Again by Lisa Burstein Read Free Book Online Page B

911.
    Instead I walked out of the
room. Headed down the stairs and out the front door of the party, trying to
pretend I hadn’t seen what I’d just seen.
    Tristan knew something was
wrong when I got back to our room, but I wouldn’t talk about it. Instead I
drank all the alcohol I could find, hoping maybe when I awoke the next morning,
for me, as much as for poor Jeanie Pratt, it had been a dream.
    The truth I would have told
Kate was a coward’s truth, but it also didn’t make me guilty of what I’d been
accused of. I wasn’t an accessory to a sexual assault. I hadn’t been there when
it actually happened.
    But I did deserve to bear
that cross for leaving. I probably deserved even worse.
    When I finally reached
Fulton Hall and took my seat in Political Justice class, I wondered if anyone
would ever hear my truth. If I would ever be brave enough to say it out loud.
To admit I had known exactly what was going to happen to Jeanie Pratt and,
instead of stopping it, I walked away.
     
     

Chapter
Eight
    Kate
    Two
days later, after my morning class, I tucked myself into a corner of the
student center and called my best friend Veronica. Not that I had anything
earth shattering to tell her other than people seemingly believed me and I was
living the life of a college freshman. Well, the boring parts anyway, but those
were the only parts I wanted to live, right?
    A
group of girls laughed from across the room. I could tell from the openness in
their eyes, the fullness of their voices that they were freshman too. Their
vibrant puffy coats hung on their chairs like matador capes. As if they aimed
for life to barrel at them. They were teasing it, inviting whatever came their
way.
    It
was easy to have that outlook when you had other people to lean on, like I’d
had Veronica in the city. But here, I didn’t have anyone.
    It
was by design. A real friend would get too close. There were only so many lies
I could tell, only so much pretending I could do without actually letting
someone in. There were also my rules. Sure, there were people here who didn’t
drink, like Dawn, but temptations were everywhere, even with people who didn’t
appear at first to be temptations, like Carter.
    I
clicked into Veronica’s contact on my cell. The photo I’d taken of her toasting
me with a glass of wine stared back at me, her black hair as shiny as her dark-as-night
eyes. I pushed call as the girls’ laughter shrilled, grew out and into the air
around them like something being built.
    Living
without drinking and sex was one thing, but would I be able to keeping living
without friends?
    I
glanced at the time: noon. If I were in the city, Veronica and I would be slipping
away from the office to gossip and eat. I kind of wished I was there instead of
here, alone.
    “Kate,”
she said, when she answered, “Wait, is that still your name there?”
    I
glanced at the laughing girls and felt the camaraderie stitching them together
through the phone. I still had friends even if they weren’t here.
    I
still had Veronica, even if we were living totally different lives now.
    “Yes,
only my age has changed,” I whispered, “and of course my hair color.”
    “You’re
always changing your hair color.”
    I
was. I did. David used to call me his chameleon. I guess I’d always been trying
to figure out who I wanted to be.
    “Yeah,”
I continued to whisper, “but not to look younger.”
    “I’m
pretty sure you were always trying to look younger,” she laughed.
    True,
but not this much younger. Not young enough to seem like one of the
laughing girls, ready for life to sprint at them instead of having already run
them over.
     “I
guess, since you’re not on my doorstep yet, people are buying it?”
    Veronica
had been there every time I got carded at the bars. She’d seen the way people
looked at me when we walked down the street together during our daily lunch
hour in our suits, like she belonged there and I was playing dress up.
    “So
far,” I