I nod my head.
“An ambulance is on the way.”
I’m starting to breathe better now, though.
“Yeah. Breathe… yeah,” he says, motioning with his hand for me to inhale and exhale on command. I concentrate on the motions and comply. My throat opens up but my heart is still pounding out of control. “You’re okay,” he assures me.
I lean my head back, seeing Coley’s building and remembering what I was doing. The choking feeling returns.
“No, no, no, Trey. No, breathe.”
“Out of the way, folks,” a woman says, rounding the corner on my left. Three paramedics arrive with a stretcher piled high with equipment. The man that was with me hangs up the phone and sets it next to me on the ground.
“You’ll be okay,” he says.
“Thanks,” I barely manage to say. I try to get a good look, hoping to remember him, but one of the paramedics steps in the way, taking my arm in his hand and trying to check my pulse. “Inhaler,” I say. “I need an inhaler.”
They put an oxygen mask on me instead.
“You’re not having an asthma attack, Mr. Holland. It’s a panic attack. I need you to take some nice, deep breaths.”
Panic attack? I start breathing, resting my head against the wall and closing my eyes. Deep breaths are impossible at first, but with concentration, they start getting a little longer. Someone puts a cuff on my arm to take my blood pressure, and I try to relax.
“Good job, Trey.”
“Thanks,” I say, opening my eyes and getting a glimpse of Carman Hall again. “I need to find Coley. I can’t breathe.”
“Trey, you’re gonna have to calm down, or we’re gonna have to put you on that stretcher over there. You see that?” I look down and then over to where she’s pointing. “You’re a tall, muscular guy. Don’t make us pick you up,” she jokes with me. “What are you, six-three?”
“Four,” I breathe heavily.
“Your feet’ll hang off that,” she says. “You don’t want to ride on that silly thing, do you?”
I shake my head.
“You a Rangers fan?”
I nod.
“What about that hat trick last Friday? Was that insane? All in two minutes!”
Again, I nod. Breathing is getting easier.
“Good job. Keep breathing. Innnn and ouuut.”
“Pulse is slowing,” another one says.
“Blood pressure’s good.”
I glance up to test myself. I think about Coley, alone in that hotel room. Breathe in. I think about Asher in there with her. Breathe out. Why the fuck was he in there? Breathe in. Is this why she isn’t talking to me? Breathe out. She isn’t mine. Breathe in. She isn’t a thing to have. To take. To possess. Not by me. Breathe out. Not by him, either, though. Breathe in.
She can make her own choices. She’s an adult. She’s fully capable. She doesn’t need rescuing. Breathe out. Why didn’t I tell him how I felt about her? Breathe in. Would he have respected my feelings and stayed away? Is there any possible way that he feels the same way about her that I do?
Not in a thousand lifetimes.
Breathe out.
I nod my head and point to the mask. “Can I take this off?”
“You okay?”
“Yeah.”
“We’re good on pulse.”
“Blood pressure’s normal.”
She helps me remove the instrument, and I take a few breaths of fresh air while the small crowd around us applauds. The small woman who’d complained about carrying me to the stretcher helps me to my feet. She can’t be more than five feet tall. “Thank you,” I tell her. “I feel fine.”
“Whatever you were thinking about… can’t be that bad, right?”
“Right.” Hopefully, but I’m about to find out. I grab my phone and bag and head across the street, going into the unmarked entrance to Carman Hall.
“Can I help you find someone?” a girl asks.
“Coley Fitzsimmons. She’s on the ninth floor. That’s all I know.”
“She’s down the hall from me.”
“She’s here?”
“We can check. I’ll sign you in.”
“Thanks.”
She walks up to the registration desk and writes in big, bubbly letters TREY HOLLAND next to JANA WICKER. She dots her I with a heart.
“Are you okay?” she asks. “I couldn’t help but notice what happened out there.”
