Dorm Politics

LENA

Sophie catches me by the elbow before I even make it to the sink, and the bathroom door swings shut behind us with a soft, final click that sounds too much like a trap.

"Was that who I think it was?"

Her voice comes out low, careful, pitched exactly like concern. I know that pitch. I've used it myself on telemarketers and on Tyler when I wanted him to think I cared about his day. It's the sound of someone performing patience while their eyes do all the real work.

The fluorescent light buzzes above us, flickering once, and I catch our reflections in the mirror. Sophie's face is arranged into something soft and worried, brows pulled together just enough to look human. But her eyes never leave mine. They're doing math.

And I already know what numbers she's working with, because I remember exactly where she was standing. Her door was cracked open, not shut, the hallway light spilling out in a thin gold line across the carpet. She wasn't half-asleep, stumbling to the bathroom and catching a blur in her peripheral vision. She was awake. Watching. Positioned at an angle that gave her a clean, unobstructed view of Julian's face under the hallway light, the line of his jaw, the height of him, the way he'd paused for half a second before he left, like he wasn't sure it was safe to go. She didn't hear footsteps. She saw a man. My stomach twists with the certainty of it.

"It's not what you think," I say, and my voice cracks on the last word because my whole body still smells like Julian, like his skin and the cedar soap he uses, and I'm terrified she can smell it too.

"Lena." She says my name like a hand pressed flat to my sternum, gentle, but firm enough to hold me still. "I saw a guy leave your room at one in the morning. I'm not stupid."

Not a shadow. Not a shape. A guy. She's handing me the exact size of the hole I'm standing in, and I understand, too late, that she isn't fishing for information. She already has it. She just wants to watch me decide whether to lie to her face.

The tile floor is cold under my socked feet. I press my back against the sink, feel the porcelain edge dig into my spine, small, grounding pain that keeps me from unraveling completely.

"It was a dare," I say. The lie tastes like pennies. "Some stupid game. It went further than it was supposed to."

Sophie's mouth parts slightly, and for a second I think she might actually believe me, might let it go, might hug me and tell me boys are trash and we should get ice cream. But then her expression shifts, just barely, recalibrating.

"A dare," she repeats, slow, like she's turning the word over to check for a wire underneath. "Okay. Who dared you?"

"Priya," I say too fast.

"Priya's been asleep since ten. I texted her about the Bio final."

My stomach drops through the floor. I didn't know that. I didn't know she'd check. I didn't know she'd already have an alibi mapped out for my alibi before I even opened my mouth.

"Fine, it wasn't a dare exactly," I say, backpedaling. "It was just, God, Sophie, it's complicated, okay? Can we not do this right now?"

She reaches out and tucks a piece of hair behind my ear, the same gesture she's done a hundred times before, at parties, at funerals, at two a.m. breakups, and it should feel like comfort. It doesn't.

"I just want to make sure you're safe," she says. "That's all. You've been different lately. Distracted. Jumpy. I'm your best friend, Lena. You can tell me anything."

The words are soft as a lullaby and somehow they still manage to sound like an interrogation. I nod because it's easier than talking, because if I open my mouth again I might actually say his name, and something in me knows that would be the end of everything.

"I know," I whisper. "I know you're just looking out for me."

She smiles then, small and satisfied, like she's just closed a deal.

We walk back out to the common room together, arms linked, the picture of normal. Someone's laptop plays a rom-com too loud, the smell of microwave popcorn thick in the air, Priya sprawled dramatically across the couch with a pillow clutched to her chest.

"Marcus told the whole a cappella group I sing flat," Priya announces the second she sees us. "Me. I have perfect pitch."

"He's projecting," I say, forcing my voice into something light, something normal, even as my pulse still ragged in my throat.

Priya launches into the rest of the story, but I stop following the words. Sophie has gone quiet beside me, and when I glance over, I catch her watching my hands instead of my face, the way I'm picking at a thread on my sleeve, the way I can't quite settle into the couch cushion. She isn't laughing at the right moments. She's a half-second behind everyone else, like she's cataloging the laugh before she lets herself join it.

At one point my phone buzzes on the coffee table, and I watch her eyes cut to the screen before I even reach for it, quick, involuntary, gone before I can be sure I saw it at all.

"You okay?" she asks, when Priya finally pauses for breath. "You seem far away."

"Just tired," I say.

"Mm." She doesn't push, but she doesn't look away either. She's still doing math.

Eventually the group thins out. Priya shuffles off to bed still muttering about Marcus's nonexistent range. The common room empties until it's just me and Sophie again, the television throwing pale blue light across her face.

"Hey," she says, catching my hand before I can escape to my room. Her grip is warm. Familiar. "I meant what I said. Whatever's going on with you, I've got you. Your secret's safe with me."

She says it so easily. Too easily. Like it costs her nothing at all.

"Thank you," I say, and I mean it, God help me, some stupid hopeful part of me still means it.

She squeezes my hand once, releases it, and turns back toward her room. But before she disappears through her doorway, she pulls her phone from her pocket and glances down at it, thumb moving once, twice, quick and practiced, the way you'd jot a note you didn't want to forget.

I stand there in the empty common room a moment longer, the television still murmuring nonsense to no one, and I tell myself it's fine. She's my best friend. She's known me since freshman orientation, since before Tyler, since before any of this. She wouldn't hurt me.

I've got you.

The words loop in my head as I walk back to my room, and it isn't until I'm lying in the dark, staring at the ceiling, that I let myself hear what I didn't want to hear the first time. The way she said it wasn't comfort. It was a claim. Like she'd just taken ownership of something I didn't know I'd given her.