidable and respectable man whose class and wealth could not be contested. Tailored suits, expensive watches, combed-back hair, and a confident smile. He gave the impression he truly was all that he was selling himself to be.

One would've never been able to guess merely by looking at him that he was a rampant addict living a completely unrestrained lifestyle that consisted mostly of prostitutes and drugs. And let us not forget the one fact that had been shaping our lives as we knew them for the past year—he was the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York's number one target at the moment.

The legality of things had never concerned my father until recently, and it had never stopped him from doing whatever it was he wished to do. He was the man, the myth, the fraud who had made twelve million dollars in less than an hour. On your average day, he would shoot enough drugs into his system to sedate the entire city of New York. On his best days, he ran the entire East Coast dry of pills and cocaine and its moments notorious hookers.

This all came to be because, in his late twenties, he had helped found Statten Financial Corp, making himself the chief executive officer. A great honor now lost since the National Association of Securities Dealers was finally able to pull them out of business after years of suspicion.

Still, for many a decade, my father had been a mentor to every ambitious swindler. A king to a never-ending list of impressionable young men trying to make a name for themselves. There was never a string too thin or a shelf too high. His ability to comprehend the real world had gotten completely lost, likely while high and drunk, and in the middle of an orgy.

I knew the favor he was meaning to ask for concerned his case because everything did. His sole existence now revolved around desperate, frantic measures to maintain his freedom and the many assets they were slowly but surely stripping him of.

His request for me that night was but a blowing in the wind. There was no cutlery clattering. No great gasp of disbelief. Not a profound proclamation of indignation.

I did not feel the need to perform for my father. He was not worth the effort. We had always been painfully disinterested in the other, and I wasn't planning on changing things now. I kept cutting into my steak. Chewing. Analyzing the flavor. Pretending it required the totality of my attention.

I appeared more enraptured by the flavor notes of the wine than by his proposition. Because I was.

He was asking me to do something illegal, which was not a first. The sentence if I were to get caught for the crime he wanted me to commit would be far less severe than what I honestly deserved. Perhaps only a couple of years' probation if I got lucky. But I hadn't made it this far in my wrongdoings to only make it this far in my wrongdoings. I knew hell would be inescapable at this point, but I was hopeful I could avoid prison.

When he breathed life into her name for the very first time, I didn't get the sense that I had become a pawn in a game we were destined to lose. I knew he was fated to lose whichever game he decided to play, just as well as I knew I would be playing no part in it.

But I think, in some way, the utterance of the name coming from his lips created some sort of disruption in the fiber of our existences. It sent us down a pathway that had not been manifested into creation until that very moment.

"I do know the girl," I finally confessed, letting my disinterest coat every last one of my words. "And I am absolutely not going to get close to her just to help your case. Are you out of your mind? Where did you even get that idea? A shitty espionage movie?"

I knew the dynamics of his body language like the back of my hand. He pulled his chair in, leaned in closer, hoping to be engaging, measuring when to pounce. His face was bright and hopeful but he was red and sweaty.

"Nate, Nate, listen to me. Just listen to me, yeah? I didn't even know Prado's daughter was here at Yale. Imagine my surprise when I found out. Imagine my fucking shock when I learned you're sharing some of your classes, your lessons, whatever they're called, with her. I thought to myself, Oh, how odd, my darling son never thought to mention it, but we can let bygones be bygones."

"We sure can. And this is very much not happening," I said. "Kiss your stupid plan goodbye."

My father's mouth stretched into what was supposed to be a smile, but the agitation behind his eyes corrupted the act.

"You're just being stubborn, son," he said, with a tremble in his voice that told me he was trying his hardest to maintain his composure. I strongly suspected he was on something, but he commonly mixed so many drugs that I didn't even bother trying to figure out what concoction he had put together this time.

"Wonder where I got that from," I muttered.

His composure was wearing thin. His act was starting to slip, leaving his ugly desperation on full display.

"All we want is for you to stick your dick up a girl's ass. How's that asking for too much?"

"You want me to get together with someone I loathe so that I can gain access to the District Attorney's home. What a plan."

His grip on the wineglass stem tightened. His smile became visibly hostile. One got the impression that he would start foaming at the mouth any minute now. "It's a great fucking plan, Nate!"

I dropped the knife and fork, concluding our dinner had ended. "I'm sure he won't notice I've stolen the heaps of fucking files he's got on you."

"I'm only asking that you browse through them. Just browse through them. Take some fucking pictures, if you like. We just want to know what we're up against. That's it."

"No," I said before he got another word in. This would likely be my only chance to draw the line. I had to make sure I did a decent job at it or else this would drag out into something exceptionally unpleasant. I got to my feet, felt for my car keys in my pockets, and unceremoniously wrestled my jacket to put it on. "I have avoided getting caught up in this fucking mess of yours for years. I'm not about to start now. I've said it a million times and I'll say it again, I want nothing to do with this shitshow. I didn't help with the money laundering schemes, didn't help cover your fucking paper trails, and I'm certainly not going to help steal evidence from a US attorney. Are you out of your fucking mind? Listen to yourself, honestly."

At the end of the day, what I saw when I looked back before fleeing, was a sad and desperate man. His time had run out. His glory days were well behind him. I guess there was something to be said about made beds and having to lie on them.

The party at Dane Finnegan's house was more of the same. His place was lackluster from the outside looking in—just one more house in a block of identical-looking buildings meant to be affordable and temporary. It was lackluster inside too, housing four male university students who had a lot more to care for other than rugs, lamps, and blankets. Interior design, for them, consisted solely of posters of naked women and whatever belongings they felt like tossing aside when walking in. A jacket here. Car keys there. Boxes and books and trash everywhere.

The alcohol was cheap. The old speakers were making it sound as if the same hip-hop song was being played on a loop. The lights were dim and made everything seem even tackier than it already was. But I had willingly driven myself there after dinner with my father because there was a lineal way of things and I was terrified of questioning them.

I had to attend Wednesday night parties at lackluster houses, and entertain absolutely everyone who wished to be entertained by me, or else the facade would slip.

I had to deliver what was expected from me if I wanted to keep people's adoration. I couldn't afford to let the lens of their perception shift in the slightest if I wanted to keep getting away with murder.

Everything was cyclical. People kept pulling me into conversations with friends I knew nothing of. They loved to talk. They talked a lot. I generally did not care for anything they had to say—it was all either redundant or uncomfortable, and people had the habit of thinking they knew me better than they did. Most of the time I could not even remember their names, but I nodded and smiled and agreed to nearly everything they had to say because it had been written somewhere in some book that these were the things one must do to be generally liked.

A guy by the name of Jack Donovan and his nameless girlfriend intercepted me while I was on my way to get a drink. I knew very little about Jack other than that he was an avid sports fan and that he'd cummed on his pants whilst getting a lap dance back in freshman year. But I smiled and pretended that wasn't the first thing that came to mind when I returned the handshake and laughed at his enthusiasm.

"We getting that third Frozen Four victory this year?" he asked directly into my ear, his voice loud and wet, his thin and weak hand grasping my shoulder to pull me in closer. From his reddened cheeks and the implication that he had anything to do with the hockey team's two previous Frozen Four victories, I gathered he was beyond inebriated.

The pungent scent of beer and chips was present in his breath and I was doing everything possible not to let my face show how grotesque I found him.

"Sure hope so. Let's see how the team holds up without some of the guys now that they've graduated. I know for sure we're going to have trouble replacing Chester."

"Any luck convincing you to sign for the Oilers?" his girl asked, fluttering her eyelids in a way that was meant to hint at subtle flirtation but was betrayed by a look of lust.

I smiled politely, pretending to be oblivious to her flirting for Jack's sake. "We'll see."

Andrew Wiley and Ben Henderson, two underwhelming football players, joined me in the kitchen soon after, both palpably drunk and obnoxious.

"Fitzy! My man!"

"Looking sharp as ever!"

"Listen, dude, you can't not throw any parties at the Meadows this year, my man," Andrew said, resting his arm over my shoulder as I fixed myself a drink.

I smiled, fiddled with my cup, and delivered my favored line. "We'll see."

Ben, who tended to mimic Andrew, came to stand next to me as well, leaving me cramped in between the two as they continued to speak directly into my ear and accidentally spat from time to time. "It's your senior year, dude. This is your last year here in New Haven. You can't let it go to waste."

"That mansion's probably gonna sit there abandoned for years once you graduate."

"Yale's just not the same without parties at the Meadows."

"Right. All these other parties are so fucking lame. And don't even get me started on the bars around town. The Meadows was the only thing keeping nightlife interesting around here."

I took a sip from my drink and smiled in a way that seemed sincere to them but sardonic to me. "We'll see."

I had sex with Jack Donovan's girlfriend a couple of hours later. And I could blame the alcohol but that would be taking too much of the blame off of me. I knew it was wrong, but I wasn't above wanting to have sex with blondes with big tits in gross bathrooms. And being the captain of the school's prominent hockey team left room for liberties that I most certainly abused.

It was because of this bathroom escapade that I later found myself becoming a spectacle. Molly Laurent decided to confront me, in a very public and very dramatic manner regarding my choices on casual sex.

I had dated Molly for a year but we had parted ways towards the end of the previous term. Our relationship had been as unhinged as any partnership between two egotistical young adults could get. Sometimes she made me want to rip my hair out, which could be a thrilling sensation. It could lead to the right rush. The right dosage of adrenaline.

Unfortunately for us, there wasn't much more sanity left for her to drain me of. And now here she was, loudly and perhaps drunkenly condemning my lack of love, my lack of consideration. Her green eyes, usually severe and occasionally apathetic, were filled to the brim with tears. Her mascara had become a smudged mess. The waves in her blond hair had lost their customary neatness. But she truly was gorgeous and I did wish that things could've been different between us. Because I wanted her, and I supposed I loved her as well, and to have both my ego and my heart wounded at the same time did terrible things to my being.

In that moment, however, I was savoring the spectacle of it all. I was savoring the stares. The whispers. The futile attempts at discretion from onlookers. This public altercation with Molly, which had seen tears and broken vases, had felt organic. It felt like the right thing to happen to the senior captain of Yale's hockey team. It humanized me in the eyes of my peers, cementing me in the role I was to play. The senior captain of Yale's hockey team gets in heated disputes with his conventionally attractive ex-girlfriend, as is to be expected.

  "I told you she was insane from day one," Sam said to me when I took the spot next to him on the living room couch. He brought a beer bottle up to his lips but it wasn't enough to hide the stupid grin on his face.

"But have you seen her face? She looks so sweet, so fucking harmless," John Graham, another teammate of mine, added in my defense.

"Hard to think she can turn into such a fucking monster when she's angry," said a voice coming from behind me. From the British accent and dangerous level of inebriation, I could tell it was Gage.

I watched from my spot on the couch as Molly took to straddling another guy on the opposite side of the room, her eyes holding me hostage with an accusatory glare that spoke directly to my soul.

I inhaled sharply, feeling the weight of this terrible night begin to press down on me. "Alright, time to leave. Where the fuck is Danny?"

"Left with two girls about twenty minutes ago," someone informed me.

"He's having a threesome?" Jade, Danny's fraternal twin, asked with that wicked disinterest of hers.

"Nah, I think he was just giving them a ride home. One of the girls was fucking wasted," John said, leaving room for a small pause in which his lips twisted into an ugly smile. "And the other one was Alexandra Prado."

The second mention of that name, that grating name, caused my senses to heighten with agitation. Everything became suddenly unbearable. The constant and unkind reminders of her existence had me stretching my neck from left to right in an effort to get rid of the tension she so effortlessly caused.  

Alexandra Prado-Montes and I detested one another, as was to be the way of things. It was one of those incontestable matters. To say it was only because she was District Attorney David Prado's daughter would've been lazy work. There was something far richer, far more intricate knitted into our animosity that I dared not explore.

"Alright, I'll give you four a ride," our defenseman Noah Lavoie said to Sam, Gage, Jade, and me with a hint of humor, evidently taking pity on me on this disastrous evening.

"It's a good thing we're leaving already," John said. He and the rest of the hockey boys had taken our departure as their cue to leave. "I heard Yale PD is planning on crashing this party."

"Why? What happened?"

"Nothing happened. The school just wants to make it seem like they're still doing something about Henry's disappearance."

The four of us looked up at the mention of that name. Mechanically almost, but sharply as well. I watched with great horror as the world fell to black. We shared a look and nothing more. Somewhere in the back of my mind lived the gratitude that Danny wasn't present because he was, by far, the most expressive of us all. And we could not afford to be expressive.

We could not afford to drop the act.

Chapter Text

02. ALEXANDRA

" Man is a being in search of meaning. "
—PLATO

 IF I had known that Marilyn Dardenne would be to blame for all of the tragedy that would soon plague my story, I would've killed her right there and then.

It wouldn't have been easy. I would've needed to rely solely on my wit as there was no way for me to overpower her physically, and even then, I wouldn't have been able to do it on my own.

But knowing what I know now, I think murder can be a simple affair. It's the aftermath that complicates everything.

Marilyn had summoned me to her office exceptionally early that Thursday morning, only one week into term, and I immediately suspected
she had devious plans. Partly because she never came with good news and mostly because Nate Fitzpatrick had already been sitting in her office by the time I arrived.

She had a very strange smile, Marilyn, very tight and wickedly amused. I always had a feeling she was keeping a secret. A ludicrous one. At my expense. Her white hair was styled with that attention to detail I found inconceivable. Her frame was as slender and tall as ever, reaching a height of six feet tall with those 1-inch kitten heels she commonly wore. She sat proudly behind her desk. The plaque with her name and the words Assistant Dean inscribed underneath it sat radiantly on its eternal spot, which was the right side of her desk. Recently polished as always.

There was a frigidness between the three of us that was palpable. I kept my shoulders tense, my chin high, and my eyes on Marilyn as if my life depended on it. Her smile stretched, but the glimmer in her eyes was anything but warm.

"I know you're both wondering why I've summoned you here today," she said at last, sitting even straighter in her chair. Her signature red lipstick was slightly smudged in the upper right corner. Just slightly, barely visible. Other than that, she remained suspiciously impeccable. "There is a grand announcement concerning the two of you that will be made in the upcoming weeks. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, I will not be the one to deliver said announcement."

Although I detested Nate Fitzpatrick, I'd always been a great enthusiast of his body language. I loved looking at him because I wanted to understand how it was that his every move seemed premeditated yet effortless. The way he pulled people in was catastrophic, and I often found myself admiring it from a sociological standpoint.

His impeccability couldn't have come naturally. Surely, there were moments of awkwardness and human error that plagued him just as ferociously as they did the rest of us.

He had the poise of a man who thought too highly of himself, but a glimmer in his eyes that hinted at humility. His voice was low, raspy, a touch uninterested but in a sultry way. "So you've gathered us here to... warn us?"

Marilyn held his gaze for four seconds longer than necessary before she decided to speak. "I've gathered you here to reprimand you in advance. When the news comes to you, I fully expect both of you to handle it with maturity. With grace. I don't want it to turn into some big scandal, and I certainly don't want to hear any complaints. I will let you know now that the decision the University has reached is final and no amount of whining will change it."

He threw his head back slightly, an amused gesture that came accompanied by a chuckle. "You're scaring me, Marilyn."

"Might as well tell us what it is already. I mean, clearly, you're dying to." I stared our beloved Assistant Dean in the eye once I'd brought to her attention that I, too, was in the room.

At this, she had the audacity to smirk. "All in due time. And yes, I do want to take this opportunity to warn you as well, not about the upcoming announcement, but that the University will no longer tolerate that terrible behavior you have been exhibiting. During the last two terms, we've received no shortage of complaints regarding you two. From Professors as well as your peers. That is simply outrageous. It is a miracle you haven't been suspended. People found it insufferable to be in your presence."

"I too would constantly complain about having to be in Alexandra's presence." His chin was propped up on his closed fist. He had the talent of appearing cold only when it came to me. He was radiant otherwise. A ray of sunshine. A beam of light. People melted in his presence. It sent a shiver up my spine. "She's very unpleasant to look at."

I kept my gaze straight ahead. Unlike him, my apathy was not selective. It was indiscriminate. My lazy indifference had become a staple of who I was.

"Everything I've done to him was done in self-defense," I stated unenthusiastically.

"Well, that is not true. People have claimed they saw you physically attack him once, without any previous quarrels, completely out of the blue."

"I attacked him with good reason, Marilyn."

