Chapter 3 Dick pic

Tessie's pov

By the time I get home, it's six o'clock; I have been recognized by eleven strangers and two professors, and a girl in the elevator has whispered "too tiny" to her friend and then looked at me like I was a haunted house.

I let myself into room 4B with my head down, my hood up, and my coffee long gone cold. And relieved of the loud, annoying boy who stopped me in the hallway asking for a tutor. The audacity of me.

Here is what you need to know about my dorm: it is not just a normal dorm.

Northgate puts its scholarship students in the cheap rooms, the ones with the buzzing radiators and the view of the dumpsters. I was supposed to live there. Instead, I live in a two-bedroom suite with real doors, a private bathroom, and a kitchenette with a marble counter, because my roommate's mother looked at the housing office's floor plan and said, "Just a few touches."

The touches included new hardwood. A rain shower. A velvet couch the color of champagne. A rug so soft I once lay on it for twenty minutes just to feel something good. The management never asked a single question once the check cleared. The whole suite smells like fig and vanilla, because there is a candle burning on every flat surface, and every candle costs more than my weekly groceries.

It's the most beautiful place I have ever lived, and I have no right to be in it. I tried to pay half the cleaning bill once. Zoe cried. Real tears.

"TESS."

There she is.

Zoe Williams is my roommate. She's twenty, five-foot-six, and currently lying across the velvet couch in a pink satin robe with a green face mask and a spoon in a pint of ice cream, like she's filming a soft launch for a perfume ad. Her family owns resorts in six countries. She has never once heard the word no and recognized it. She also cries at dog food commercials. She is the first friend I've ever had who didn't want anything from me, which is hilarious, because she has everything.

She sits up. Her face mask cracks.

"Tess. Why are you trending?"

I freeze with one shoe off.

"I know I advised you to confess your feelings to that transfer kid." She points the spoon at me. "I did not tell you to humiliate yourself on the internet."

"It's not-"

"It has forty-three thousand views."

"Forty-three-"

"Forty-four. Sorry. Forty-five."

I sit down on the floor, right there in the entryway, on the soft rug. I'd like to say I handle it with grace. What I do is put my face in my hands and make a noise like a deflating bagpipe.

The spoon hits the floor. A second later, Zoey is on her knees beside me with her arms wrapped around my shoulders, smelling like cucumber and gardenias.

"Oh my God," she says. "Oh, babe. Oh, no. I'm so sorry. I was joking. I'm an idiot. I'm the worst."

"I really thought he liked me," I choke out. "He was so nice to me, Zoe. He smiled when I gave him that water. He said my name like it meant something."

"He's nice to everyone. That's what nice boys do. It's a personality, not a promise."

"He said I wasn't his type. In front of his friends. He said I was too-" I can't finish it.

"I know. I watched it nine times." She pulls back, and the mask finally slides off her face and lands on my knee. Her eyes are shiny. "I'm going to kill him."

"He's six-two."

"I'm five-six, and I'm wearing a robe. Physics is a social construct."

I laugh. It comes out wet and ugly, but it's a laugh. Zoe grins like she's won the lottery.

"I offered to talk to him for you, you know," she says, grabbing a box of tissues from the coffee table. "I had a speech. It had bullet points. And you said, 'No, Zoe, I'm brave, I'm going to do it myself.' And I said, fine, and look at me, being supportive, and this is what I get."

"This is what you get."

"I should have trusted my bullet points."

Then she asked the question that I hadn't even thought about. So he leaked the video?

I wiped my tears with my hand and stared at her. I don't know. It was just Luke, his friends, and I in their dressing room. No one else. So who did?.

She lets me cry for exactly twenty minutes. She sets a timer. She says she read somewhere that it's the optimal length. She brings me a blanket, a bottle of water, and a spoon, and sits against the couch with her shoulder pressed against mine, saying nothing, which for Zoe is a minor miracle.

The timer goes off.

"Okay." She claps her hands. "Time's up."

"I just got here."

"Time's up. Do you know what we're doing tonight?"

"Studying." Hell no.

"Clubbing." We are clubbing tonight.

I stare at her. "No."

"Yes."

"Zoe, I have a lab report. I have a shift at six tomorrow. I'm not even-"

"We are sneaking out of this shit hole of a school," she says, standing up and spreading her arms like a person announcing a coup, "we are going to a place with excellent lighting, and we are drinking some alcohol, because alcohol makes you feel good and nobody has ever cried in a rooftop lounge."

"People cry in rooftop lounges constantly."

"Not in mine."

"I don't want to go out. I want to lie on the rug and die."

"You can die tomorrow. Tonight, you live and party with me."

"No."

"Please."

"No."

She drops to her knees and presses her palms together. Her bottom lip trembles. She actually tilts her head.

"Zoey."

"Pleeeeease."

I look at her, this ridiculous, loving, spoiled person who cried when I got a cold, and something in my chest gives up.

