JENNIE
"Who started it?" I ask, trying my best not to jump to conclusions like I normally do.
Lisa tries to meet my eyes, but I look away. "I went to find her after I walked you to class," she says.
"You promised me that you'd leave her alone." "I know."
"So why didn't you?"
"She was pushing it—she started provoking me, saying that she fucked you." She looks at me with a wild desperation. "You aren't lying about that, are you?" she asks, and I nearly lose it.
"I'm not answering that question again. I already told you that nothing happened between us, and here you are in a freaking jail cell asking such a thing," I say with frustration.
She rolls her eyes and sits down on the small metal bench inside the holding cell. She's really pissing me off.
"Why did you go find her? I want to know."
"Because she needed her ass beat, Jennie. She needs to know that she isn't to come near you again. I'm sick of her fucking games and the way she thinks she has some sort of fucking chance with you. I did this for you!"
I cross my arms over my chest. "How would you feel if I'd been the one to go find her today after I told you I wouldn't? I thought we were both trying to make this work, and here you blatantly lied to my face. You knew you weren't going to hold up your end of the deal, didn't you?"
"Yeah, I did, okay? It doesn't matter now, what's done is done," she huffs like an angry child.
"It matters to me, Lisa. You keep getting yourself in trouble when it's not necessary."
"It's very necessary, Jen."
"Where's Rosé now? Is she in jail, too?" "This isn't jail."
"Lisa . . ."
"I don't know where she is, nor do I give a shit, and neither do you. You aren't going near her."
"Stop being like this! Stop telling me what I can and can't do—it's really pissing me off."
"Are you cursing at me?" she says with an amused smirk.
Why does she think this is funny? It's anything but funny. I begin to walk away from her, and the smile disappears from her lips.
"Jennie, come back," she says, making me turn around. "I'm going to find your father to see what's going on." "Tell him to hurry up."
I growl at her, literally, as I walk away. She thinks just because her father is the chancellor, she's going to get out of this easily, and honestly, I really hope she does. But it's still nerve-racking how lightly she's taking the whole thing.
"What the fuck are you looking at?" I hear her say to a cop, and I rub my fingers over my temples.
I find Marco and Jisoo standing next to an older man with gray hair and a mustache. He's wearing a tie and black dress pants, and the way he's holding himself gives me the feeling that he's important. When Jisoo notices me standing in the hall, she walks over to me.
"Who's that?" I ask her quietly. "He's the provost."
"That's the vice chancellor, right?" Jisoo looks worried. "Yeah."
"What's going on? What are they saying?" I try to hear the two men talking, but I can't make out anything.
"It's . . . well, it's not looking good. There was a lot of damage done to the lab that Rosé was in—I'm talking thousands of dollars' worth of damage. On top of that, Rosé has a broken nose and a concussion. Someone drove her to the hospital."
My blood begins to boil. Lisa didn't just push Rosé around. She seriously injured her!
"Also, Lisa shoved a professor to the floor. There's a girl who's in Rosé's class that already wrote a statement saying Lisa came in there looking for Rosé specifically. It's looking really bad right now. Marco's trying his best to keep Lisa out of jail, but I don't know if that's going to happen." Jisoo sighs, running her fingers through her hair. "The only thing that can keep her out of jail is if Rosé decides to not press charges. Even then I don't know what'll happen."
My head is spinning.
"Expulsion," I hear the gray-haired man say, and Marco rubs his hand over his chin.
Expulsion? Lisa can't get expelled from school! Oh my God, this is a mess.
"She's my daughter," Marco says quietly, and I take a sly step closer to them.
"I know she is, but assaulting a professor and damaging school property isn't something we can just brush aside," the man says.
Damn Lisa and her temper. "This is a disaster," I tell Jisoo, and she nods sullenly.
I want to throw myself on the floor and cry, or better yet, I want to stomp over to Lisa's cell and punch her in her face. Neither of those things will help.
"Maybe you should talk to Rosé about not pressing charges?" Jisoo suggests.
"Lisa will freak out if I go anywhere near her." Not that I should even listen to her, since she doesn't listen to me.
"I know," Jisoo replies, "but I don't know what else to suggest at this point."
