The Outsider: Hard Knox Part 1

Hard Knox.

The Outsider Chronicles.

by Nicole Williams.

WHY DID IT feel like the first quarter of a person's life was spent fulfilling one necessary evil after another? Evils like pureed peas from a gla.s.s jar-sourpuss second-grade teachers who seemed like they'd rather eradicate students than educate them, p.u.b.erty in all its awkward, insecure glory, drinking too much cheap tequila at a party and dancing on a table for half of one's graduating cla.s.s to witness . . . right before stumbling off of said table. Somewhere along the way, I'd stopped trying to fight it and accepted that necessary evils were simply a part of growing up. There were no shortcuts to becoming a well-rounded, tried-by-fire, productive member of society.

I was sure that when I left high school in the rearview, I'd left the necessary-evil part of my life as well. After packing up my family's vintage minivan-which was just a gentle way of saying it had been one of the first ones off of the a.s.sembly line-full of cardboard boxes and lofty dreams, I chugged down hundreds of miles of interstate in search of a higher state of being. Surely life at one of the more prestigious universities in the country had to come standard with enlightenment, maturity, and most importantly, no more necessary evils. I'd done my time mucking through the refuse of humanity's downsides-I was ready to enjoy the fruits of my labors and patience.

G.o.d, I couldn't have been more wrong. It had taken me all of half a day of traipsing up and down the stairs and halls of my dorm at Sinclair University to realize the only higher state on this campus was what was being realized on the lawn by the students smoking a substance that wasn't legal in this state yet. It took me another twenty-four hours to accept it.

Accepted that college was the apex of necessary evils. During the first month of my freshman year, I started a countdown to graduation-one of those paper chain things elementary kiddos put together to count down the days to Christmas. By the time I was done, I'd stapled together close to 1,500 loops of multi-colored construction paper. I hung it around the ceiling of my dorm room, although it had to overlap close to four times.

Thankfully, my freshman roomie was chill with the countdown-to-graduation chain and the rest of my "quirks," and thankfully again, she agreed to be my cellmate for our soph.o.m.ore year. If it hadn't been for the campus's policy that all undercla.s.smen had to live on campus if they weren't local students, Harlow and I would have moved into an apartment as far away from Sinclair as we could get. But no, another year of purgatory was on the docket for us.

I'd ripped off 169 loops as of today, and I had 471 to go. I was just about to whip out a back handspring-or not-when my phone buzzed inside my purse.

I answered my phone in my best Lolita voice. "I told you that was a one-time deal. No repeat business. I'm strictly a one-night stand kind of girl."

"Then have you got any friends of a like mind?" the caller replied, managing to keep her voice even.

"I might know someone. My roommate is a total floozy. We're talking no standards. If you've got something that swings or even barely bounces between your legs, you're in business. Let me give you her number."

"And Jake has the audacity to say you're a bad influence on me." Harlow giggled her little pixie laugh.

Her giggle wasn't where her pixie-ness ended though. The girl could have been Tinkerbell's great-granddaughter. She was so d.a.m.n cute that I'd had to refrain from pinching her cheeks our entire freshman year.

"Jake is an ocean and half a dozen time zones away. Not to mention smack in the middle of hostile territory. What he doesn't know he doesn't know."

Jake was Harlow's boyfriend. They'd met last year at some frozen yogurt place, and the rest was history. Those two were so sickeningly in love that I couldn't spend more than ten minutes around them without feeling nauseous. While Harlow might have had Tinkerbell's DNA running through her veins, Jake had the market cornered on Captain America. When he put on his Air Force digs . . . Well, you can imagine the attention he drew from the female crowd.

"Actually . . . that's kind of why I'm calling . . ." Harlow's tone gave away her expression. I knew her forehead was lined, she was chewing on her bottom lip, and her head was c.o.c.ked to the side. Yet still impossibly adorable.

"The suspense is killing me, Harlow." I stopped on the sidewalk and waited. I could already hear the general hedonism I was heading toward.

"Jake might have sort of gotten an unexpected leave . . ."

"And Jake might kind of, sort of be with you right this very moment?" It wasn't a guess. I could tell from the exuberance she was trying to mask.

She laughed, which was too much of a squeal for me to take that early on a Friday evening.

"Oh, he's definitely here," she said around a sigh.

If I stayed on the phone any longer, my ears would need to be bleached out. "I take it I'm to infer that means you won't be my wingman into the very bowels of h.e.l.l tonight?"

"And miss out on all the fun? Please." She tsked. "I promised I'd be your Goose, and my promise is gold. I might just be a few minutes late . . ."

"Or a few hours!" Jake shouted in the background, followed by another squeal-sigh from Harlow.

