The Fifteenth Minute (4 page)

I watch her go, feeling like a heel for not walking her home. But I don’t want to explain that I’ve been asked by the dean of students not to set foot inside student housing this year. The trouble I’m in is both terrifying and completely embarrassing.

Speaking of trouble.

Even though I’d rather focus on Lianne and that amazing kiss, I pull out my phone and redial my dad. If I avoid him any longer he’s going to get mad, which will only make things worse for all of us. “Sorry,” I say when he picks up. “It’s been a really busy day.” That’s sort of true, anyway.

“Daniel,” he says, his voice serious. “Son, I need you to call the new lawyer back tomorrow. He wants to get to work clearing your name, but he can’t help you until he hears from you.”

“Okay,” I promise. The trouble is I’ve already made this promise and then broken it. And Dad isn’t going to put up with that anymore.

“
Tomorrow
, Daniel. This guy is the very best. He’s a specialist, and he’s on your side. I can’t understand why you don’t just call.”

How is it so hard to explain? It’s like being sent to an oncologist.
Hey, the cancer doctor is on your side. Why aren’t you looking forward to the appointment?
In this case, the specialist isn’t trying to keep me out of an early grave. He’s trying to keep me at Harkness.

“I will call him after my first class,” I promise again. I’m going to do it, too. I’ll get this off my back so I can enjoy my date with Lianne. My first date in months.

“You do that,” he says. “I need you to keep the faith.”

“I will.” But it’s an empty promise, because keeping the faith requires having some in the first place.

We hang up, and I lean against Capri’s brick wall and wonder for the hundredth time whether my father even believes I’m innocent. He says he does. But my father is all about damage control. He’s an accountant and a devout Catholic. He married my mother when they were both twenty-one. My brother came along a year later and began breaking records right out of the womb. Star athlete. Super scholar. Most likely to break every heart on the North Shore of Long Island.

Then there’s me. The other brother. The difficult one. Even when they don’t say it, I can hear my parents thinking:
why can’t you be more like your brother?
And that was
before
the college accused me of a heinous crime.

It’s getting late now, and it’s really freaking cold out here. So I go back inside Capri’s to grab my coat and say goodnight.

At least one thing went right today. While I walk home by myself, I’m humming “Cold as Ice” by Foreigner and remembering the shape of Lianne’s smile.

I
wake
up slowly on Tuesday morning before my alarm. But that’s because another kind of alarm is going off on the other side of my wall.

Separating my room from Bella’s are two wooden doors and a small bathroom. That may sound like a decent divide, but acoustics are strange. Our bathroom seems to amplify the sound of my two best friends getting it on.

I have no idea what a “normal” amount of sex in a relationship is. I’ve never had a relationship, and I’ve barely had sex. But wherever the mean lies, I’m fairly sure Rafe and Bella are several standard deviations past it. Most nights I fall asleep to one of the playlists I’ve compiled to drown out the sounds of their passion. (A six-second crossfade is sufficient to cancel out the grunts and dirty talk that make it hard to look them in the eye over brunch the next morning.)

Mornings are trickier. I’m half asleep right now, my limbs heavy. But I become slowly aware of furtive little gasps and a low moan coming from the next room. My phone and earbuds aren’t on the bedside table where I sometimes leave them, either.

My heavy eyelids fall closed again, and I drift for a moment. Maybe it’s the porn soundtrack next door, or maybe it’s inevitable. But my sleepy brain picks that moment to remember a wonderful thing.

DJ kissed me last night.

Rolling onto my side, I smile into the pillow. He was so, so cute. And even sexier than I’d remembered. Every time he grinned that boyish grin, I became a little stupider. By the time we got outside, I was practically in a nervous coma.

But it was so worth it. When he’d pulled me against his hard body, I’d wanted to scale him like a tree.

I still want to.

