The Fixer: New Wave Newsroom Read Online Free PDF Page A

get a little dicey out there.”
    There was my opening. I still wanted to tell him. And not because I hoped it would somehow make him want to help me with the art building. It was more just a strange compulsion to tell someone coming over me gradually but inexorably, like a tide. I had been keeping this secret for three and a half years, and I didn’t want it anymore. And Matthew, as unsettling as he could be, made me feel safe. And that was…really, really weird. But if I examined the thought too much, I would lose my nerve, and more than anything, I needed to let my secret out.
    â€œYeah. Royce was one of the leaders of my freshman orientation group. I… God, this is so embarrassing now.” I turned my back and started making sandwiches so I wouldn’t have to look at him while I talked. “For about a millisecond there, I thought he was cool.” I braced for the incredulous reaction I deserved, but it didn’t come, so I kept going—with the story and the sandwich. “He kind of…fixated on me. Assaulted me with his charm, if you will. And I didn’t know anyone at Allenhurst. I’m not from around here.”
    â€œWhere are you from?”
    The question surprised me. I think it might have been the first time Matthew had asked me something about myself. “Oregon. Just outside Portland.” I turned and handed him a sandwich. “I was nervous,” I said, returning to my story, trying to tell it without sinking myself back inside it. Usually when my mind went back to that night, I felt the emotions as strongly as ever. Now, though, I wanted to recount what happened in a detached way. I took a deep breath. “I was trying to make friends. I had been kind of…straitlaced in high school.”
    â€œYou don’t say.”
    He was grinning, so I perched on the bed next to him with my sandwich and used my free hand to punch him in the shoulder, but I made sure it was his uninjured side.
    The teasing actually helped—a lot. It grounded me in the present, allowing me to stay outside the story as I told it. “Yeah, so Royce seemed…cool. Which, again, I realize makes me seem like an idiot.”
    â€œNah. Royce seems like a master manipulator. If you didn’t already know him, I’m sure he could seem appealing.” He cocked his head. “Actually, no, he couldn’t. But go on.”
    â€œOkay, well, the second night of orientation, there was a party in Hannover House. A bunch of guys with adjacent rooms opened them up for the party. They were all freshman pledges to one of the frats on campus, and lots of the older brothers were there, too, including Royce. I…drank too much.”
    â€œAs I’m sure everyone did.”
    I shrugged, the casualness of the gesture belying the fact that I was actually clinging desperately to my vantage point as a detached storyteller. “I didn’t have a lot of experience with drinking, and it kind of came on me all at once. I got up to leave, and Royce noticed I was unsteady on my feet. He asked if I wanted to come to one of the empty rooms and watch a movie.”
    â€œAnd you said yes.”
    â€œOf course I said yes,” I didn’t even bother trying to keep the self-disgust from my voice. “He was the coolest guy in our class.” I didn’t know what was worse, actually, what happened that night, or the fact that I walked right into it.
    â€œI’m sorry, Rainbow Brite.” I whipped my eyes to his face. He’d spoken so quietly, so…sincerely, that it startled me. I don’t know why a genuine, calm expression of sympathy was such a shock, but it was.
    â€œIt wasn’t…what you’re thinking. I wasn’t adverse to a little, um, experience.” I cleared my throat because my voice had become embarrassingly scratchy. “But not, you know, much beyond first base.”
    â€œI fucking hate that metaphor. But I’m guessing