My father was growing bald. All my life, his hair had been thick and black, darker than the pieces of charcoal that Iād use in elementary school art class. But as he hunched over his toolbox, I couldnāt seem to look away from the bald spot. It was slightly bigger than a quarter.
He pulled out a screwdriver and stared back at my desk lying on the floor. It was nicer than anything the school had offered. Now its legs stood straight in the air like a dead animalās.
āYou need me to help with anything?ā I asked.
Dad said nothing. He began unscrewing a leg from one corner of the desk. When it was out, he chucked it on the floor and unscrewed another one.
Heād driven to the dorm in less than twenty-four hours. Coming from the Midwest, it was a seventeen-hour drive, nonstop. Dad had probably slept in the rental van during his breaks. And when he finally made it to my dorm, Dad had only handed me a box of black garbage bags. Told me to pack up everything as fast as I could. He had nothing to say to me in personāheād barely even spoken over the phone.
My room was now mostly packed, except for my backpack, my suitcase, and the desk. The black garbage bags were piled in the moving cart. I used that to block the doorāI didnāt want one of the other RAs barging in.
Throughout the morning, I kept hearing voices out in the hallway. The walls in the dorm were paper thin. You could hear everything hereāfreshmen urging each other to take a shot in their rooms or a poor freshman girl awkwardly moaning as some boy jackhammered her. After three years, you got used to the noises. You blocked it all out like the wind.
But I kept hearing my name in every loud conversation or hushed tone, in the laughter as a pair of girls walked by.
I didnāt know if that was better or worse than the text messages. I currently had forty-three of them, unopened, burning on my phone. They came from friends, acquaintances, coworkers, but nearly half of them had come from numbers that I didnāt recognize. It was as if they all smelled blood and came for the carnage.
The texts were straightforward: Youāre a fucking bitch, Mary. You deserve worse.
And what could I say to that? I didnāt disagree. It was my own hands that had reached out, my own fists that had flown. The damage that Iād done to herāonly a bitch could do it. Even my own father was stunned.
Heād finished dismantling the desk. He left the legs on the floor and laid the desk on top of the moving cart. It looked like it would slip off any second. But Dad was already opening the door, gesturing to my suitcase, backpack, and desk legs.
āYou carry those,ā he said, wheeling the cart past the door. I scooped up my things and took one last look at the room. For the past two years, Iād lived in a small off-white box with a window and a tiny nook of a closet. I didnāt mind the faulty thermostat and the muggy heat in the winters. Over the summer, Iād kept my things here, even as Iād bounced far away from one sublet to anotherāa perk of being a resident adviser.
The room hadnāt been glamorous, but it had been home enough for me.
Now it was over.
I followed Dad as he wheeled the cart down the hallway. He wasnāt moving fast enough. I stared straight ahead as we passed by the dorm rooms, then the common area.
There was a group of freshmen sitting around the couches, their laptops and coffees spread out in front of them. Like sheep, they all looked over as soon as the cart squeaked by.
Carly was one of them.
And I felt it againāthat burst of white-hot rage in my veins.
Carly smirked, then turned to whisper to a boy sitting next to her. And I saw it, my stomach flipping over.
She was wearing a thick pair of glasses today. Her red hair was piled up into a bun over her head, pulled away from her face. Her lips were swollen. There was a large, black bruise that covered the top of her right cheek, just below her eye.
The bruise shouldnāt have been that darkāit hadnāt been that dark yesterday.
As Dad and I waited for the elevator, we could hear loud laughter from the common room, where Carly and the others sat. My phone was vibrating nowāmore texts pouring in. The news was spreading throughout campus. I could feel it.
On our way to the front desk, Dad and I passed by more freshmen, all flocking in for lunch. They seemed to rush out of our way. Two freshman boys slipped past us, snickering, their arms raised in surrender, as if I were putting a gun to their heads.
I hated them all. At least now I could be fully honest about it. They were so bright-eyed and ambitious. Every freshman thought they were going to make something of themselves, like working for the UN, running a Fortune 500 company, or writing a future New York Times bestseller. Some of them were awfully cocky about it.
I wanted to tell them that it wasnāt worth it. That it wouldnāt happen. That the world didnāt give a shit about most of us.
At the front desk, I handed my work polo and my badge over to Mohamed, the RA who lived two floors above me. He studied economics. I once gave him a joint that Iād confiscated from the womenās bathroom. He once shared some of his Adderall with me during finals week. The two of us got along pretty well.
But as he worked on the computer, Mohamed didnāt say much. He almost acted like I wasnāt there.