The noises from next door have picked up the pace. My breathing accelerates just imagining what it would be like to have a man like DJ want me so badly he was breathing hard and making those low, eager grunts. Because I’m polite, I put my palm over my exposed ear to muffle the sound of the grand finale. But now I can hear my own heartbeat glugging along, wishing for someone who’s not here. I squeeze my eyes shut and think of DJ again, his moist lips, the hint of beer on his tongue. His fingers in my hair…

When I lift my palm off my ear a minute later, it’s quiet. I could get up and go out for coffee. But I don’t have class until ten today. So I lean out of bed just far enough to grab the FedEx envelope that arrived yesterday afternoon. When I tear it open, a fat script tumbles onto the quilt.

Nightfall. Screenplay by Roland Sebring
.
Based on the novel by Helen Botts
.

I wonder what Helen Botts will think about Princess Vindi showing some skin. I’ve met Helen Botts, and she’s a lovely silver-haired librarian type who now drives a Bentley. I suppose if Helen Botts doesn’t like the movie, she can weep into her royalty statement.

Lifting the cover, I flip to the first page. Let the skimming commence. They’ve opened the film at the castle gates. Lucifer has found a way to appear like a storm cloud over the city, terrifying the children.

Yada yada yada.

Princess Vindi’s first line is on page eleven. “I am not interested in your excuses, Lord Shelter. The time for excuses has passed.”

Sigh
. It could be worse. In fact, I’m sure it
gets
worse. I keep flipping.

The sex scene is on page 132.

They grope, caress, moan and fondle. Vindi’s robe slides off her velvet breast. Valdor ducks his head to catch the pink teat carefully in his fangs. The camera pans downward to reveal clothing falling to the floor. With a heated rush of sexual urgency, Vindi mounts Valdor. The soundtrack rises with the keening writhings of intercourse. Valdor’s shouts are increasingly loud. The camera pans Vindi’s milky white, heaving bosom as she screams in consummation. Cut to Vindi’s shuddering face. Valdor moans deliciously, pulling Vindi softly into his embrace.

I let out a shriek.

A few seconds later Bella comes tearing through the door, mouth gaping. Her eyes skate around the room until she finds me in my bed. “What is it? A spider?” She’s wearing a Harkness Soccer T-shirt and nothing else except the flush of someone who was recently…

Gah.

I fall back onto my pillow. “There’s no spider, Bella. I wish that was the problem.”

“What is it then? Hang on…” She darts into the bathroom and reappears a second later wearing her bathrobe.

Words can’t do the problem justice, so I hand the script over. Her eyes scan the page, and I know exactly when she’s found the object of my horror. Because she bursts out laughing.

“Stop,” I whine. “It wouldn’t be funny if it was you.”

“Oh, honey,” she giggles. “I’m sorry. Do you really have a velvet breast?”

I throw my stuffed bear at her. “You mock my pain. I can’t shoot a sex scene. And I really can’t shoot a sex scene with Kevin Mung.”

She cocks an eyebrow. “Why doesn’t that boy take a screen name? He’s pretty to look at. But I always think of mung beans.”

“Stay on topic.” I grab the script from Bella. “This is ten times worse than I thought it could be.” I feel sick just imagining a roomful of leering cameramen and me with no clothes.

And
Kevin
. Shoot me.

“Let’s break down the problem.” Bella sits on the bed. “Is it the boob shot? Is it the scream upon consummation? Is it the
mounting?
Is it the awful, awful writing?”

“It’s…all of the above. And…” I shudder. “Kevin. He happens to be, um, the only one I ever…” I can’t finish the sentence. I just look up into Bella’s blue eyes and pray she’ll understand.

Her mouth falls open. “You’ve tasted the mung bean?”

There’s a snort from the bathroom where Rafe is brushing his teeth, and I want to
die
.

Bella flicks my door shut and frowns at me. “So, not only do you have to shoot this awful scene. But it’s with a guy you’ve doodled? Was this
recently?
I thought he was dating that singer.”

I protest with a violent shake of my head. “We were fifteen. We did it because…” I bite my lip and realize that I really don’t know why. “Because on a movie shoot, there’s a lot of doodling. And I was young and socially inept.”
Still am
. “And I thought it would make me cool. Instead, it just made people talk about us behind our backs.”

Bella cringes. “That sucks, honey. Is it awkward with him now?”

“No, actually. We’re good friends—good friends who never
ever
talk about that night. But this would
make
it awkward.”

