“I haven’t been burned yet.”
“You haven’t been close enough to the flame.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
“Meg!” Katie chided me. “I get it. He’s cute. But please… He is not worth it. I can tell from one glance that he’s not a good guy. Please, Meg. Let’s go.”
“Listen to your friend, little Meggie,” Greyson laughed. “She knows what she’s talking about.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” She glared at him.
“I’m just saying that you should know what it’s like to date a dirty dog.” He smiled at her sweetly. “Now leave.”
“Brandon.” Katie frowned. “I want to go now.”
“Katie, I’m sorry,” Brandon sighed.
“We’re not going to talk about this here.” Katie gave me one last glance. “Is there anything I can do to convince you to leave?”
I shook my head wordlessly.
“Please don’t let sex make you think he likes you, Meg. Sex is nothing for men like him.”
I stared at her and felt tears pricking my eyes as she spoke. I knew she was right, of course. But that didn’t stop me from hoping that something else would happen.
I stood there wondering why I didn’t run out as fast as I could. And then it struck me. I couldn’t. My body wouldn’t let me leave. A part of me started to understand why women stayed with men they knew were inherently bad. When you were bitten by the love bug, it was hard to do anything but hope and pray that somehow it could work out.
There was silence in the room as we all stood there. Finally, Katie shook her head and walked through the door, Brandon following behind her. He stopped at the door and turned back to face us before looking at Greyson one last time.
“It doesn’t have to be this way, Greyson. You don’t have to be this way.”
“It always had to be this way.” Greyson’s voice was bleak.
“This isn’t over, Greyson. We’re not in college any more.”
“Just leave, Brandon. Go explain to your woman why you’re not the spawn of the devil before it’s too late.”
“Call us, Meg. If anything happens, call us.” Brandon glanced at me and left the room.
I stood there staring at the ground, feeling confused and worried.
Greyson finally spoke up. “I don’t know why you didn’t leave with your friends.”
“I want to know what happened to Nancy.”
“I don’t know what happened.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t care what you believe, Meg. You should have listened to your friend. What we had was about nothing more than sex.”
“I don’t care.” I bit my lip as I lied. His words had cut me to the core. I’d really thought we were beyond that stage.
“If you’re staying, you better get back outside. The tests will be starting soon.”
“Okay.” I nodded and glanced at him. He was surveying me with an odd light in his eyes.
He sighed. “You shouldn’t have stayed, Meg.”
“I couldn’t leave,” I whispered, and he nodded back at me.
“That’s what I was afraid of.”
***
I didn’t go back outside right away. I couldn’t face the others and the questions in their eyes. I needed to compose myself, and I wanted to check to see if Nancy was back in the room. Part of me knew that she wouldn’t be there, but I was hoping beyond hope that she would have shown back up.
I quickly walked into our room and looked around. I stopped as I looked at my bed and the messy sheets. I was pretty confident that I had made my bed in the morning, like I always did. My breathing slowed as I looked around the room again to see if anything else looked askew. Nothing else seemed off, so I walked over to the bed and pulled off the duvet and the sheets to see if someone had left a note for me, but there was nothing there.
I threw the bedding back onto the bed and was about to walk back out of the room when I saw something shiny glittering underneath Nancy’s bed. I ran back and quickly pulled it out, and I was surprised to see a diary. I opened it slowly, feeling bad for invading Nancy’s privacy, but I needed to see what she had written in case there were any clues inside.
The diary appeared to have been started a long time ago, as the first entries were about some guy named Hunter who she appeared to have been in love with while in school. There was a lot of angst and emotion, and it seemed like Nancy had really had the bug for him. I flicked through the pages quickly, not wanting to read about her obviously unrequited and painful school crush. I flipped back a few pages, when I realized that my eyes had flickered over an entry about Maria.
“Maria is bringing her new boyfriend home this weekend. Mom and Dad are excited that she’s coming home, but that’s because they don’t know the truth. I can’t believe that Maria is stripping now. I hope Ryan doesn’t find out she’s coming home. He’s going to flip a switch. It’s so unfair that Maria has two guys and I have none. I wish that Hunter would notice me...”
I stopped reading then, as it seemed that the writing had changed pretty quickly back to her crush on Hunter. I sat on her bed and thought for a moment about what I had just read. I assumed that Maria’s boyfriend was Brandon. But what did she mean about the stripping? Had Maria been a stripper? And if so, did that mean that the club really was a strip joint? But who was Ryan? And why had Nancy been worried that he would find out about her new boyfriend? I flipped through again, more carefully this time, to see what else I could find. I paused on the next page as I saw another entry.
“Maria’s boyfriend Brandon is gorgeous. One of the most gorgeous men I’ve ever seen. He makes Hunter look like a little boy. Maria told me that he’s the best sex she’s ever had. I tried not to show her how uneasy she made me feel as she went into detail. I don’t think she knows I’m still a virgin. I don’t...”
I sat up straight as something hit me. Nancy was eighteen. And supposedly, Maria had dated Brandon ten years ago, Nancy would have been eight when all of this had gone down. Why would she have been writing about a boy she had a crush on at eight? And the sex thing? It didn’t make sense. There was no way that an eight-year-old had written this diary.
So that meant one of two things: this was someone else’s diary or this was written at a later date. Either way, this diary had been left here for a purpose. This wasn’t a case of Nancy accidentally leaving her diary in the room. Whoever had left the diary in the room wanted me to see it.