“I’m good,” I tell her. “Just a little, uh… asthma attack.” I look away when I tell her, my natural reaction to lies. “I haven’t had to use an inhaler in years, so I wasn’t prepared for that.”
“I’m pre-med, if you need anything,” she says when we get out on her floor. We stop at the third door on the right, and she raps four times quickly. We can hear people inside. “Coley? Teri? It’s Jana, with a visitor.”
Breathe in. Breathe out.
Coley opens the door slightly, her expression changing quickly from curiosity to distrust.
Jana senses the tension immediately. “If I shouldn’t have brought him up here, I’ll take him back downstairs.”
“Coley, please,” I beg her.
“It’s fine, Jana.” Coley smiles at her friend, nodding at her to send her away. She slips into some house shoes and comes out into the hallway with me. “Let’s go down here,” she says as she guides me to a common area where a few other students are huddled in front of a television. We take two seats in the very back row of the room.
“What happened Sunday morning, Coley?” I can’t help but jump right in.
“What’s up with your face?” she asks, touching the area on either side of my lips. “Indentations… or something.”
“Oxygen mask. I just had a fucking panic attack. I was with Asher. He said he went to my hotel room, Coley.” I put my face into my hands. Breathe in. Breathe out. “What the hell happened Sunday morning?”
“Oxygen?”
“If you don’t answer my question, we’re going to have to get the paramedics back here, laureate. I’m not kidding.” She can tell from my shortness of breath that I’m not.
“I’m sorry, Trey.” Her voice is full of remorse. She shakes her head. I swear, a tear falls from each of my eyes before they even have time to form. They catch me completely off-guard, anyway. “He woke me up, pounding at the door, and I thought… I thought it was an emergency or something. I panicked. I’m sorry.”
“What?”
“I knew it was him. I answered the door. I was in my pajamas… they were… not the most modest pajamas in the world. I was half asleep, and… I didn’t know what to do.”
I’m not following her story. “So… what did you do?”
“He was yelling for you to come to the door… It was obvious he was messed up. Drunk, at least, and still in his tux, but he looked awful…”
“Yeah? And?”
“I told him you weren’t there, but he didn’t believe me. So he wanted me to let him in to prove it to him.”
“Tell me you didn’t let him in. Please, Coley.”
When she directs her attention to my lap, I do the same, only to see that I’ve got both of her hands in mine. I’m trembling. I know it’s me and not her because my arms are shaking, too. I try to pull away, but she holds on to me tighter. “I didn’t let him in. I kept the door latched. But he thinks we hooked up, Trey. He laughed and said he finally had something solid on the saint. Before I knew what he was doing, he took my picture through the opening in the door.”
I wrestle my hands away and pull her tightly into my chest.
“I was so scared, Trey. After I closed the door, he stayed in the hallway and pounded on it, yelling for you for fifteen minutes or so.” I move my hands up and down her back. “He said he was going to tell Zaina if you didn’t come out. Then, he said that he had told Zaina. I felt awful.”
I shake my head. “I don’t think he’s done anything like that. Not yet, anyway. Coley, I’m so sorry. I never thought anyone would both
er you. I wish you had called me.”
“I just wanted to get out of there… and things were weird… and I felt so bad. I don’t want to be the reason you and Zaina break up.”
I pull away from her and look her in the eyes.
“You wouldn’t be.”
“Okay.”
“I thought he’d done something to you. I was going to kill him, Coley. I honestly thought I was going to kill another man today. But, like… even if you had hooked up with him–”
“Trey–”
“No, wait. If you had, he had every right to be with you, and you with him.”
“Trey, there’s something else.”
“What?”
“Pryana’s in my room.”
I raise my brows. “Yeah?”
“She won’t go back to her apartment.”
“Why not?”
“Ummm… she was raped this weekend.”
“What?” I shake my head. “When?”
“After formal. After she got home, apparently. Her door was unlocked. Her keys are gone.”
