Devious Minds (7 page)

“
P
orter!” I pounded on the kid’s dorm door. “Porter, open the door!”

Shuffling noises as graceful as a bull in a china shop came from behind the door.

“Let me in, asshole. I know you’re there. We have practice in ten minutes, and if you’re late,
I
have to do extra sets of core drills. You hung over?”

Finally, the door opened and Porter appeared in his boxers, rubbing his eyes like a sleepy toddler. “Fine. I have to piss. I’ll be right back.”

“Did you tie one on last night, Baby Porter?”

He flipped me the bird and started a slow walk down the dorm hall.

“Hustle up!”

No sooner had Jack left than the elevators popped open to reveal a certain widely despised DJ. I saw her first. She was balancing two coffees and a donut box along with her messenger bag. She was wearing leggings, a pair of Converse, and a graphic T-shirt. I couldn’t make out the writing, but I was sure it was something ironic or political.
Hipsters
. Before she looked over at Jack’s door, I stepped back, slamming it shut.

A second later, a light knocking started.

“Dimebag, you up?”

Dimebag
? I made a mental note to get that out of Porter later.

“I brought coffee and donuts. Two maple bars for you. Your favorite. I seriously don’t understand how you can eat like that, but whatever.”

Another knock at the door.

“Jack?”

“Gooooo awayyyy,” I mumbled in the best rendition of Jack Porter I could muster. It landed somewhere between a man’s groan on his deathbed and a screeching owl.

“Jack? Are you okay? You sound sick.” I heard her foot tap outside the door. “Okay, well, if you’re sick, I don’t want to come inside, so I’ll leave your coffee and donuts outside the door. I have the coffee spout set up right over the crease of the paper cup. If that isn’t how you find it, don’t drink it. Also, the donuts are arranged in a T shape. The stem of the T is fatter rather than longer. Should they not be in the aforementioned T form, consider them altered and, again, don’t eat them.”

I shook my head, wondering what Sydney’s dorm room was like. She was like a police detective who’d been kicked off the force after losing it. Solving the crime from home, just a basement full of red string connecting suspects. A web of deception and lies—trust no one.

I heard a low thump, followed by a short breath, but she remained by the door.

“Hey, I brought you something else. It’s a new mix for our birthday.” She shot a CD under the door, and I caught it under my foot. “Also, I did what you suggested. I sent a copy into that record label. It’s a long shot, but the worst they can say is no, right? Or I guess they can tell me to toss my mixer off a roof and go fuck myself. Which is a real probability.”

She let out a deep sigh.

“Also, and just to hedge my bets, I sent a copy of my old radio personality work to the local broadcasters in the city. I might have a chance at a summer job with one, but the 98.7 KRUG one is a long shot.”

“Shit.” She kicked the doorframe. “I’m talking to a door. This is ridiculous. Okay, love you, shit stain. FYI, Allison had a real good time last night, and Nick liked you too.”

Then her footsteps faded down the hall.

Yes, last night. Threatening Fernando’s scholarship. Well, that’s how I saw it, so I had to stop her. I probably shouldn’t have shoved her back into the bathroom. That could have been taken the wrong way, but I wasn’t thinking. I was feeling. And then she put her hand on my chin, turning my cheek so I had to look into her saucer-sized brown eyes, and tells me to fuck off. That I’m ruining Jack Porter. That I made her feel worthless.

I have no idea what she’s talking about. Two years ago, I left to get water, and when I came back with two bottles and a bag of gummy bears from the snack machine (because she said she liked them—now I ask you, what kind of asshole remembers that amount of detail from a one-night stand?) she was gone. Like nowhere to be found and disappeared into thin air. I ran the two flights to her guest dorm room, and her friends were there, but no Sydney. She left without an explanation. It took me weeks to push her toward the back of my mind. Now she was here accusing me of wrongdoing?