"The reason being?"

"That he deserved it."

He scoffed. Marilyn hesitated for a couple of seconds before finding her words again.

"It is a bad look for the University that you two continue with this childish, unacceptable behavior. From now on, you will leave these differences behind and learn to grow from these hardships."

The smile that appeared on her face was the first genuine one I'd ever witnessed coming from her, and this truly did frighten me.

To further my horror, she clapped her hands and happily stated, "Exciting times are coming, kids!"

I think, up until that point, I had never experienced fear quite like that before. I racked my brain trying to come up with theories on what this possible announcement could be but came up empty-handed. Nate and I were both Classics students, so we spent more than enough time together in that regard. Outside of that, our extracurricular activities were incompatible. He and I existed in opposites outside of our love for Greek things. I struggled to understand what bridge the University was hoping to build here.

I was tortured by the thought of him for the rest of my morning. When Ruth and I battled the trash bags filled with disposable coffee cups and breakfast leftovers out in the alley behind the shop, I half-expected him to emerge from the shadows. When we marched back inside, I expected him to be there, standing out over a crowd of blurred faces like he was the main subject of a Romantic artwork.

Before long, the coming and going of people lulled me into a mindset that didn't have him in it. I almost didn't worry about what the future held. I took people's orders and occasionally prepared them too. By this point, people knew better than to expect a great deal of enthusiasm from me. But regardless of what my face might have conveyed, I truly did love working at Fifth Street.

Despite it being perpetually hectic, it was the sort of place that could never feel disgustingly crowded. I'd always thought it was one of the few places that could bring warmth to the cold and intimidating passages of an Ivy League school.

There came a moment of peace that morning, relatively speaking, when the traffic of hurrying students subsided once they all went on their way to their early morning lectures. I had a novel open on the counter before me but the title has since gotten lost in me because on the opposite side of the counter sat Nancy Anh, and she's the protagonist of this one memory.

She already had her latte and a croissant, which should've kept her occupied but the heavens knew that the world would stop turning if she was to ever stop speaking. It was one of those unspoken laws of the universe. I flipped the page and watched as the words became a blur that got mixed up with the endless string of sentences coming out of Nancy's mouth.

"—and I told Clark that he was being silly. There is no way the police are going to know that he does cocaine just because they took Jenny's spoon as evidence. Besides, this entire operation is to try and find the people who are doing the dealing. If they started arresting students for doing a little cocaine now and again we'd all be in jail."

She picked her croissant apart, engrossed by her own accounts and unaware that I wasn't following. I didn't know who Clark was and this was my first time hearing about Jenny's spoon, but I knew this was all concerning the school's stricter policy on drug use.

Seven months had passed since Henry Lieberman's disappearance and people still had no idea what had happened to him, but drugs had been a central part of the investigation ever since police had learned he'd been one of the school's most prevalent dealers. Ever since, there had been routine searches and counseling sessions so that the school could look like they were doing something about the problem.

This new term had started with the sweet reminder that the University was taking great measures to prevent another scandal from happening.

"Hopefully things will sort of go back to normal next week," she continued just as I was about to pick up on my reading. "My family's coming down to visit next Thursday I think. Some relatives from Vietnam are flying in on Monday and my parents want to bring them here so that I can say hi but mostly to show them around school. The place is going to lose a bit of its charm if they learn what happened to Henry, though. Well, actually, no one knows what happened but you get—"

When the bell rang to announce the arrival of a new customer, I was foolishly hopeful. I thought any distraction from Nancy's thrilling recounts would be a good one, until I actually saw the three familiar faces that were approaching the counter and lost what little faith I had.

"Well, don't you look absolutely exhilarated to see me," Nate said, with the same enthusiasm one would have at their grandmother's funeral. Sam Adesanya and Danny Vaughn were standing behind him, his faithful accomplices on the ice and loyal friends outside of it.

"How's your friend?" Danny asked with a raspy, tired voice that told me he probably hadn't gone home after dropping Jamie Harlow and me at our dormitory the previous night.

"She was still asleep when I left this morning."

"With the way she was chugging that tequila, that hangover is going to be one for the books. That plus the soreness and bruising from all the falls she took?"

Sam whistled. "I'd be surprised if she even makes it out of bed today."

Jamie had made a fool out of herself. That statement held true at various points in time.

"What the fuck are you wearing?" Nate asked me in reference to the yellow shirt that the Fifth's staff was now being forced to wear.

"It's our new uniform," I informed him bluntly while I punched in orders.

"It looks like shit."

"Well, so do you."

"I'm reporting you to your manager."

"I'm sure Ruth will be outraged."

"Your employee is harassing me," he said to Ruth, who conveniently happened to be passing by. No one knew why she was the manager. She was neither the most qualified nor the most passionate. If it came down to anything, it was probably poor luck.

"Good for her," Ruth responded, her curls bouncing as she hurried by. She shared a humorous look with Nate that let everyone know their little back-and-forth had been in good nature.

"Well, I think the two of you look great in yellow," Danny cheerily added, his gaze set on Ruth as she went to speak with a vendor who had walked in with a confused look on his face.

For a reason I wasn't quite sure of, I took a minute to admire the triad of young men before me. I had always found them to be a curious sight, if only because I found the dynamics of their status to be fascinating. They fit the mold of favored athletes so perfectly that it was actually admirable.

Sam was level-headed, personable, and immensely reliable even to those he owed nothing to. A head full of short curls, smooth dark skin, and very fine features had become the physical attributes that pointed to him around campus. He cared very little for his popularity but navigated it with grace.

Danny was charismatic and easygoing to a fault. His brown eyes conveyed openness. His soft features paired with his dirty blond hair gave him a sort of boyish disposition. But he reveled in the attention that came with being Yale's star goalkeeper. He wasn't exactly arrogant, but it wasn't outrageous to say that he enjoyed having his greatness be recognized. His sex drive had been the topic of several discussions around campus, so in that regard, he wasn't as graceful as Sam.

But at the center of both boys and at the top of society's popularity hierarchy, there was a spot reserved for the one person who could make any crowd believe the world revolved around him. Nate Fitzpatrick, affectionately referred to as Fitzy first by the hockey crowd and then by a body of students who liked to pretend they knew him better than they did, fit the prototype of the treasured star athlete as if the role had been made strictly for him.

I thought the universe had lacked creativity when creating him, because in what world was a young man who fit the archetype of beauty while simultaneously being a talented sportsman groundbreaking in any way? He should've been more challenged. His talent should've come accompanied by pitiful looks, or the other way around, to keep things balanced and in place.

But Nate had an athletic frame that would've earned him a statue in ancient Greece. His fine features were those of a handsome young man. His brown hair, always styled but never excessively so, could never look out of place even in his most frenzied moments. And his eyes were a rich green shade that was all depth and self-possession.

"Fitzy here told us about your meeting with Marilyn," Sam said amiably, the corner of his lips lifting to display sympathy. I always felt he was on some sort of quest to de-escalate the tension between Nate and me.

Nancy, who had shared some courses with the boys and was generally everybody's acquaintance, looked up from the bits and pieces of her croissant.

"I haven't heard anything about a meeting with Marilyn," she said, visibly curious and always eager to be in on everything that happened around her.

Danny was the one to share the accounts Nate had likely conveyed to him earlier that morning. Everyone was finding Marilyn's course of action to be curiously strange.

Sam rested his forearms on the counter. "I think it's going to be some sort of community service project to make up for your childish behavior this past year."

"They're going to have us out cleaning streets and whatnot? That's fucking ridiculous," Nate scoffed.

Danny grabbed the coffee I'd slid over the counter and removed its lid, letting out some of the steam as he pleasantly commented, "No. I think they'll have you give Freshman students some speeches on friendship and maturity and some shit like that."

Sam chuckled and mirrored Danny's actions with the coffee I handed him. "They'll make an example out of you two, that's for sure."

"I mean, you have to admit this is a tiny bit exciting," Nancy squealed, her lively eyes jumping from one face to the next to try and find someone who matched her excitement.

Nate's soft gaze met hers. His tone was not crude but painfully unenthusiastic when he responded. "Exciting is not exactly the word I would use to describe having to spend time with that thing."

I glared at him. "Very bold of you to insult me while I have a hot beverage in hand. It's almost like you've never heard of accidents."

"It's going to keep everyone on their toes," Nancy continued, completely unfazed by our bickering.

A deep bitterness brewed inside of me as the day progressed and I became increasingly aware of the fact that he had everyone eating out of the palm of his hand. Male professors adored his wit. Female professors adored his charisma. Every student craved his validation. Eyes would fly in his direction whenever a joke was uttered to see if he found it funny. Heads would nod whenever he gave his opinion on a morally gray matter. The correct answer always sounded better coming from his lips. And it infuriated me because it made his animosity towards me all the more difficult to digest.

And I suppose now is the right time to tell you that I never had anything against Nate. When my father announced he would be indicting Jared Fitzpatrick, the issue felt worlds away to me. I'd grown up seeing piles of files on my dad's desk, towering so high sometimes I could barely find him behind them, and mundanity then paved the way to disinterest.

My father was the so-called Sheriff of Wall Street. Jared Fitzpatrick wasn't the first powerful stockbroker he prosecuted. He most certainly wouldn't be the last.

It had never occurred to me, foolishly perhaps, that Nate would care. But he did. And so did our opinionated peers, who were pretentious down to the bone and could not help but make something out of our situation. They were merely feeding into the gossip but wanted to feel intellectual doing it. Nate did not take to it kindly.

It was through this series of unfortunate events that he ended up the main protagonist in a play about my life. A play I did not even star in. I was always in the back, always a forgotten spectator. I didn't enjoy it, this animosity. It didn't nourish my withering soul. All the opposite, really. It was draining, debilitating, and I very much preferred the mediocrity of my previous life. It wasn't easy having to be in a never-ending competition with the one person who was effortlessly good at everything he did as if he'd been blessed by every god he came across.

And so I withered and withered, and studied him with spiteful fascination, and stayed in that Thursday night, reading my insomnia away only to later pretend to be fast asleep when Jamie came stumbling in with a football player whom she then proceeded to have muffled sex with. And I tried not to think about how terrible this term was shaping up to be, and tried not to think about my breakup with Tom and the subsequent mutilation of what had once been our friend group, and how there was a new way of things I still needed to get used to.

But my head felt like it was about to explode, so I gripped the bedsheets just as the football player finished, and I came to the realization that my life was as anti-climactic as this one-night stand had been for Jamie.

Chapter Text

CHAPTER THREE.
NATE

"There is nothing permanent except change."
—HERACLITUS

   THE moments before dawn were always my favorite. The cold air filled my lungs with a sharpness necessary for my senses to awaken. Sam and Danny stepped out of the house after me, moving their bodies as if to shake off the cold and their drowsiness. Danny blew into his gloved hands. Sam rubbed his eyes while a yawn escaped him.

The three of us climbed into Sam's car without uttering a word. I took the passenger seat while Danny sat in the back. No one made any attempt at conversation. The radio remained turned off. It had become an unspoken rule that we needed a moment of silence to let reality edge in.

By the time we arrived at our destination, our shoulders were less tense, our dispositions less severe. There was more movement around us now, more voices. Several of our teammates were arriving at Ingalls Rink as well, bringing with them complaints about the weather, about their lack of sleep, about the soreness in their bodies. It brought us out of that terrible place we were in and forced us to melt into our surroundings.

The sound of lockers opening and closing sounded like a beautiful symphony that marked the start of my days. Mindless conversations traveled through the air. The reminder that my teammates trusted each other so blindly gave me a feeling of serenity that I clung to with all of my might.

"No, can't do," Chris McAvoy was saying to some of the boys. I'd missed the first half of their conversation. "I can't get in touch with my dear mother. She's on a wellness retreat over in Florida."

"I think they call those rehab centers," John Graham countered with a teasing grin adorning his average American-boy features.

As the team's resident ginger, Chris's skin tended to turn pink quite often. This was not one of those occasions. "No. She's been to those before. This one's more like a cult."

This interaction was followed by exclamations shared while gearing up, and they were always more or less the same. Noah Lavoie had stayed up late playing video games. Rob Samsonov's girlfriend was crazy. Jake Matthews' girlfriend was a sweetheart. Julian Hall really needed to see a chiropractor. Danny could not believe how stiff his padded pants were and felt the need to make it everyone's problem.

Coach pulled me aside once we were already on the ice to deliver an endless string of instructions, only to end his speech with, "This is your second year as captain. You know the drill. Get Burrow to keep it in his fucking pants, tell Graham not to get too excited with the drinking. Remember, tryouts are in two weeks. Oh, and the Youth Academy Board of Directors asked me to tell you they want you in the Try-Out Committee."

I readjusted my gloves, watching as my teammates followed drills being instructed by an assistant coach. "Did you tell them I was in?"

"Told them I didn't know your schedule. If I were you, I'd accept the invitation."

A furrow formed between my brows as I reached for my hockey stick. "To watch a bunch of kids be shit at hockey?"

Coach fixed me with his usual severe stare. "It's an honor to be invited to that Committee. It means they think highly of you. They've never invited a player before."

Being irreparably cocky was a prime aspect of the image I had to maintain. Acting as if I were doing the world of hockey an honor by participating in the sport added to the allure that people found attractive about me.

But I loved hockey in a very tender, childlike way. It was one of the few things in life I treasured deeply. The overly confident facade was precisely that.

So I did not mean it when, with preposterous levels of smugness, I skated away from Coach Nicholson and asked, "It is only right that I'd be the first, don't you think?" over my shoulder.

Coach wasn't satisfied with our performance by the end of practice. I told Rob Marchand that I would tell Coach his concerns about John Graham's aggressive gameplay and promised Brian Wilson I would run some shooting drills with him in my spare time to help him improve his technique.

But I cared about none of that. My mind was somewhere else entirely after we got off the ice. I only vaguely followed how Noah and Sam agreed to ride together to their shared English lectures, which prompted the latter to give Danny his car keys along with a warning to "not let what happened last time happen again."

"Yeah, right, sure, whatever you say," Danny responded. He then waited until Sam was out of view to dangle the car keys in front of my face. "Ready to hit the road? We've got an exciting day ahead of us. I'll go listen to my 200-year-old professor talk about absolutely nothing at all and you'll go write a dissertation on why Zeus was such a horny fuck. Riveting. People would kill to be us."

"Can you wait for me in the car?" I asked as ordinarily as possible, draping my bag over my shoulder and slamming my locker shut with a little too much force. "I'll be there in a minute."

Danny turned on his heels without needing to be told twice. "Just don't take too long. Or else I'm leaving your ass behind."

I waited until everyone had left before I made my way over to the stands, where a figure had been sitting for the past hour, unobtrusive enough to go unnoticed by everyone but me.

I did not know what Josh wanted. I'd been ignoring his and my father's calls, but it seems I'd been avoiding them too well and they had now taken new measures. I sat a couple of seats to his left, feeling it was only right that I kept the expected distance between us.

He was not looking at me. He kept his gaze ahead, on the ice rink, but not necessarily looking at it. He looked as idiotic and audacious as ever. But ill as well, as if he hadn't slept in days. I wanted to feel sorry for him but my brain wouldn't allow it.

"Why do you have to be so fucking selfish?" he asked suddenly, not breaking from his trance.

"You're one to talk about selfishness," I muttered. My voice had come out laced with a thick bitterness that I did not bother to water down.

His head snapped in my direction, and that distant, almost dizzy disposition of his turned defensive in the blink of an eye. "You're still holding on to all of that crap that happened fucking years ago?"

"Yes, I am."

He started to raise his voice then. Delivering the same tired speech avoiding accountability for screwing over our brother, Colin. I didn't flinch. Despite being the oldest, he was also the shortest and perhaps most out of shape of the three of us. We all shared some similarities in appearance, but Josh was aging poorly due to his consistent drug use and unrestrained lifestyle from an early age. He always looked dehydrated. The wrinkles on his forehead and around his eyes were prominent. Sometimes he looked as old as our father.

I laughed, a short, incredulous laugh that escaped me against my better judgment. "You do know we haven't heard from Colin in months, right?" I asked, my tone unmistakably sour and accusatory. "Mom called me last Saturday, said she hasn't been able to get a hold of him for a minute now. You and I both know that even if he's ignoring the rest of the fucking world, he'll at least take her calls now and then. But no. She can't reach him. Doesn't have a fucking clue where he is. He could be dead somewhere, for all we know. Mom's worried sick. She could not stop crying when she called. Want to know what I told her? I told her I'll handle it. For days I've been calling everyone, trying to get in touch with people from all over the country. People from high school. People from college. Hell, I've even been trying to get in contact with those hippies all the way over in California. Think I'm having much fun?"