Asher was with her, but he wouldn’t rape her. “Who did it?”
“She’s not sure. Trey, she doesn’t even know how she got home from the dance. It’s like she has a gap in her memory from… from about the time that you left until she woke up yesterday around noon.”
“When I left? Why does she remember when I left?”
“I don’t know, but she remembers you saying good night while she and Asher were dancing, and then she says she doesn’t remember anything else.”
“She doesn’t remember going to The Wit?”
“Huh?”
I nod my head. “She and Asher took a car to the offices. She walked in on her own. She led him in.”
“How do you know?” Coley asks me skeptically.
“I saw them.”
“When?”
“When I was outside waiting for you, Coley. I saw them.”
“And you didn’t think that was strange? Why didn't you tell me? I would think that was really odd, them going to The Wit that late on a Saturday night. I would have called her.”
“I did think it was weird, but I was afraid they’d seen me standing outside of this building. I just decided to let it go.”
“Because you didn’t want them to know you were with me.” I don’t answer. I’m not entirely sure she was asking me, anyway. “So it was probably Asher.”
“There’s no way, Coley,” I argue with her.
“Well, who else would it be, Trey?”
“I don’t know, but that’s a pretty crazy accusation to make, don’t you think?”
“No. It’s who she was with. It’s who was buying her drinks. It’s who she was relying on to get her safely there and back, so I don’t think it’s that absurd to make that connection.”
“You’re gonna need a lot more evidence than that.”
“Speaking as his defense attorney?” she asks, clearly upset. “As his fucking loyal frat brother? As an accomplice? This is why I didn’t think I could trust you. Someone probably had to help carry her.”
“Are you really accusing me of this right now? Seriously?”
“Well? Where’d you go after you left me? What was your real reason in abandoning a three-thousand-dollar-a-night hotel room–no, sorry, an entire floor of three-thousand-dollar-a-night hotel rooms? Because you wanted to sleep in your own bed? Come on, Trey.”
“Home, yes,” I say, sitting up straight and backing away from her. “You know I was at home. I called you from there.”
“You knew where she was. All I know is that you were drunk… And now I know you were fully aware of where she was.”
“With Asher, my best friend who wouldn’t–” I look around and lower my voice. “Who wouldn’t rape the girl he was with. Plus, he respects Pryana more than any girl I’ve ever known him to be around. He’s a flirt but he’s a decent guy.”
“Why did you come here then? If he’s so decent, why did you nearly have a panic attack on your way here? What did you think he’d done with me?” Her voice is so elevated that the other people in the room are now looking at us.
“Anything!” I yell, standing up. “Anything he’d have done with you would have been too much. Anything, with you. Don’t you get that?” I lean into her and speak quietly again. “But that has everything to do with the way I feel about you–not him.”
“Get out. Get out before I get my RA to drag you out of here. And you and Asher better have some solid fucking alibis.”
“Coley!” I grab her hand to stop her from walking away, but she’s much stronger than her small stature led me to believe. She jerks away from me, crossing her arms in front of her chest and looking at me stoically. “Coley, wait.”
“What?”
I shake my head, just now coming to grips with what’s happening. Dragging my palms down my face and rubbing nervously at the stubble on my jaw, I ask her quietly, “How is she?”
She walks right back up to me and stands three inches in front of me, her head angled up to look at me. I put my hand on her arm, thinking her approach is a friendly gesture, but when she slaps my arm away, I realize how very wrong I am. “She was raped, Trey. How the fuck do you think she is?”
“Tell her…” Tell her I’m sorry sounds like I’m admitting guilt. Tell her I’m thinking about her sounds menacing if she really suspects I did it.
“I’ll tell her you’re leaving.”
I nod my head, chewing on my cheek in frustration as I stare after her.
Too impatient for the elevator, I see the exit for the stairs and run down all eight flights of them. The exit leads me outside, where I immediately wait for the next available cab. I know it’s just the middle of the day, but there’s no way I can just go resume classes like normal today.