Last night at the party it took me a good ten minutes to calm myself in the Kappa bathroom, and when I came back to the rec room, Nick Sharbus was hovering over her. I caught him rubbing her back in a circle. He did that move where you start off high up on the shoulders, circle twice, then lower your hand to the small of the back with the fluidity of liquid—my move.

Katharine was pissed, but I had to leave with Fernando and do what the little witch asked. We tossed Sydney’s tires into her truck bed, but I wasn’t about to wake the entire football team. Instead, we stole the team jersey—we sign one every year on our first day of drills, sort of a commitment thing—and in red magic marker, I wrote “SORRY” and tossed it in with the tires.

No cops at our door at one in the morning, so I guess apology accepted. But where was my apology? Nowhere, and that little snot always seemed to win.

Not today.

“What?” Jack was standing in the doorway. He bent down to grab a crumpled T-shirt off the floor. “You just mumbled, ‘Not today,’ and lifted a clenched fist toward the ceiling.” He dropped his eyes just outside the door, and I grabbed the CD from the floor, tucking it into the waistband of my shorts.

“What’s this?” he asked, hovering over Sydney’s gifts. Then he flipped the box open. “Oh shit. Sydney was here.”

I nodded.

“Okay. Did she tell you the exact location of the coffee lid and formation of the donuts?” He walked past me, threw on some basketball shorts, and pulled a pair of socks from the drawer. “Because that’s important.”

I shook my head.

“One time, some kids in my science class pulled a chunk of rat meat from our dissection table and tucked it into my tuna sandwich. It was my fault really. I left my lunchbox above my hook when I should have kept it in my backpack.” He threw on his Nikes and grabbed a sweatshirt from the back of his desk chair.

“Anyways, I ate the sandwich, and they all laughed at me. It was awful. When I got home, I felt sick to my stomach but couldn’t tell my mom because she’s horrible. So I made the mistake of telling Sydney, and she slashed all their bike tires.”

He started to laugh softly as he continued his embarrassing confession.

“And for the next three weeks, Sydney would walk into our classroom before lunch and move things on all their clothing hooks. Halfway unzip bags. Spray cheap perfume on their coats. They were terrified of her. One girl, Nicole Farris, didn’t eat for like a month. Nicole wouldn’t trust the food her mother packed because Sydney left a Barbie doll head with the eyes X’d out in her lunchbox.” After surveying the dorm hallway like a member of the Secret Service, he grabbed the coffee and donuts and pulled them inside. “Okay, let’s go.”

A
fter less than a week of recon, I’d set phase two of
Destroy Sinister
into action. Now, you’re going to think I’m the biggest douche in the world, so I won’t spoil it now. Just wait for her reaction. Anyway, after much investigating, I’d discovered Sunday Lane had quite the following around campus. Half of which wanted to quarter her body four horses style, and the other half wanted to build a throne for her in the center of campus. I chose to focus on the out-for-blood fan base.

Late at night, pencil and paper in hand, I listened to every podcast I could find on the campus radio station website.

Here’s what I recorded and successfully decoded from the mouth of Sunday Lane:

1. Spanky
(who, after careful analysis, I knew was the dean)
has fruity breath. Not because he’s a known diabetic, but because he’s constantly tossing the salads of the higher-ups
.

2. The shrieking T’s
(which I determined were Tina, Theresa, and Tiffany from the cheerleading squad)
wear off-white all the time because it makes it easier to hide cum stains. Since they apparently live in a land where it rains semen, and if they don’t get semen in their mouths before midnight, every day, they turn into Gremlins.

3. Number twenty-four
(me)
has a microscopic prick and you’d need to request Hubble telescope assistance and hover it within two inches of my crotch to even find an organ down there
.

4. There are three girls in Psych 101 who meet in the upper level of the library and have an orgy every Thursday.
(Note to self: get to the library more often).
Then afterward they drink mochaccinos and swear to never do it again. But without fail, they arrive and the cycle continues. She refers to them as the Freudian sluts
.

5. She calls her roommate a shallow puddle in human form. Just a babbling blond ooze steeped with insecurity.
(Allison).
Not too much on her, but the word “vapid” is used a lot.

