Prologue
Keira
It was the end of October, and I guess you could say my freshman year was going pretty well. I’d gotten into all the classes I wanted thanks to the AP program I had done in high school. I was also carrying two extra classes this semester, which didn’t leave me much extra time for socializing. As a matter of fact, I didn’t have any extra time. That was fine with me because I had no desire to fuck around with rushing sororities or crashing frat parties. I was not at Michigan State to get my MRS degree. I was, however, more than happy with my guest membership in the Kappa Mu Epsilon society, which came to me courtesy of my math scholarship. I’d made a few friends within that group my first week of school, and if anything, I might grab a beer with some of them. But a party girl I was not.
Besides, it’s not like I was getting sorority invitations left and right. Not with my looks. I mean, I’m not ugly, not by any stretch. I’ve actually been told I “clean up well,” especially by my mom, who’s always trying to get me to do just that—blow-dry my hair, put on some lipstick, even a skirt once in awhile. But honestly, little beauty extras take time, which we’ve already established I don’t have a lot of. The only time I do dresses is for weddings and funerals, and even then, I’m hard-pressed not to just put on a nice pantsuit. And makeup? Forget it. Waste of time, especially when you consider that I’m not trying to get a boyfriend (I don’t have time for those either, not if I want to graduate early). I admit that my hair is the one point of vanity for me, and it is no doubt my best feature, even if it is a lesser shade of brown. I keep the ends trimmed, but it hasn’t been cut in any serious sense of the word since I was three. Most days it gets a towel-dry and then up it goes into its own self-secured bun if I don’t have a clip or an extra pencil to stab it with. I can hear my mother tsking now. “All that beautiful glossy hair,” she’d say. I guess I just didn’t turn out to be the Snow White of a daughter she’d always hoped I’d be.
My roommate would say the same thing. We’re opposites in ways that don’t count—I’m tall and gangly, she’s petite and curvy. I have long brown hair and she’s got short blonde curls. As roommates go, Gwen’s alright. She’s pre-med, so while she’s not quite the academic nerd that I am, she’s serious about school—she doesn’t play loud music and she keeps decent hours. Even though she has more of what’s considered a normal social life than I do, we established upfront that having guys spend the night in our room was out of the question. And it’s just the two of us. Having a double instead of a quad is almost unheard of as a freshman, but the residence gods must have been smiling down on us. We even had a room at the end of the hall, instead of being sandwiched between two party rooms, which was almost every other room on the hall except the RA’s room at the other end.
Yeah, it was Sunday, and all was pretty much right with the world. Gwen and I had gone to brunch at a cool pub not too far from campus and then to a showing of Star Wars Episode 7 at the cheap movie theater. They were showing all of the movies in the franchise leading up to the new release at Christmas. I wasn’t into it that much, but Gwen was a huge fan, and experience had taught me that even a brain like mine needed its fair share of entertainment. Besides which, we came right home and were well into study mode by three o’clock.
When I glanced up at the clock again, it was nearly ten-thirty, definitely time for at least a peanut butter sandwich or a bowl of instant mac and cheese. The problem was it wasn’t my stomach that had me looking at the clock. Instead, a dance party had erupted out in the hallway, complete with the booming baseline of a Pitbull song, and the loud chanting of what sounded like a chugging challenge. Now, I’m all for study breaks, when they happen inside someone’s room, or better yet at one of the sanctioned ones hosted by one beer-crazed frat house or another.
“You can’t expect the entire freshman class to be study nerds like us,” said Gwen, as if she could read my mind. She was seated at her desk with three biology books open, and a yellow highlighter poised above one of them.
“I know,” I said. I was glaring at the door, weighing my options. I might have been able to just put on some headphones and ignored my hunger pangs for another hour. Except that it was after ten, which was supposed to be quiet hour in the dorms. Above the pounding music and raucous laughter, and chanting, I still heard the brassy screech of Vanessa Fisher’s voice.
How such a shrill voice could come out of that tiny body of hers was beyond me, much less how Vanessa could get herself to be heard over almost any other sound.
“And having another confrontation with Vanessa isn’t going to get her to stop,” Gwen added just as I was unfolding my legs and preparing to jump up from my bed.
“Probably not, but it will make me feel better.” I knew Gwen was right in one way. But it was after ten on a Sunday night, and I was within my rights to complain, even for the third time this week. And yeah, maybe I resented her a little bit, certainly I resented people like her. Popular girls. Beautiful girls. The ones that always ripped on nerdy girls like me until it was time to bail them out when their asses were on the line. The entire drill team had me to thank for graduating when I tutored their sorry asses one year. It was probably unfair of me to assume that Vanessa was like those girls in my high school just because she was a beautiful blonde cheerleader, or because her room was unofficially known as “party central.”
I ignored Gwen’s wary look as I rose off of my bed and ambled to the door of our room. When I opened it, not only did the pounding noise rush in, but the first thing I saw was Vanessa Fisher riding some jock piggy-back and yelling at the top of her lungs as she twirled at towel over their heads. Nope. I had not misjudged her one little bit.
I walked steadily toward her. The mass of bodies around her, an equal number of lettered jocks and crazed girls, had given Vanessa and her mount plenty of room to buck around, so I didn’t have any trouble walking right up to them. Vanessa had on black shorts that were cut so far up that they looked more like underwear, and a cropped pink fuzzy sweater that barely came past her boobs. She and her jock had their backs to me, so I reached up and tapped her on the shoulder.
When she pivoted to see who had dared to interrupt her game of ride the pony, it must have signaled the guy whose back she clung to, because he turned at the same time.
I could handle Vanessa’s exaggerated annoyance. If she rolled her eyes any harder at me, they’d get stuck in zombie position. What I was in no way prepared for was to be staring up into Nate Buckingham’s face. Nate fucking Buckingham. And the fact that it rhymed in my head wasn’t even slightly amusing.
I’d done my best to forget the guy. With him being the heartthrob quarterback all through high school, and me being, well, me, it’s not like we ran in the same circles. We’d hardly had two words to say to each other. I was in marching band for awhile, and that was as close as I ever wanted to get to the football team. I never understood the whole smacking each others’ asses and head butting as a way of congratulating each other on a great play. And the times when I did overhear them in the halls talking to each other, they sounded like a bunch of neanderthals—all they could talk about was girls and cars and, you guessed it, football.