“So put your foot down,” Bella suggested, wrapping her arms around her knees. “I’ve seen you in action. You’re like a very small lion tamer. Just crack that whip and tell them you won’t do the scene.”

“I’m going to have to.”

“Wait…” Bella frowned at me. “Did you say the
only
guy you’d ever…?”

Ugh. “Unfortunately. I don’t meet a lot of guys. Or—I meet them, but it’s always on a set, where everyone knows everyone else’s business. I learned that lesson the hard way. Or I thought I did. Last year I kissed a model at an Oscars after-party. And he sold the story to a British tabloid.”

Bella’s face was all shock. “Seriously? I mean, don’t take this the wrong way. But why did they give him cash? I mean, I’m not
paying
DJ to find out what happened when you ducked out the back door of Capri’s last night. I’m curious. But it’s not worth money…” She waits.

I say nothing.

“Okay,” Bella tries. “It’s not worth
much
money. Perhaps a small bribe. And I’ll beg if necessary. Or you could just spill already. Did you or didn’t you fool around with DJ?”

My room door opens a crack to reveal Rafe’s face. “Wait. Lianne hooked up with DJ?” His smile is about a mile wide.

“I didn’t,” I say quickly. Protecting myself is a reflex. These are my friends, though, who only want me to be happy. “But there might have been kissing.”

Bella lets out a whoop. “I
knew
you had your eye on him! Did you give him your number?”

“He asked me out for Thursday. Well, sort of. It’s just pizza.”

But Bella’s face is lit with victory. “This is
so
exciting. Something to look forward to. Now call that manager you’re always yelling at and tell him where he can shove his heaving bosoms.”

It’s only six a.m. in L.A., so it will have to wait a few hours. “I’ll do it,” I vow.

I
catch
my arrogant manager after my first class of the day, and the call goes about as well as could be expected.

“Bob, I’m not doing that scene as written.”

He sighs. “I know that, babe. But you know this script will be rewritten by fifty different people before it makes it onto the set. So it’s a waste of time objecting to this or that word. Instead, we’ll just lay out what they’re
allowed
to do. Maybe we’ll say that side boob is okay, but no nips. Or yes to ass cheek and no to full frontal.”

I experience a shudder from my “nips” to my ass cheeks. “How about no scene at all. A kiss and fade to black.” I could survive a kiss with Kevin.

Again with the sigh. “I can’t sell that.”

You mean you don’t want to
. “How about this—you get me some progress on the Scottish play, and I’ll give you side boob.” I can’t believe I just formed that sentence. It sounds as if we’re describing a cut of meat at a butcher shop.

He’s as noncommittal as always. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Unsatisfied, I shove my phone in a pocket. Now there’s nothing left to do but survive a few more days of classes before I can go on a date with DJ. At least I have that to look forward to.

I
do
as I’m asked. Finally. When everyone is out of the house except me.

The whole debacle is deeply embarrassing. And even though I’ll bet everyone who lives in Orsen’s house has heard about the accusation against me, I never talk about the case. Never.

Part of me is hoping that the lawyer can’t take my call. He must be a busy guy, right?

No such luck.

“Daniel,” he says, his voice booming and confident. “It’s a pleasure to get you on the phone. I’ve read your file, and I think I can help.”

“Um, thank you, sir.” But I feel no relief, because I just don’t trust him. “I, um, know you don’t know me. But before we begin, I just need to tell you that I did not…do what they’re accusing me of.” I can’t even bring myself to say the word, because I don’t want it on my tongue. “So there’s no compromise I’m willing to make.”

“Whoa there, son. Let’s slow down just a little bit. I’m not going to ask you to compromise yourself in any way. What’s interesting to me about your case is how ridiculously the college has handled it. They haven’t given you a
chance
to say, ‘I didn’t do this.’ And that’s not right.”

Even though that’s all true, my heart is already pounding against my ribcage. I have never known real stress until this year.

“My first job will be to get the college to give us a private hearing.”

“They, um, haven’t been willing to do that, sir. The first lawyer my father spoke to couldn’t get anywhere with them.”