6. This might have been the most important discovery.
The Brown-eyed Virgin—a boy she describes has the grace of a blind one-legged man riding a bicycle across an ice-skating rink and the sexual prowess of a lamppost
. She told a lot of stories about this guy. They were too personal and too detailed. I knew it was Jack.

“
H
ey Bri-Bri,” I tweeted at Brian as I stepped into the studio.

He hated it when I called him that. So naturally, I did it in the most syrupy tone I could muster. Instead of his usual pep talk on how to be a respectable member of society (given at the beginning of each show), he pranced around in a circle, lowering and raising an envelope in his hands.

“You did it, you bitch!” He tossed the envelope at me. “They want you. I’m so jealous. Which dorm do you live in, so I can set it on fire and take you out for good?”

He was wearing a crazed smile as he plopped down in his rolling chair. Dramatically lifting his eyes to the ceiling, he released a growl. “Seriously. You are the worst person I know, Sydney, and good things always happen to you. So unfair,” he muttered under his breath.

“Yes, I was just thinking about how good things
always
happen to me the other day. Like, for example, a girl in line at the school café dumped an entire bottle of ranch on the linoleum floor. I conveniently stepped in it and slipped, smearing white cream across my black pants, and three guys called me DJ Cum Stain. Clever, huh?” Actually, I was pretty stoked they even recognized me.

Pretty soon the twenty-somethings would outweigh the octogenarians at the club. Rick, the sleazy gold chain-wearing club owner, said his weekend business tripled since I started six weeks ago. He said he’d pay me ten bucks an hour on top of my tips, and if I played on Halloween, he’d throw in an extra fifty bucks. I said I’d do it on one condition: two extra underage bands—for Allison and Jack.

Next Friday was Halloween, Jack’s and my birthday. Isn’t it odd we were born on the same day, two years apart? Rumor had it my mother was a werewolf who could only physically conceive a human when the full moon rose on the fourth Tuesday in January. Of course, I spread that rumor, which got back to her at a PTA meeting, and I was grounded for a month.

Jack would be nineteen, and I would be the blessed twenty-one. Legal drinker.
Watch out world! Here I stumble.
Rick agreed to my terms, but before I left his office, he’d said, “Wear a costume. Something that doesn’t look like a ten-year-old boy. No
X-Men
or
Minecraft
shit.”

Duly noted.
Does everyone think I dress like a zitty gamer kid? Where did I go wrong?

I felt a light slap across my face and realized Brain was now standing in front of me. He’d swiped his chubby fingers across my cheek, pushing my mind from my Halloween costume dilemma.

“Read it, slutbag.”

I gave him a dirty look. No one touched me, but Brian was harmless. However, his six-foot-four boyfriend of three years, Dante, was not. He was built like a grain tower with the fragile and mercurial emotions of a mother bear. No doubt, he would tear your shit up if you gave him a reason.

I ripped out the letter and sagged against the wall.

“Read it out loud,” Brian said, eyelashes batting like I was about to start a romantic confession for his ears only.

“Yes, sir… Ahem.” Throat cleared for dramatic effect.

Starnose Entertainment, Ltd.

Austin, Texas

Mr. Brian Bayhouse,

It has come to our attention you employ a personality by the name of Sunday Lane.

Our subsidiary station, 98.7 KRUG, located in Portland, Oregon, is interested in offering Ms. Lane a summer temp-to-perm position. Final determination for the open position will be made in January. Until that time, we will continue to listen and contact you directly if Ms. Lane is chosen to move to the interview process.

We hope Ms. Lane will continue to deliver stellar and entertaining shows.

Amber DeFargo, JD, MBA

Vice President, Talent and Entertainment

Starnose Entertainment, Ltd.

“Aaaaaaahhhhh,” I moaned, and Brian wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Don’t look at me like that. That is what an orgasm sounds like.”

I sank back against the wall, fanning myself with the pearlescent ivory letterhead. It felt so heavy in my hand. It had to be destiny.