“Columbus and 69th,” I tell the driver when I get in, feeling my chest begin to tighten. I’m too tall to tuck my head between my knees, so I bend as best as I can and try to take deep breaths.
“You okay back there?”
“Yeah,” I say.
“You’re not going to throw up?”
“No.” I’m not actually sure, though. I do feel a little queasy this time around. I tuck my tongue against my cheek and try to think of something else, but feel all the blood rushing to my face. I’m concentrating so much on my breathing that I don’t even realize we’re at my parents’ house when we’ve stopped.
“Is this the right place?”
“Oh, yeah.” I pay through the app and get out, stumbling as I walk but quickly getting my footing. My parents rush out of the house.
“You had me so worried!” my mom says through tears. Her arms are around my waist on the sidewalk. She doesn’t realize her petite stature is keeping me steady, but it is. I hold on to her and start crying.
“What happened, Jackson?” Dad asks, putting his hand on my shoulder.
“I don’t know.” It’s about the best answer I can come up with off-hand.
“Come in the house. Livvy and Jon have been calling.”
“Why?” I ask, now having trouble walking because of my mom. “Mom, I’ve got it,” I whisper, keeping one arm around her and moving toward the house.
“Your collapse was on the news. Then no one knew where you were. We’ve been trying to call you.”
“I was supposed to be in class. My phone’s on silent, I’m sure.”
“Why aren’t you in class?” Mom asks, standing in the foyer and leaning against the door.
“It’s my Wit period. We can go wherever to work… and everything…” I sigh, then become overwhelmed with confusion and frustration. “Everything just got really fucked up.”
Dad raises his brows, surprised at my choice of words. I walk into the living room and sit down on the couch, dropping my head in my hands and letting tears flow freely. “Coley’s been avoiding me. I couldn’t figure out why. Asher thinks we hooked up–we didn’t–but he sort-of went off the rails about us. And Pryana–she’
s our managing editor–she was raped over the weekend and Coley’s telling me I better have a good alibi, and I don’t have one.”
“What?!” I hear it in stereo from both of my parents.
“When?” Mom asks.
“Where?” Dad adds.
“After formal. Maybe at her place. She doesn’t even know.”
“How is she?” my mother follows up.
“Coley wouldn’t tell me.”
“Well, you were at the hotel, weren’t you? Surely your fraternity brothers can vouch for you,” my father says.
I shake my head. “I took Coley there.” Mom’s jaw drops open. “I didn’t feel like staying there, but the room was paid for, so I thought I’d do something nice for her. I showed her to the room and grabbed my things and went home. Alone… and proceeded to get wasted.”
“How did you get home?” Dad asks.
“I took the car service.”
“Okay.”
“And you got drunk… alone?” my mother asks.
I nod my head.
“And then what?” Dad asks.
“I called Coley. We talked for a few minutes, but she contends she has no proof where I was.”
“Were you at home all night?”
“Yes!”
“Jackson?” I look at my dad wearily. “You know we have extra security on your floor. We have cameras pointed at your door twenty-four-seven. They record non-stop. If you were there, they’ll prove you were there. I’ll call the company and request copies of the footage. It’s just a matter of finding out when the rape happened.”
“Who did she go to the dance with?”
I look at Mom. “She went with Asher.” I shake my head. “He’s a jerk sometimes, but he wouldn’t rape Pryana. It could be anyone! Right?”
“Sure,” she says. “What does he say?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t talked to him since I found out.” I try to remember everything we talked about today. “I saw him and Pryana after formal on Saturday. They went together to The Wit offices.”
“How do you know?”
“I was waiting for Coley outside of her dorm. I know all of this sounds wrong, but I was just trying to do something nice for a friend. That’s it.”
“Okay,” my dad says, but I can tell he’s struggling to understand my motives.