“I know. But you can’t defend yourself if they won’t hear you out. So my first job is to demonstrate all the ways that they’ve mishandled you. To defend you, I first have to go on the attack. We have to accuse the college of violating your rights.”

Now I’m starting to sweat, because
attacking
is the last thing I want to do. I just want the whole issue to fade away. “But if they drop their, um, claim, I’m hoping to stay here.”

“Of course you are. But unless we can make them own up to their failures, they’re going to just decide this thing behind closed doors and send you a letter with their decision. We have to make it clear that you didn’t get to tell your side of the story, and that you’re being mistreated. By the time this is over, I’m going to make sure everyone knows how poorly they’ve behaved.”

He waits for me to say something, but I’ve got nothing.

“At some point you and I are going to have to spend a couple of hours discussing the details of the night in question—last April eleventh. But today we’re not going to do that.”

“Okay,” I say quickly. I’m not looking forward to telling him the intimate details of my sex life.

“But today I want to ask you about August twentieth. The day the dean called your home in Huntington.”

“All right.” That’s another painful story, but at least there’s no nudity involved.

“Your file indicates that the phone call on August twentieth was the first communication you had from the college. Are you absolutely sure they didn’t reach out before then?”

“Yes sir.”

“So the phone rings out of the blue. And who’s on the other end of the line? Tell me exactly what happened.”

I think of this moment as The Day the Music Died. Just remembering it, my heart does a drum solo, because my father and I have gone over this a million times. If I’d handled everything more carefully on that summer day, everything might be different. “The caller was a secretary for the assistant dean of student services. I didn’t catch the secretary’s name. She said if I had thirty minutes to spare, the dean would like to speak to me. So I said that was fine.”

“You didn’t ask, ‘What is this about?’”

“No. I wish I had. But I don’t get calls from the dean’s office…”

“You were intimidated.”

“Hell yes.” I remember standing there in our kitchen, feeling worried. But I had an hour before my shift at the seafood restaurant where I wait tables in the summertime, so I just said I’d take the call. “The dean came on the line—”

“Assistant Dean Maria Lagos.”

“Right. She said she wanted to ask me some questions about the night of April eleventh.” I
should
have gotten off that phone and asked for a proper meeting. I should have told my parents there might be some kind of problem. But I didn’t do that. “I told her I didn’t know off the top of my head what night that was. She said it was the night of a party, and also a young woman had asked to stay in my room, and I said, ‘You mean Annie Stevens?’ And she said yes.”

“Let me stop you right there,” the lawyer said. “Did the dean ask your permission to tape the call?”

“No. She didn’t mention anything like that. And I don’t think she taped it, because there were times when she stopped asking me questions and said, ‘Just a moment,’ like she was trying to catch up with her notes.”

“Did she tell you she was taking notes?”

“I could hear the keyboard clicking.” I remember thinking she was a fast typist.

“Okay. What happened next?”

“She asked me about the early part of that night. The party was in the next entryway, where a lot of freshmen were serving drinks to other freshmen, so I was freaking out. There’s a rule against hard alcohol on Frosh Court, but nobody follows it.”

“What did you tell her?”

“The truth. I went to the party, and Annie was there. The dean asked if I drank alcohol and I said yes I drank some but not very much.”

“Did she ask you to quantify exactly how much? Did she talk about ounces, or ask you to count up the number of drinks?”

“No. She asked if I was drunk, and I told her I wasn’t.”

The lawyer asks me a couple more questions. He’s focused on procedure—what questions I was asked, and how precise they were. I get it—he’s trying to show the college that they didn’t gather enough information to figure out what happened that night.

But I just don’t see how this is going to help. The college isn’t trying to send me to jail. They’re only trying to decide if I can stay at Harkness. There are thousands of guys who’d like nothing more than to take my spot. The college can do whatever it wishes.

My father and I went over this, too.

“Daniel, at what point did you figure out that Annie Stevens had accused you of sexual misconduct?”

Maybe I’m slow, but it had taken a while before I’d figured out where the questions were leading. “Well, I was worried about the underaged drinking until the dean’s questions shifted to my dorm room. When she started asking me about Annie sleeping in my room, I didn’t know why she wanted to go there. Staying in someone else’s room isn’t against the rules.” I sighed. “I am the biggest idiot alive.”

