Chapter 11

el went out with J. T. Radford despite the fact that Sara liked him. (They both knew that was true.) If Sara had asked her not to, Mel would have honored her request. At least she would have initially honored it. Before she fell for him, as she did eventually. Before she became addicted to the sex.

The truth was, she and Sara had always been competitive—as close as sisters but like sisters, always striving against each other, always looking for the advantage. As children they had competed for track ribbons and spelling trophies. Sara had always been a better student than Mel, and during their junior year of high school, when Sara had confided to Mel that she wanted to forgo the University of Tennessee in favor of Bedford, a private college “much harder to get into unless you have a four-point grade point average,” Mel had known instantly and irrevocably what school she wanted to attend. She had never even heard of Bedford until Sara mentioned it, but now she was determined that that was where she would go. “It’s not that easy to get into,” Sara said, as if she already regretted sharing her dream with Mel. “Even if your daddy is rich. You’ve got to have something besides money to get into Bedford.”

Mel didn’t believe there was anything money couldn’t buy your way into, but to hedge her bets she ran that year for president of the senior class against a boy named Cyrus Clapp. Despite his unfortunate name, Cyrus was handsome and popular, and had served in the student council, the Beta Club, and the National Honor Society for most of his previous three years. He was considered a shoo-in. But Mel had written a speech so smart and funny that it was still being talked about years later, a speech that began with the quote: I may not know much, but I know the difference between chicken shit and chicken salad. She won in a landslide vote. The presidency and her father’s begrudging donation of a new wing to the fine arts building were enough to overcome her grade point deficiency, and when the offer from Bedford finally came, it was with a great deal of self-satisfaction that she told Sara. Even their admission to college, it seemed, had become a competition of sorts.

So it was only natural, Mel realized later, that they should fall for the same boy. It was surprising that this had not happened before, although they had always had very different tastes in men. Mel liked hers a little rough around the edges and Sara preferred hers quiet and studious, boys she could easily control who were crazier about her than she was about them. Which made it all the more remarkable that Sara had even given J.T. Radford a second look.

Mel had noticed him that first night in the woods as they came down the embankment toward the bonfire, sitting in the back of a pickup truck with the firelight shining on his hair. She had noted the way he sat curiously watching her, his shoulders slumped and resting against the side of the truck and his legs stretched in front of him, crossed carelessly at the ankles. But it wasn’t until he spoke, shouting at Jemison to leave them alone, and Sara started moving toward him like a sleepwalker, that Mel had looked at him with any real interest.

Later, as they climbed the ridge in the moonlight and Mel pretended to twist her ankle so he would have to carry her, she had seen the look on Sara’s face. She had been intrigued. It was like a game. A game Mel knew she could win. And that first night, when he came over to watch a movie in their room and Sara was so quiet, Mel told herself it wouldn’t last. She thought, I’ll go out with him once and that’s all. Just to prove I can. He was nice enough, good-looking and funny, but no guy was worth breaking up a friendship over.

After the movie in their room, Mel walked him out.

“I don’t think your roommate likes me very much,” he said as they stepped onto the elevator.

“What makes you say that?” Mel said. She liked him well enough but he had a quiet cockiness that she found instantly suspect. You could tell he was one of those guys women always find charming, and he knew it.

“Well, let’s see,” he said, leaning against the elevator wall. He grinned. A tiny scar curved below his right eyebrow like a piece of white thread. “She doesn’t say two words to me all evening. And on the way up here she reminds me that there’s a curfew.”

“There is a curfew.”

His grin faded slowly. “Yeah, I know that. But I hadn’t even gotten off the elevator before she was reminding me that it was time to go.” She didn’t say anything and he looked at his feet silently as the elevator made its lumbering descent.

When they reached the ground floor, the door slid open. She stepped out and he followed her down the hallway to the front desk. The monitor behind the desk looked up at them suspiciously, then went back to reading. J.T. leaned over to sign himself out. All along the brightly lit corridor the fluorescent lights flickered and hummed. “Walk me out?” he said, and Mel shrugged and nodded at the monitor.

“The doors will lock behind you,” she warned, without looking up.

“That’s okay, I’ve got my card,” Mel said.

She followed him out onto the porch. The quad was deserted. Frost shimmered on the moonlit grass. He took her hand and led her down the steps, and she followed him without a word. In the shadow of the portico he pulled her smoothly into his arms and kissed her.

Up until that kiss she could have stopped at any time. She could have sent him packing without so much as a backward glance and spent her whole life without ever thinking of him again. But the kiss changed all that.

When he let her go, she stood there swaying in the moonlight. There was a strange humming sound in her head, low-pitched and rhythmic. She put her hand up to her ear and said, “What’s that noise?”

He looked around the moonlit quad. “What noise?”

“That noise. Like water running in a sink. Like a flood through a sluice gate, like …” She stopped. The sound she was hearing was her own pulse pounding in her temples.

He grinned. “Are you cold?” he said.

“No.” She stood there like a narcoleptic on the verge of a seizure. In the sky beyond his shoulder, Perseus raised his shining bow. Or was it Orion who carried the bow? Mel couldn’t remember. Her head felt dense and thick. “I don’t know,” she said. “I guess,” she said.

He opened his jacket as if to envelop her but she shook her head and stepped back. “I promise I won’t kiss you,” he said, and dropped his arms.

Pink Floyd drifted from an open window. After a moment, she stirred and said, “I should probably go in.”

He stood there looking at her with his hands pushed deep into the pockets of his jeans. “I’ll see you Friday night then. Friday at eight. I’ll call you tomorrow.” He backed away and grinned and walked off whistling in the moonlight.

She watched him go. Far off in the darkness a car door slammed. The moon sailed over the turrets of Amsterdam Hall, shining fitfully behind a line of swiftly moving clouds. The sound in her head gradually subsided. It had started out as a game and now everything had changed.

She hoped Sara would understand.