I made a disgusted grunt before shuddering. "I'm letting you off the hook tonight. Enjoy your boyfriend. And whatever he's doing to make you sound like an understudy for a p.o.r.n-star."

"I can hear your jealousy, Charlie."

Leaning into one of the streetlights, I exhaled, accepting that my night had just gone from sure-to-blow to contender-for-the-worst-night-in-history. "You mistake my jealousy for good old-fashioned cynicism."

"Good thing I happen to love your cynical, snarky, grumpy self," Harlow said, followed by a few second pause. I was certain I didn't want to know what was happening on her end of the call. She continued, "Really, though. Why don't you wait for us so we can all go to this thing together? You know, the whole strength-in-numbers thing?"

"Did you miss that I gave you a free pa.s.s to bail on your friend? Stay with Jake. Snuggle, give each other pedicures, and do whatever else you two freaks do together. Give him my love."

A couple of girls pa.s.sed me, probably heading to the same place I was judging by the way they were dressed . . . although they were blurry-eyed and stumbling before they'd even pa.s.sed through the party doors. I withheld my eye-roll. Or not.

"I can't do that to you, Charlie. I know how much you loathe those kinds of things."

"Loathe is a kind word to describe it, but it's my a.s.signment, not yours. Why should we both suffer through a night of keg-stands and vomit-slicked dance floors? Besides, I like my Jake-and-Harlow in small doses, and definitely not on a reunion night. Stay where you are, do what you're going to do . . . just keep off my bed. There's bad voodoo surrounding it that I'd hate to rub off on you two's mojo."

"I've mentioned that I love you, right?"

"Yeah, yeah. I love you too. Traitor," I grumbled, shoving off of the pole and continuing on my way. Stalling wouldn't change the fact that I was spending a night inside my own personal h.e.l.l-also known as a sorority house.

"You're not wearing the condom skirt tonight are you?" Harlow asked, biting on her lip again from the sounds of it.

I glanced down just to make sure. Nope, nothing but a pair of well-loved jeans. "I should wear the condom skirt to every one of these things. You saw it when the night was over. There were only, like, five of the couple hundred left. Think of all of the unwanted pregnancies that skirt single-handedly prevented that night."

Harlow exhaled. "And you're not wearing the On the Prowl for my Next Baby Daddy shirt?"

That got a laugh out of me. "G.o.d, I love that shirt. Talk about a surefire way to keep the boys and their come-ons at bay . . ." I had to glance down to remember which tee I'd slid into to ensure the guys kept their distance. Ah, cla.s.sic. No Daddy Issues or Low Self-Esteem Here.

"Do I want to know which one you're wearing tonight?" Harlow sounded like she was almost wincing.

"Probably not, but come on, I'm working tonight. On a.s.signment. How am I supposed to observe and doc.u.ment my findings if I have to swat off half-drunk guys looking to score all night?"

"You do realize you tend to wear those friendly shirts a good portion of the time, right? Even when you're not working on an article? And don't get me started on those c.o.ke-bottle gla.s.ses you wear . . ."

"They're hip." I adjusted them higher on my nose.

"They're hideous."

"They're man repellant."

"Well, I can't argue with you there," she muttered. "Just promise me you won't make so many guys cry at this party."

A smile formed at those memories. I didn't relish the idea of reducing the so-called stronger s.e.x to tears, but those who wouldn't take a hint from the first five nos were not given a sixth. Instead, my fist, knee, or up-turned drink did the talking. "I promise not to make all of the guys cry."

"Did you ever think for one non-crazy moment that if you turned off your raging feminist agenda, you might discover a few decent guys out there? You know, the ones who don't have six-six-six stamped on their hearts as you're so convinced they all do."

At the precise moment, a trio of "potentially decent guys" stumbled by me. They didn't just reek of alcohol-they smelled like they'd been marinating it for the past decade.

"Nice rack," one of them slurred at me.

"With so much potential out here, however will I pick a gentlemen suitor? And I'm not a feminist, I'm a realist," I said in my driest tone, glaring at the next set of guys who stumbled by. Whether it was my glare or that they weren't so impaired they couldn't actually read the words stamped onto the shirt over the b.r.e.a.s.t.s they were admiring, they kept the peanut gallery to themselves.

My whole life, I'd been so flat that wrestling into a sports bra to run sprints in gym was more a formality than a necessity. But the summer of my junior year, p.u.b.erty had caught up with me, and my girls burgeoned from mandarins to personal-sized watermelons . . . and never had so many guys at my high school known my name.

"Sure you'll be okay? Really, we don't mind linking up with you." Harlow wasn't only cute as a b.u.t.ton; she was sweet and thoughtful to boot. She was pretty much everything I wasn't.

