Read Online Final Exam by Maggie Barbieri - Free Book Online Page B

was sudden,” I said. Trixie came out from the living room and introduced herself to Amanda. “This is Trixie.” I looked at the dog. “Trixie, this is Amanda.”
    Trixie held up her paw and allowed Amanda to hold it.
    “I didn’t think they allowed animals in the dorms,” she said, dropping the paw.
    “Special dispensation from the pope,” I said. She didn’t get the joke. “Special circumstances, really. I live alone and I wouldn’t have anybody to take care of my dog while I lived here.” And no, I wasn’t lying: living with Max these days was like living alone, and she certainly wasn’t going to take care of Trixie while I was away. “Now, is there something I can help you with?” I steeled myself for some kind of spring break confession about irresponsible sex or a wet T-shirt contest but there was none forthcoming.
    “Are we still having our house meeting tomorrow night?”
    “House meeting?”
    “Yes. When all of the RAs get together and discuss the upcoming events and any issues that exist in the dorm.” She looked at me as if I were a moron. “House meeting,” she repeated.
    “Sure. We can have a house meeting,” I said. I wondered if she’d like to hear about my “issues,” namely, that I didn’t have a toilet. “Where and when?”
    “Seven o’clock in the TV room,” she said, leaning in to get a better look at my accommodations. “All of Wayne’s stuff is gone,” she whispered to herself.
    “Sure is.” I looked around. I hoped it was. If I discovered anything like what I had found yesterday, I wasn’t going to be happy. “So I’ll get to meet the other RAs tomorrow?”
    She nodded. “There are six of us. Me, and five guys.” She stepped out of the room and back into the hallway. “There’s only one floor of women here. You knew that, right?”
    “I knew that,” I confirmed. “Hey, were you close with Wayne?”
    She flushed a pink that was close to the color of her flip-flops. “No. Why would you ask that?”
    I shrugged. “I don’t know. He lived here, you live here . . . just thought I’d ask. I thought maybe you knew where he went.”
    “Why would I know where he went?”
    “Just thought I’d ask,” I repeated. When she didn’t move from her place in the hallway, I asked her, “So, tomorrow at seven? TV room?”
    She nodded and took off down the hallway, her flip-flops slapping a guilty staccato on the marble floor. She knew more than she was giving up. Or she was madly in love with slack-jawed Wayne. Or both.
    The next thought hit me like a ton of bricks.
    Could he have been her dealer?

Eight
    The next school day passed without incident and I managed to keep my nose clean for the entire day. I spoke with Crawford at lunchtime and he told me that he had found a woman in the squad who had a hook in Scarsdale. She had reached out to a detective there and found out that Wayne had not been reported as a missing person, at least not so far. But the detective promised to keep an eye out and an ear to the ground and to let Crawford know if anything turned up.
    We were running out of metaphors so I hoped this wrapped up quickly.
    I got back to the dorm just in time to pay the pizza guy, who was waiting for me at the front desk when I walked in. I skidded to the front desk in my high heels; my first duty as RD was going to be to have a conversation with the custodian about the high gloss on these floors. There was clean and then there was dangerous . We had entered into the latter category with Mr. Janitor’s overzealous buffing.
    I had called for a pizza before I left my office thinking that I would be back at the dorm in minutes; I had gotten waylaid by a student who was not guilty about spring break, but guilty about the D he was getting in my creative writing class. If he had channeled all of that guilt into his creative writing, he would have had something to work with, but instead, he was frozen. We worked through a few scenarios, with my mind on my