Chapter Twenty Naomi

Chapter Twenty

Naomi

November 2022, six months before her death

The next day is cold and gray, the trees’ branches wilted, as if exhausted from yesterday’s storm. In desperate need of coffee, I walk up to Nassau Street to get Olive’s for breakfast, and to my surprise, I nearly run headfirst into Ben. He’s carrying a bag of food, head down as if in a hurry. I wonder if he has one sandwich in there, or if he’d gotten a second one for his girlfriend.

“Hey,” I say.

He shoves his hands in his pockets and keeps his head bowed low like the trees. “Hey.”

We stand there in silence for a moment, until Ben speaks. “Look, about what happened at the game. She’s not my girlfriend, okay? We broke up months ago. I just, this is embarrassing, but I saw you with Liam so when she said it…I didn’t correct her. It was stupid and, yeah, I’m sorry.”

“Thanks for clearing that up.” I look down at the sidewalk too, still damp from last night’s rain. I believe him. She seemed like she was there to win him back.

“Anyway, I’m guessing it doesn’t really matter now, does it?” When I look up at him, his gaze is somewhere past me. His hands are still in his pockets, and he has his guard up, like he knows I was with Liam last night after the game. Maybe it was for the best that he saw Liam kiss me.

“Yeah, umm…” I say, wondering how to word this. “Ben, I really like hanging out with you, but Liam and I, we still have some shit to figure out—”

“So I saw.” Ben says this abruptly and looks up at me for the first time. I’d expected to see a distant, if not angry, look in his eyes and am surprised to see a sadness there instead. He shifts his weight. “Well, I have to go. See you around.” He pushes his way past me and when he’s a few strides away he stops and turns around. “I just…I think you’re making a mistake. I think you deserve better.”

Defensive, I open my mouth to respond, maybe to tell him the truth— that I’m still in love with Liam —but before I can think of what to say, he dips his head and is gone.

—

On Monday, I worry when Amy doesn’t show up to class. She seems like she’s going through something, but like me, she always tries to deal with it on her own. After class, I text her, where are you? to make sure she’s okay—I hadn’t seen her since Saturday morning—but also to talk, to tell her about Liam and Ben.

I grow more anxious when I don’t hear back from her all day, and after an evening meeting with my thesis advisor, I’m walking back to my dorm in the dark when I’m overcome by an inexplicable sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.

The sensation grows as I enter our building and climb the stairs. I’m rounding the landing when a scream from somewhere deep in the building rips through the silence. I freeze, holding my breath, listening into the dark, until I hear it again, followed by a string of laughter.

Shadows stretch over the hall leading to our room and our front door is ajar. As I approach, my heart beats faster.

Something is wrong.

My thoughts are spiraling—Is it Amy? Is she sick? Hurt? It’d been raining; had there been an accident?—when I see what’s painted on the door: an X. Two angry slashes dripping like blood.

What the hell is going on?

Is this a prank? Some dumb frat guy prank? An X marking an infected house?

I cautiously edge forward, apprehension rising with each step, and brace myself as I tip open the door.

It’s so much worse than I’d expected.

The room is destroyed. Lamps knocked over and shattered, bottles and books and clothes all over the floor like someone had been frantically searching for something. Muddy footprints. Defiled essay pages, scattered across the room. And a strange smell—something grassy, decaying, like rotting trash.

My hands begin to shake. I feel violated.

That’s when I see her. Nearly hidden in all the chaos of the room, Amy’s slender form sits in a heap on the couch, head in her hands, crying.

I rush to her side. “Are you okay?”

She doesn’t respond.

“What happened?” I look her over for injuries and when I notice she’s clutching her hand, blood oozing from it, I feel a fresh wave of panic. Pieces of broken glass litter the floor around her, drops of blood. “You’re bleeding.” I move closer, reaching for her. “Let me see.”

She flinches and pulls away. “It doesn’t hurt.”

I convince her to show me her hand and wince when I see how deep the cut is. “We should take you to the health center.” I find a first-aid kit and wet a wipe with peroxide. “Come here.”

Once we’ve stopped the bleeding, I survey the room. My insides twist as I take in the overturned furniture. The broken glass. Pages ripped from books.

“Did you see that?” Amy points to the far wall, and when I see it, the hairs on the back of my neck rise.

The wall that used to be covered in our Polaroids and posters is now graffitied. Dark red words spray-painted across all our memories: Nos Semper Vigilantes. Below it, Suck my dick and hateful slurs: Slut. Chink. Bitch.

“I looked it up. It means We Are Always Watching, ” Amy says quietly.

It feels as if the temperature in the room has dropped ten degrees. My stomach is in knots and my heart is loud in my chest. I think of the incidentwith Pete, the hate in his eyes when he’d shouted at Ben and me.

Up until now, I believed—na?vely—that Princeton existed on some plane outside normal existence. A place where we could walk alone at night without having to look over our shoulders, without having to worry about the targets pinned to our backs.

Since the pandemic, I’d felt tension in certain circles, in certain rooms. There’d been a growing chasm between students like me and students like them. In a time like this, how could we not stand up for our beliefs? But it was like our beliefs had forced us into tight boxes, oblivious to the nuances and in-betweens. The campus from before the pandemic forced us into remote learning was not the same campus we returned to.

“It’s my fault,” Amy says, staring down into her lap.

“What? Why would you say that? It’s not your fault that there are hateful people in the world. Look, in October, after your surprise party—Ben and I ran into some guys, they were really drunk, and one of them, Pete Whitney, said some racist bullshit. I’m willing to bet he and his friends did this.”

“But that was a month ago.” She’s still looking down as I pull her into my arms, hold her cold, shivering body as if she were a child. Amy shakes her head, sniffs. “This isn’t for you. It’s for me.”

I pull back from her. “It could be for any of us. I’m calling public safety.” I grab my phone to call the campus police, but she puts a hand on mine, stopping me.

“We can’t,” she says, shaking her head. Her eyes are huge. Terrified.

“Why not?”

“I’m telling you. Please.” She looks down and shakes her head, letting her long hair fall over her face. “I’m sorry, but…it wasn’t meant for you, okay? It’s a warning. For me. It’s about the article I’m working on. If we call public safety, they’ll investigate, and the wrong people will get wind of what I’m writing. That’s all I can say. Let them think they won. Please. Don’t report it.”

—

That night Amy stays with a friend and Zee with Trey. Unwilling to stay in by myself, I go to Liam’s room. Knock on the door.

Liam answers with a look of surprise, sleepy and shirtless in the doorway. I try not to look down at the lines of his muscular stomach, or the V trailing from each hip down to his sweatpants. “Hey,” I say.

His face relaxes and one side of his mouth tips up in a grin that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “You have no idea how much I’ve missed you.”