"I guess you're right." I look back at Marco, then down the hall, to where Lisa is.
Lisa is my first priority, but I do feel awful for what she did to Rosé, who I hope is going to be okay. Maybe if I go talk to her she'll decide not to press charges, which would at least eliminate one problem.
"Where is she? Do you know?" I ask Jisoo.
"I think I overheard them say she's at Grandview Hospital." "Okay. Well, I'll go there first."
"Do you need a ride back to your car?" "Shit. I didn't drive."
Jisoo digs her hand into her pocket and hands me her keys. "Here. Just drive carefully."
I smile at my best friend. "Thanks."
I have no idea what I would do without her, but since she's leaving soon, I guess I'll have to find out. The thought saddens me but I push it back; I can't think about Jisoo's leaving right now.
"I'll go talk to Lisa and let her know what's going on."
"Thank you again." I wrap my arms around Jisoo's neck in a tight hug. Just as I reach the door Lisa's voice booms down the hall. "Jennie! Don't you fucking dare go find her!" she screams. I ignore her and open the double doors.
"I mean it, Jennie! Come back in here!"
The cold air drowns out her loud voice as I walk outside. How dare she tell me what to do like that? Who does she think she is? She's made a huge mess because she can't control her temper and jealousy. I'm trying to help clean up this mess. She's lucky I didn't slap her for breaking her promise to me. God, she's so frustrating.
WHEN I ARRIVE at Grandview, the woman at the nurse's station doesn't want to give me any information on Rosé. She won't confirm if she's here now or tell me if she's been here at all.
"She's my girlfriend and I really need to see her," I tell the young bottle blonde.
She obnoxiously pops her chewing gum and twirls a lock of her hair between her fingers. "She's your girlfriend? The kid with all the tattoos?" She laughs, obviously not believing me.
"Yes. She is." My tone is clipped, nearly threatening, and I'm surprised at how intimidating I actually manage to sound.
It must work, because she shrugs and says, "Go down the hall and make a right. First door on the left," before wandering off.
Well, that wasn't too hard. I should be more forceful more often. I do as she told me and approach the first door on the left. It's closed, so I knock lightly before entering. I hope she told me the right room.
Rosé is sitting on the edge of a hospital bed. She's shirtless, wearing only jeans and socks. Her face.
"Oh my God!" I can't help but blurt out as I take in her appearance.
Her nose is broken; I already knew that, but it looks so bad. It's so swollen and both her eyes are black. Her chest is covered in bandages; the set of stars inked just below her collarbones is the only thing not covered in bandages or cuts.
"Are you okay?" I walk over to the bed. I hope she's not angry with me for coming here, to the hospital; this is my fault, after all.
"Not really," Rosé says timidly. She lets out a deep breath and ruffles her hair before opening her eyes. She pats the bed next to her and I walk over to sit beside her.
"I'm so sorry for this. Will you tell me what happened?"
Rosé's caramel eyes meet mine and she nods. "I was in the lab—not the one I showed you, but our plant tissue lab—and she came in there and started telling me to stay away from you."
"Then what?"
"I told her she doesn't own you and she slammed my head against a metal bar." I flinch at her words, looking at her nose.
"Did you tell her you slept with me?" I ask, unsure whether I believe this or not.
"Yeah. I did. I'm really sorry for saying that, but you have to understand she was attacking me, and I knew that was the only way to get to her. I feel like such an asshole for saying it. I'm really sorry, Jennie."
"She promised me that she'd stay away from you if I did, too," I tell her. "Well, looks like she broke another promise, didn't she?" she says pointedly.
I stay quiet for a minute and try to put the fight together in my head. I'm angry at Rosé for telling Lisa we slept together, but I'm glad she admitted it and apologized. I don't know which of these girls to be more angry with. It's hard to be angry at Rosé as she sits here with so many injuries that I basically caused, and despite all of that she's still being so kind to me.
"I'm sorry that this keeps happening because of me," I tell her.
"It's not your fault. It's mine, and her. She just views you as some sort of property, and it pisses me off. You know what she said to me? She said that I should know better than to 'fuck with what's her.' That's how she talks about you when you aren't around, Jennie." Her voice is soft and calm, totally unlike Lisa's.
