CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

Hannah stood in line at the residential dining hall, engaged in an intense internal debate.

As she studied the buffet, she tried to decide between a salad or a calzone. Her diet during finals week hadn"t been the healthiest, and a nagging sense of guilt had her leaning toward the greens. Then again, the calzone smelled so good.

"Tough call, huh?" someone said from just over her shoulder, making her jump slightly.

She turned to find Finn Anderton behind her, a broad grin on his face. She thought of about three different responses in that moment, but decided to go with the one that was least informative.

"Why are you here? Don't you eat at your fraternity house?"

He seemed happy to be interrogated.

"Remember, I'm still just a pledge, not a member, so I only eat there when I'm invited, and I was not invited tonight. Besides, I was looking for you."

"Why?" she asked suspiciously, before immediately moving on to a more pressing question. "How did you know I'd be here?"

"I stopped by your room and asked Lizzie," he explained. "After I convinced her that I meant no harm, she very reluctantly admitted you were here. She looks out for you. Is that because you helped her out with those threatening messages she was getting?"

"I think she mostly looks out for me because she's a nice person," Hannah replied, deadpan.

"Well, I'm here now," he said. "I sure hope that I didn't scare you when I came up behind you like that."

"You didn't," she assured him. "There's a difference between startled and scared."

"If you say so," he teased.

Hannah, irked by his cockiness, grabbed the calzone as if it might somehow spite him, though she wasn't sure that he would see it that way.

"Good call," he said, noting her selection," they're yummy."

"Why are you here?" she demanded, not engaging in his playful banter.

His grin dimmed slightly, and she could tell he was about to get serious.

"I thought you might want to know what happened with Reggie today."

Hannah put a parfait on her tray and headed for the register, hoping she wasn't betraying her intrigue. As badly as she wanted to know, she didn't want to look like it.

"I guess I'm mildly curious," she conceded.

"Somehow I think that's the understatement of the day," he noted, before launching in. "Anyway, it went really well. I joined him in the professor's office. The T.A. was there too. Reggie methodically went through many of the points you made last night. He noted that a fellow student, Sherry Braid, might be dating Marvin Jost. He explained the playing time situation."

"And they just caved?" Hannah asked as she handed her meal swipe card to the student at the checkout register.

"Not at first," Finn told her. "The professor initially said he couldn't do anything based on a mere allegation from another student."

"But that's exactly what was done to Reggie!" Hannah protested.

"Which is what he told them," Finn agreed. "He said his scholarship was at risk and demanded that they look at the footage from the test immediately. They started to object, suggesting they couldn't access the video so quickly, but he nailed them."

"Really?" Hannah asked, unable to keep the excitement out of her voice as they walked to an unoccupied table in the dining room.

"Yeah, he was great," Finn went on. "He said that he was coming to them as a courtesy but if they didn't resolve things right away, his next stop would be to the coach and then to the dean's office. I barely said a word the whole time. Anyway, that's when they caved."

"What did they do?" Hannah wanted to know.

"After all their claims that it would be so difficult to access, the T.A. managed to get the test video in less than a half an hour," Finn said. "Of course, it didn't show anything incriminating against Reggie, although you can see Sherry staring daggers at him from a couple of rows back."

"So where do things stand now?" Hannah pressed.

"Reggie's suspension is lifted, with a note of apology in his academic record for the ‘miscommunication,'" he told her. "Reggie asked what would happen to Sherry. They said they couldn't get into that, but I have a feeling that it's not going to end well for her."

Hannah sat down at the table and, in what she considered a show of tremendous restraint, took a spoonful of parfait instead of going right for the calzone. After swallowing, she replied.

"I'm glad everything worked out."

She noted that Finn suddenly looked nervous. Sensing something unpleasant coming her way, she tried to nip it in the bud with her own attempt at humor.

"What's wrong?" she asked. "Are the blisters you got from your terrible dancing giving you trouble?"

It was the first acknowledgment by either of them about last night. It seemed to work, as his grin quickly returned.

"No," he assured her, "I feel great. If you want, I could play a song on my phone right now and we can trip the light fantastic right here among the dining hall dinner crowd."

"I would, but I don"t want my calzone to get cold," she replied without missing a beat.

"Fair enough," he said before returning to the topic he"d clearly originally intended to broach. "I had an idea, but you"re so prickly that I"m hesitant to suggest it."

"Well, you"re starting off great," she said acidly. "It"s always a super move to win someone over to your idea by calling them prickly."

"Anyway," he replied, not taking the bait, "I was thinking—you helped out your friend, Lizzie, with her harassment issue. Now you've done the same for Reggie with this false cheating allegation. I'm starting to wonder if you should try to make this a regular thing."

"What do you mean?"

"Just that there are a lot of students on this campus who could use your help," he explained, "you know, folks who don't want to go through official channels like the school administration or campus police. Maybe they don't want to deal with the bureaucracy, or go on the record, or just think it will take too long, or not do any good at all. But if they could come to you, share their issues, and get some advice, or even have you look into their situations. I don't know, it seems like you could do some real good."

Hannah listened to him quietly, waiting for the moment when an objection would pop up in her head. She expected that once the first flush of Finn's mix of flattery and flirtation passed through her, some obvious reason to reject the idea would come to her. But nothing did.

The idea of helping other students in need, people who didn't think they could go the authorities for whatever reason, appealed to her. She had to admit that when her mind was fully occupied with both classes and cases, it tended to mute what she could only describe as her latent bloodlust.

That intense desire to punish wrongdoers, even through violence if necessary, didn't ever really go away. But when she was focused and busy, the volume turned way down. If helping other students could serve the twin goals of righting wrongs and keeping a lid on the fury inside her, one that often felt like it was on the verge of bubbling over, maybe it was worth considering.

She looked up from her tray at Finn, who was already smiling again, seeming to already know what she was going to say. She wanted to wipe the grin off his face. But he appeared so sincere and hopeful that she couldn't bring herself to do it. Instead, when she answered, she was almost affable.

"I'll think about it."