"One hour," I say.

"Four."

"Three."

"Deal." She springs to her feet. "Now. Stand up. Turn around."

I stand. I turn. She circles me like a hawk circling a very small field mouse.

"You dress like a nerd," she announces.

"I am a nerd."

"You dress like a nerd in hiding. Every day. A hoodie, skinny or baggy jeans, the same ponytail. I love you, but it's like you've been hiding inside your own clothes." She lifts my sleeve between two fingers and drops it. "Tonight you are wearing my clothes. My shoes. My bag. And you're not taking no for an answer. I'm going to dress you like a queen so you can see how beautiful you are, and so Luke Reed can see exactly what he just turned down."

My throat tightens. "Zoey."

"I'm going to make you feel like a princess. Just let me. By midnight, half the boys in this school will be on their knees, begging at your mercy."

"That's a lot of knees."

"That's the plan."

Zoe's closet has a name. It's called the Vault. It has its own lighting, a rotating shoe carousel, and a velvet bench for "deliberating." I stand in the doorway while she tears through it like a tornado with a manicure, flinging things onto the bench: a black satin slip dress, a cropped blazer, a tiny gold clutch, a pair of silver heels with a platform so high I could use them as a stepladder.

"These won't fit," I say, holding up the dress. It is roughly the size of a handkerchief.

"Everything fits if you believe."

"I'm five-foot-nothing, Zoe. I'm four-eleven and a half."

"And I have a seamstress on speed dial. Go. Shower. I'll lay out the plan."

I was about to enter the bathroom when my phone buzzed. I went out naked to get my phone.

It was a message, and it read.

MAX: Hi baby, it's your latest student, Max. Still on my way home, but I just wanted to find out if my master got home safe.

Me: WTF... do you ever give up? And how the fuck did you get my number?

MAX: The class group chat that you advised me to join.

Ooh, that's true. I remember joining that group, but I attended just once because it was clashing with my work shift, so I had to stop going and study on my own.

Another message popped up before I replied to the previous.

MAX: Are you there, master?

ME: Well, that doesn't mean you should go around texting random people because you are in the same group chat with them.

MAX: Ooh, my bad. So have you changed your mind? When do we begin our private class session?

ME: NOPE, never. See, I have a highly contagious strain of influenza. Very dangerous. Causes fever, headaches, and, in severe cases, a tragic inability to win hockey games." So stay away from me if your dream is to remain on the ice and play hockey.

MAX: Wow, thanks. Thanks for the warning. Fortunately, I've been vaccinated."

ME: "Against my flu?"

MAX: Against losing." He sent a sticker. "Next excuse?"

ME: "I told you, I'm not tutoring you." "I'm serious. My condition is incurable." "I could infect your entire team."

MAX: Good thing I'm not asking you to cure me. Just teach me microbiology."

ME: Do you ever give up?

MAX: Not when I'm this close to passing microbiology. Okay, how about I send you something to light up your mood and make you change your mind?

ME: You wish 🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄 Nice chatting with you, and good luck to your failed career and exam.

I was about to drop the phone when it buzzed again, and this time it was an image. I clicked on it, and it was a picture of his dick and a text.

MAX: Something to lighten up your mood

ME: Did you just send me a picture of your ugly dick?

MAX: In changing your mind. Did it work? And besides, you looked like you haven't fucked in a decade. So I sent you something you can wank with.

ME: In ruining my day? Hell yes. You've succeeded in icing me out. For the record, I am posting that picture on @NUTea.

MAX: Nah, baby, most of the chicks on this campus have the pics already, but you could still go for it if that will make you tutor me. That will be more babes for me.

ME: Goshhhhhh. You are so irritating, boy fuck off my phone and lose my number.

I dropped my phone and didn't pick it up again after it buzzed, and I went ahead to take a shower.

****

Hours later, I'm sitting on the edge of her bed with my hair in hot rollers, my eyelids glittering, and my toes in heels so tall that I have to hold onto the nightstand. Zoe has pinned the dress at the back and hidden it under the blazer. She dabs a little gloss on my lip, steps back, and presses both hands to her heart.

"Oh," she says. "Oh, wow."

"Is it bad?"

"Look."

She turns me toward the full-length mirror.

I don't recognize her at first. The girl in the glass has a bare collarbone, a glossy mouth, soft waves that fall past her shoulders, and legs that look a whole lot longer than they have any right to. She's holding herself like someone who has never in her life been told she was too small for anything.

"There she is," Zoe whispers.

"Where?"

"Right there, genius."

I swallow. "Where are we going?"

"Frost. The rooftop lounge downtown. Everybody goes on Tuesdays."

"Everybody."

"The whole hockey team."

My stomach drops somewhere below the platform heels. "Zoe."

"Including Luke." She smiles at me in the mirror, small and fierce. "And he is not going to be able to look away."

I look at the girl in the glass for a long time.

For the first time all day, she doesn't look like a joke.