"Cut the bullshit, alright? I'm sorry I can't babysit Colin, a grown ass man. I'm trying to support our father here! You know, the man who has given us every fucking thing we own. The man who paid for your fucking hockey lessons, who bought you your stupid gear, the one paying your fucking tuition! But you don't give a fuck about that because you're selfish. It's all about fucking hockey to you now. You've found the one thing you're good at and now you're turning your back on us!"

I worried that someone would overhear his ugly outburst. I glanced around anxiously, ensuring there was no one to be found. When I spoke, I made sure to keep my voice low.

"If I could help you, I would," I lied. "But what you're asking for is not exactly easy. It's not reasonable."

Josh had enough sense to lower his voice into something similar to a whisper as well. "We're not asking you to do anything illegal. We just want you to befriend the girl. That's it. Maybe use her as a way to get ourselves a harmless little dinner with Prado. Think about it. We talk things out over some champagne and lobster. Doesn't that sound lovely?"

There was nothing in the world that could convince me to help them. Even if the odds were in their favor, which they weren't now, they would never be entirely on their side.

The truth was that my father was set to go to prison. He was presently a free man due to some technicalities that his heavenly lawyer had been able to call, but little by little everything around him was starting to crumble. His accounts had been frozen. Properties, vehicles, and yachts in his name had been seized. The FBI had raided his private island. More than fifteen computers had been confiscated.

His defense team, along with his status as one of the most powerful men in New York, had been giving David Prado a headache for some months now, but that was not to say he couldn't be arrested any day.

I hurried through the next few minutes after Josh's departure, forbidding myself from having a single godforsaken thought. I hurried to Sam's car, parked right by the Rink's entrance, where Danny was waiting for me, and tried to dismiss this violent feeling of guilt that was threatening to climb up my spine. Danny drove us out of the parking lot with nothing but the faint sound of the radio filling the air inside the vehicle.

"Danny, what can you tell me about Alexandra?" I asked out of the blue, merely out of curiosity, and because this new popularity she had in my life had made me realize I knew virtually nothing about her.

My distaste for her came more from annoyance than actual hatred.

The perfect student. Perfect daughter. A skilled violinist who could speak more languages than even I and could quote Plato as if he lived in the back of her head. On the off chance I thought about her outside of Yale, I could conjure nothing but a perfect picture. With loving parents, a healthy upbringing, and even a perfectly healthy family pet to top it all off.

And she was pretty, much to my dismay. Even I could not deny her good looks. Her sun-kissed skin never lost its glow, even in the dreary East Coast winters. Her long, dark hair earned her the envy of many. And her eyes were the prettiest shade of brown I ever did see, which was a truth I was taking with me to the grave.

The one fault I could find in the impeccable portrait of hers lay inside her brain. If people knew of her around campus, it was because she tended to be odd in a way that most people found uncomfortable.

She continually looked as if she was either nervous or sick or feeling brutally apathetic. She smoked a lot and kept quiet for long periods of time and her hands trembled whenever she was put in mildly uncomfortable situations.

If you take her pretentiousness into account, one could easily find the allure of mystery in her. But that was simply not the case with Alexandra because it seemed there truly was something wrong with her nervous system and the areas of her frontal lobe meant to produce empathy.

Did I dislike her? Yes. Would I have made her disappear if I could? In a heartbeat. But would I have pushed her off a bridge? No, I just wouldn't have called emergency services if I saw it happening.

Danny was slow to respond, which was to be expected. Even though his reflexes were immaculate on the ice, he was rather a slow thinker outside of it. "Alexandra? As in Prado?"

"Do you know any other?"

"Matter of fact, yes I do. There's Alexandra Sanders, the hot chick at Davenport. Then Alexandra Robertson from psychology, Alexandra Mitchell, Joel Buchanan's girlfriend--"

"Buchanan's girlfriend? Unless he's got two, her name's Lindsay."

"The blonde one? Isn't it Alexandra?"

"It's definitely Lindsay, Danny."

"Oh, right, well, there's also—"

"Yes, Prado, Danny. Alexandra Prado."

He hummed and tapped his index finger on the steering wheel, seemingly deep in thought as he drove us through narrow streets. "What do I know about Alex? Alright, let's see. Last name's actually Prado-Montes, but you know that already. I know she's in Branford, and she's sharing a dorm with that friend of hers, the one who got wasted the other night, Jamie Harlow I think is her name. Maybe you know this Jamie chick. She has a reputation for liking athletes, but from what I've seen she comes off a little desperate, actually not a little, very—"

"Focus."

"Oh, right. Well, I know she was dating this guy, don't know his name, but I think he's in a band or something. But yeah, guy's a fucking dickhead. Noah and I were actually planning on asking her if she wanted us to beat him up after we learned what he did. I mean, how could he? It's one thing to cheat, but to cheat on her with her best friend? That's low even—"

If I'd been behind the wheel, I would've hit the brakes so hard I would've sent us both flying out into the street and put us on the cover of the local newspaper. "What?"

Danny looked at me incredulously. "There's no way you didn't know. Everyone was talking about it by the end of last term."

"You know I don't keep up with gossip," I responded, still in a state of disbelief.

"At this point, it's not even gossip. It's general knowledge. Popular culture, if you will. Beatrice Watson, ever heard of her? Probably haven't. I hadn't either. Apparently, she was Alexandra's best friend. They were all friends. Those two girls, Jamie Harlow, Ruth from Fifth Street, some other guys, and the boyfriend. But yeah, the guy dumped Alex and immediately got with Bea. Did you really not know?"

"Don't you think I would've made her life a living hell if I knew?"

"I thought you'd acquired some decency at last—don't fucking smack me. Anyway, why the sudden interest? Have you finally decided to stop being a fucking dick to her? Anyway, who cares about you? Let's talk about me. My parents are trying to set me up. They're planning an arranged marriage."

"Are they, Danny? Or did they simply suggest you meet some nice girl they really like?"

Danny's parents were academics of the most intimidating kind. I was never sure what exactly they did for a living; I just knew that they had a plethora of diplomas from Ivy League schools that read something along the lines of Doctor of Philosophy in some long, confusing scientific word. I'd seen them myself when visiting the twins' home in Boston.

But unfortunately for Ernest and Celestine Vaughn, the twins were not recognized for their intellect. They were not at all dumb, just far from well-versed in scientific matters. And to compensate for this, their parents had made numerous attempts to set them up on romantic dates with academic folks who liked to speak about atoms in their spare time.

The twins hated it. I personally found it a great source of entertainment.

"Not this time," Danny responded, sounding genuinely fearful. "Mom's serious this time. She's even threatening to bring her over so we can meet. Her name's Genevieve and she doesn't shave her mustache. This is hell."

"Maybe it would do you good to date a girl like Genevieve."

"How insensitive of you. You know I love my girls with a massive rack and no mustache."

"Maybe Genevieve has a massive rack."

"Girls with massive racks don't have mustaches."

"Danny, please shut the fuck up."

Looking back, I do wonder if Danny had been nervous in that moment and was doing everything in his power to keep the mood light and his mind wandering. He had a carefree way of being that was difficult to distinguish from the looseness caused by nerves. When I saw him again later that day, back at home, he was finding it impossible to hide his jittery behavior. It made me wonder if he had spent the entire day lamenting what was to come, which I had done.

It was Friday night, and the occasion called for a party at our home.

We had been regular hosts over the past three years, and I will not shy away from admitting I had once been proud of the savagery that characterized them. It had catapulted us into popularity, turning us into the very heart and soul of New Haven. But we had closed our doors back in February, allowing ourselves to wallow in self-pity after the devastating events that had taken place that month.

But it was September now. It was the beginning of a new term. The general consensus around campus was that the parties were bound to resume because there was no reason for them not to. It was our senior year. The events that transpired during the last party had long been digested. Bygones had been bygones.

We were not ready. The five of us stood about the vast kitchen and living room space, looking like ghostly apparitions here to haunt our own home. Frozen, terribly solemn, embodying the very feeling of dread.     

But we had to perform. We had to deliver what was expected of us. The gates to the estate had already been opened. Now we waited for the first wave of guests to pour in, knowing very well they would be walking all over the scene of a crime we had worked tirelessly to keep hidden from them.

Jade was the first to be unable to withhold the tension. "Are we really doing this? I mean, it's insane."

"We have to. It'd be suspicious if we didn't," Sam responded, working as the voice of reason the group desperately needed. His expression was severe as he started to fix himself a drink. "We have to carry on as usual, like nothing ever happened. Because, you know, nothing ever happened."

Gage, who took to pacing and had just finished his fourth glass of whiskey, waved his right hand dismissively. "Forget that crap, people are going to be talking about the tapes non-stop. What a fucking nightmare."

Danny, who sat slouched on a counter, scoffed softly. "Sorry to be the one to inform you, but people have been talking about the tapes non-stop for the past seven months."

"But this is the first party we're hosting ever since it happened. We all know people are going to bring it up more than usual," Jade argued.

"And we'll laugh," I proclaimed, my tone firm and commanding. Although I was as tense as the rest of them, I understood that a facade was all we needed to make it through these trying times. "We'll laugh when they do. And we'll say, 'didn't we look great on those tapes?' and we'll play along, act unbothered—no, not unbothered, proud."

Sam and Jade shared a look. Danny covered his mouth with his left hand and stared out into the void. The darkness in Gage's blue eyes intensified. They did not look prepared at all, but what choice did we have?

Danny hastily finished his whiskey. It gave him the courage to look out the window from which the garden shed could be seen, sitting solemnly in a dark corner of our massive estate.

"What if they look inside the shed?" he asked in a whisper.

Gage went to stand next to him. "Remind me why we haven't burned that fucking thing to the ground?"

Jade joined them. "Because it would look suspicious," she said.

"And we don't want to draw any attention to it," Sam added, now standing with them as well. "The last thing we need is for the fire department to find... something. Anything."

I poured myself another drink and watched as they stared out into the yard with the same haunted expression on all of their faces. "The shed is locked. No one can break in. But still, just for good measure, we'll take turns guarding it. Make sure no one drunkenly forces their way in."

The whiskey was bitter. I winced as it burned its way down my throat. I poured another one.

Chapter Text

CHAPTER FOUR.
ALEXANDRA

"Unripe grape gets sweet as honey, at a slow pace."
—GREEK PROVERB

   JAMIE was breathing heavily, nearly panting. Her stomping was sure to anger the students in the dorm below. Her legs would quiver on occasion and her ankles would give because she was slightly inebriated and wasn't used to the high heels she was wearing. She looked very silly in that blue dress she had on, only because the weather called for something with more fabric.

Her voice was breaking pitifully. "I mean, really, what else are we supposed to do? Go to Brady's? Are you kidding? Everyone, and I mean everyone, is going to be at the Meadows. Can't we do something fun for once?"

She was a very dramatic girl, driven by her emotions in a way most people found exhausting. But it worked in her favor more often than not. Like that night, for instance.

It was because of her that I ended up at the Meadows for the second time in my life. I'd attended one of those infamous parties before, during Freshman year. It had been too much for me. Cocaine and girls stripping and boys fighting and, if you were lucky, the occasional orgy were just some of the things that these parties had become infamous for.

But even though the parties had not been to my taste, the Meadows was a place that never abandoned you. 4813 Bel Meadow Drive, commonly referred to as the Meadows by most of the New Haven community, was a dazzling beauty. I'd always lamented never going back solely because it was not a place you could admire just once.

There was so much to see. So many details that could go unnoticed if you didn't take your time admiring them. The estate was a massive gated property on the outskirts of the city. The manor was a beautiful Georgian home positioned at the very center of the grounds. A tennis court, a pool, and unbelievably well-kept gardens were just some of the amenities one could find in its exterior.

I don't know how to best describe the feeling of entering one of those fabled parties at the Meadows. The place was heavenly. The people were chaotic. It made for a hypnotizing mixture.

Jamie pulled me around for the first twenty or so minutes. There were places I wanted to see but there were people she wanted to be seen by and she felt that was more important. Anyone who was somebody at Yale and the neighboring areas would be at these parties, and so because of this, they acquired a Gatsby-like essence that was making Jamie nervous.

I wasn't observing her too closely when she took to chugging one shot of tequila after another. My attention was set on two of the many chandeliers gracefully scattered around the house as if they were mere trinkets.

Jamie brought another shot glass up to her face but did not look like she could stomach it. She smiled nervously at somebody walking by. "Did Ruth really bail out on us?" she asked me, abandoning the liquor on the table.

"How is that surprising?" I responded, craning my neck to admire the details up in the ceiling. "Well, we're here now. What do you want to do? The orgies are down in the basement. So are the heavy drugs from what I've heard. The second floor is forbidden, isn't it? People are not allowed in the bedrooms. You've got beer pong, pool, and stripping to choose from."

She frowned. "I don't want to do any of those things. Tell you what, you can keep walking around. I'll be in the kitchen. Maybe the hockey boys will be there. Join me once you're done exploring, yeah? I don't want to do anything stupid."

But it was an irrevocable law of nature that Jamie was bound to do something stupid. I didn't worry much, I went sightseeing. 

Guests were allowed to roam every room left unlocked, and I most certainly made myself at home. I moved leisurely through the rooms, with a drink somehow always finding its way to my hand. Chatter and music felt like background noise that never fully managed to disrupt the surface. The light was always dim, always warm, never imposing.

The gods knew I was probably the only person at the party admiring the artwork and the oriental rugs and the plasterwork with decorative moldings. But they spoke to me, which was something I would not commonly say, and before I knew it, several hours had passed and I had left Jamie unattended for a dangerous amount of time.

The Meadows was a dream but navigating it was a nightmare. I was unfamiliar with the layout. Every time I exited a room and entered another it felt as if I'd been going in circles. I walked down the main corridor, which started at the foyer and took me all the way to the back of the house, to an enormous space in which both the kitchen and a living room were. There was no sight of Jamie.

But Sam was there, by the counter with his teammates, and by some dumb stroke of luck he happened to notice me.

"Everything alright, Alex?" he asked, stepping forward to disengage from the conversation his friends were having.

"I'm looking for my friend Jamie, have you seen her?"

"I'm afraid I don't even know who she is," he responded sheepishly.

"She's the one who passed out at Dane's party." What a terrible thing to be remembered by, but unfortunately for Jamie, her mishaps were what made her memorable.

"Oh, her. Yeah, I think I saw her earlier tonight. She was the one drinking tequila straight from the bottle, wasn't she?" he asked one of his teammates, the heavily tattooed Noah Lavoie, who nodded in confirmation. The smile on Sam's face was endearingly apologetic when he turned back to me. "But I haven't seen her in a minute, to be honest. You should try asking Danny. I think he's playing pool right now. I'm pretty sure I saw him talking to her earlier tonight, maybe he knows where she is."

I turned on my heels and took one good look at the long corridor. Finding Danny did not sound like an easier feat than finding Jamie.

I heard Sam chuckling behind me. "Down the hall, three doors to the right. The pool table's there. The room is pretty much across from the main staircase," he kindly informed me.

I nodded, trying to hold on to that information with a foggy brain that felt strangely detached from my body. "Got it."

Immense as the Meadows was, the main staircase was impossible to miss. Situated halfway into the main corridor, on your left when walking in, was that white marble wonder. A lighthouse to us all.

Just as Sam had instructed, the room where a crowd had gathered to watch four guys play pool was right across from the staircase. I could not initially see either Danny or Jamie but ventured in anyway. I soon learned that abandoning the safety of the main corridor had been a mistake. Now I found myself going from one adjacent room to the next, and the disorientation had started to become nauseating. Before I knew it, I was back where I had started, completely bewildered about how I could've possibly circled back to a new round of pool being played.

I decided to take a different turn, struggling against the hazy lights and the booming sounds that seemed to be coming from everywhere. I was now suddenly in some room. One of the many living rooms, perhaps, and I once again couldn't find any of the people I was searching for.

But Gage Thompson was there, and this was significant because Gage Thompson was somewhat of a mythic character around Yale. He was talked about in an overly exaggerated way. People whispered when they talked about him. They bowed their heads and stepped out of his way when in his presence. They had this vague fear of him that was almost fanatical. If you never saw him in the flesh, you would've believed him to be fictitious with the way people treated him around campus.

