“Don’t test me,” she replied coolly, now completely in control, as if a moment ago she hadn’t threatened me with bodily harm. “You’re deliberately goading me, and I don’t understand why.”

I didn’t think “because it turns me on” was a good response. She was right, though; I was deliberately goading her and I felt a tiny twinge of guilt at using her to make myself feel better. But it was so small that I squashed it without remorse.

“Boundaries. Girls are always putting up boundaries.” I sighed dramatically.

“I can’t believe you’re my lab partner. Would you just stand up and let me out.” She threw her backpack over her shoulder and gestured for me to move, but I couldn’t. I had a little wood in my pants and I needed her to be about fifteen degrees less cute in order for me to be able to obey her commands.

“I’m feeling kind of hungry. Are you hungry?” I stalled for time.

“You have got to be kidding. Do you dye your hair? Has too much peroxide use damaged your brain function?” She shook her head. I was blond, and unlike many a fair-haired lass I’d spent time with, mine was all natural.

“So that’s a no? I couldn’t tell because I didn’t hear a no in those words.”

“Yeah, that’s a no,” she hissed at me. Then she leapt onto the table like a puma, jumped down, and hustled out of the classroom. My eyes followed her jean-clad ass all the way up the stairs and out of the classroom.

Pulling out my phone, I looked down at her number and tapped a button to add her as a contact. I thought I’d found a good way to spend my time before Thursday. Helping AnnMarie learn how to say “yes.”

Chapter Three

BO

BY THE TIME I’D EXITED the classroom, AM was gone. I didn’t know much about her, but I knew one person who would.

Noah’s girlfriend worked at the library, and the library was the source of all gossip and rumor at Central, primarily because the student supervisor, Mike Hanover, served as a kind of oral historian of Central College…if by historian you meant someone who traded in gossip and rumor.

A certain amount of bullshit weighted Mike’s commentary, but he seemed to know a shitload about everyone and wasn’t shy about sharing it. I headed to the floor where Mike held court.

My prey sat behind the circulation desk pretending to read a textbook. Mike owed me one since I’d orchestrated a little love connection between him and the object of his unrequited lust. Basically he’d just needed to nut up and ask the chick out. But he was too weak-kneed, and I’d had to act as the third-grade go-between. Now he owed me a favor. Noah thought the world ran on money, but Mal, another roommate, said it runs on favors. I didn’t need money, so I gathered favors. Mike owed me about ten for hooking him up with the love o’ his life.

“Michael Hanover, my man, what is up today?” I knocked fists with him. Some guys like a more complicated greeting, like two back slaps and a finger grip, but Mike was a one knock to the knuckles sort of guy. I’d tried a more detailed greet one time and the poor guy looked so confused I’d just pretended we were giving each other high fives.

“Hey, Bo. No fights lately?”

“Got one this Thursday at the Casino.”

Looking like a kid whose toy was snatched from him, Mike moaned, “Nothing closer?” The Casino was a forty-five-minute drive from here. It didn’t seem all that far away to me, but Central kids liked to stick close to campus. Maybe they thought they’d turn into pumpkins or something.

“Nah, I’m trying to be a good boy. Apparently Central admin doesn’t like it to be known that its students are engaging in brutality against others, even if it is mutually agreed-upon brutality.”

Mike nodded his agreement, although I wasn’t sure if he was agreeing with Central admin’s uptight staff or agreeing we should be able to beat the shit out of each other without interference.

“So, Mike, I have Bio 101 this semester.” I got straight to the point.

“Dude, why?”

“I wouldn’t reveal this to everyone, Mike, but I have a weak stomach,” I lied.

Mike’s eyes grew huge, as if I’d shared some deep dark secret even though the untruth was obvious. If I had a weak stomach I’d have chosen geology as my science elective over biology. Mike traded in confidences like Mal and I gathered favors. Everyone had their own currency. For Mike, you had to share one to gain one and the easiest way to trade with Mike was to just make shit up so long as you didn’t care that the rest of the campus knew about it by the end of the day.

“Are you asking me how to get out of Bio labs?” Mike asked, nearly breathless with this new gossip he’d broadcast to the next dozen people he came into contact with.

“No, I don’t mind the labs. I want to know more about my lab partner.”

Mike looked relieved. “That’s a good thing, man, because I couldn’t get you out of the lab. Who’s your lab partner?”

“AnnMarie West.”

At the sound of her name Mike’s eyebrows shot into his forehead. “Typhoid Mary?”

“Typhoid Mary?” I repeated dumbly.

“Yeah.” His eyes were bright with excitement and he leaned over the counter, motioning me closer. I tilted my head forward but didn’t move. I only got that close to another person if it was a woman and she was going to stick her tongue in my mouth. “You’re new, so you weren’t here last year when she slept with the entire lacrosse team. She gets around a lot. A lot.” Mike repeated the last part as if I hadn’t understood his insinuation the first time.

I bit down on my tongue hard, hoping the pain would prevent me from punching Mike in his smug little mouth. Few girls ever banged an entire team. They usually slept with one or maybe three and that was enough for people to label her a groupie. Noah and I’d seen it happen in high school to a girl I’d slept with. We spent one night together, and the next day talk was she’d slept with the entire football team. Noah and I had tried to put out the fire the best we could, but the whispers persisted when we weren’t around. Pack attention didn’t shift until the girl transferred schools.

I waited to hear the rest of the rumor, measure the extent of the damage for myself. At my encouragement Mike spilled the rest.

