The Tragedy Paper by Elizabeth LaBan

addition to how white I looked, what a stranger was doing in the bathroom. But before I had a chance to, he was standing in front of me, towering over me, it seemed.
    “I hear you spent the night in a hotel room with my girlfriend,” he snarled.
    This was by far the worst-case scenario.
Please let someone else come in
, I chanted to myself.
Please let someone else come in
.
    He moved in even closer. His nose was practically touching mine.
    “If you weren’t so weird-looking already, I would mess you up,” he said. “Maybe I’d break your nose, or give you a black eye. Nobody—and I mean nobody, except for me—gets to be alone in a bedroom with my girl. Is that understood?”
    “Don’t worry,” I said, perhaps a bit too sarcastically. “I can’t imagine she’d let that happen again.”
    “Let what happen?” he asked.
    I was scared, I’ll admit it. I hadn’t meant for it to sound that way, and I knew once you started trying to dig out of a hole, you only made things worse. In my mind I could still hear her voice saying
Thanks for the last eighteen hours
. Eighteen hours. Eighteen hours. I hoped Patrick couldn’t read minds. For a second I distracted myself trying to think of which superhero could read minds. Just to let you know, it is Professor X of the X-Men, but I was so frazzled I didn’t think of it until I got back to my room.
    “Nothing,” I said finally. “I mean, she won’t ever want to spend a night in a hotel again, with me, that is.…”
    I didn’t seem to be making Patrick feel any better. I thought about telling him there were two beds and I didn’t even sleep in one of them, but I was fumbling and knew I would somehow mess it up more than I already had.
    “Why’s that?” he asked. He could lean over just a bit and bite my nose if he wanted to. It would suck to have to meet new people looking the way I look with a big festering biteon my nose. But he didn’t, and I should have realized that nobody would want to get that close to me anyway. Just then the door swung open and a redheaded short guy walked in. He was wearing red-checked boxers and no shirt even though there was a sign reminding us to come to the bathroom in more than just our underwear. He smiled at Patrick, then his eyes rested on me.
    “Hey,” the kid said, looking from me to Patrick, then back to me.
    “Hey,” Patrick said. I think I managed a weak smile. We all stood there for a few seconds, and I wondered if he forgot what he came to do. Then he nodded and went into a stall.
    “I’m just joking with you, you know that, right?” Patrick asked suddenly, patting me on the back. “I was just kidding around. Hey, Peter, introduce yourself to our new friend.”
    “I’m Peter,” a voice said from inside the stall. We could hear him unrolling the toilet paper.
    “I’m Tim,” I said.
    “I didn’t mean to scare you. Did I scare you?” Patrick asked. I remember thinking the guy was crazy, he was all over the place. Before I had a chance to say anything, he kept talking. “So, do you want to come to my room later?” he asked. I just stood there and looked at the floor. I assumed he was talking to Peter.
    “Hey, you,” he said, nodding in my direction. “We’re organizing this semester’s big Game, and you should get inon it. It’ll be a good way for you to meet people. What do you say?”
    I had no idea what he was talking about. The big Game? But I didn’t want to stick around for an explanation. My head was spinning, and the smell in the bathroom was getting overwhelming. I had to get out of there.
    “I’m thinking a little strip poker might be in order,” smelly Pete said from inside the stall.
    “No way,” Patrick said. “I don’t need to play a game to get some action. I have other ideas. What’s that game called when you have to off someone and it’s a secret and …”
    “Assassin,” I said without thinking.
    A slow smile spread over Patrick’s face.
    “Okay, then,” he said.