The Bermudez Triangle Read Free Page B

something?”
    “No. Smaller group. We work with them, though. What do you do?”
    “Oh, you know.” Ashley sprawled herself over the bed and started braiding her hair loosely. “Food drives, stuff like that. Sort of. I lied about half the stuff on my application. They don’t care, anyway, as long as you pay. It’s all bullshit. You want a Red Bull?”
    “No thanks.
    “Ashley remembered her manners and reached down into her mini-fridgeand halfheartedly offered a Red Bull to Nina as well. Nina shook her head. She didn’t really feel the need to increase the number of hours she was awake with her roommate.
    Steve typed. Ashley braided. Nina watched her visitor out of the corner of her eye. He had a deep tan and just a bit of a shadow on his chin, and his face was becoming more and more intent on the screen. Then his fingers stopped moving on the keys and he turned around slowly.
    “What’s bullshit?” he asked.
    “This. Schools. Admissions are all bullshit,” Ashley said, clearly bored by the discussion already. “Schools just want money. Give them money, they let you come. Get some bullshit recommendations. Whatever.”
    Steve regarded Ashley with a curious cock of the head. Nina, however, had to step in. She
had
to.
    “It’s not bullshit,” she said. “I do everything I put on my application, and I’m here to learn how to run things.”
    “Oh,” Ashley replied. She seemed completely content with her own thoughts; the opinions of others didn’t affect her at all. She dropped the braid and let it unravel, then she sprang up, tugged her tiny shorts into place, and flat-footed it out into the hall.
    Nina jumped off of her own bed and firmly shut the door. She could feel her pulse racing.
    “I’m not going to make it,” she said. “I can’t live with her for nine more weeks. Can we switch rooms?”
    “Some people are like that,” Steve replied.
    “You mean assholes?”
    “The thing is,” he went on, “if you let it get to you, you can never get anything done. But you can come down anytime, if you want to escape.”
    “Thanks.”
    He turned back around to his e-mail. Nina settled herself back down to her reading.
    Steve suddenly interested her a lot. Maybe it was because he had expressed a mutual dislike of Ashley (the enemy of your enemy is supposed to be your friend, after all). Maybe it was because he seemed real—from his conversation, right down to his worn-out clothes. And maybe it was just because he was flat-out muscle-bound and appealingly rugged.
    He thanked her quietly when he was done, then gave another quick glance at Nina’s bath basket before smiling and backing out the door.
    Later on, as she walked down to the bathroom, she passed Steve in the small kitchen nook. He had the door to the microwave open and was using a piece of cardboard to scrape out the green slime that coated the already nasty interior. She stopped and watched him, but his head was actually in the microwave, so he didn’t notice. There was a bottle of some kind of environmentally friendly orange cleaner on the counter, which Nina guessed was his.
    She hadn’t liked what Ashley had done, but it hadn’t occurred to her to clean the mess up, either. In fact, in a whole hall full of leaders and activists, Weird Steve was the only one who appeared to care about the fate of the cleaning people.
     
     
Independence Day
     
     
    June 29
    TO: Mel; Nina
    FROM: Avery
    Our manager, Bob, gave me my first point today because some people complained that I ignored them. (Eight points and you’re fired. Either that or you get Valuable Prizes.)
    I AM THE VERY FIRST P. J. MORTIMER’S EMPLOYEE TO GET POINTS! I WIN!
    Later on I caught Bob sitting out back by the Dumpster reading
PC Gamer
on his break. I had a cigarette, and he gave me one of those “ew, you smoke?” kind of looks. So I gave him one of those “sex with your Sims girlfriend doesn’t count” kind of looks back.
    June 30
    TO: Avery; Mel
    FROM: Nina
    You know,