Now Sarah looks stricken. “You can’t think I’m the one leaking information about him to the—”

“Heather and I don’t,” Lisa says stiffly. “But a lot of people do, thanks to your past history and your very vocal opinions about Qalif. So if you value your job, I suggest you start keeping your mouth shut, and lay low.”

Sarah nods wordlessly, her eyes shiny with unshed tears.

“I’m glad you understand,” Lisa says in a slightly more sympathetic tone. To me, she says, “Come on, Heather.”

But we’ve hardly gone two steps when an all-too-familiar voice sounds from the doorway to the main office.

“Ms. Wells! There you are. Where have you been all day? I must have left you a dozen messages. Why haven’t you returned any of my calls?”

Mrs. Harris, Kaileigh’s mother, comes bustling in, then plops her backside into the visitors’ chair in front of my desk, balancing her large designer handbag on her knees and peering out from behind the enormous bouquet Rashid sent me.

“Of course I understand how busy you all must be after the tragedy.” She lowers her voice dramatically as she says the word “tragedy.” “But I really must speak to you about Kaileigh’s roommate situation. It’s gotten a thousand times worse since I spoke to you yesterday. I hope you got the message I left that Mr. Harris is consulting our lawyer back home in Ohio. That’s how bad things have gotten. He didn’t even want me to come here, but I said I’m sure we didn’t have to stoop to litigation, as you seem like a reasonable person.”

“Okay, Mrs. Harris,” I call to her from Lisa’s office. “Thanks. I’ll be with you in just a second.”

I duck back into Lisa’s office to whisper, “Lisa, you go on upstairs to meet with the Albrights. Sarah, you go home. I’ll handle Mrs. Harris.”

Lisa glances at the clock hanging on the office wall. The little hand is already on five, and the big hand is inching perilously close to twelve. At any moment the letters from the president’s office will be delivered to the RAs, and all hell will be breaking loose.

“Are you sure?” Lisa asks, chewing her lower lip uncertainly.

I nod. “I’ve been shot at before by homicidal maniacs. I think I can handle an angry mother.”

21

What Is New York College Doing with Your Tuition Money?

We all know that tuition is going up at New York College at the same time that large donations from certain Middle Eastern countries are said to be flowing in. What is the college doing with all our money?

Rumor has it that plans have been submitted to the city by New York College to build a state-of-the art fitness center (possibly for the president’s beloved Pansy basketball players).

The new fitness center—estimated to cost over $300 million—will feature, among other things, an indoor sand volleyball court, a forty-foot climbing wall, ten racquetball and squash courts, an indoor Olympic-size pool, steam rooms, saunas, four performance studios, twenty thousand pounds of free weights, three yoga studios, two hundred pieces of cardio equipment, and four full-size tennis courts on the roof.

Thank goodness the college is spending all this money on a gym and not on new lab equipment or recruiting better professors, because I enrolled at New York College to get ripped abs, not an education!

New York College Express,

your daily student news blog

I’d just finished talking to Mrs. Harris—who doesn’t have much of anything new to say, except that she really, really wants her daughter, Kaileigh, to be moved from room 1412 because now Ameera, instead of “slutting it up,” is spending all her time weeping—and was typing a letter, when I got a call from the front desk.

It’s Gavin.

“Hey,” he says. “Some dude just dropped off a bunch of official-looking letters for the RAs. They’re from the president’s office.”

“So?”

“Well,” Gavin says. He sounds nervous. “I put them in their regular mailboxes instead of bringing them back to the office to go in their staff mailboxes.”

“That’s okay,” I say.

Dear Ameera, I’m typing. This letter is to inform you that a mandatory meeting has been scheduled for you in the Fischer Hall director’s office tomorrow at 9:00 a.m.

“Well,” Gavin says. “You know that Megan chick with the long nose?”

“Gavin, you know better than to call women chicks.”

“Sorry. That Megan woman? She opened her letter. And now she’s crying and calling her parents on her cell phone in the middle of the lobby, saying she’s been fired from her RA position.”

This is a nightmare. It has to be. Maybe I’ll wake up soon and be in Italy, on my honeymoon with Cooper, and I’ll tell him about it and we’ll laugh over mimosas.

Probably not though.

“And?”

“Well, I thought you should know about it,” Gavin says.

“Thanks, Gavin,” I say. I’ve started another letter. It says the exact same thing as Ameera’s letter, but begins Dear Rashid.

That’s because the other thing Mrs. Harris complained about is that the prince is spending too much time around her daughter’s room.

“Every time I’m in there,” she said, “it seems like he’s knocking on the door, asking what the girls are doing, if the girls want to go out, if the girls want to come up to his room to watch a movie or play with his Xbox or if Ameera got his flowers. Did you know he sent her flowers, exactly like the ones you have here?” She swatted at the flowers the prince sent me, because the bouquet really is quite large, and was getting in her way as she tried to speak to me. “I asked Kaileigh if the prince sent her flowers, because you know she was quite badly shocked by the death of her RA too. But no, he didn’t bother. Only Ameera. But Ameera won’t even see him. Every time the prince comes over, Ameera pulls the covers over her head and refuses to even look at him. Well, you and I are adult women, Ms. Wells, we know what’s going on there.”

I’d stared at her in confusion. “We do?”

“Of course we do,” Mrs. Harris said. “I’m sure the prince heard what kind of girl Ameera is, and she’s playing hard to get. That’s why he’s sending her flowers, and not my Kaileigh. My Kaileigh would never think of doing those kinds of things, not even with a prince, even if he did take her and her suite mates to that fancy sushi restaurant for lunch. Because that’s all it was, lunch. Kaileigh assured me of that.”