“Mom—”
“We were so worried about you after that terrible accident, but Les couldn’t get off work until today—”
“It wasn’t that big a deal, Mom—”
“And we just had to come up and see you, but your room is empty in the dorm. You weren’t in classes—Claire, what’s happened to you? I can’t believe you’d do something like this!”
“Like what?” she asked, sighing. “Mom, would you quit shaking me? I’m getting dizzy.”
Mom let go and folded her arms. She wasn’t very tall—just a couple of inches over Claire’s height, even in midheeled shoes—and Dad, who was glowering at Shane in the background, was as tall and twice as broad. “Is it him?” Dad asked. “Did he get you into trouble?”
“Not me,” Shane said. “I’ve just got that kind of face.”
“Shut up!” Claire hissed. She could hear that he thought all this was funny. She didn’t. “Shane’s just a friend, Dad. Like Eve.”
“Eve?” Her parents looked at each other blankly. “You mean—” As one, they cast horrified glances at Eve, who was standing with her hands folded, trying to look as demure as it was possible to look while wearing an outfit that looked like something a Goth ballerina might wear—all black netting in the skirt and red satin up top. She smiled sweetly, but it was kind of spoiled by the red lipstick (had she borrowed Miranda’s?) and skull earrings.
Mom said faintly, “Claire, you used to have such nice friends. What happened to Elizabeth?”
“She went to Texas A&M, Mom.”
“That’s no reason not to still be friends.”
Mom logic. Claire decided that Shane had been right—there was no getting out of this one. She might as well jump into the pool; the sharks were circling no matter what she did. “Mom, Eve and Shane are two of my roommates. Here. In this house.”
Silence. Mom and Dad looked frozen. “Les?” Mom asked. “Did she say she was living here?”
“Young lady, you are not living here,” Dad said. “You live in the dorm.”
“I’m not. I’m living here, and that’s my decision.”
“That’s illegal! The rules said that you have to live on campus, Claire. You can’t just—”
Outside the windows, night was slipping up on them, stealthy and quick as an assassin. “I can,” Claire said. “I did. I’m not going back there.”
“Well, I’m not paying good money just to have you squat in some old wreck with a bunch of—” Dad was at a loss for words to describe how little he thought of Eve and Shane. “Friends! And are they even in school?”
“I’m currently between majors,” Shane offered.
“Shut up!” Claire was nearly in tears now.
“All right, that’s it. Get your things, Claire. You’re coming with us.”
All the amusement faded out of Shane’s face. “No, she isn’t,” he said. “Not at night. Sorry.”
Dad got red-faced and even more furious, and leveled a finger at her. “Is this why you’re here? Older boys? Living under the same roof?”
“Oh, Claire,” Mom sighed. “You’re too young for this. You—”
“Shane,” Shane supplied.
“Shane, I’m sure you’re a perfectly nice boy”—she didn’t sound especially convinced—“but you have to understand that Claire is a very special girl, and she’s very young.”
“She’s a kid!” Dad interrupted. “She’s sixteen! And if you took advantage of her—”
“Dad!” Claire thought her face might be just as red as his, for very different reasons. “Enough already! Shane’s my friend! Stop embarrassing me!”
“Embarrassing you? Claire, how do you think we feel?” Dad roared.
In the silence, Claire heard Michael say mildly, from the stairs, “I think maybe we’d all better sit down.”
They didn’t all sit down. Shane and Eve escaped to the kitchen, where Claire heard a clattering of pots and furious whispering; she was sitting uncomfortably on the couch between her parental bookends, looking mournfully at Michael, who was sitting in the armchair. He looked calm and collected, but then, he would. Mom, Dad, this is Michael, he’s a dead guy…. Yeah, that would really help.
“My name is Michael Glass,” he said, and extended his hand to Claire’s dad like an equal. Dad, surprised, took it and shook. “You’ve already met our other two roommates, Eve Rosser and Shane Collins. Sir, I know you’re concerned about Claire. You should be. She’s on her own for the first time, and she’s younger than most kids coming to college. I don’t blame you for being worried.”
Dad, defused, settled for looking stubborn. “And who the heck are you, Michael Glass?”
“I own this house,” he said. “I rent a room to your daughter.”
“How old are you?”
“A little over eighteen. So are Shane and Eve. We’ve known each other a long time, and to be honest, we didn’t really want to let another person into the house, but…” Michael shrugged. “We had an empty bedroom, and splitting costs four ways is better. I thought a long time about letting Claire stay here. We had house meetings about it.”
Claire blinked at him. He had? They did?
“My daughter’s a minor,” Dad said. “I’m not happy about this. Not at all.”
“Sir, I understand. I wasn’t too happy about it, either. Even having her here is a risk for us, you understand.” Michael didn’t have to go into it, Claire saw; her dad totally got it. “But she needed us, and we couldn’t turn her away.”
“You mean you couldn’t turn her money away,” Dad said, frowning. For answer, Michael got up, went to a wooden box sitting on the shelf, and took out an envelope. He handed it to Dad.
“That’s what she paid me,” he said. “The whole amount. I kept it in case she wanted to leave. This wasn’t about money, Mr. Danvers. It was about Claire’s safety.”
Michael glanced across at her, and she bit her lip. She’d been hoping to avoid this—desperately hoping—but she couldn’t see any way out now. She nodded slightly and slumped back on the couch cushions, trying to make herself small. Smaller.
“Claire’s dorm was girls-only,” Claire’s mom put in. She reached over to stroke Claire’s hair absently, the way she did when Claire was little. Claire endured it. Actually, she secretly liked it, a little, and had to fight not to relax against Mom’s side and let herself be hugged. Protected. “She was safe, wasn’t she? That Monica girl said—”
“You talked to Monica?” Claire said sharply, and looked wide-eyed at her mother. Mom frowned a little, dark eyes concerned.
“Yes, of course I did. I was trying to find out where you’d gone, and Monica was very helpful.”
“I’ll bet,” Claire muttered. The idea of Monica standing there smiling at her mom—looking innocent and nice, probably—was sickening.
“She said you were staying here,” Mom finished, still frowning. “Claire, honey, why would you leave the dorm? I know you’re not a silly girl. You wouldn’t do it if you didn’t have a reason.”
Michael said, “She did. She was being hazed.”
“Hazed?” Mom repeated the word like she had no idea what it meant.
“From what Claire told me, it started small—all the freshmen girls get it from the older ones. Nasty stuff, but not dangerous. But she got on the wrong side of the wrong girl, and she was getting hurt.”
“Hurt?” That was Dad, who now had something to hold on to.
“When she came here, she had bruises like a road map,” Michael said. “To be honest, I wanted to call the cops. She wouldn’t let me. But I couldn’t let her go back there. She wasn’t just getting knocked around…. I think her life was in danger.”
Mom’s hand had frozen in Claire’s hair, and she let out a little moan.
“It’s not that bad,” Claire offered. “I mean, look, nothing broken or anything. I had a sore ankle for a while, and a black eye, but—”