My Freshman Year: Day 50

Days as a Freshman: 50

Mood: Nervous

“Grace! Hey, come here! Have you heard?”

Sitting down next to Crystal and Naima, I set my plate of salad, tuna, and french fries on the table and pretended that I hadn’t eaten the same thing yesterday, the day before, and the day before that.

“I thought maybe you would have heard something…” Naima stirred her bowl of chocolate ice cream and chocolate sprinkles forcefully, whipping the whole thing into a soupy mess. Somehow, Naima could eat ice cream with every meal and never gain a stray pound.

“Heard what?” I looked down at my water glass before taking a swallow. Inspecting before drinking became a habit after finding a stray piece of someone else’s hair a few weeks before.

“The whole soccer team thing, idiot!” Crystal looked at me like I had two heads, and both of them were being stupid. “Last night, at their Thirsy Thursday party? People are saying a girl was assaulted.”

I stopped eating, my fork poised with nowhere to go. “At the soccer house?”

“Who knows what’s really true,” her appetite still in tact, Naima scooped a watery glob of ice cream into her mouth before continuing, “but people are totally talking about how this freshman maybe got rufied and woke up naked in one of the guys’s beds.”

“How do you know if you get rufied?” Putting my fork down, I pushed my plate away, my hunger having disappeared completely.

“You feel all dizzy and stuff. Kinda like you’re gonna faint.” Crystal looked at us with wide eyes, her silverware still poised in her hands. “It’s weird. It’s like you can’t talk and then things go fuzzy and then you wake up and can’t remember a thing.”

“How do you know all that?” Now even Naima had put her spoon down.

“It happened to me once. In high school.” Crystal looked down quickly, cutting into her veggie burger. “Nothing bad went down. My friends brought me home. But it was like…really weird.”

Naima looked at me, but neither of us knew how to follow up such a revelation. So I decided to press the issue that was stealing my appetite and making me feel light headed. “Are they saying who was involved?”

“No…” Crystal looked up at me. “I wouldn’t worry about it. There’s no way Sasha had anything to do with it.”

“I didn’t say—!”

“No, but you look so nervous that you might as well have.” Naima smiled at me, no doubt trying to wipe the panic from my face. “He’s not someone who would be involved in something as disgusting as this.”

I smiled back at her, weaker than I wanted to. I had a study session with Sasha after dinner tonight. It had been something to look forward to all week.

But now I wasn’t sure I was all that excited.