āOne final thing,ā he said. āI need your master key, Mary.ā
Mohamed was uneasy, his face taut. He looked at me as if horns had sprung out of my head. In reality, he might have been looking for a bruise or a scar on my face, some sign that I had gotten into a fight with a freshman girl. Yet somehow my face had been spared. Carly had terrible aim.
I felt my cheeks start to burn, that rush as I contemplated running out of the office, away from campus and Mohamed and Carly and everyone else who knew. Everyone who would know.
I fumbled in my backpack. Dug past the laptop and the wires and the wallet. I yanked out the master key to the dorm and chucked it on the desk. Mohamed stared at it.
āWell, that was the last thing,ā he said, unsmiling. āYou can go.ā
The drive back home was slow. Soul-crushing. Dad and I were cramped together in the cargo van that heād rented. We listened to whatever Dad could find on the radioāusually any station that played classic rock from the seventies and eighties.
We wove past large red oaks and birches. In the third week of October, their leaves were now fiery red and deep orange. They were a staple in Ithaca. Later, we reached miles of flat plains. The roads and highways started to blend together: impatient drivers speeding by, a stranded car, ugly soundproof barriers that flanked the sides of the road, little highway shrines for victims of roadside violence. Or it was more grass, endless stretches of grass. I offered to take over the driving, but Dad shook his head.
āYou can barely keep your hands to yourself,ā he said dully.
I felt a lump in my throat. I knew Dad was angry, bitter, but I realized there was something else. He didnāt trust me anymore. I hadnāt kept my hands to myself. I hadnāt behaved like heād known me to be. I was a liability now.
Everyone else Iād left behindāmy peers, my professors, my coworkers at the dorm, the boys Iād slept withāwhat did they now think of me? Was I unhinged to them, frightening? Were they even shocked? Maybe theyād sensed it all along. Maybe that was why few of them ever got close.
And the friends Iād made, the people Iād found throughout collegeāweād connected so quickly, like kids in a sandbox. Our past three years together had flown by: crying over finals, only to laugh in hysterics at two in the morning; going out and getting drunk, or staying in and getting high; making out with guys right after puking at a party. We even shared alcohol that Iād confiscated from the freshmen. Weād been through all of it. In college, it was shared mayhem.
But this was a different mess that Iād gotten into. Something darker, more convoluted. I couldnāt justify myself to anyone. Any friends Iād had at school were gone.
Any way you looked at the situationāI looked like a monster.
Around eight, Dad and I stopped for the night in Holiday City. Despite the cheery name, the place was run-down, mostly a cluster of seedy gas stations and motels that served the truck drivers who passed through. Dad booked us a motel room with double beds. We had dinner there, dry hamburgers and stale french fries. Dad watched the news, then fell asleep soon after.
I stayed up in my bed, looking at the new texts on my phone. Iād finally opened all of them, but I hadnāt sent a single reply. I felt like Iād been ripped open.
I was ātrashā to people. I was a āfucking bitchā for terrorizing a weak freshman. I needed to āeat shit.ā The news had spreadāit always did on a college campus.
Next, they would pry for gossip. They would ask Mohamed about my move-out. They would discuss my time at the dorm, my behavior over the fall. Since I was no longer there, the only explanation would come from Carly.
Then theyād go online. They would search for me, deciphering my pictures, my comments, my posts for any hint of what I would do. Of what I was.
I knew this because I had done the same. I had watched other people burn before. Like the sorority girl from last year, who had been photographed making a Hitler salute at a G.I. Joes and Army Hoes party. By the time I saw the photos online, sheād already been suspended and stripped of her Fortune 500 internship. It was a mesmerizing train wreck. There was satisfaction in watching someone else suffer for their sins.
But now I was the one being watched. And if they prodded, I was afraid of what they would find.
I went through my social mediaāFacebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tinder. I deactivated everything and scrubbed myself off the Internet. After a cursory search, I no longer appeared online, no posts nor pictures. No one needed to know anything about me.
My reputation mightāve been over at school, but I would protect it everywhere else. After I was done, I turned off my phone. Placed it on the nightstand.
I gulped down a glass of water and my escitalopram and tried to fall asleep. Instead, I kept thinking about the lovely old buildings at school, the first hint of snow coming in the next few weeks, and the smell of coffee as I walked to class with a friend, musing about theses and grad school. Madison and I had talked of backpacking through Europe after graduation. But now I had no reason to go.
When I woke up the next day, my eyes were sticky with dried salt.
