Truly Daring

A face appeared from around the open doorway to my dorm room. It was grinning like a lunatic, but even in the best of times I didn't much appreciate the look. "Hey babyyyyyy," crowed the face. Its hair was gelled to the nines, framing too-pink skin.

I set my hands flat against my laptop keyboard to keep from slapping it. The computer was just too expensive. I had a policy with the owner of the face creeping around my door; he wasn't supposed to speak to me for any reason, and if we had to be in the same room together, we were supposed to look in completely opposite directions. I usually expressed this policy by saying things like, "Fuck off, Jack," or, "You're such a piece of shit."

"Fuck off, Jack!" I spat toward the door. "What do you want?" It was Friday night, and I'd submitted two different papers this week. My plans did not include the piece of shit in question.

A hand came around the side of the doorway to match his face. There was a little baggy wedged between two fingers. Actually, it was a remarkably big baggy, given the price of the white stuff inside it. "You going to Harry's thing tonight?" he said, waggling the ****.

My first impulse was to turn everything upside down and tell him no. I was planning on going to Harry's thing tonight. Jack wasn't supposed to be. Harry had assured me he wouldn't, because he was supposed to be out of town.

"Isn't your grandma dying, or something?" I said, crossing my arms over my chest. Normally I wouldn't speak that way to someone, but Jack brought out my worst qualities.

"Not tonight. They shot her full of all kinds of crazy shit and she's up and walking. Which means I can push off the visit to this week and miss some classes scot free." He finally came around the corner of the door, stuffing the **** into some back pocket. Residence at Bean Hall was supposed to be reserved for the studious, or at least the high achieving. Jack was neither, but he had discovered a loophole. Or, rather, he had been born into it. Sir William Maxwell Bean had endowed Regis College with the funds for Bean Hall to ensure that his dull-as-bricks daughter Georgie would be able to attend there. Jack had kept up the family tradition. What was the school going to do, tell their largest donor's family to piss off? That was more my territory.

“Fuck! Off! Jack!” I thundered, getting up and slamming the door in his face. The worst part was that I could hear him laughing as he went off down the hallway.

I emerged a few hours later with a storm cloud making circles around my head. It was only right, given the rain coming down outside the windows. They were calling it a once-in-a-lifetime storm. Those seemed to be coming too often for my taste lately, but I hadn't come to Regis for meteorology. The word had gone out. Nobody was supposed to leave their homes. The school had confirmed it. They didn't need to threaten punishments, because the inevitable drowning would do that well enough. It was lucky that Bean was a new building by Regis standards. The others had been on flood watch for three days already, while the premises at Bean stayed remarkably dry.

The smart people had gotten out of town and inland a few days ago. That left the stupid, and the people whose family situations were so bad that they'd endure the storm to avoid them. I was the latter. The less said about that the better. I made my way to the room nearest the entrance. Not to Harry Pardon's room, not yet. I had to confer first.

Molly looked up as soon as I stormed into the room. Her red hair was held up with a pencil, twisted around to make a bun. She was wearing silk shorts and an overlarge sweater. “We already know,” she said.

“Jack is going to–” I cut myself off. I pursed my lips, feeling undermined. “And you're just fine with that?”

“Who's fine with it?” laughed Molly. “But it doesn't matter. Harry isn't going to leave him out in this weather.”

I sat down on the edge of my friend's single bed. Molly's roommate, Joan, came up from around the corner of the cabinet that divided her space from Molly's. The mousy brunette had a cup of tea in her hands. She usually did, if she wasn't at the hospital for her nursing placements. She put it down beside me and I guessed it was supposed to be a gift. “Thanks,” I grumbled. “I don't know what's wrong with Harry. Why does he hang out with someone like that? God. If I spend more than a minute with him, I…”

The two roommates shared a look. They'd heard this spiel before.

I went on about it for a few minutes and then calmed down. I put my head in my hands. “Fine. It's fine,” I sighed. “How are you guys?”

“Alive, for the moment,” said Molly. “You know, you could just not go tonight.”

“And drown alone? No thank you.”

“We're not really going to drown, are we?” murmured Joan.

Molly and I winced. The nurse-in-the-making was anxious to the bone. “We're not going to drown, Joan,” I said. “Or burn, or starve, or whatever. We're gonna be fine. The city's figured out how to deal with storms like these by now. A weekend, maybe four days. Then we'll be alright.”

“Okay,” said Joan, adjusting her glasses.

“If we're still going, we'd better get ready,” Molly said, getting up from her desk. She nudged the chair in with her foot.