“Jesus, good thing I’m into men,” Brian said, shaking his head. “Well, you heard them. Get your ass in there and continue to deliver
stellar and entertaining shows
.”

S
nake was ready to tote my gear when I pulled up outside the club. It was just my regular Sunday gig with the added bonus of ten dollars an hour (high roller).

I stole a glance at Nick as I walked inside, and he lifted his head, sporting a bright smile. “Hey, Gorgeous,” he whispered as I walked past.

Molly’s ears perked up and she laughed to herself.

It took me five minutes to realize he’d said
gorgeous
.

At first, I thought he’d called me George, so I’d spent the last three minutes racking my brain about why I was George. Which George was I? Like a cool George? I even grabbed my cell, looking up George on Urban Dictionary.

Here’s what came up: A guy with a very big (usually huge) penis. No shit. Stop reading and look it up right now.

Then I rewound my entry into the club and played it back in slo-mo: “Heeeeeeyyy, goooorrrrggggeeeooouussss” (insert hair slowly feathering across his forehead, exposing his brown eyes and a cocky slow rise of his strong square jaw).

I was still on fire as I set up my equipment. After the sorority gig, Nick and I parted ways in the parking lot. He’d given me a brief hug, and my face slammed against his T-shirt. He smelled like a cross between ammonia and cigarettes, which actually was disappointing and another crushing blow the strong, silent Bartender Nick I’d built up in my mind.

But there was still hope, and since I’m an optimist (yeah right) I imagined he was a drug dealer forced into a life of dirty work to pay for his grandmother’s hospital bills. After beating himself up about his poor life choices, he rushed out of his meth lab to be with object of his heart’s desire, DJ Lesbos. I would change him. Nick and I, we’d get through this together. His grandmother would be just fine.

“Hey.” Nick’s voice hit me from the side, and I dropped my mic on the stage. “Shit. Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Taking in a deep breath, I casually picked up the mic and placed it on the table. “No problema.” (I was already hating I started off in Spanish). “I was just thinking about—”

“About me?” he teased.

I was pretty sure my vagina dropped through the stage and into the club cellar.
Nope, I see it now. It’s running down the street, screaming, “Danger” in Mystikal’s voice
. A feeling akin to death washed over me, and Nick frowned.

“What’s wrong? Are you feeling okay?” He lifted a hand to my forehead, pressing it against my skin. “No fever.”

Snap out of it, Sydney.

“Oh, sorry, I’m fine. Trying to think up a costume for next week. Rick threatened to call Child Protective Services if I showed up looking like a prepubescent boy.”

Oh God, now he’s going to agree with Rick and forever see me as a George.

He laughed. “Don’t worry about Rick. He’s been singing your praises for the last week. He doesn’t care what you wear. So you’re working on Halloween?”

I nodded and slipped on my headset, pulling up the first track.

“Okay, cool. Well, I’m working until ten. Then I’m going out to some bars with friends. Too bad I can’t take you along.”

I cleared my throat. “That’s my birthday,” I said, trying to be nonchalant. “I’ll be twenty-one.”

Nick’s lips curled up in a faint smile. “No, shit. When’s your set over?”

“Not ‘til eleven. I told Rick I wanted a few hours to celebrate the end of my sobriety. So I arranged pre-mixes for the rest of the night.”

“Awesome. I’ll wait for you to get off.”

My head was spinning on the mega-load wash cycle, just churning and churning. Nick just stood next to me, staring, and I was staring back. After a few seconds, he glanced over to the bar where the first patron was waiting on a drink.

“Okay, or maybe another time?” He jumped off the stage and walked across to the bar.

What the hell am I thinking?
I must have looked like a moron.

Grabbing the mic, I belted, “Yes,” through the speakers.

Nick did a nice fist pump in the air, telling me he got the message. It reminded me of Judd Nelson on the
Breakfast Club
—when he’s walking across the field and he’s like
Yes, Molly Ringwald wants me, and F-you high school
.

God, I wish I had that song right now.