He had come to Yale as an uptight British kid but had somehow ended up becoming the personification of angst and no one understood why. The most accepted theory was that he detested having to play tennis and had a complicated relationship with his parents, but that was as far as the details went.

There was a quality of secrecy to him that made him unapproachable. His blue eyes had an unnerving intensity that not even Nate himself possessed. Whereas Nate's green eyes were deep, Gage's were sinister.

And there he was, in all of his macabre glory. Next to him sat his girlfriend, Jade Vaughn, a feared character in her own right. She had red hair, fair skin, and a certain perversity that was everywhere to be found—from the dark brown color of her eyes to the effortless smirk ever-present in her mouth.

Whereas Danny was known for his friendliness, his twin sister was known for her unpleasantness. Sorority girls hated her. It was rumored she had once made Marilyn cry. I always thought she was a necessary type of evil.

I had become so preoccupied with these insignificant matters that I had somehow missed the staring. Evident as it was. They were amused stares, filled with mockery rather than harsh judgment. I self-consciously fixed my hair and clothes but found nothing misplaced.

"Hey, Prado!" a voice called out. I did not recognize it, and once I spotted the person it belonged to, one of the guys playing pool, I did not recognize him either. "I'm here if you need some practice," he said.

Some of the people around him chuckled, but the majority of the people following the interaction seemed equally puzzled as I was.

"We'll let you know next time we head over to Brady's," the guy next to him said, referencing the popular bar on the outskirts of town that many students frequented.

"I'm sure you'll get the hang of it eventually, doll," a third guy remarked as he walked up to me, pool stick in hand, bringing with him the pungent smell of whiskey and sweat.

I moved my head just as he reached out to caress my chin. My eyes were wide and wary and I could feel them pulsating with panic. "What the fuck are you talking about?"

"Molly Laurent has been telling people you sucked Jeremy Linn off in the alley behind Brady's," a female voice coming from behind me answered back. When I turned around, I was greeted by Jade Vaughn in all of her mean-spirited glory. She was standing right there. Right before me. With her arms crossed and an eyebrow curved. "And she also mentioned that your method was not very satisfactory."

I paled, although I wasn't exactly sure which of these events was responsible for making me sick to my stomach. "Jesus Christ, what?"

"Is it true?" Jade asked, her face lit up by this sinister amusement she did not attempt to hide.

"Absolutely not," I responded, my voice a pitch higher than usual.

"Why would she lie?" she pressed. Her brown eyes, naturally harsh, were studying me intently, searching for any hint of deception in my face.

"I don't know. Because she's out of her fucking mind maybe?"

She smiled. It was not a warm smile but it felt sincere, and I've since gathered that Jade had mastered the art of mixing those two elements and making them effortlessly hers. Coldness and sincerity were her suit. They were a color she wore well.

"Good answer," she responded. "I'm assuming you've interacted with Nate at some point and she's angry about it. Don't sweat it. Everyone with a functioning brain knows not to take her seriously."

"That's the problem, though. Everyone here is a fucking idiot."

Gage snorted. He'd been sitting nearby, loosely following our conversation with feigned indifference. He took a sip of whatever it was he'd been drinking. His expression was mindful when studying my face.

"You're the girl who's been giving Nate hell, aren't you?" he finally asked, but I could tell he knew the answer already. Neither seemed fazed by this new awareness of who I was. Gage even looked amused when he commented, "Keep up the good work." Or at least as amused as his stern features allowed him to be.

Jade shrugged. "I can tell Jeremy to quit being such a jackass and stop lying to people if you want. I think that'll help clear your name if you're so worried about rumors."

"I'm worried about people thinking I give bad blow jobs."

Gage let out a laugh—a more sincere one this time. "I can clear that up if you want," he suggested playfully.

"Don't be a dick," Jade said to him, softly kicking his leg as a lighthearted reprimand. "Listen," she said to me, "it's likely Molly won't leave you alone now. She's not all right in the head. Honestly, don't mind her."

I wanted to take her word for it. Let bygones be bygones. But after being walked over so many times by so many people, fairness was starting to feel like a very diluted concept.

I was angry. But this anger was not exclusive to this one moment. I was angry at everything and everyone. I was angry at Molly for turning me into her latest victim. I was angry at Jamie, for being so careless. And at Nate, for existing. I was angry that my boyfriend had left me to be with my best friend and I had done virtually nothing about it.

That night at Brady's would still torment me on my very best days. I sat across from them because they had chosen to sit on the same side of the booth. There was a lack of remorse in their eyes that they were trying so hard to fake. Their fingers interlaced over the table. "We decided we want to give this a try."

Bile rose up my throat, tears stung my eyes, and my body pulsated with this terrible adrenaline. But instead of saying all of the things I should've said, I simply smiled. An insincere grin. The most pitiful gesture to ever cross my face. "I'm happy for you," I said. What an imbecile.

Gage perked up then as if he'd only just remembered something. "Oh, and if you're looking for your friend, the one who passed out at Dane's party, I'm pretty sure she went up to Nate's room."

"Oh, for fuck's sake."

Jade's lips quirked into that vicious smirk she was notorious for. "Take the main stairs. Only bedroom to the left. Double doors, can't miss them."

I all but raced up there and barged in, ready to interrupt whatever needed to be interrupted. I stumbled upon Nate helping Jamie to her feet. They were both fully clothed but there was no mistaking that she had been kneeling before him, and I, like any other sane individual, took that as a sign that something erotic had happened.

They were both startled to see me. Nate was quick to pick up on my accusatory glare.

"Don't worry, shortcake. I was already sending her on her way," he said. That was the first time he referred to me by that unfortunate nickname.

Jamie was a mess. A drunken mess. Pitiful to look at. "You fucking asshole," I said to Nate, still presuming the worst had happened.

"Who? Me?" he responded innocently as he leaned back against a desk. He tended to go about things in an infuriatingly arrogant way.

"Yes, you. How dare you take advantage of her when she's clearly drunk, you piece of shit?"

All humor abandoned him. At first, I attributed it to his distaste for my unkind nickname, but when he pushed himself off his desk and walked towards me with a calculating gaze, I understood it was more than that.

I tried to stand my ground as he came and stood right before me. I tried to take up space and not drown in his immensity. But to be painfully honest, that was an act that consistently mutilated my self-preservation.

"I'll have you know that I was up here, in my room, minding my own business, when your little friend barged in without so much as knocking," he said, and something about the way he said it had frankly scared me. "Mind you, she's not even allowed up here. And certainly not in my fucking bedroom, of all places. So I asked her to leave but she refused and has spent the last ten minutes begging me to fuck her. Now that you're here, I'll ask that you kindly tell her I'm not interested in having sex with her and that she's embarrassing herself."

He glared at Jamie over my shoulder and I heard her let out a whimper. He then redirected his hard gaze back to me and I wanted to just about die of mortification.

"And before you go around throwing accusations like that again, remember that I don't need girls to be drunk for them to want to sleep with me."

Jamie was swaying uncomfortably, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. Her chin was wobbling slightly and her eyes were already in the process of becoming teary. "Are you mad at me?" she drunkenly asked me, her voice breaking pitifully.

To say I was colossally embarrassed would've been an understatement. I could not bear to raise my eyes and meet Nate's firm gaze. I felt pathetic and he felt larger than life. "Not now, Jamie," I muttered dejectedly.

She let out a drunken, disbelieving laugh. "Not now? What? Are you going to fucking scold me once we get home like I'm a fucking child? I'm tired of you always treating me this way! Like I'm fucking stupid, when all my life—"

And, to my absolute dismay, she took off on a passionate rant, airing out her frustrations about the sort of friend I was.

Overbearing, prudish, pretentious. My eyes remained glued to her shrieking figure the entire time, unable to break out of this state of disbelief that told me it wasn't humanly possible to carry this much shame.

The fact that Nate was witnessing her outburst and the unkind words she had to say about me was beyond humiliating. And to make matters worse, she chose to end her theatrical monologue with, "You think you're so much better than everyone else. Please! Your boyfriend left you to be with someone else! Clearly, you're in no fucking position to be looking down on others!"

Amongst some of the things you must know about Jamie is the fact that she, like the rest of my friends, still maintained a friendship with Tom and Bea. They claimed they wanted to stay neutral on the matter, but I always felt their neutrality lacked a lot of sympathy for me.

All three of us remained silent for a while, all experiencing different types of discomfort. Nate's gaze was intently set on the carpet, and to my surprise, I couldn't find humor anywhere in his features. Not even a trace of glee in his eyes. This was shocking. He had mocked me for less.

Jamie's wild and bloodshot eyes were going back and forth between him and me, trying to find a reaction that would dictate how she should respond next.

I cleared my throat, trying to get rid of the lump that had gotten lodged in there. "Can you leave us alone for a minute?" I asked her weakly without even looking in her general direction. "I'd like to have a word with him in private."

Neither Nate nor I watched as she stormed out of his bedroom, but the second she slammed the door behind her, a mischievous glint lit up his eyes.

"That's all this was, shortcake? You just wanted me all for yourself?" he asked, very obviously trying to dissolve the tension.

Although I would never care to admit it, I felt eternally grateful that he was acting as if Jamie's breakdown hadn't just happened. It took me a couple of seconds to regain my composure and look him in the eye without fearing that he would see the dampness in mine.

"I want to stick a bottle up your ass, that's what I want."

"So kinky."

"No. Shut up. Listen, I need to talk to you. Your girlfriend—"

"Ex," he clarified.

"—has been telling people that I... that I..."

He frowned. "That you?"

"That I did something indecent! And even worse, that I was bad at it."

"Well?" He gave me a pointed look. "Are you?"

"Give me something pointy. Quick. I feel the sudden urge to stab you."

My mortification was met with indifference. He scratched the back of his neck and spoke as if we were discussing the weather and not my dignity. "Molly likes to talk shit about people she feels threatened by. Clearly, you've made the list. So congrats, I guess."

"Congrats? She's fucking insane!"

His gaze was unmistakably tired when he went to sit on the edge of his bed. "Tell me about it. Now, would you mind leaving? It's weird having you here. Lock the door on your way out. Don't want your psycho friend sneaking back in."

Chapter Text

CHAPTER FIVE.
NATE

"Pay attention to your enemies, for they are the first to discover your mistakes."
—ANTISTHENES

 THE clock was ticking almost ominously. The only sound, besides the uncomfortable shuffling or the occasional clearing of a throat, was the flames crackling to my right.

The eleven of us crammed inside of Edmund Horvat's office was a conventional sight. We were sitting around the large circular table in the far right corner. Books and loose papers and cups of tea covered nearly the entire surface of the table.

To avoid falling asleep, I took to studying Professor Horvat's office. Its vastness collided with its crampedness, and in a way, it felt like the sort of place where the ordinary and extraordinary met.

Nearly all of the furniture was old and worn. Tall, unorganized bookshelves covered seventy percent of the wall space. An immense map of ancient Greece covered another ten percent. The remaining twenty percent were crooked paintings and a white wall.

After I was done inspecting his office with an uninspired eye I turned to him, and as always, he paid no mind to the intensity of my gaze. His eyes were set on the one empty chair on the left side of the table.

I could hear the hurried tapping of his foot against the hardwood floor. He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and mindlessly fiddled with the compass he always carried in the pocket of his suit jacket.

The mortified expression on his face was making him look slightly more deranged than usual, but it wasn't a significant difference because Edmund already looked deranged naturally.

He was a very eccentric character, but that is a word I use because I esteem him. To everyone else, he was simply odd. He had rough features and white hair that would normally stick out in every direction. His nose was long and defined and his eyes were big and expressive. And because he was the sort of man who got overly excited about the things he held dear, he tended to make people uneasy with his stereotypical image of a vaguely insane philosophical professor.

He looked at the empty seat some more and then switched his compass for his pocket watch. The watch kept ticking. At last, he sighed, pocketed the watch, and started to open the book before him.

"Alright, class, today we're going to—"

That's when Alexandra barged in. She took a seat rather clumsily, stumbling with her books and her bag and apologizing profusely for her tardiness. "I'm really, really sorry, Edmund. Something got in the way. I had to run all the way here."

But she did not need to apologize. Edmund was beyond elated to have his favorite student finally join us.

"Don't you worry. We were only just getting started. So," he clapped his hands, "Herodotus. Did any of you do your reading on him?"

Philippa rolled her eyes at Edmund's blatant favoritism. Charles smiled at Alexandra. Ben looked bored by a lecture that hadn't yet begun. Edward sipped his tea a little too loudly, as was customary for him. And everyone else dived into a thoughtful trance, guided by Edmund's profound knowledge.

No one had noticed it. I did, for whatever reason. I noticed the swollen eyes and the redness that surrounded them. Noticed the dispirited attitude she wore like a coat that hugged her tightly. To me, they were unequivocal signs that she had been crying, which caused me great discomfort. I did not like to think of her as a sentient being with very human emotions.

I tried not to stare. I tried to keep my gaze on the long paragraphs before me, and if not, on the window to my left, watching the treetops sway. I tried to keep my thoughts on Herodotus and on how pretty the morning was. But my eyes would return to her with a subconscious insistence that I consciously detested, and I could swear I could feel something twisting and turning in my chest. Pity, perhaps.

I had a strong suspicion that all of this had to do with her friend's cruel outburst on Friday night. It pained me to admit it, but I really did pity her. Alexandra Prado-Montes deserved a lot of things. To be mocked over her ex-boyfriend's callous infidelity was not one of them.

But I was thinking of her too much, too freely. We'd gone our separate ways after our Greek Historians class and still, my thoughts kept circling back to her. By the time we met again for the mandatory Human Rights course, the sight of her entering the hall had already become nauseating.

"Has she done something to her hair?" Nancy Anh, who was sitting to my left, asked.

"I don't know. But she looks nice, that black sweater suits her," said Danny, sitting to my right, his head tilting slightly in my direction as if it were me he wanted to hear from. I fixed him with a hard stare that indicated there was no way I would ever admit to such a thing.

Alexandra finally took a seat, still showcasing that jittery behavior I'd seen earlier at Greek Historians. I was under the impression she was being eaten away by some insecurity that was evidently nestled underneath her skin.

"Don't even say it, Nancy. I know I look a mess."

Nancy shrugged unfazed. "I think you look nice. Danny thinks so as well. And Fitzy. He's been trying not to stare but he's failing miserably. I don't think he even realizes he's doing it."

I frowned. "That's not true." It was.

"Have any of you ever had an STD?" Danny asked abruptly.

Alexandra released a deep breath. "Oh, boy."

"I don't have one. I get tested regularly, okay? It's just that someone snitched and told my parents that I get laid a lot so they've been mailing me magazines about weird sexually transmitted diseases to get me to slow down. Now I'm paranoid. Have any of you heard of this thing called donovanosis?"

"No, and I have a feeling I don't want to," I said.

"Whatever you do, do not look at pictures of it."

"Oh, definitely wasn't planning to."

Our Human Rights lecture began with Marian Greene, our 57-year-old British professor, going over some definitions and technicalities we had brushed over during a previous lesson. Normally, I found these types of lectures to be awfully dull. But this particular course was different because no topic was ever boring when it was being presented by Professor Greene, a minor celebrity around campus.

Whenever you're told that a female professor arouses a lot of excitement in her male students, you're likely to imagine a scenario that doesn't accurately depict the essence of Marian Greene. She wasn't overtly sensual. No, it wasn't that. She carried herself with a lot of poise, a lot of grace. She was stern but caring. To an extent, I would even dare say she was motherly.

But it was well known that she was a sexually liberated woman. She never shied away from that aspect of her life. Her reputation, both as a person and as an educator, had never been tainted by her promiscuity because she didn't give it the power to.

If you ask me, her allure came from her experience and from the two rules she abided by. First, she never slept with the same man twice. And second, she never slept with students. There is nothing more appealing to inept young men than a challenge entwined with a forbidden factor.

"As I mentioned at the beginning of the term," she said about fifteen minutes before the lecture was scheduled to finish. "We're going to be working on a very exciting project that has always been an important part of the Human Rights program here at Yale. As some of you may know, it has the uninspiring name of The Human Rights Project."

Nervous laughter bounced off the walls. People awkwardly readjusted their sitting positions.

