Set Me Free ➳ m.f.z.

129 Days Before

One Hundred and Twenty-Nine Days Before

After my last first class of my first week at Weston Willow, I entered Room 43 to an unlikely sight: the diminutive and shirtless Paige, wearing only a bra and underwear, hunched over an ironing board, attacking a pink lace dress. Sweat trickled down her forehead and chest as she ironed with great enthusiasm, her right arm pushing the iron across the length of the shirt with such vigor that her breathing nearly duplicated Mrs. Cobbs'.

"I have a date," she explained. "This is an emergency." She paused to catch her breath. "Do you know"—breath—"how to iron?"

I walked over to the pink dress. It was wrinkled like an old man who'd spent his youth sunbathing. If only Pay didn't ball up her every belonging and stuff it into random dresser drawers. "I think you just turn it on and press it against the dress, right?" I said. "I don't know. I didn't even know we had an iron."

"We don't. It's Kendall's. But Kendall doesn't know how to iron, either. And when I asked Chloe, she started yelling, 'You're not going to impose the patriarchal paradigm on me.' Oh, God, I need to smoke. I need to smoke, but I can't reek when I see Asher's parents. Okay, screw it. We're going to smoke in the bathroom with the shower on. The shower has steam. Steam gets rid of wrinkles, right?

"By the way," she said as I followed her into the bathroom, "if you want to smoke inside during the day, just turn on the shower. The smoke follows the steam up the vents."

Though this made no scientific sense, it seemed to work. The shower's shortage of water pressure and low showerhead made it all but useless for showering, but it worked great as a smoke screen.

Sadly, it made a poor iron. Pay tried ironing the dress once more ("I'm just gonna push really hard and see if that helps") and finally put it on wrinkled. She matched the dress with black healed sandals.

Just then, Asher knocked on the door. I'd seen him once or twice before, but Paige never introduced me to him and didn't have a chance to that night.

"Oh. My God. Can't you at least press your shirt?" he asked, even though Pay was standing in front of the ironing board. "We're going out with my parents." Asher looked awfully nice in his pressed blue button down. His short, brown hair was gelled and combed back nicely. He looked like a movie star— one that was a dick, though.

"Look, I did my best. We don't all have maids to do our ironing."

"P, that chip on your shoulder makes you look even shorter."

"Christ, can't we get out the door without fighting?"

"I'm just saying. It's the opera. It's a big deal to my parents. Whatever. Let's go." I felt like leaving, but it seemed stupid to hide in the bathroom, and Asher was standing in the doorway, one hand rubbing his cheek and the other fiddling with his car keys as if to say, Let's go.

"I could wear a ball gown and your parents would still hate me!" she shouted.

"That's not my fault! You antagonize them!" He held up the car keys in front of her. "Look, we're going now or we're not going."

"Fuck it. I'm not going anywhere with you," Pay said.

"Fine. Have a great night." Asher slammed the door so hard that a sizable biography of Leo Tolstoy (most famous words: "Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.") fell off my bookshelf and landed with a thud on our checkered floor like an echo of the slamming door.

"AHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!" she screamed.

"So that's Asher," I said.

"Yes."

"He seems nice."

Pay laughed, knelt down next to the minifridge, and pulled out a gallon of milk. She opened it, took a swig, winced, half coughed, and sat down on the couch with the milk between her legs.

"Is it sour or something?"

"Oh, I should have mentioned that earlier. This isn't milk. It's five parts milk and one part vodka. I call it ambrosia. Drink of the gods. You can barely smell the vodka in the milk, so the Hawk can't catch me unless he actually takes a sip. The downside is that it tastes like sour milk and rubbing alcohol, but it's Friday night, K, and my boyfriend is a dick. Want some?"

"I think I'll pass." Aside from a few sips of champagne on New Year's under the watchful eye of my parents (they didn't watch Maddie so she was always off drinking), I'd never really drunk any alcohol, and "ambrosia" didn't seem like the drink with which to start. Outside, I heard the pay phone ring. Given the fact that 190 boarders shared five pay phones, I was amazed at how infrequently it rang. We weren't supposed to have cell phones, but I'd noticed that some of the Willow Crowns carried them surreptitiously. And most non-Crowns called their parents, as I did, on a regular basis, so parents only called when their kids forgot.

"Are you going to get that?" Pay asked me. I didn't feel like being bossed around by her, but I also didn't feel like fighting.

Through a buggy twilight, I walked to the pay phone, which was drilled into the wall between Rooms 36 and 37. On both sides of the phone, dozens of phone numbers and esoteric notes were written in pen and marker (205.555.1584; Tommy to airport 4:20; 773.573.6521; JG—Kuffs?). Calling the pay phone required a great deal of patience. I picked up on about the ninth ring.

"Can you get Pay for me?" Asher asked. It sounded like he was on a cell phone.

"Yeah, hold on."

I turned, and she was already behind me, as if she knew it would be he. I handed her the receiver and walked back to the room.

A minute later, three words made their way to our room through the thick, still air of Oklahoma at almost-night. "Screw you too!" Paige shouted.

Back in the room, she sat down with her ambrosia and told me, "He says I ratted out Jack and Kalani. That's what the Crowns are saying. That I ratted them out. Me. That's why the writing on your forehead. That's why the nearly killing you. 'Cause you live with me, and they say I'm a rat."

I tried to remember who Jack and Kalani were. The names were familiar, but I had heard so many names in the last week, and I couldn't match "Jack" and "Kalani" with faces. And then I remembered why: I'd never seen them. They got kicked out the year before, having committed the Trifecta.

"How long have you been dating him?" I asked.

"Nine months. We never got along. I mean, I didn't even briefly like him. Like, my mom and my dad—my dad would get pissed, and then he would beat the shit out of my mom. And then my dad would be all nice, and they'd have like a honeymoon period. But with Asher, there's never a honeymoon period. God, how could he think I was a rat? I know, I know: Why don't we break up?" She ran a hand through her hair, clutching a fistful of it atop her head, and said, "I guess I stay with him because he stays with me. And that's not an easy thing to do. I'm a bad girlfriend. He's a bad boyfriend. We deserve each other."

"But—"

"I can't believe they think that," she said as she walked to the bookshelf and pulled down the almanac. She took a long pull off his ambrosia. "Goddamn Wilow Crowns. It was probably one of them that ratted out Jack and Kalani and then blamed me to cover their tracks. Anyway, it's a good night for staying in. Staying in with Kenz and ambrosia."

"I still—" I said, wanting to say that I didn't understand how you could kiss someone who believed you were a rat if being a rat was the worst thing in the world, but P cut me off.

"Not another word about it. You know what the capital of Sierra Leone is?"

"No."

"Me neither," she said, "but I intend to find out." And with that, she stuck her nose in the almanac, and the conversation was over.