Charmed Thirds_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [91]
“Anyway, I hope our paths legitimately cross again soon.”
“Me, too,” said Paul.
I really believed them. But not enough for me to go out of my way to stay in touch. It's better this way, leaving things open-ended. Because if I actually did e-mail Hy or Paul and they ignored me, I would know that tonight was a fake after all, and I'd rather not think that.
I left the party not too long after that conversation, after I caught Dexy slipping out the door arm in arm with a masked man in a blue satin cape emblazoned with a huge rhinestone donkey. I'd find out later that he's known in downtown circles as Democracy Man. But at the time, I thought about what Mini Dub had said about the jackass and how he was more right than I would ever admit to his face.
the thirteenth
Bastian and I could see the commotion from several blocks away. A crowd was gathered in front of the entrance to the dorm, and several police cars were parked in the street. An ambulance was pulling away slowly, without its siren wailing. As we got closer, I noted that most of the students were touching their faces in some way—hands rubbing foreheads, hands covering eyes, hands clasped over mouths as if in prayer—all gestures of shock, of disbelief. Everyone was speaking in hushed tones.
“Something bad must have happened,” I said to Bastian.
“Muy malo,” he said, too concerned for English.
I approached a Japanese girl in pigtails, platform boots, and a Little Bo Peep pinafore. Her Gothic Lolita ensemble gave a surreal edge to an already strange scene.
“What's going on?”
“Some guy was found dead in his room,” she said.
I must admit that when I first heard this news, I was comforted that it wasn't a terrorist thing. Some guy was found dead, I thought to myself. What a relief.
“Who was it?” Bastian asked. “Was it a suicide?”
She shook her head. “I don't know,” she said. “They won't tell us anything.”
“I heard it was someone on the fourth floor,” said a chunky, curly-haired guy wearing a business suit and a yarmulke.
“Oh my God!” I cried, instinctively bringing my own hands to my cheeks. “That's my floor!”
“J!” I heard a hysterical scream. “Jaaaaaaaayyyyyyyy!”
I turned toward the voice and saw Dexy barreling through the crowd. Her stricken face looked all wrong with her outfit, a chipper, pastel swing dress.
“It's Mini Dub!” she gasped. “William!”
And that, so they tell me, is when I passed out.
When I came to, I was lying on the sidewalk, the new subject of the crowd's attentions. I caught bits and pieces of their commentary as I tried to open my eyes.
“Is she his girl?”
“Dunno . . .”
“We can check the facebook . . .”
“Aw, shit. Homeboy's dead but the facebook lives on.”
“That's fucked up.”
It was all very fucked up. And as I got the facts, it proved to be even more so.
He didn't attend the mandatory meeting for all RAs about “racialization” last night, didn't show up for class today or pick up his paycheck. But when he didn't bring brownies to the Columbia College Conservatives Club (Anti) Affirmative Action bake sale this afternoon, his friends got worried. They contacted the head RA, who keyed into William's room and found him on the floor, unresponsive.
Dead.
There was no bloody razor blade. No noose made out of a bedsheet. No drugs or any other evidence of “a suicide situation” or “foul play” as the police put it. The preliminary medical examination has ruled his death to be from “natural causes.” According to the Dean of Student Affairs, William last swiped into the dorm on Thursday afternoon after his lab. Dexy and I might have been the last people to see William alive, outside the elevator. So he'd probably been lying there, dead and undiscovered, through the night and into the day. In retrospect, I probably should have noticed the absence of his annoyance.
But I didn't. Not at all.
The CCCC wants to have a candlelight memorial on the steps