I don't like the way Lisa seems to think she owns me either, but it bothers me when someone else says it. Lisa doesn't know how to handle her emotions and she's never been in a relationship before. "She's just territorial."
"You can't really be defending her right now."
"I'm not, that's not what I'm doing. I don't know what to think. She's in jail . . . well, in a holding cell on campus, and you're in the hospital. This is just too much for me. I know I shouldn't be complaining but I'm so sick of this drama all the time. Every time I feel like I can breathe, something else happens. It's drowning me."
"She's drowning you," Rosé corrects me.
It's not only Lisa that's drowning me. It's everything: it's this college, my so-called friends who betrayed me, Lisa, Jisoo leaving me, my mother, Rosé . . .
"I did this to myself, though."
Rosé says, not without a little annoyance, "Stop blaming yourself for her mistakes. She does this shit because she doesn't care about anyone but herself. If she cared about you, she'd have stayed away from me like she promised. She wouldn't have stood you up on your birthday . . . I could go on for ages."
"Did you text me from her phone?"
"What?" She presses her palm to the bed to shift her body closer to mine. "Fuck." She hisses from the pain.
"Do you need something? I can call a nurse?" I offer, momentarily distracted.
"No, I'm getting ready to leave here. They should be finishing up my discharge papers. Now, what were you saying about me texting you?" she asks.
"Lisa seems to think you're the one who texted me on her birthday pretending to be her so I thought she was coming but she didn't know she was supposed to."
"She's lying. I would never do that. Why would I?"
"I don't know, she thinks you're trying to make me hate her or something."
Rosé's gaze is too intense, I have to look away. "She's doing a pretty good job of that on her own, isn't she?"
"No, she's not," I counter. No matter how angry I am with her and how confused Rosê's words are making me, I want to defend Lisa.
"She's only saying that so you'll think I'm some sort of villain when I'm not. I've always been there for you when she wasn't. She can't even keep a simple promise to you. She came in there and attacked me—and a professor! She kept on saying she was going to kill me, and I really believed her. If Professor Sutton hadn't come in, she would have. She already knows she can take me, she's done it multiple times." Rosé shivers and stands to her feet. She grabs her green T-shirt from the chair and lifts her arms to pull it on. "Shit." She drops it to the floor.
I hurry to my feet to help her and grab the shirt from the ground.
"Lift as much as you can," I say and she brings her arms straight forward in front of her to aid me in dressing her.
"Thank you." She tries to smile again.
"What hurts the most?" I ask, assessing her swollen face again. "Rejection," she timidly answers.
Ouch. I look down at my hands and begin to pick at my fingers.
"My nose," she then offers as a gesture to soften the moment. "When they had to set the broken bone."
"Are you going to press charges against her?" I finally ask what I came here to ask.
"Yeah."
"Don't, please." I stare into her eyes. "Jennie, you can't do this. It isn't fair."
"I know. I'm sorry, but if you press charges she'll go to jail, to real jail." The thought sends me into a panic again.
"She broke my nose and I have a concussion; if she'd hit my head against that floor again, it would've killed me."
"I'm not saying that's okay, but I'm begging you. Please, Rosé. We are leaving anyway. I'm transferring to Seattle, and Lisa will be gone, too."
Rosé looks at me with worry. "She's coming with you?"
"No—well, yes. You won't have to worry about her anymore. If you don't press charges, you won't have to hear from her again."
Rosé looks at me through swollen eyes for a few seconds. "Fine." She sighs. "I won't press charges against her, but please promise me that you'll really think about this. All of this; think of how much easier your life would be without her, Jennie. She attacked me for no reason, and here you are cleaning up her mess, as always," she says, utterly irritated
I don't blame her, though. I'm using the feelings she has for me against her, to persuade her to not press charges against Lisa.
"I will, thank you so much," I tell her and she nods.
"I wish I had fallen in love with someone who could love me back," she says so quietly that I barely hear her.
Love? Rosé loves me? I know she has feelings for me . . . but she loves me? Her fight with Lisa—the reason she's in the hospital right now—is my fault. But she loves me? She has a girlfriend and I'm so back and forth with Lisa. I look over at her and pray it's the pain medication speaking, not really her.