Two-way Street

Day Two, 7:19 p.m.

I don’t know what else to do, so I head over to Jordan’s brother Adam’s dorm. Maybe I could tell them Lloyd and I are fighting? Or that he proposed to me, and when I said I wasn’t ready to get married, he kicked me out of the room. Hmm. It’s going to be challenging, trying to come up with an explanation that makes sense as to why I have nowhere to sleep tonight.

Adam’s building has the same swipe card system as Lloyd’s did, but for some reason, there are no people coming in and out. Maybe Lloyd’s building is like, the party building, where people are just coming and going all the time. And Adam’s building is the studious building, and all the kids are in their rooms studying.

A girl in a pink tank top and tons of eyeliner walks up the steps, and I try to follow her into the building, but she turns around and gives me a death glare. I am a master at the death glare (I perfected it even more just for this trip), but this girl is really, really good.

“You can’t come in without your card,” she says.

“I forgot my card,” I say.

“You forgot it?” She tosses her hair over her shoulder.

“Yeah,” I say. “I forgot it in my room.”

“Not my problem,” she says and starts shutting the door. “Go to the student center and get a temporary.” And then she shuts the door in my face. God, I hope she’s not leading the prospective student tours around this place. Who would want to go to school here? So far, I know three people here. Lloyd, Adam, and Pink Shirt. Lloyd is currently pissed off at me because I won’t hook up with him, Pink Shirt was just a bitch to me, and one time, Jordan’s brother told him he should break up with me because I had no tits. This place is so great.

I pull out my cell phone, which for some reason is on silent. Oh. From when I made that big show about putting it on silent when Jordan dropped me off here. So that Lloyd and I could hook up. I take a deep breath and contemplate what I’m going to say. Something to make it look like I ditched Lloyd? But then I realize that this whole time, this whole game I’ve been playing about the Lloyd thing is kind of pointless. Because I was hoping to make Jordan jealous by using Lloyd to make him come to his senses—i.e., realize MySpace Mercedes was a total slut, while I, on the other hand, was so obviously desired and cool that I was moving on at the speed of light. But now that I know the MySpace girl is made up, it kind of ruins it. He just doesn’t like me. Or love me. So it doesn’t matter if I have a boyfriend or not, because he doesn’t care.

I feel like I’m going to cry, so instead of calling Jordan, I follow the signs to the student union and order a pink lemonade, which I drink while sitting on a bench outside and trying to figure out how long I have until it gets really dark and I’m forced to do something. My cell phone rings. It’s my dad.

“Hey,” I say, trying to sound like everything’s fine. Must not sound like I am stuck with no place to spend the night after getting attacked in Lloyd’s dorm room. Okay, not really attacked. More like accosted. But still. I can’t let my dad know I have nowhere to sleep.

“Hey, honey,” he says, and something in his voice makes me nervous.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“Listen, Courtney,” he says. “I have something that I need to tell you.”