"The Human Rights Project has always been fairly simple but it has garnered a bit of a bad reputation over the years. Something I've always tried to get students to understand is that the project itself is easy, but I will admit that the workload can be a bit strenuous at times. But if you're responsible with how you manage your time then you'll have absolutely no trouble passing this course with flying colors. So, this is how it is going to go down. Each one of you is going to pair up with a classmate of your choice, and you're all going to be presented with some pretty basic questions that you must give elaborate answers to. Questions such as can we prevent genocide? How can dictatorships be resisted? What are the laws of war and how do we decide what's morally acceptable and what isn't? These questions are going to be in regard to Nazi Germany, the Ottoman Empire, the Soviet Union, amongst many other things. Each one of you has to present a point of view that is different from that of your partner's, have to cite ideologies that adhere to this point of view, and have to use your research to dispute the other's points."

Danny and I had agreed to take on this project together, having known that it was in store for us for the coming semester. However, I had not yet measured the severity of having to discuss the morality behind the actions of the Soviet Union with Danny, and how I was likely to end up with clinical insanity by the end of our first discussion.

"I will not be playing a Nazi apologist, so let's get that out of the way," I could hear Alexandra whispering to Nancy, who was oddly entranced by Marian Greene and had seemingly not heard what Alexandra had said.

"I'm sure all of you are already aware that this is an exhaustive project that will require loads of reading, research, and effective communication with your partner to really understand the stance they're choosing to take on these matters. Now, I'm sure you'll be pleased to learn that this project will actually make up 80% of your final grade. Oh, don't give me that look! It's an easy way to get that final grade up. 50% of it will be your marks on the finished project, and the remaining 30% will be on the papers and assignments you hand in throughout the semester. Just hand in everything on time, make sure your work is complete and tidy, and you've got yourself thirty percent of your final grade secured. I'll speak more on the points you'll need to touch on and the requirements you'll have to meet. Also, start thinking of who your partner will be, and choose wisely! And no, there cannot be any teams of three."

It had been naive of me to think that would be it. That my dreadful luck would not call any more misfortune upon me. I had begun gathering my belongings by then, tired but beautifully unaware that the worst was yet to come.

I thought I would get to go about my day as usual, but that blissful naivety was stripped from me only a moment later, when everyone was already in the process of vacating the hall and Marian decided to make one final announcement.

"Nate and Alexandra, can you join me for a minute?"

I can confidently say I didn't know. I didn't see it coming. I was blindsided. Not even as we stepped forward to meet Marian at her desk did I have an inkling of what was to come.

"I'm afraid you two will not be granted the luxury of choosing a partner," she stated once we joined her, looking at us sympathetically as she continued to place some books inside her bag. "It was agreed upon by the end of last term that you two would be taking on this project together. It is my understanding that Marilyn already spoke to you about this. I don't think she gave you any specific details, but she did tell me she gave you two a bit of a warning beforehand so that you could take the news a little more gracefully."

Marilyn's warning had been shoved to some corner of my mind where I stored all things inconsequential. I had convinced myself that the little surprise she had in store for us would end up being some silly little task.

It had never even crossed my mind that Marilyn would think of something so twisted as to have us do the Human Rights Project together. It just felt like a senseless act of cruelty. I felt she had crossed the line of what I thought was fair punishment.

It took me a minute to measure the severity of the situation. At first, I believed it to be some sort of joke. But then realization crept in and I felt my spirits drop to my feet in just one terrorizing second.

Alexandra swallowed hard. I could've sworn she'd paled slightly. "Is this a joke?"

"If it were, it would be a rather unfunny one, I'm afraid," Marian replied with great remorse. "As I mentioned earlier, this project requires effective communication. A bit of teamwork, if you will. And that is something you two lack tremendously. The school is not oblivious to the animosity between the two of you, and we're also aware of the reason behind it. If you ask me, this rivalry is completely understandable and, to an extent, even healthy. Your grades really improved last term, Alex, and I have reason to believe this competition you've got going on was what fueled that. But we've received innumerable complaints about you two and your quarreling. From just about everyone, really. Be it the teachers that you're annoying senselessly, or the third parties that have to pay for the silly pranks you two play on each other. It's a bit childish and it's not a good look for the school. And it's especially not a good look for you as team captain, Nate. If I'm not mistaken, you got in trouble last year because you sent Alexandra death threats—"

"I told her I was going to kill her after she keyed my car. It was a figure of speech. I didn't actually mean it."

"Well, you did it publicly and got in trouble for it. Threatening a woman that way is something that always needs to be taken seriously. We discussed it with Coach Nicholson and he's in on this. He thinks this will be a good look for you. You have to set an example as team captain, after all, and there's no better way to do so than by leaving this silly conflict behind and leading with maturity."

"This is a terrible idea," Alexandra said to her with a note of warning.

"Oh, I agree," Marian chuckled as she reached for her bag and draped it over her shoulder. "But I also believe you two can make it work."

Alexandra looked nauseous, and I wouldn't have put it past her to be sick at such an inappropriate moment.

"Are you alright?" I asked, not out of concern but because I didn't want to be there if she started vomiting.

"I just really fucking hate that I have to spend even more time with you. Having to see you during class is torture enough, but during my spare time as well? I might as well just jump off a cliff."

"Yeah, you might as well. And fuck you."

I felt lightheaded by the time I made it home. The idea of having to see Alexandra on a nightly basis felt like a comedic skit at best and an actual nightmare at worst. But it was bizarre from whichever angle you looked at it. It was the timing that befuddled me most. How everything seemed to be coming into alignment for the most complicated of scenarios.

Danny and Gage were entirely engrossed by the television screen when I joined them, trying out a new video game that Gage had bought earlier that day. Sam was fixing himself something to eat in the kitchen. I went to join him and was just about to share the dreadful news when Danny's loud complaints interrupted me.

"Noah fucking lied, this shit's not easy. What the fuck am I supposed to do now? I can't get through—oh, hey Nate. Didn't see you come in. Some guy called and asked for you, by the way. Said his name was Michael something. Archie? Archer? Anyway, he said he managed to get a hold of Colin, that he's up in Montreal with some guy named Nick Atkinson or Robinson or something like that."

Sam chuckled as he went to sit on the kitchen island with a plate in hand. "Well, aren't you wonderful at passing on messages?"

I held up a hand to silence Sam. My heart was beating painfully against my ribcage. "Nick Atkinson, up in Montreal, yeah, I know him. Went to high school with Colin. Did he tell you anything else? Why hasn't he been answering any calls?"

Danny shrugged, his eyes still on the screen. "Don't know about that. But this Michael guy did say that they were going camping for the week, so you probably won't be able to reach them, but you can give them a call on Monday. They'll probably be around by then. I wrote down Nick's number for you. It's in that napkin next to the microwave."

I ran my hands over my face and exhaled shakily, unaware that I'd been holding my breath in the first place. I could feel how the anxiety I'd been carrying for weeks began slowly evaporating from my body.

I was only just beginning to melt into my surroundings when Jade came in. She sat across from me, on the opposite side of the kitchen island, and smiled this insincere tight smile that I returned.

"Tell Molly to stop bothering that one girl who's always a pain in the ass to you." She said it like it was a command and not something to be taken into consideration. "I don't remember her name, but you know who I'm talking about."

"Alexandra Prado. And no."

"I'm not asking."

"Well, why don't you do it yourself then?" I questioned amusedly. "If I'm not mistaken, you've always been very fond of giving Molly a piece of your mind."

"If I show up at her doorstep it will inevitably end in physical assault, and no one really wants that."

"We don't?" I asked.

"No, we don't," she responded.

"Why? You scared?" Sam inquired, the corners of his mouth lifting into a mischievous grin.

"Yes. For her well-being."

I don't know if it was because she happened to catch me in a terrific mood after having learned that my brother was alive and breathing, or because common sense dictated she was right, but I set out later that evening hoping to do exactly what Jade had asked of me.

Not because I cared about what happened between Alexandra and Molly, but because I wished to preserve whatever sanity I had left. With that Human Rights Project ahead of us, the last thing I wanted was for Molly to learn that I was seeing Alexandra on a nightly basis.

So I stepped out of the house and stared at the vastness of the grounds that surrounded it. And I laughed to myself. I laughed out loud at the ridiculousness of it all.

Chapter Text

CHAPTER SIX.
ALEXANDRA

"It is more important to know what sort of person has a disease than to know what sort of disease a person has."
—HIPPOCRATES

   There was the kindness of slumber, followed by a faint awareness, and then pain—entering the stage as if it were the main protagonist of one very twisted act.

My dorm materialized around me like a memory rather than something real. Jamie was fast asleep in the bed next to mine. The lack of sunlight indicated it was still dark out. But above all else, I was acutely aware that I was wet in some places, damp in others, and sticky all over.

The upper half of my body was covered in sweat. That in itself wasn't a big deal. But I knew, without even needing to look, that if I were to reach down to the lower half of my body my hands would come up bloodied.

That past summer, for a reason I hadn't taken the time to wholly understand, my body had gone on a self-sabotaging mission. My menstruation was suddenly making me feel as if every torture method from the Middle Ages was being done to my body at once. The bleeding increased. My mental health plummeted.

For months, I had hoped that this would be a singular occurrence. That I would get to return to an existence in which this wasn't a problem. But time proved me wrong and I now had to live with the knowledge that something was wrong with me. I didn't know what, exactly. And I wasn't interested in finding out.

I tried to do some research in the school's library on my second day back, but every medical term I stumbled upon sounded as frightening as the next and I frankly preferred not knowing what was happening to me.

I'm sure the scene must have looked like something straight out of a horror film for Jamie as she stirred awake. It took every ounce of the little strength I had to convince her not to call emergency services. But I'm not sure whether I passed out or if my senses went into such turmoil that everything became a blur, because although I have a faint recollection of Jamie helping me to the shower, I don't actually remember it.

There is only the vague memory of Jamie cursing and lamenting not having access to a bathtub. I remember the feeling of the cold water and Judy Farrow from down the hall asking a lot of questions. But everything happened in little instances I couldn't grasp.

By the time I came to be, I was all cleaned up and getting ready for my shift at the Fifth. Jamie was sitting in her bed, her legs pulled up to her chest, staring at me as if I were some sort of strange specimen she had never seen before.

Jamie was a foolish girl at times, but she could be a great friend on occasion. I very much appreciated what she had done for me, but we were going about things in a very awkward way because we hadn't spoken at all since the quarrel in Nate's room.

It was now Wednesday morning, and although I would've loved to talk things out, this was certainly not the moment to do so. I had taken far too many painkillers in the hopes that my body would return to the closest thing to normality it could come up with. And this, combined with the pain and little sleep, had me stuck in an odd trance I couldn't snap out of.

I felt like I was stuck inside of myself. My reflection in the mirror filled me with a rage I felt too weak to release. I just kept on applying makeup to hide my sickly features, being a bit too heavy-handed, wanting nothing more than to scream at the young woman looking back at me. To berate her. To punch the mirror. Put my hands around her neck and squeeze. Why? I wanted to ask. Why does something have to be wrong with you? Why can't you be normal? Why can't you be like every other girl? Why? Why? Why?

"Is this normal?" Jamie asked, but from the way she looked at me, I could tell she already knew the answer.

I gave her a dismissive shrug as I continued applying makeup and inspecting my reflection. "Not sure. My last few periods have been really bad. I think it's just stress and all the crap I eat."

"I'm really sorry." She said it suddenly, like it had been at the forefront of her mind. I could see her pained expression in the mirror and understood that this had nothing to do with my current health state. "I really didn't mean what I said the other night. I was only trying to make you feel bad. I knew you were right, I just didn't want you to be. The truth is I was actually jealous."

"Jealous of what, exactly?"

"Of your relationship with Nate. You know I've always liked the guy. He's been my biggest crush since freshman year. I've been trying to get his attention for years, Alex, and when I went into his room the night of the party he didn't even know who I was. He asked what my fucking name was, and when I told him he actually asked if I was new here. Three years and he hasn't noticed me once. But you're on his mind all the fucking time. His eyes are on you from the minute you enter a room to the second you leave it."

"He despises me. I'm the last person you should be jealous of." My voice was flat and I cared very little for how I came across.

"I don't think you should go to work," she said gingerly. She was still looking at me as if there was a possibility I would faint any second.

"I'm fine, really. Pain's nearly gone now. You can go back to sleep." She didn't protest. It was only 4:30 in the morning.

The morning was unforgivably cold and I could no longer tell if my numbness came from the pills or the freezing weather. The sun was yet to rise and the desolate streets of New Haven had nothing to warm them. It felt like a barren town. The trees that lined the path to the Fifth swayed ominously, moving to the rhythm of the winds that picked up now and again. I watched as some orange and yellow leaves broke off from their branches, swaying their way down to the pavement in this very slow and sad way.

My guts were churning by the time I made it to the Fifth. I stayed outside, my back pressed against the door as I shivered incessantly due to the cold. Charles joined me soon after, as per my request, staring at me with a puzzled expression before he offered a greeting.

Charles was one of my co-workers and classmates. A twenty-one-year-old Classics student with a baby face and an impressive stash of drugs on him at all times. He was friendly and handsome and liked older women to a degree that made me think he had no self-preservation because he was always getting in trouble for sleeping with someone's mom.

I explained my situation to Charles, not in vivid detail, and he was quick to offer a solution, as he had done on multiple previous occasions. Before long, we were both looking out for any passersby as he fixed me a remedy that consisted of pills and white powders. From that moment on, I became something outside of myself. My body no longer felt like my own. My conscience felt thin and feeble, like it could not grasp the simplest concept if it tried.

I worked through most of my shift on autopilot. I don't think anyone suspected I was out of my mind, and if they did they did nothing to show it. I didn't mess up anyone's orders as far as I was concerned, and people knew not to expect staggering amounts of generosity from me.

There came a moment when we were given a momentary break from the madness of the morning rush. That was when Jamie came in, tearing at the seams with excitement.

"I've got great news. Fantastic news. Groundbreaking, even," she declared as she joined us.

Ruth looked at her with boredom, her chin propped over her closed fist as she leaned lazily over the counter. "Did the basketball guy finally return your advances?"

She opened her mouth and closed it immediately after. "No," she said after a moment of thought. "No, it's not that. Molly's been telling people that she got Alex mixed up with someone else on the whole Jeremy fiasco. And he totally backed her up like the pussy-whipped lunatic that he is."

Despite still being out of it, to the point I feared I might have been drooling, I was still visibly stunned by the news. Everyone else mirrored my surprise. The unspoken understanding between us was that there was only one person capable of making Molly Laurent go back on something she'd said.

This meant that our beloved Fitzy had done me a favor, and the prospect was too bewildering to even consider—so we didn't.

"That Jeremy guy has been kissing the ground she walks on ever since she separated from Nate," Charles said while wiping the counter.

Jamie nodded. "Oh, he was biding his time, for sure."

"Do you think he tried his luck before they broke up?" Ruth asked, clearly out of sheer curiosity. She didn't seem particularly interested in the matter.

"You'd have to be beyond idiotic, possibly suicidal, to do something like that," Charles responded.

"Why?" I asked. I was only loosely following the conversation for obvious reasons, but I found Charles' words strangely confusing. I had never considered Nate to be senselessly violent. Aggravating yes, but not downright violent.

"What do you mean why?" Jamie asked. "One good punch from him and you'll end up in the emergency room with lifelong lasting issues."

"But I've never seen him get in a fight," I argued but felt I wasn't doing an outstanding job at getting my point across. My vocabulary felt very limited. "Outside the rink, at least. Yes, he's strong, but it doesn't really matter, does it? I mean, it's a factor, but a useless one if you take into account that he's not the type to lose his temper and get into petty fights."

"He plays hockey," Jamie stated as if her argument was self-explanatory. "He's violent by nature."

"I don't think Molly would've cheated on him anyway," Ruth added on a separate note, evidently bored by our conversation. "One needs only eyes to see she is borderline obsessed with the guy."

"I think they're going to end up together," I said, but I was still very much out of it and had very little control over which thoughts my tongue aired out. We all watched through the windows as various cars began to pull up to the parking lot, and we knew that in only a matter of seconds, there would be a crowd of hockey players giving the Fifth its typical vitality back. "They're going to get married and have kids and live in a mansion in whatever city he ends up playing in. But they're going to argue like it's an Olympic sport and won't get a divorce because they care about their image too much and their kids are going to end up traumatized."

And in he came, in all of his narcissistic glory.

"Could you make it any more obvious that you're in love with me?" he asked teasingly as he came to stand on the opposite side of the counter, staring me down while a smug little grin lifted the corner of his lips.

