The Bride Wore Size 12

Chapter 2

It’s a beautiful day, one of the last of summer. The  sky outside my office is clear blue, the temperature a perfect seventy-five degrees.

It’s also the first week of freshman orientation at New York College. So far, very little is going right.

“Look,” says the attractive woman in tight white jeans who’s slid into the chair beside my desk. “It’s not like my Kaileigh is spoiled. For spring break last year, she volunteered to build houses in Haiti with Habitat for Humanity.

She lived in a tent with no running water. She knows how to rough it.”

I keep a polite smile plastered onto my face. “So what exactly is Kaileigh’s problem with her room, Mrs. Harris?”

“Oh, it’s not her room.” Mrs. Harris has to raise her voice to be heard over the drilling. Carl, the building engineer, is perched on a ladder near the office photocopier, doing what we’re telling the student staff is the last of some “minor elec- trical repair work” left over from the renovation the building received over the summer.

When the students discover what Carl is really doing— installing the wiring for a set of security monitors on which my boss, Lisa, and I will be able to watch everything that occurs in the fifteenth-floor hallway—they’ll  probably launch a protest over the invasion of their privacy, even though it’s being done for their protection.

“It’s Kaileigh’s roommate,” Mrs. Harris goes on.

I nod sympathetically before launching into a speech I’ve given so many times I occasionally feel like one of those of the performing robots at Disney World’s Country Bear Jam- boree, only not quite as cuddly:

“You know, Mrs. Harris, an important part of the college experience is meeting new people, some of whom might come from cultures other than your own—”

Mrs. Harris cuts me off. “Oh, I know all about that. We read the orientation material you people sent us over the summer. But there are limits to what someone can be ex- pected to put up with.”

“What’s Kaileigh’s problem with her roommate?”

“Oh, my Kaileigh isn’t one to complain,” Mrs. Harris says, her skillfully made-up eyes widening at the idea of Kaileigh ever doing anything remotely wrong. “She doesn’t even know I’m here. A problem with Ameera—that’s the name of Kaileigh’s roommate—was the last thing we were expect- ing. Those two girls have been texting and Skyping back and forth all summer, ever since they found out they were as- signed together, and everything seemed fine. I assumed they were going to be BFFs, best friends forever, you know?”

I’m aware of what BFF stands for, but I only smile encouragingly.

“It wasn’t until this week, when Ameera and Kaileigh ac- tually started living together, that we realized—”

Mrs. Harris bites her bottom lip and glances down at her

perfectly manicured nails and tastefully jeweled fingers, hesitant to continue. A father standing directly behind Mrs. Harris—not her husband—keeps glancing at his gold watch. A Rolex, of course. Few New York College students request financial aid . . . or if they do, they aren’t the types to have their parents do their complaining for them.

“What?” I’m as impatient with Mrs. Harris as the guy with the Rolex, only for different reasons. “What did you realize about your daughter’s roommate?”

“Well . . . I don’t know any other way to put this,” Mrs. Harris says. “Ameera is . . . well, she . . . she’s . . . she’s a slut.” The parents in line behind Mrs. Harris look shocked. Carl,