The lawyer actually laughed. “No you’re not, son. You just don’t think like a criminal.”

I didn’t
used
to. But after someone accuses you of being one, it changes your entire outlook.

“Daniel, please tell me exactly how personal the dean’s questions became.”

My head begins to ache. “She made me give, uh, the play-by-play of our entire encounter. Who kissed who, which hands removed which clothes. I told her all this, but I was really nervous. It’s not an easy conversation with anyone, and of course I’d just caught on to the fact that someone had a problem with it. My first thought was that maybe Annie wasn’t eighteen or something. But that would be weird. It was second semester…”

“I’ll run a background check on her and we’ll rule that out. But what else did the dean ask?”

“After everything I described, she’d stop and say, ‘And how did she give consent for that? Was it verbal?’ And I had really good answers for almost all of those.” Because the whole encounter had been Annie’s idea.

“All right. And did you get the sense that the dean took careful notice of your responses?”

“I guess so. But I can’t be sure.”

“I see. So after this detailed conversation last August, what happened?”

I had the world’s most uncomfortable conversation with my parents. And I began to worry, and never stopped
. “I got a letter five or six days later telling me I was on social probation.”

“Right. I have to tell you that I’ve read and re-read this letter, and it’s a pretty interesting document.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s
incredibly
specific about the probation they imposed on you—where you can and can’t go, and exactly how you should avoid contact with Miss Stevens. But on the subject of what it is that you’re supposed to have done, there’s nothing. I’ve never seen anything like it. Either it was written by someone who has no experience investigating sexual assault, or they’re being vague on purpose, because they’re not feeling confident about the accusation. And now they’ve let five months pass without deciding your case.”

Like I don’t know that
.

“It’s possible that they think the case against you sucks, but they’re trying to be sure they give it adequate attention anyway. There’s a law called Title Nine. Most people think it’s about school sports, but it’s broader than that. Sexual discrimination and harassment.”

“Okay.”

“These past few years colleges have been threatened with losing certain sources of federal funding if they don’t demonstrate that they’re fighting harassment and also sexual assault. And that’s a fine idea, right? But colleges—even well-funded ones like Harkness—keep proving that they have
no clue
how to investigate sexual violence. And when they get it wrong, it hurts
everyone
. Think about it. There are girls who are raped, but the college bungles the investigation. On the other hand, there are guys like you who are at the wrong end of bungled investigations.”

“Federal funding,” I repeat slowly.

“That’s right. Just like everything in life. Money is the driver.”

My head gives a fresh stab of pain, and I wonder if it’s even possible to get out of this mess unscathed. When I first learned that Harkness College might throw me out for something I didn’t do, I still didn’t quite realize the seriousness of the situation. But then my father explained that my Harkness transcript would show that I’d been suspended for disciplinary reasons.

In other words, if Harkness kicks me out, I’ll be untouchable.

“Well, Daniel, we’re going to have to leave it here for now, because I have a lunch meeting. It was a pleasure speaking to you. If I have any more questions for you before I press the college for a hearing date, can I reach you at this number?”

“Sure,” I say. “Anytime.” I’d promise anything right now if it meant getting off this call.

He tells me he’ll let me know if he gets anywhere, and then I thank him and hang up.

I spread out on my bed and stare at the ceiling. This lawyer number two—Jack—he sounded more knowledgeable than the family lawyer who’d first tried to help sort me out. But it might not even matter. The last guy explained to me that I was just another customer, and Harkness was free to decide at their whim that they didn’t want me anymore.

Last summer, even as my parents were freaking out, I kept thinking that it was really just a big misunderstanding. I honestly believed the college would call me back and say, “Never mind. You weren’t the guy we were looking for.”

But that never happened. Two lawyers later, my panic had shifted into something heavier, like dread.

It’s lunchtime, but I can’t enter most of the dining halls on campus, because they’re inside the twelve residence houses. And my “agreement” with the college states that I can’t enter the houses until my case is decided. So I eat a lot of sandwiches from the deli.

I’m not hungry right now anyway.