I stood straight, only now realizing I had been staring at him this entire time. I rubbed my eyes, hoping to adjust my vision. "I will take my own life before I ever catch feelings for you."

"Sounds thrilling. I'll have the usual."

"Do I look like I remember your order?"

I did. A couple of his friends snickered and, to my
surprise, Nate himself smiled. I could feel Jamie's eyes on me, accusatory and demanding.

I took a deep breath and looked at Sam. "Same as always?" I asked.

Nate glowered. Sam laughed. "You know it," he said.

I knew Edmund would be locked away in his office, entertaining chaos that was foreign to everyone but himself.

From the moment I first laid eyes on him—a man well into his sixties who walked slouched and had impenetrable blue eyes that were always jumping from one thing to the next—I had the impression that no one in the world had ever understood him, and it was not for a lack of trying.

He didn't so much as blink when he saw me. He left the door ajar as a silent invitation for me to come in while he continued to tend to his business. Even though his office was always in disarray, it was a source of comfort for me. It was the sort of place you could get lost in.

He was rummaging through various loose papers when I came in. He hadn't looked up yet when he said, "You didn't join us this morning." But it wasn't a reprimand as much as an absentminded comment.

I sank into one of the two brown chairs across his desk. "Couldn't make it. Sorry."

"And aren't you supposed to be in class right about now, young lady?"

"I don't have it in me to sit through a single lecture today."

He finally looked up then, his eyes widened comically by his glasses. "Do you have it in you to have some tea?"

My response came in the form of a smile, and he dropped everything at once to fix us tea. He rambled on and on about the text he'd been translating before he had to go over some student work, but it all came out in a hurried and muddled sentence.

"Your eyes are awfully red," he said when he handed me the teacup in a saucer. "It's a good thing you haven't attended any of your classes today. One look at you and you'd be sent to the Dean's office before you even made it to your seat."

I sat back on the chair and took a small sip. "Courtesy of Charles. What is it that you were reading?"

"Oh, some piece a student wrote about Ariadne."

"Anything good?"

"Mostly victim blaming. Reading anything of interest yourself?" His gaze was firm. Penetrating. In a way, bewitching.

In retrospect, I believe Edmund might have been my one true friend at Yale. It all started back in Freshman year, when he asked that I stay behind after class to discuss an essay I'd written, which he had apparently found riveting. I stayed for three hours. Came back the following night, mostly because I had not yet made any friends and didn't have anything else to do on a Friday night. We had deep and at times grueling conversations on philosophical matters, and for once someone listened to me. But most importantly, someone valued what I had to say. That was a first. It was nice. My visits to Edmund's office became recurrent.

I think he could see I was a little bit broken and took an interest in that. Don't know what kind of interest exactly. I don't know if he saw himself reflected in my social incompetence or if he saw me as a philosophical experiment he intended to study. It didn't feel predatory. I felt he actually cared.

Over the years, a sort of routine was established. I visited him during my most tempestuous moments and he guided me back to safety. I sat across from him with a dazed look in my eye, gaze lost, feeling as if I had been left to my own devices. He was always careful, moving tentatively, choosing his words wisely. He'd ask if I had read any new books or revisited any old epics. I'd say yes, always, and together we dived deep into a world of myth and philosophy. A small, imaginary getaway.

"I've been reading about Eros and Psyche."

Edmund's eyes were heavy. His gaze was curious but steady. "Oh, Eros is a thing of nightmares."

But I suppose I might have gotten a little more lost that day. I think I ventured too deep into the sea. We talked for hours and once our conversation reached its natural end, he seemed unable to bring me back to shore. I was in a trancelike state. Hypnotized, almost.

He realized this. Realized I wasn't entirely home. "Alex?"

"Yes?"

"If I remember correctly, back in Freshman year you made what they call a bucket list, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"Yes, I remember. I remember now. It was a list full of great activities. There were many skills you wished to learn. Whatever happened to it?"

I was beginning to feel more present by then. I could feel a tightness in my throat that was making my voice raspy. Slowly, my fists unclenched. "I sort of abandoned it once I got with Tom."

Edmund seemed almost relieved to see I had come to. His eyes glimmered. His voice sounded surprisingly soothing to me when he said, "Perhaps you should revisit it."

Chapter Text

CHAPTER SEVEN.
NATE

"Too many opinions sink the boat."
—GREEK PROVERB

   I did not offer a greeting that day. "Come up to my bedroom," I said. I did not wait for a response. Did not check to see if she was coming.

There was a small flicker of satisfaction once I heard her soft footsteps making their way up the stairwell behind me. Only then did it cross my mind that it was perhaps not a great idea to invite her into my space, but I didn't think much of it. I must have been out of my mind.

We had been working on our project for a week by then, and I had let it be known that we were to meet at the Meadows always. My schedule was too packed and I was commonly too tired to meet elsewhere.

Normally, we picked a sitting room that was far removed from any of the commotion that naturally occurred around the house and worked from there. But I had taken several beatings during the latest practice, and I worried only about my own comfort as I went to lie down in bed and left her to make herself comfortable on my desk.

The project itself was going terribly. Somehow she had emerged victorious in every argument we'd had and I was being forced to play devil's advocate in all of the twisted scenarios Marian Greene was ordering us to entertain. This time was no exception.

"This is not fucking fair," I declared, sitting up to glare at her more intently. "You've given me the worst options and now you're angry because I can't come up with anything."

"This should come to you easily," she said dryly, "you are a terrible human being."

"That is your opinion. And just because I would push you off a bridge does not mean I support genocide."

"Oh, so you would push me off a bridge? Me? A Mexican? Hate crime."

"Shut up."

"This Nazi apologist crap is right up your alley."

"I'll do the Nazi apologist crap if you do the justifying of genocide."

"Whoever created this stupid project was probably a white supremacist. Why on earth would someone want to counter, you know, basic human decency?" she asked as she began to collect her belongings. However, she halted in the middle of shoving one of her books into her bag to stare at me warily. "Are you a white supremacist?"

"Are you really going to make me pull the "my best friend's black" card? Of course I'm not a fucking white supremacist."

She nodded, but something in her eyes told me she was going over every interaction she'd ever seen me in to see if there was ever any instance in which I might have come across as a bigot. There wasn't, but I did hear her whisper, "Your father looks like he could be one," under her breath.

I hit her in the head with a pillow. I wasn't trying to be gentle either. I hoped she got a concussion. But she was laughing as she pushed her hair away from her face. And just as I was only moments away from getting rid of her, Sam came knocking on my door just to open it without waiting to hear from me.

He was shirtless and mid-yawn when he said, "We're heading out to Brady's in ten," and then immediately stepped back out.

Alexandra let out a sigh of relief as she draped her bag over her shoulder as if it weighed a ton. "Thank god. I could really use a drink."

"No one invited you," I told her.

"I did!" Sam yelled from down the hall.

The sun had already disappeared into the horizon when the six of us congregated outside the house. Because this was routine for us, Sam and I took the front seats of his car while Danny, Jade, and Gage climbed in the back. Only now one other person was joining us, and while I was eager to inform her that there was no space left in the car, Danny, unfortunately, opened his mouth faster than I did.

"Come on. You can sit on my lap," he said, extending his arm to motion her forward. He glanced at me briefly then, his brown eyes dark with amusement. "What is it that you've been calling her lately? Shortcake?"

I glared at him through the rearview mirror.

It wasn't long before we got to Brady's, the local pub known for not looking too hard at the mostly fake IDs students used to get in. The brick walls, worn-down pool tables, and old-fashioned bar gave the place a tavern-like feeling I personally enjoyed profusely.

My friends cared very little for the reactions they received as they sauntered in. A boy scowled at Gage and a girl fluttered her eyelashes at Danny, but they remained blissfully oblivious as they slid into the booth—first Gage, then Jade, and then Danny. Alexandra, who had suddenly adopted an airy disposition, was left trapped between Sam and me.

Cathy Wilson came to take our orders, and in doing so she desperately tried to get our gazes to meet because we'd had sex in the bathroom once and she felt very strongly about it still. It happened the night I broke up with Molly, so naturally, I was drunk and heartbroken and not of sound mind.

I wasn't meeting her eye now not because I regretted it. Truthfully, there was nothing to regret. She was pretty and the sex had been good, and in the grand scheme of things those were the only things that truly mattered in the world of casual sex. But ever since it happened, I'd always had an inkling she was expecting more from me. A call, a date, a second round. Something. Anything. But she wasn't getting it. At least not from me. Danny, on the other hand, was down for anything if you asked nicely.

Everyone asked Cathy for beer except for Gage, who looked up with tired eyes and said, "Actually, I'll have some whiskey." And we wouldn't have cared, we would've thought nothing of it, had Gage not developed somewhat of a drinking problem earlier that year.

Don't get me wrong. The problem had begun long before that. If I had to pinpoint an exact moment, I would say it happened the summer after Freshman year, when he realized he detested playing tennis but had no choice but to stick to the sport because his parents were not giving him another option.

Truth was, Gage was not just good at tennis. He was gifted. At his worst, he was considerably better than the vast majority of players he competed against. His parents were not planning on missing out on the fame and glory that came with such talent. So an ultimatum was set. He either picked up the racket or got disowned.

None of us, minus Alexandra perhaps, were surprised to find that he drank liquor like a man who had been relinquished to his own devices in a deserted landscape. Typical Gage, we would've said.

But a drunk person was a drunk person, and now that Alexandra was here, we couldn't speak as freely as we commonly did. There were a lot of subjects that were forbidden. A lot of secrets meant to be kept between the five of us. And I, for one, didn't trust Gage to keep his mouth shut.

It was impossible for the twins, Sam, and me to conceal our discomfort. We were all thinking the same thing—that Alexandra was no fool, that she could pick up on context clues if we gave her enough of them. We stiffened our postures, exchanged wary glances, and prayed to whichever god was listening that he didn't say the wrong thing.

Gage was not an idiot by any means. He picked up on our glances, accusatory to a degree, and immediately turned defensive. "Alright, why are you looking at me like that? It's not a crime to want some whiskey to warm up on a cold Wednesday night, is it?"

Jade's eyes were burning into the side of his head, trying to get a silent message across. "Don't you want a mixer with that? A chaser? Some grapefruit juice? A Coke?"

"The best chaser for whiskey is more whiskey."

I grimaced. "I strongly disagree."

Gage was now visibly exasperated but was trying to contain it so as not to make Alexandra too uncomfortable. "I'm not going to get shit-faced, alright? Don't worry."

Alexandra had picked up on the tension but was considerate enough not to comment on it. Instead, she cleared her throat and began to glance around the bar, anxiously searching for a diversion. When she did find one, she was nice enough to redirect our attention to a girl standing by the bar.

"Her. Do you see her? The girl wearing the flowery shirt," she said eagerly, finger-pointing and everything. I had to turn my entire upper body to look over because the bar was behind me, and I very much doubted the poor girl couldn't feel the collective stares of the six people in our booth.

"What about her?" Sam asked, taking in the girl's body from top to bottom.

"That's Kristen Ray. Ever heard of her? She's the one who messed around with her chemistry professor last year."

Jade gasped. "Are you talking about the Sexy Feet incident?"

"Mind elaborating?" Danny asked. "Because I'm very lost."

Cathy arrived with our beers then and all but slammed them down on the table, earning herself unapologetically judgmental stares from all of us.

"Thank you, Cathy," I said grimly, meeting her eye for the first time that night. She held my gaze, cold and unwelcoming, before storming away in a very unflattering, child-like manner.

"Don't forget my whiskey!" Gage called after her before returning his attention to Alexandra. "So, you were saying?"

"Last year, there were rumors that Kristen was messing around with one of her teachers. Can't remember his name, but he was a creepy-looking fellow. Tall, lanky, with wild hair and crazy eyes. He was nearing his sixties by then, I think. Certainly not the type to get female students excited. Anyway, they were just rumors, and they were so outlandish that most people didn't believe them."

"Until?" Gage interrupted, absolutely entranced by the story and paying very little mind to the whiskey that had been placed before him by a male bartender.

"Until she slipped. Like, quite literally slipped. She fell while exiting a lecture hall and all of her bag's contents fell out. Apparently, there were pictures. Polaroids. Of feet. Crusty and old. It was a no-brainer figuring out who it was in those photographs."

"And he was fired, surely," Gage said, looking comically repulsed.

"No, he wasn't," Jade responded. "Apparently, the school couldn't fire him because they couldn't prove he was in a romantic relationship with Kristen. And technically, there was no way to really say if those were really his feet in the photographs."

"They could've made him take his shoes and socks off, to compare," Danny said.

"A bit unprofessional, don't you think?" Sam chuckled.

"He resigned, though," Alexandra clarified after taking a small sip from her beer. "Shortly after it happened. Guess he feared they would eventually learn of his affair with a student."

"Why did I not hear about any of this?" Danny asked no one in particular. "It sounds like one hell of a story. I would've loved to be an active participant in it. Ruffle some feathers."

Alexandra fidgeted uncomfortably, her gaze intently set on the beer bottle before her. "Well, it happened back in February. Back when Henry Lieberman disappeared. And when the tapes were aired. So, you know, you probably had bigger fish to fry."

Danny covered his eyes. "She knows about the tapes," he whined.

"Of course she knows about the tapes," Sam argued, but his demeanor remained oddly relaxed compared to that of the other boys. "She doesn't live under a fucking rock."

My fists were clenched so tightly that I doubted she hadn't noticed. It felt as if my entire body had been locked in place. I tried to steady my breathing and remain as inconspicuous as ever while I looked at Gage and silently implored him not to lose his mind.

Jade had not had any visceral reaction to the mention of the tapes or Henry. Instead, an unrevealing smirk took to adorning her lips as she looked directly at Alexandra. "Thoughts on the tapes?"

"Didn't see them myself," Alexandra responded, a little too quickly, while scratching the back of her head to keep her hands busy. "Heard a lot about them though."

Most of us were taken aback by the nonchalant way with which she was going about things. Usually, when those tapes were brought up, they were accompanied by a yearning for scandal, by a need for a big reaction that would give people something to talk about. But to my surprise, although perhaps unsurprisingly, Alexandra happened to be the exception.

"Yeah, what are your thoughts on them?" Jade pressed, not unkindly.

Alexandra shrugged. "Fucking sucks that it happened. People are weird for not letting it go. I'd be willing to bet that most of the people talking have done some questionable things themselves, and at the Meadows of all places. All that fake outrage is just hypocrisy."

Sam smiled. "See, I knew you'd be reasonable about the whole thing."

"It's a good thing you haven't seen them," Danny said, considerably less tense than he had been moments earlier. "It wasn't my best performance."

A lighthearted teasing ensued. I could tell we were all breathing normally again, relieved by the fact that we had found one person who wasn't treating our darkest night as if it had been nothing more than a soap opera.

It took me a minute to notice she wasn't participating in the playful bickering. I thought she'd zoned out at first, but the look in her eyes was not an airy one. It took me longer than I'd like to admit to realize that she was staring at something with an intensity that made it look as if she'd spaced out.

I followed her gaze to the opposite side of the pub while the conversation proceeded on around us. A couple was sitting in that little corner, thoroughly unaware of our intrusion. The place had less than stellar lighting overall, and the fact that those two were tucked away in a corner made it so they were largely engulfed by shadows. But there was a red sign in the shape of a heart hanging right behind them, and so they came to life in this lovely red hue that made them even more mesmerizing, or devastating, to look at.

The guy was average in the most unflattering way. He was not too much of anything. Not too tall, not too thin, and not too attractive. He was closely listening to what the girl next to him was saying. His eyes were wide and attentive. She was pretty from what little I could tell. Soft fair skin, flat blond hair that looked almost milky.

I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary. They seemed like a regular couple to me, until it clicked, and I felt this terrible knot in my stomach that I scolded myself for. I shouldn't have felt sorry for Alexandra but I did. I couldn't help it.

Before I even had the chance to try and offer some consolatory words, she nudged my arm and leaned in. "I'm going to the toilet. Let me through."

I got out of the way. I let her escape. Her troubles have nothing to do with me, I inwardly reminded myself. But who was I kidding? This anguished feeling hadn't left me. I still saw so many people in that disenchantment reflected in her eyes. I saw my mother, I saw Colin, I saw myself during my most desolate nights.

