Page 36 of Deck of Scarlets
Chapter Fourteen
Before I entered Carman Hall, I moved the invitation inside my purse, making sure it stayed hidden. There was no going back now. I had made the decision on my way back to the dorms, and if shit hit the fan, at least I tried to save Heather and Nickie from whatever catastrophic damage was heading their way. If the society was dangerous and I succeeded in shutting it down, well, then maybe getting involved was the right thing to do after all.
Next time something like this happened, I needed to ignore all the signs and act oblivious. That way, it untied my hands.
I came back to find Heather and two other girls in our dorm room drinking cheap wine coolers—minus Heather—laughing about some lame math problem their professor assigned to them for the weekend. None of it made sense to me, and I had no intention of trying to understand; I was just happy she had a distraction.
I only wanted to get to bed.
All three had thick textbooks open to some complicated scribbles, and with the heaviest-looking calculators I’d ever come across, they typed away aggressively, trying to solve the equation.
“Remi, this is Colleen and Meghan,” Heather introduced, interrupting my need to escape.
The girl in the pink shirt stretched her hand to me. “Colleen.”
I took it gingerly. “Nice to meet you.” Colleen’s wrists were coated with silver bangles from Tiffany’s. Her hands were well-manicured, and her palms were soft as silk. The gold-plated bracelets were a dead giveaway of her economic status, and she wasn’t ashamed to flaunt whatever tax bracket her parents belonged to.
I prayed she wasn’t stuck up, for Heather’s sake.
“Meghan,” the other girl said, her back leaning against the wall, sipping on a blue wine cooler. Her calm demeanor gave me the sense that she would rather be drunk at a party than sitting in a dorm room figuring out the square root of some outrageous number.
I waved sheepishly at her and returned to my side of the room. Rummaging through my desk drawer, I finally found some makeup wipes and erased tonight’s pathetic attempt at a social hour from my face.
“Professor Toke has a crush on you, Heather,” said Colleen.
“No, he doesn’t!” she squeaked. My back turned to them; I could only imagine her face turning tomato red.
“Please, he can barely keep his eyes off you,” Meghan added. “Is he young?” I chimed in, peeking over my shoulder.
“Very, and delicious,” purred Meghan.
“No!” She covered her face with her hands, trying to hide her embarrassment.
“First week of school and you’re already creating a scandal,” I joked, tossing the used makeup wipe in the wastebasket under my desk.
“It’s not like that,” Heather mumbled into her hands.
“The man asks you every class to help him. It’s definitely like that,” snickered Meghan.
“Yeah, and when you do, my God, he makes it obvious,” added Colleen.
“How so?” I asked, genuinely curious and surprisingly thankful for this odd distraction. I watched Heather’s face sink when I interrogated her friends more.
“You’re going to have to sneak in and see for yourself,” said Meghan, downing the rest of her drink.
Stealing one more look at Heather, who was uncomfortable with this ordeal, I decided to be a good roommate and kicked her ‘friends’ out early.
“Thanks,” she said sheepishly, pulling back her covers and fluffing her pillow.
“I didn’t mean to put you on the spot like that,” I said, doing the same.
“No, it’s okay. Maybe they’re right.” Her voice sounded so fragile it bothered me.
Heather slipped off her socks and got under the covers, flicking her lamp off.
“Are they? Or are they making fun of the fact he just likes you as a student and they don’t get the same attention?”
She sighed like my questions were annoying her. “I’d prefer we move on from this topic, if that’s okay?”