"How much more okay can I get than partying the night away with the Alpha Phis at their 'Let's Get Wild' party? Because, you know, these people need another excuse to get wild . . . and drunk . . . and stupid."

d.a.m.n, I was in a mood. I did a mental compute of the date, and . . . nope, I wasn't PMS-ing. The closer I got to the Alpha Phis' house, the more my mood darkened. I pitied the guy who set his sights on me. Pitied him.

"I'll give you a recap tomorrow because I'm sure it will be, like, totally epic," I did my best attempt at a flakey voice, but I missed the mark by a long shot.

"What kind of article are you working on again?" she asked.

"Underage drinking on campus."

"That doesn't sound so Pulitzer Prize winning."

"Maybe not, but instead of just writing about it, I'm going to pick out a few unknowing subjects and tally how many times they revisit the keg. Underage drinking is always more interesting when you have exorbitant numbers to go along with it. Of course, because I'm Charlie Chase and I don't write run-of-the-mill articles, I'll go on to approximate their weight and how much time goes by between drinks, then come up with a blood alcohol level for each of them, which I'll average and publish. Should make for happy reading for President Winters. 'Come to Sinclair, where you're sure to receive a cutting-edge education as well as have ample opportunities to drink yourself into a stupor.'"

Harlow was silent for a moment. "Do you ever take a night off? You know, do those normal things most college students do?"

"Why would I want to go and get all normal when being abnormal is so much more interesting?"

She let out a long sigh. "Once I have long enough to think about that, I'll get back to you. In the meantime, be safe, don't get arrested, and call me if you need anything."

"Does that come with any conditions about bailing me out of prison should I wind up there?"

"Has it ever?"

I was close enough to the sorority house that I caught my first glimpse of someone curling over the porch rail and puking. It was barely an hour into the party, and people were already hurling into the flower beds? I sighed, wondering if I should have worn a biohazard suit. That would have been as effective at keeping unwanted advances at bay as my shirt would.

"Have fun with your lover," I grumbled, trying not to shudder when I heard what sounded like a roar in the background.

"You have fun too." Harlow was fighting a giggle.

Someone lunged down the sorority house's stairs, sporting nothing more than an eye mask and a silk cape. Howling at the moon, the bare-a.s.s-wonder streaked down the sidewalk . . . in my direction. Unfortunately for me. Although not quite as unfortunately for him, as evidenced by what was bouncing between his legs being a far-cry from anything superhero-like. When the streaker pa.s.sed me, I stepped aside to give him a wide berth. He stuck his tongue out and wiggled it at me. A charming, not-so-well-endowed caped crusader. Just when I thought I'd seen it all.

"How could I not," I said into the phone although Harlow had already ended the call. Someone wasn't eager to get it on with her boyfriend.

At ten yards back, the house looked like a giant dis...o...b..ll thanks to the sequined tube-tops and sparkly mini-skirts swirling about the place. It was almost blinding, and from the looks of it, I was the sole female who wasn't showing off a good few inches of cleavage. I hadn't made it to the second step before the gestapo marched in, and by gestapo, I mean the bottle-blond, surgically implanted, Alpha Phis. They were high on the list as who Hitler'd come back as.

A girl hitched her hand on her hip, blocking my way and looking down at me like she wished she had a chainsaw within reach. "In case it isn't clear, this is a no-crazy-b.i.t.c.h-allowed party."

Sydney Barrister. A true gem. The kind of person who confirmed that if it wasn't already, humanity was screwed. I gave her an unimpressed look. If she wanted to get into an insult-brawl, she should have come better prepared.

"Then how did you sneak by?" I asked.

Her other hand when to her other hip as her nostrils flared. "Oh, my bad. I meant this is a no crazy-ugly-b.i.t.c.h-allowed party."

My unimpressed expression went a couple of notches higher. There was little anyone could say that could reduce me to tears. The benefit to growing a thick skin and weeding out as much personal insecurity as possible. "I'll repeat my question. Then how did you sneak by?"

Sydney stared at me like she couldn't quite believe what I'd just implied, but when a smile pulled at my mouth, she traipsed down the remaining stairs, her fists curling. I wasn't in a big hurry to dodge her or protect myself, because if I couldn't beat Sydney Barrister in a cat fight with my hands tied behind my back, I didn't deserve to take another breath. When she was almost within arm's reach, a set of hands grabbed her shoulders and pulled her back.

"Take your paws off of me!" Sydney ordered, trying to shrug away as she glanced back to see who was responsible for interrupting her fantasies of ripping clumps of hair from my head. As soon as she saw who it was, her whole demeanor changed. The anger bled from her face, the tension drained from her fists . . . and her chest popped out. "Beckett!"