I was restlessly shuffling my leg as I watched the ex-boyfriend get up from his table and head towards the bar. My eyes immediately traveled to find Alexandra, who was still making her way to the bathroom, and then flew back to his unathletic figure. With great agitation, I realized that if neither developed a better awareness of their surroundings they were going to end up bumping into one another.

Danny was narrating a raunchy encounter he'd had with a sorority girl the night before. Everyone was following along. I was the only one who'd noticed the great tragedy unfolding before us as one body accidentally stumbled into another. I got up at once, without thinking it through, not having the slightest clue what on earth I was doing. The pub was crowded and I had to push several people out of the way to get to them.

He thought it was a pleasant surprise. She looked like a deer caught in the headlights. I reached them right after their initial greetings and mindlessly placed my right hand on her waist to redirect her attention to me before she made a fool out of herself.

"I'm heading to the bar, want anything?" I asked, pretending to be unaware of his presence. Putting my respectable acting skills to use, I then proceeded to look up and act as if I was only just now noticing him. "Oh, hey. Sorry to interrupt. Nate Fitzpatrick."

He shook my outstretched hand, his expression becoming puzzled but mostly unreadable. I could see the uncertainty dancing around his eyes as he looked at Alexandra for an answer that he wasn't going to get. He swallowed hard after seeing how my hand remained firm on her waist.

"Yeah, Fitzy, right? Tom Drinkwater, pleasure."

What followed was a very uncomfortable thirty seconds. Because Alexandra wasn't speaking and I wanted to just about die at the fact that his name was Tom Drinkwater.

"You killed it on the Frozen Four last season, by the way. Loved watching you play. Hopefully you guys will go on to win it again this year," he said stupidly, unsure of how else to break the silence.

"Thanks man, I appreciate it." I didn't. I moved my hand up from Alexandra's waist to her elbow and pulled her away. "Alright, we're leaving to get some drinks. See you around, Drinkwater."

I could see how he turned around and headed back to his table, abandoning his previous plan. I dragged Alexandra to the least crowded corner I could find, where she remembered she had mobility and some fully functioning vocal cords.

"That's bullshit. Tom doesn't even like hockey."

I couldn't hold back my laughter anymore. "Never mind that. Shortcake, you were dating a guy named Tom Drinkwater? Holy shit."

That look of feigned annoyance she always wore well was fighting a losing battle. She was trying her hardest not to smile. "Oh, shut the fuck up. It's just a name."

"Drinkwater!"

"An unfortunate name!"

"That's the guy you've been losing your mind over? He? Him? Tom Drinkwater?" I went as far as to directly point at the table where the couple was still sitting. She smiled and turned to leave.

I don't know. It seemed inconceivable to me that a guy as average and uninteresting as Tom Drinkwater had the power to wreck the life of someone as infinitely riveting as Alex.

Chapter Text

CHAPTER EIGHT.
ALEXANDRA

"You can't hide behind your finger."
—GREEK PROVERB

HERE is some information for you in case you are unaware. The women who avidly seek the attention and companionship of hockey players are commonly referred to as Bunnies. More specifically, Puck Bunnies.

Yale's Bunnies were infamous because they had all starred in those infamous tapes. They had cared very little for the repercussions the tapes had brought about. They'd already had a reputation around town by then. Overly sexual, excessive, and pleasure-seeking were some of the ways people described them even prior to the tapes. No one was surprised to see them do what they did. Eleven girls with two guys had been baffling but not the slightest bit hard to believe. People had always believed the Bunnies capable of such acts.

Epicurean, was the word Edward from the Classics department had used to describe them. I didn't understand what their deal was, but I'd learned that it wasn't unusual for them to linger about the Meadows whenever the boys were in, always congregated in some room, waiting for one of the hockey boys to come in and solicit their services. It was one of those peculiar things that people deemed perfectly acceptable only because it was happening at the Meadows.

The Bunnies always gave me openly judgmental looks whenever I happened to walk past their little burrow. It was as if they suspected I was perhaps the only person who presumed it strange for a handful of young men to have a brothel inside their home. That Thursday evening was no exception. I let myself in, as I had been instructed, and had to hurry past the room in which they had congregated out of fear they would lure and then ambush me.

I quietly joined the boys in the living room, watching them be enraptured by a hockey game being aired on television.

"What am I looking at?"

"Brown," Nate muttered with total disinterest in my arrival.

"We'll be facing them in a couple of weeks," Sam elaborated. "Coach has us going over hours of footage. They've got some good rookies this year who are really helping their roster. And one of their guys, a sophomore, has improved considerably these last couple of months. He's fucking lightning. Faster than our captain over here."

Nate groaned and sank lower into the couch. "Bullshit. Hughes is not faster than me. He's had a couple of good games but he's not nearly as consistent as I am."

Danny was just about to voice a response but his words were drowned out by the sound of the doorbell.

"I'll go get it," Sam said just as a player on the screen scored a spectacular goal.

Nate winced. Danny rubbed his face. "Fucking Hughes," he muttered.

An idea came to me just then. A terrible one. Wretched, even. I fear the voice that suggested it had done so mockingly, but nevertheless, the seed had been stubbornly planted.

A couple of days earlier, I'd embarked on the task of revisiting my bucket list, as per Edmund's command. I was not doing it out of passion or drive, but robotically. Automatically. Because I knew nothing else than to follow orders and this seemed like a good enough way to get my life back on track. To have it feel mine once more and not be something that existed in a vacuum.

I enrolled in German lessons, asked a classmate for his favorite tattoo parlor in the area, and spent a large sum of money on one of those summer courses in New York City that were always opened months in advance due to high demand, where a person who is very well known in their field teaches you how to do something. Edith Ansel was going to teach me French Pastry Fundamentals.

But I knew in my heart that number four in that fifteen-point list was to learn how to ice skate, and Nate's impressive track record on the ice was staring me in the eye. Two-time Frozen Four winner. Two-time ECAC Hockey Player of the Year (only the third player to ever achieve this.) Two-time ECAC Hockey Most Outstanding Player in Tournament (fourth in history.) A countless number of Forward of the Week awards. First junior to be appointed captain of Yale's hockey team. Widely regarded as the fastest active player in NCAA Hockey.

You probably understand now the treacherous roads my mind was choosing to take. Asking Nate for help in learning how to ice skate sounded like a magnificent idea if you took into account only certain factors and neglected all the rest.

But even though my imagination was running rampant, I had not lost my common sense. I knew that theory and practice both entailed very different notions, and so I kept my mouth shut for my own well-being.

When Sam reappeared in the doorway, his expression was an unmistakably pained one. It took me a couple of seconds to register that his face was contorting only because of how hard he was attempting not to laugh.

We didn't get the chance to question him on what was humoring him so wildly because three figures were quick to materialize behind him, and I was so taken aback by their strange appearances that I was sure the entire room had heard me inhale sharply.

On the front, there was a couple who I would estimate were in their fifties. They were tall and lean and freakishly dispassionate. Behind them was a young woman, awkwardly standing with her arms rigid by her sides. Her brown hair fell flatly over her shoulders, and the thick frames of her glasses made her eyes appear two sizes bigger. She was wearing a lilac sweater and a khaki skirt over black tights. And although I don't want to be too unkind with my description of her, I think it is necessary to point out that she had a hairy upper lip.

Nate's gaze all but flew in Danny's direction and instinctively so did mine. Danny looked as if he were on the brink of tears.

"Mom, Dad, what are you doing here?" he asked a pitch higher than his usual tone.

"We told you we'd be coming over sometime soon, son," the woman I now knew to be Danny's mother responded. Her voice sounded exactly as I'd imagined. Velvety but strangely mechanical.

"You never said you'd be coming over tonight."

His father nodded and intertwined his long bony fingers in front of him. "We figured you would not be pleased to hear we would be coming over given the nature of this encounter, and would even go to great lengths to evade it. The element of surprise was necessary to make this meeting possible. Son, this is Genevieve Hodgkin. Genevieve, this is my son Daniel Vincent Vaughn."

I was prohibited from watching any more of this peculiar encounter because Nate had wrapped his hand around my wrist and was pulling me along with him.

"Ernest, Celestine," he nodded as a form of acknowledgment but still tiptoed around the couple as if fearful of them, pulling me like a rag doll behind him. "My partner and I have a school project we need to work on so if you'll excuse us we'll head out now. Enjoy the rest of the evening. Goodbye."

I could hear Sam make some excuse as to why he too had to leave, although I don't think Ernest and Celestine minded in the slightest. They had Danny precisely where they wanted him, cornered and in the presence of Genevieve Hodgkin.

"Well, let's just hope they didn't walk past the Bunnies' room," I said with a laugh as we reached the second floor.

Nate and I were not the best of friends. We were not even friends in the most superficial sense of the word. But previous events had led me to believe that his burning animosity towards me was beginning to wander into reasonable grounds. I thought he was starting to realize he didn't have to hate me. The previous night, for instance, he'd been nice to me and had not died trying.

Truth be told, I'd been hoping that maybe now we could get along. We didn't have to necessarily like each other, but we could at least coexist without feeling like there was a threat being made to our welfare.

But he was guarded again. He didn't seem to be enjoying my presence, or even tolerating it. His broad shoulders were tense and his eyes lacked the mischievousness they usually produced whenever he was around me. We entered his bedroom and he shrugged off my comment even though I could tell he had found it amusing. He just didn't feel like entertaining me.

He pulled out the desk chair and placed it so that he wasn't entirely turned away from me, but he did so with a soured disposition that told me he would've preferred not having to face me. I sat down tentatively on the edge of his bed, feeling genuinely bothered by his spite. I didn't feel like I deserved it.

I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear with a hand that was now trembling slightly. I pretended to rearrange my notes as I asked, "So, you'll be playing Brown in a month?"

"Yeah." His response was dry and final. His eyes were set on the notebook on his lap.

"So, is this Hughes really better than you?"

I don't know why I was even trying. I'd been on the receiving end of his contempt before. I wasn't unfamiliar with it. But there was desperation clawing at my sanity. The image of him smiling at me the previous night was plastered all over the walls of my brain, and my mind was clinging ferociously to it.

He had been nice to me. He had given me an ounce of consideration. He had saved me. The climatic sensation of victory when seeing Tom's deflated face had been stored somewhere between my soul and my sanity. He couldn't take it away from me now.

He felt inclined to respond this time because he was too egotistical to let that question go unanswered. "Absolutely not. The boys are just talking shit. The kid's good but he needs to work on his technique."

"Is he faster than you?"

"Might be just as fast. But faster? Don't know about that." A husky chuckle came out of his lips but I understood he was more amused at the prospect of a challenge than he was by me. "I guess we'll find out."

"You're pretty fast." The comment slipped out of my mouth before my brain had the chance to scrutinize it. The statement itself was true but I always thought it through before praising someone with an implausibly big ego.

I could see it already, that smugness that took over his features. His lips lifted into a delicious smirk that I'd always found enticing, merely because I couldn't understand how someone could be so pompous.

"Is that a compliment?"

"It's an observation."

"A correct observation. I am pretty fast, shortcake. You're right."

"How old were you when you first learned how to skate?"

His eyebrows furrowed as he looked momentarily taken aback. He glanced around the room before reaching over for the glass of water on his desk just to sniff it. "Did you put something in my drink?"

"What are you talking about?"

"You're asking too many questions, being too nice. So you either want to get inside my pants or your murder scheme is complete and now you're just patiently waiting for me to die."

I began to aggressively flick through the pages of the book before me. "Well, I won't ask you any more fucking questions ever again then," I muttered, angry at myself for even trying to appease his good side and sneak in the subject of ice skating knowing very well that my subconscious mind had an ulterior motive.

My behavior evoked a laugh from him. A deep and hoarse laugh that I would've loved had it come from anyone else. "You remind me of a chihuahua, shortcake. Tiny and angry. I must have been four or five years old when I learned how to ice skate. My mom took me and my brother Colin to this rink in Manhattan. They both held my hand the whole time. Didn't fall once. Fun times. What about you?"

A fire ignited somewhere in the pit of my stomach. I tried to remain neutral and not look like I'd just been presented with what was, as of the past ten minutes, the opportunity of my dreams. I gripped his bedsheets and tried my hardest to keep my voice even.

"I actually don't know how to."

He thought my response over for just a beat, his features not contorting to exhibit any peculiar emotion. "Another thing to make fun of you for."

I would be lying if I said I hadn't been slightly disillusioned, but in all truthfulness, I wasn't surprised either.

"Yeah," I sighed. "At least my dad's not going to prison."

It was my most commonly used argument. He never had anything good to say in return so he just always hit me with the nearest weightless object, usually a pillow. The room then fell victim to a dense silence as we went over each other's notes, but it wasn't long before he breathed in deeply and gifted me his entire attention for the first time that evening.

"Can I ask you something?" The visible curiosity carved on his face alarmed me slightly.

"Sure."

"Are you and Edmund having an affair?"

"What?"

"I was meaning to stop by his office the other day, you know? But I heard you in there so I turned back around, figured I'd stop by some other time. But I could swear I heard you two talking about love and passion and some other crazy shit like that. He sounded awfully excited when talking to you about the whims of love. Hard not to make any assumptions."

I was unsure whether I blushed or paled, but I knew my reaction had been ungraceful. It could not be denied that I was spending most of my spare time in Edmund's office, but it had never occurred to me that we would be accused of having an affair.

"No, I'm not sleeping with Edmund, Nate. What the fuck? We'd been talking about the myth of Eros and Psyche, that is all."

His gaze was not accusatory but taunting. He believed me but he was very much enjoying making me uncomfortable. "And why are you talking about Eros and Psyche with your professor, shortcake? All alone in his office, might I add."

"Because he knows his Greek Mythology and also fuck you."

He smiled, satisfied with how he'd successfully gotten under my skin.

"Alright, time for you to go," he said, closing the book on his lap with one swift move.

I quickly glanced at the digital clock on his bedside table and figured that he was kicking me out nearly forty minutes earlier than usual. "We still have time."

"We're not doing anything interesting, though. We already went over last night's points. We can do the reading on the Ottoman Empire separately, so I don't think it's necessary for you to come tomorrow. And we agreed to rest on the weekends, so if I'm lucky I won't be seeing you until Monday."

I didn't understand where this was coming from. He had never done this before. He took his academic work too seriously to let his distaste for me get in the way. I was about to ask what had gotten into him when a knock on the door that was subsequently opened just a second later told me all that I needed to know.

A Bunny was standing there. Waiting for him. Her name was Charlotte if I remember correctly, and she was the most hippie-esque out of the pack of Puck Bunnies who followed him around like a devoted cult. He nodded and she came in, and I understood I needed to leave quickly. She didn't acknowledge me as she passed me by, bouncing until she crashed into his arms. I hurriedly grabbed all of my belongings and rushed out, not wanting to see or hear anything.

My books and notes were all in disarray as I stood outside his door in stunned silence, unsure of how to feel about the fact that he had kicked me out to be serviced by one of his special escorts.

—

"They say Stacy is on ecstasy all the time. And that Caroline is into all sorts of crazy things—like getting tied up and stuff like that."

Jamie would not stop talking about the Meadows and the Bunnies when she came to visit me at the Fifth the following morning, and I strongly suspected all of the derogatory things she had to say about those girls came simply because she never did figure out how to join them.

When yet another face appeared on the opposite side of the counter I slammed my notebook shut out of reflex. The dull sight that was Ben Leonski greeted me with that perpetually befuddled expression of his. He was an English student who always felt the need to oversaturate people with information about Classic Literature to remind them of his intellect. He went for some small talk, the typical How have you been? And how's the reading of Madame Bovary going? I responded vaguely, with the typical good and it's not.

"Have you got any plans for tonight?" His voice was airy. He might have been nervous but was normally too awkward for it to show.

Next to him, Jamie's leering face. This was surprising to me and amusing to her because Jamie was a lot prettier than me. A lot more desirable. Her body was better formed, curved at the right places. No man ever looked at me when Jamie was around, and Ben was doing it simply because he believed we were on the same level of insignificance in Yale's social hierarchy.

"I was wondering if you'd like to go to the movies with me," he went on. "I haven't picked a movie yet because I want to make sure it's one you'll like. I'll pay for everything. Popcorn and sweets and—"

"I'd love to go to the movies with you, Ben," I interrupted, not caring for anything else he had to say.

"Great," he said, his lips stretching into a thin smile. "See you tonight, then. Pick you up at 7?"