“I heard she’s a recruiting perk. Like when they bring new recruits on campus, they get a visit from AnnMarie.” He wiggled his eyebrows so I understood “visit” was a euphemism for some type of sexual service. I guess Mike thought everyone was stuck in third grade, like him. “They call her Typhoid Mary because she slept around so much you could get a disease just standing next to her.”

“I don’t think STIs work that way.”

“Right,” Mike said, not understanding. “Um, but that’s her nickname.”

“Seems like it would be a bad recruiting perk to have a new student come in contact with someone who’s so disease-infected.” I pointed out the obvious contradiction in his rumor but, like the handshake, it only confused him. Mike looked at me as if I’d asked him to find the square root of some four-digit number.

Some guys felt their reputation was enhanced by bragging about the number of women they slept with. You could always divide that number by about ten to get to the accurate one. It also never made much sense to me to brag about sleeping with a girl deemed easy. Where was the challenge if the girl would sleep with anyone? The sex conquest currency was irrational.

“So Typhoid Mary is your lab partner? Dude, you’re going to see so much action this semester.” Mike smiled at me as if we were sharing some kind of great joke.

“I’m not even on the lacrosse team,” I said.

“I don’t think you have to be on the lacrosse team,” Mike reassured me.

“This girl not play your game?” Mike’s gossip wasn’t usually so barbed.

“I tried her out, but she’s too stuck up for me. I’m not an athlete, I guess,” he admitted. “But you shouldn’t have a problem getting into her pants.”

“Why’d you want to hook up with a girl who’s got the Health Clinic on speed dial?”

Mike cocked his head. “Wow, I really dodged a bullet there.”

Irrational. Bug fucking nuts. Nothing I was saying was getting through, so I gave up. “You see her around the library much?”

“Not really. She hangs out with another chick, tiny girl, braids, and some theater people. They don’t come into the library much. I probably should have reserved my game for after class or at the commons.”

I tilted my head back and exhaled heavily. No, dickhead, she would have turned you down no matter what. That girl could smell rotten from a mile away after being exposed to so much of it, which was probably why she never talked to me in class last semester. But there was no educating Mike. She’d turned him down, so her bad reputation was fair game. He’d probably console himself with the thought that he was lucky to have gotten turned down by a skank. “Thanks for the info, man,” I said.

“No problem, Bo,” Mike said cheerfully, totally unaware I wanted to drag him over the counter and beat him bloody.

“Grace and Noah around?” I needed to move on from Mike and this topic.

“Ah, yeah, in the stacks.” Mike pointed to the center of the library, which held old and uncirculated books. It was a dank, dusty, low-lit place with rows of metal shelves. Perfect for on-campus making out.

I’d used it a few times since Noah showed me where he and Grace “studied.” I always made a big show of banging on the shelves when I entered. I was pretty sure Grace and Noah did very little studying in there. Every time I’d seen them in their nook they were disheveled, and Grace’s lips looked like they’d been chewed on by a big, bad dog.

It was fun breaking up their nookie time.

AM

A PAPER WAS WAVING FROM my car window when I got to my apartment building, which was situated a block off the eastern end of campus. The scrap looked like a pinned butterfly with two edges fluttering in the wind on either side of the windshield wiper. It could have been a flyer, an invitation to see a band downtown, or a coupon. It could have been anything innocuous or innocent, but I knew it wasn’t.

Dread was a cold feeling. It swept over a body like a blanket of ice and immobilized you. I forced my hand up to the windshield and pulled it off. I already knew what it would say, or at least some variation.

Saw your “dad” over break. Does he know what a slut you are?

I crumpled the note in my gloved fist, thinking that if Clay Howard III was standing in front of me right now I’d have no problem driving a pen directly into his eye—no matter what Bo Randolph said I was or wasn’t capable of. I wanted to throw the page away but didn’t. Instead, I carried it upstairs to put it with the other notes from Clay. I wasn’t sure why I kept them, other than to remind myself that staying off Clay Howard III’s radar and off Central’s campus was the best thing I could do for the next two years.

And that I didn’t date Central College guys. Ever. Not even ones that looked like Bo Randolph.

That was one of my immutable life rules, along with no wearing of white pants during that time of the month and no reading Stephen King before going to sleep.

“I have terrible news,” Ellie announced as she walked into the apartment. I was making us sandwiches and soup, the meal of poor college students and old ladies, the note tucked safely away in my drawer.

“Mayo?” I held up the jar and Ellie nodded. She pulled out a bar stool and propped her elbows on the counter to watch my culinary efforts. I gestured with my mayo-laden knife for her to respond. “What’s the drama?” I piled meat, lettuce, and tomato between the bread slices.

“There’s a very cute freshman who could be my lab partner.” She groaned and put her head on top of the counter.

Ellie was a math major and smarter than 99 percent of the students at Central, including me, but she looked like a cheerleader, her dark, coarse hair pulled up into two low ponytails. She also had the habit of sleeping with her study partners. Her last boyfriend, Tim, was our economics tutor. We had set up the tutoring session, not because we were failing, but because we wanted to get As. Unfortunately, after their sex life petered out around midterms, Ellie lost interest, and I ended up attending the remaining awkward sessions trying to duck Tim’s inquiries about the missing part of our once merry triad.

“So don’t sleep with him.” I plated our sandwiches and poured the microwaved cans of soup into bowls Ellie and I’d picked up at a garage sale. Our apartment was filled with secondhand goods. Ellie was a scholarship student and while my tuition, books, and this apartment were paid for by my father, neither of our families could afford to furnish the apartment in anything but castoffs and hand-me-downs.

“You say that like you haven’t known me since I played with Barbies.” Ellie’s voice was muffled since she was currently speaking into the counter, but I could still make out her lame protest.