chapter 2

The cell of the room was so small that when I flipped him off, I almost poke his eye." You're a genius, bradford. Seriously, where do you get your material?"

"Oh, but dude, this is perfect." my roommate trucked his hands in the pockets of the argyle sweater-vest he always wore under his blazer. Through a moth hole. I watched his right thumb wriggle in excitement." because the party tonight at Lawrence hall. And Lena si throwing it because her sister always ships her vodka. And you know who Lena rooms with." he waggled his eyebrows.

at that time, I finally had closed my book." don't tell me your trying to set me up with my—"

" Your soul mate?" I must've looked violent,

because Tom put very serious hands on my shoulders." i'm not trying." he said, enunciating each word, " to set you up with Charlotte. I'm trying to get you drunk."

Charlotte and Lena had set up camp down in the Lawrence Hall basement. As tom had promised, it wasn't hard to get pass the hall mother. Each dorm had one ( in addition to our army of RAs) an older woman from town who oversaw her students from the front desk. They sorted mail, arranged for birthday cakes, lent an ear when your homesick—but they also enforce the hall rules. Lawrence was famous for sleeping on the job.

The party was in the basement kitchen.

Though it was stocked with plates and pots and even spindly four-burner stove, the pans were all dented so they looked like they'd been worn to war. Tom squeezed against the stove while I shut the door behind us; within seconds, one of the knobs rubbed a half-moon of grease into his sweater-vest. The girl next to him smiled thinly and turned back to her friends, a tumbler of something dangling from her hand. There had been atleast thirty people in there. packed in shoulder to shoulder.

Grabbing my arm, Tom began shouldering us to the back of the tiny kitchen. I felt like being pulled through a dark, dank wardrobe into some boozy narnia.

" that's the wierd townie dealer," he whispered to me. " he's selling drugs. That's Governor Schumer's son. he's buying drugs."

" Great," I said, only half-listening.

" And those two girls? They summer in Italy.

Like, they use 'summer' as a verb. Their dada runs an offshore drilling operations."

I raised an eyebrow.

"what, I'm poor, I notice these things."

"right," if it was a joke, it was a lame one. Tom might've had a hole in his sweater-vest, buy back in our room, he also had the smallest, thinnest laptop I'd every seen. " your poor."

"comperatively speaking." Tom dragged me along behind him. " You and me, we're upper-middle class. we're peasants."

The party was loud and crowded, but Tom was determined to drag me all the way to the far wall. I did'nt know why until a strange voice curled through the ciggarette smoke.

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