I didn't want to go out with Ben Leonski, but Friday nights could very easily turn into pity parties whenever I was the host. There was nothing else for me to do and an evening with Ben did not sound entirely unpleasant. Jamie was about to comment, likely mocking me for my date, but the sound of her voice was drowned out by a deeper, unfortunately recognizable one coming from behind her.

"Not as handsome as Drinkwater but at least his name is not as silly," Nate said, walking up to the counter and completely disregarding Jamie. "I'll have the usual."

Chapter Text

CHAPTER NINE.
NATE

"One thing I know, that I know nothing. This is the source of my wisdom."
—SOCRATES

   I'D done a lot of rich things in my life. Ridiculous things that bordered on outrageous. Hinting that Alexandra was having an affair with Edmund was one of them. This is, of course, taking into account that I was the one spending Friday night at his home.

She would have every right to taunt me over this. Arguably, my little visit looked worse than hers. But there was a perfectly reasonable explanation as to why I had abandoned every other plan that Friday night and had instead traveled the twenty-seven minutes it took me to get to Edmund's place, and that is that he was out of his mind and I loved him more than I loved my own father.

His house was a reflection of him. You saw him everywhere. You felt him everywhere. This place was his and the reminder never abandoned you. The chaos was considerably more unrestrained than the one he kept in his office which in turn made it feel more personal, like everything had a little more meaning and a lot more depth.

It had low ceilings, brick walls, and creaking floorboards. It was dimly lit with the aid of old chandeliers and oddly placed lamps, and cramped with books and candles and cups and crooked paintings. I was sitting on the small circular table next to the fireplace, drinking whiskey and feeling my face get hot due to my proximity to the flames. He was trying to translate some Greek writing but every time I asked what it was about I always got some halfhearted response.

I had come here earlier in the evening because I needed to escape. The phone at the Meadows had not stopped ringing. I was running away from the voices at the other end. I didn't want to guess, even less know what there was to be said considering the calls were all coming from my father. I knew a party would not help my agitation, and I already felt too grossed out by myself to engage in casual sex. There was only one place for me to be.

I had escaped with some pitiful excuse that no one cared to question. Stopped by a convenience store to buy a bottle of whiskey that I began to drink straight from the bottle as soon as I jumped back inside the car. Then I began the twenty-seven-minute drive.

"Can I ask you something?" I uttered seemingly out of nowhere, disrupting a thick and serene silence. My eyes were still on the fire and my right hand was gripping the bottle. "But you have to promise me you'll actually respond instead of going on a twenty-minute rant to divert us from the topic."

He took a sip of his tea and placed it back on its saucer before he stared up at me over the frames of his glasses. "Can't make such promises but ask away."

"Why were you and Alexandra Prado-Montes talking about Eros and Psyche one sunny afternoon in which neither of those characters was of importance in any relevant way?"

It was stupid, but I hadn't been able to abandon that minor situation ever since I stood eavesdropping outside of Edmund's office. It didn't feel like curiosity because I frankly did not care. But I had found it bizarre and a corner of my mind refused to let it go. I found her curiosity puzzling, and inside of me lived an animalistic desire to understand her for a reason I couldn't understand myself.

Edmund thought my question over for a second, blinked, and then returned to his never-ending paragraphs. "You know I don't talk about other students and their business. It's a rule I abide by."

I leaned back on my chair and felt the corner of my lips lift into a smirk that was slightly stained with disbelief. I wasn't used to not getting my way with Edmund. He had spoiled me in a way he would go on to regret for the rest of his life. "Please indulge me. I beg. Give me something. Anything."

He lifted his shoulders into an absentminded shrug. "Does there need to be a reason why she wished to have that conversation?"

"No, I suppose. But surely you understand why I find it odd."

"Maybe she was just interested and wanted to learn more."

I took a swig from the bottle and felt the liquor burning in my chest. "About love and soul?"

"What do you care?"

"I don't."

"You care enough to ask," he retaliated, still more preoccupied with his little passion project than with me.

I sat up straighter and looked back at the flames. I couldn't understand why this subject was bringing me a certain layer of distress, but it was. "But why does she care about Eros and Psyche?"

"Why shouldn't she?"

"Why should she? I don't wake up in the morning and immediately think Hey, I should do some research on Echo and Narcissus, or on Orpheus, or Jason, or anyone."

Edmund didn't look up despite the added passion to my speech. "Because you're too proud and self-centered. It never hurts to learn more about these influential figures."

"Is she in love with someone? Is that what's happening? I'm pretty sure she's on a date with Ben Leonski right about now."

"Why the sudden interest in her love life?" Edmund asked with disinterest.

I groaned because he had pointed out something I was still avidly denying to myself. I got up and grabbed my coat from the back of the chair. "There is no interest. I just thought it was weird, that's it. I'd better get going now."

When I climbed into bed that night, the only thing on my mind was the tale of Eros and Psyche. A story rooted in bitterness, deception, and mistrust. A story of two fickle characters so exceptionally flawed in their own ways.

I kept them locked away somewhere in my chest and thought back to them the following morning when, without meaning to, I caught Jade sneaking out of Sam's room at the crack of dawn. She did not notice me. She never did. Her mind was always elsewhere. In Sam's bed, perhaps. Or in the ruins of her relationship with Gage.

I've never been good at giving advice, and I've never been good at understanding the caprices of love, so I always steered clear of that affair, figuring it was for them to understand and for me to keep out of.

The basis of what little I knew was rather convoluted. Jade and Gage had loved each other very much once. Both of them had been too troubled not to. Their relationship had started back in Freshman year and it had consisted of nothing but their unreleased anger and frustration at the world. It was destined to fail, but the sex was great and they enabled each other's self-deprecating behavior. What more is there to ask for if you're a miserable college student?

Sam had always loved Jade from afar. He had always been too clean for her. Too disciplined. Too self-respecting. Too discerning. He knew in his heart that they were not compatible, that he could not fix her, so he never tried. He let her continue to spiral and drown in her bitterness even though he loved her because his heart never triumphed over his reason. And because he was sure his love was unrequited.

Everything I'm about to share next I learned through whispers. Through words that traveled around corners, through shadows, through echoes. It was January and Jade was not happy. Something very bad had happened to her at the hands of someone who up until that point remained nameless.

It was messing with her performance at the theater. It was causing her to drink more, to do more drugs. Gage was not of any help because Gage was miserable himself. He hated his parents, hated the sport he was being forced to play, and hated himself.

But Sam did know how to help. Sam was a shoulder to lean on. He knew just what to say and just what to do. He offered a sturdiness and a sense of security that Jade had never even known existed.

I don't know what happened behind closed doors. But I know Jade grew to love him, and I also know she didn't want to leave Gage. The agreement that had been reached between the three of them had been kept secret from me. I had known nothing of it as it happened. But Jade and Gage had started letting Sam into the bedroom, and Sam had accepted because those had been stressful times and our sanity had been running thin.

I don't know when it started or how often it occurred. I first learned of it when I saw it with my own eyes on that infamous night when the tapes were played. If you had told me before, without evidence, I wouldn't have believed you.

Then tragedy struck in February and Jade found herself becoming closer to Sam. She loved him feverishly. He was the only one who could make her feel safe. Feel human. She started sleeping with him, now without Gage. Gage knew but did not care. He was having a terrible time all around. His relationship had become the least of his concerns.

Jade and Gage stayed together, I don't know why, they weren't technically a couple anymore and she was in love with someone else. I do know why Sam didn't want to make things official with her, and that is because she had tainted his reputation. The perfect son, perfect student, and perfect athlete now had a stain on his golden boy prestige. His parents had been ashamed of him for the very first time in his life and I suppose he didn't know how to deal with that. He probably thought Jade was to blame because he was physically incapable of carrying the blame himself. He still loved her, though, but in secret and with a lot of stipulations.

I always felt a twinge of sadness whenever I watched her sneak out of his bedroom in the mornings. I felt bad for her because I couldn't imagine what it would feel like to be loved so conditionally. I felt bad for Gage as well because he didn't deserve to be regarded as an afterthought. And I felt bad for Sam because I knew it was killing him to be this cruel.

The already vast kitchen felt immense that morning as I fixed myself something to eat in sweeping silence. I had two bites left of my breakfast when Jade appeared shyly in the doorway, hiding into herself, failing to meet my eye.

"I think there's something wrong with Gage," she said lowly.

We headed downstairs together, both of us remaining silent. When I reached Gage's door, Jade kept her distance as if to wordlessly notify me she had no intentions of following me in. I turned the doorknob, walked in, and realized I could not blame her.

A putrid smell collided with my face as soon as I walked in. I could see small puddles of vomit scattered around, but things had been worse and I knew better than to panic. I ventured in, looking for Gage, and eventually found him in his bathroom, crouching over the toilet.

When I pulled him back, I was startled to find just how pale he was. There was a thick layer of sweat covering him entirely. His teary blue eyes looked nearly green with illness. He felt very frail under my touch. Weightless as he shivered pitifully.

I helped him sit with his back against the wall. My grip was firm but I was trying to stop my own hands from trembling.

"What have you done, Gage?" I asked softly.

"It keeps coming back," he muttered, his voice breaking with emotion, his eyes releasing long streams of tears. "Every time I try to sleep, I remember a bit more. I remember the blood. I remember his fucking face. My god, his face. It was battered, Nate, how did we—"

I held his face to try and soothe him but also because I couldn't stomach listening to him any longer. "I know, I know, I know. Listen, it's going to be okay, alright? Fran's going to come and I'll get her to give you something to sleep. Something that will knock you out. You need to rest, Gage, or else this is going to keep eating you alive."

He nodded, his breathing unsteady due to his heavy crying. I left the room with my heart lodged all the way up in my throat. This was not unusual. This was not the first breakdown that the Meadows had borne witness to. But it never got easier. Jade was still standing outside the room, nibbling nervously on her fingernails.

"Call Fran and have her come with the full kit. Tell her Gage has got alcohol poisoning again. And tell her to bring Alice as well, to help bathe him and get him changed. I'll call Mrs. Brolin so that she can clean this mess up."

Everyone did as they were told. In a matter of only thirty minutes, order had already been restored at the Meadows. Yet the agitation remained. The unkind reminder that Gage was not alright lingered over the four of us, and I'm sure we all anxiously wondered how much more he could take before he inevitably broke. But we put up a front because Genevieve was still around. Danny's parents had insisted that she stay at the Meadows while she worked on a project with a board of Yale academics, no doubt expecting Danny to develop feelings for her somewhere along the way because they were too intellectual to comprehend human emotions.

I would've liked Genevieve any other day of the week. Bring her to me next Monday and I would've probably had a blast with her inability to read a room. But right now I was on edge and she was very much getting on my nerves.

"Just because my parents want me to date you doesn't mean it's going to happen," I overheard Danny calmly explain to her that morning, but I could tell his patience was wearing thin. He was worried about Gage, and Nancy had been stressing him out lately as well. She was his partner for the Human Rights project and we all had to hand in some papers the following Wednesday. She hadn't even made up her mind on which ideologies she would be defending because she was the type of person who believed in just about everything if she could talk herself into it.

"Why would you not listen to them?" Genevieve questioned.

"Because I'm an adult. A grown-ass man. I don't have to do as they say." I could hear how his voice grew thicker with impatience and frustration. Not at Genevieve exactly, but at the cruel reminder that his parents found him incompetent, too witless to make his own decisions.

I didn't get the feeling Genevieve felt insulted by Danny's lack of interest. I don't think she expected him to be interested in her. This was as much of an arrangement to her as it was to him. She just couldn't understand why he wouldn't want to comply.

"But they're highly intellectual individuals. Why would you disregard something that people who have garnered so much respect amongst the scientific community—"

That's when he lost it. "Because I don't give a fuck about intellect, Genevieve! I don't give a single fuck! I don't want to marry a woman with a big brain! Shit, I don't even know if I want to marry at all! What's the point? I'm just gonna fucking cheat anyway! Because I just want to fuck! I want to have sex. I want to have sex all the fucking time. I don't know why. I don't. And I know it sounds fucking horrible, but it is the truth! It is my truth! I have the chance to enjoy my fucking youth, why should I not take it? There is nothing wrong with that. Nothing! But that is something my parents will never understand because they were nerds who never got fucking laid, so now they think I'm getting it all wrong because I'm not following their exact footsteps. Well, I don't want to follow in their footsteps!"

It was, in some obscure way, almost fantastic to witness how we were all a result of our parents' mistakes. How the mutilation of our souls had begun long before we'd noticed, making all of the misfortune that comes next nearly inevitable.

That night, all of the hockey boys met up at Brady's. It was a bonding outing that couldn't have been timed more poorly. Danny was agitated by the reminder that Genevieve was at the Meadows still. Not even halfway into the evening, he disappeared into the bathroom with the two Bunnies of his choice, likely to drown out the sound of his parents' voices inside his head. Sam was likely thinking about Jade and how she had stayed with Gage for the night. I don't know what was going through his head exactly, but I could recognize the heartache reflected so distinctly in his eyes.

I was trying my hardest to forget that haunted look in Gage's eyes. I looked around the bar, thinking perhaps I could do what Danny did and find someone to escape with. Some girl who would offer me nothing but a cheap thrill and momentary pleasure. At the time, it sounded like the greatest deal in the world. The idea of prolonged happiness just felt unrealistic.

It took me several minutes of studying my surroundings to spot her. On one of the booths to my left, drowning in the fluorescent LED lights and the shadows in the places the lights couldn't reach, was Alexandra on what I assumed to be her second date with Ben Leonski.

I had remained impartial to them up until that point. I knew who Ben Leonski was, I just didn't care. I didn't care to give him depth, a description, or some attributes that would store him as a human being in my brain. He was simply Ben Leonski. But I needed to forget Gage's eyes and there was something about her that had always bewitched me. I was spellbound.

If I'd known how to help it I would've stopped a long time ago. So I took steadfast sips from my drink and stared at her. And stared and stared and stared until I noticed her discomfort.

He was making her uncomfortable. She was considerably far from me but I could read her body language better than I could read anybody else's. Reading her, to me, was as easy as reading a four-word sentence. His hand would occasionally rest on her knee, trying to creep its way up only for her to push it away. But he kept trying. A brush of their shoulders, his fingertips on her arm, his breath on her neck. When they got up to leave, she looked unsure of herself. She was staring at the main doors as if she were terrified of them.

I hesitated for a moment after watching them leave. I was perpetually concerned by a great many things, I didn't want this to be one of them. But I had a conscience and a beating heart that was squirming uncomfortably in my chest. Letting out a resigned sigh, I downed what was left of my drink and followed after them. No one at the table asked where I was going because they didn't feel they had the authority to do so.

It was fiercely cold outside. I buried my hands deep inside my pockets and tried to keep myself from shivering. My breath appeared before me like small clouds of fog. The streets looked eerily desolate, lit only by street lamps that gave this part of the city a haunted feeling. I was worried that I couldn't find her. She had every right to leave with him if she wanted to but I had a feeling that hadn't been the case.

I got in my car, unsure of what my plan was exactly, but I figured anything would be better than to simply stand there. I only made it one block before I saw a small silhouette standing in the corner.

I knew it was her even though the lighting was abysmal because one of my most useless talents was that I could spot her anywhere. She was all alone, shivering, looking every bit like the perfect victim for the most heinous crimes. This was no place for a girl like her to be.

I pulled up next to her and rolled down the window. "How much for the hour?"

She kept on looking straight ahead. "Fuck off."

"What are you doing here, shortcake?" I sighed. "Why didn't Ben Leonski give you a ride?"

I could hear her teeth chattering as she responded. "He doesn't have a car. He took a taxi. Now I'm waiting for mine."

"Wait. He took the first cab and left you here all alone instead of offering you the first ride?"

She shrugged but I could tell she was bothered. "He did offer to share the cab, but I didn't want to go to his place."

"Get in the car, Alex."

"Oh, fuck no. I'll pass. Thank you."

"You either get in the car or I'll go get you myself."

There was no point in arguing. She didn't want to be there. She knew it wasn't safe and I was her most reliable option in that moment.

"Is this the Mercedes I keyed?" she asked once she had settled in, attempting to hide her efforts to warm herself up.

"Yes, fuck you for that, by the way. Why did you even do it?" I asked only because I didn't want any awkward silences creeping in. "I know it was in retaliation for something I did but I don't remember what."

She continued looking out the window. "It was early November and it'd been raining a lot. I was peacefully walking to one of my lectures when you drove by and splashed me. I was soaked from head to toe. A lot of people saw. It was embarrassing."