In Halls

Pictures

There was a knock on my door. I paused halfway through pinning up a picture of me and Jason at a Black Lives Matter protest earlier this year, and opened it. Elizabeth was there, in a cute cotton dress with her hair in perfect curls but red-looking eyes. Impact of the night before, I imagined.

"Hey, come in, just let me finish sticking this up."

I'd been looking for my plants when I found the shoebox full of pictures I'd brought for room decoration. Of course, I'd wound up getting side-tracked by decorating my pin boards. At least the walls were now less blank and intimidating.

"Oh hi, thanks, I just wanted to talk to someone about last night and I thought... hey, is that your boyfriend?" She leaned into the picture, reaching a finger out towards it as I stuck in the final pin. "He's cute. You kept that quiet!"

"He's my brother, actually." I braced myself.

"What, seriously? You guys must have different Dads?"

I swallowed. When I wanted to antagonize people, I gave sarcastic responses to this question, like 'Do you think?' or 'No, it's a genetic mystery.' But my instinct was to like Elizabeth. She seemed pretty sweet, in all honesty. So I was truthful, but succinct.

"Yeah, we do. What's up?"

"Oh," she said, straightening up and looking around uncomfortably, "it's about last night."

"Take a seat," I said. I turned the desk chair out for her and perched on the bed. Elizabeth stood for a minute, twisting her phone in her hands in front of her.

"Thanks for letting me come in. I don't know what to do, really."

I gave her a reassuring smile.

"If it's about the King's cup thing, don't worry, I took the bin out this morning."

Elizabeth's worried expression only got worse.

"Oh! What happened, what King's cup thing?" she asked.

"You, um, you don't remember last night?"

Elizabeth shook her head. Her and Josh both? I was glad my instincts had told me not to keep up with them on the drinking. I only hoped Jason was joking about his own alcohol consumption. I summarised the incident with the drinking games.

"It's fine, I mean, it could happen to anyone. But we could probably all do to drink a bit less next time, to be honest."

I tried to say it in a general way, as Elizabeth was already looking ashamed, and downright unhappy.

"So, if your memory is a bit patchy, what was it you were worried about?" I asked.

Elizabeth hesitated yet again.

"Have you seen this?"

She unlocked her phone, and showed me a social media profile. She was tagged in a video post by Tara (so was I, I noticed) in the night club. It had been shared at one in the morning and showed the three of us dancing. A guy with thickly gelled hair stood behind Elizabeth, acting like he was dancing with her. Well, now I understood her worries.

"Oh, nothing happened. I know it looks weird, but there were these guys hanging around all night, none of them got any closer than that. Trust me, Christopher and I saw them off every time they came around."

I expected her to be relieved, but she still looked anxious.

"What's up?" I asked.

"Oh, nothing, it's just... my girlfriend saw it and she gets really anxious and she's scared that something happened and I don't know how to calm her down when I'm this far away."