Her voice was so close to gushing, I rolled my eyes.

"Never mind what I just said. You can put your paws, hands, or whatever else on me"-Sydney's eyes swept south of his belt-"anytime you want."

After shuddering, I hurried the rest of the way up the stairs, taking advantage of Sydney's distraction. All it took was a raised eyebrow from me to part the sorority sister barricade, and no, no, I didn't think it was a coincidence SS was short for sorority sister. They stepped aside with nothing more threatening than a disgruntled sigh. I knew that kind of girl-I'd spent most of high school tortured by her clones. They were like a pack of wolves, but once they were separated from their alpha, they tucked their tails between their legs and whimpered at the enemy.

After paying the admission fee, I collected my cla.s.sy red Solo cup and bee-lined it to the keg crammed into the corner of the living room. Unlike the others headed in the same direction, I wasn't looking for a buzz; I was looking for a scoop. Overconsumption and underage drinking were illegal on campus, but it was kind of like jay-walking . . . it ran rampant, and no one ever got into any trouble for it until they paid for it with their lives. Last year, a soph.o.m.ore had drunk himself to death, and the year before that, a student had been so intoxicated, he'd walked into the middle of the road to play a game of chicken with a car. He didn't come out the victor.

I wasn't naive enough to believe I had a chance of ending binge drinking on college campuses, or to even put a dent in it, with my article. I was, however, hoping to open people's eyes. To get them to think twice about tossing back that fifth drink when the fourth had left them fuzzy enough. To put a face to the name, a story behind the life that had been lost. Instead of being known as the drunk kid who got wasted by a Hummer going forty miles an hour, hopefully he'd become Jake Messenger, a kinesiology major who grew up on a farm and used to coach Little League. People were too anesthetized to the world around them, and it was my goal to crack their numb sh.e.l.ls so they'd wake up and smell the reality.

Enough of that soapbox . . . It was time to fill my cup with the cheapest beer money could buy and find a place to camp out and watch the binging show.

All of the furniture in the Alpha Phis living room had been moved out, but bodies were still packed in to capacity. Crossing one room that couldn't have been longer than twenty feet, I was a.s.saulted by B.O. from at least a dozen different guys, the sickeningly sweet perfume of twice that many girls, and I had my b.o.o.bs or a.s.s not-so-unintentionally grazed, groped, or fondled by a football team's worth of grubby hands.

"Hey, Charlie!" a voice hollered behind me.

The music wasn't quite blasting, but it was close, so whoever was screaming at me had a serious set of pipes. I didn't stop or slow down though, mainly because I knew if I stopped my momentum in a crowd this size, I'd never find my way out of it. When the second shout came, I glanced over my shoulder.

I wasn't sure whether to sigh or smile. That was pretty much the conflict I'd always felt around Beckett Farrell, aka Beck, aka could have been plucked straight out of the fifties. He was an All-American guy who liked sports, cars, and girls. He came from an upper-crust family and still called his mom every week. He was one of those college guys who actually combed their hair, and he had a smile so bright and easy, even at the first cla.s.s of the morning, that I wondered if he poured sunshine into his coffee.

Beck and I'd been a thing last year, but that thing had ended right before summer break-thanks to me. I hadn't caught him s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g some other girl or selling drugs to pay for his car or anything like that, but in the end, I couldn't decide if I wanted to smile or sigh when I saw him. If, after six months with a person, I still couldn't decide if I wanted to go toward him or away from him, it was time to cut my losses.

I didn't have anything against good guys, but I needed someone with a little more grit to him. Someone who had some dirt under his fingernails and didn't mind if I had some under mine as well. I wasn't in the market for bad boys-that was a heap of heartache and venereal disease I didn't want-but I wasn't exactly shopping for Time magazine's Man of the Year either.

Which led me to the conclusion that maybe I was just screwed when it came to the future flames department.

Beck caught up to me at the kegs. The air back in that corner was so stale with the scent of beer that I wondered if inhaling it long enough would affect my blood alcohol level.

"Was that a case of the cold shoulder or what?" Beck slid up beside me, nudging another guy out of the way.

"Sorry, it was more a case of 'I didn't want to get swallowed by the crowd or get idly threatened by your girlfriend again.'" There was a line for the kegs, so I waited my turn. Part of getting the story was fitting in. If all I sucked down was a bottle of water, people would get suspicious, and suspicion was a surefire way to kill an article.

"Sydney?" Beck hitched his thumb over his shoulder, his brows pulling together. "She's not my girlfriend anymore."

"You mean to tell me Sydney Barrister isn't the love of your life?" I did my best surprised face. "Shocker."

"Sydney's got her merits-"