“Zeke was telling me that I shouldn’t talk about murdering the person who did this to your room.”
“And you said you wouldn’t, but here we are,” Zeke retorts.
“I never said I wouldn’t. I told you that I know what I’m doing. Livvie knows I’m not going to leave her alone with your ass. Babe, what are you looking for?”
“A tissue. I can’t even find a tissue box,” she laments. Her lower lip quivers. Tears threaten to fall once again.
I panic and rip off my T-shirt, shoving it in her face. “Here.”
“What’s this for?” She turns the gray cloth over in her hand.
“Tissue.” I point at her nose.
“Here.” Zeke shoves a box of Kleenexes in between us. He grabs the shirt and throws it in my face.
“Put this on or you’ll start a riot,” he adds with a jerk of his head.
We all turn toward the door to see about twenty girls with their faces in the doorway. I glare at them as I tug my shirt over my head. Once it falls into place, I stalk over. “I want to know who did this. Start talking or my brother is going through all your phones. I know one of you videotaped it. I’ll count to ten. First one who comes forward gets a hundred bucks. If no one comes through, Zeke here will be hacking into every account you have and displaying all your dirty laundry on the campus message board.” I flip my hand over.
“Ten—”
A phone hits my palm before I can get the next number out. I glance in surprise at the owner—a tall, athletic girl with brown curly hair.
“I’m a broke college student,” she answers in reply to my unasked question. “I’m not turning down Benjamin to protect some dumbass fraternity.”
“Good answer.” I pull out my wallet and hand over a couple of bills. “Send me the video. As for the rest of you, if I see one thing about this on the internet, you better hope your entire internet history is cleaner than a nun’s habit.”
They nod in unison. I guess word’s gotten around that when we say shit, we mean it. I give the girl my phone number and then shoo everyone out. We don’t need to be gawked at like we’re zoo animals.
“Let’s order some pizza for the floor,” I suggest.
“Why in the hell would we do that?” Zeke asks, taking my phone from my hand. He wants to see the video.
“Because you can’t beat everyone with a stick all of the time. Sometimes, you gotta be nice. Give and take. Carrot and stick. It’s what the coach does. He runs our asses like we’re dogs and then gives us a huge treat at the end of the day.”
“Fine. Order the pizza.” He tosses me his phone.
“Baby, come away from your stuff. We’re going to hire someone to clean all this shit up.”
“But what about Erika’s things? All of it is ruined.”
“Not to be mean, but Erika’s stuff wasn’t real good in the first place. Why don’t you figure out what she wants to keep and then we’ll replace the rest?” Zeke suggests.
“She’s not going to accept charity. She’s not like that,” Livvie frets.
“Tell her it’s an insurance payout.”
“We have insurance for this?” I ask in surprise.
“No, but that’s our business and we take care of our business, right?”
“Well, I think Tank might have something to say about that.” Tank’s pretty possessive about everything. I once heard that he beat someone up for sitting in his chair at the campus bar.
“Great. Tank can pay.” Livvie throws up her arms.
“The only person who ain’t paying is Erika, okay? Zeke, you find out who did this, and you, Levi, once you’re done ordering pizzas—and breadsticks—help me clean up this mess.”
“Yes, ma’am,” we chorus.