Free Shot Girl by Karen E. Olson Page A

something.
    I was over in this part of the city anyway, so why not? Maybe Ned Winters—who had called Priscilla, who called me—could lead me in the right direction, Felicia-wise, since he was head of the journalism department. I was pretty sure he’d have a few things to say about Ralph, too, but if seeing him could get me some information, then I could suffer through it.
    Ned had been Ralph’s best friend and roommate. The three of us and Priscilla practically lived together in Farnham Hall, although Priscilla and Ned weren’t a "couple." They’d had one disastrous night together—Priscilla wouldn’t even tell me about it, which made me really wonder what had happened—and decided they’d just be friends.
    The only thing about going to Southern that my mother approved of was that I lived on campus—that was not the norm; Southern has always been more of a commuter college—giving me "the college experience," as she put it. I’m not sure cohabiting with Ralph on a regular basis was what she meant by that, but what she didn’t know didn’t hurt her. And I doubted she’d know what a bong was even if she saw one. It was too bad Jamond hadn’t been born yet; otherwise we would’ve definitely taken advantage of his community-garden crop.
    Ned was the pretty boy who had no ambition. He liked being in school, having few responsibilities. After we graduated, he went on to get his master’s degree at Columbia in New York City and came back to Southern as an adjunct journalism professor. He’d never worked at a newspaper or magazine, or done anything else that could resemble actual journalism. He was everything I loathed: the professor who pretended to know how it was but had never been in the trenches himself. And to think he was molding young journalistic minds. It was fucking frightening.
    When Ralph and I split, Ned called me a few times to "commiserate." By the fourth call, I was tired of replaying the shit and rebuffing Ned’s advances. Despite his denials, I also knew he was reporting back to Ralph about my life. I told him to quit bothering me.
    Just about a year ago, he called me at the paper "officially" and wanted to know if I’d be interested in teaching a basic newswriting class. I asked him if he was on crack and hung up.
    I stopped at the light at Fitch and looked to my right at Connecticut Hall, the dining hall, where the only edible food had been cereal. I was a Froot Loops girl back then. I should’ve just poured the Budweiser on top of them; they were mixed up in my stomach most of the time anyway. Behind the dining hall were the residence halls. The long walkway over Fitch Street connected the West and East sides of campus, and I remembered how damn cold it used to get crossing that bridge to go to class.
    Someone honked a horn behind me. I shook myself out of my memories and turned left onto Fitch.
    The state had been doing a lot of renovation work here in the past few years. The journalism department had moved out of Engleman Hall and into Morrill. I barely recognized either as I pulled into the parking lot adjacent to both. Engleman was more than double the size it had been; a sort of mural carved in beige stone decorated the entranceway to Morrill.
    If it had looked like this when I was here, maybe I’d be like Ned, too, and never want to leave.
    I walked into Morrill Hall, and a dozen emotions embraced me as the air-conditioning hit me in the face and I sighed with relief. I hadn’t realized how comfortable I’d gotten with the heat; it was sort of like wearing a heavy coat I didn’t need but had gotten used to, so I kept it on.
    I pushed the button on the old elevator, and as the doors opened, Ned Winters and I both did a double take; he stepped out and pulled me into a bear hug before I could say anything.
    "Oh, Annie," he said, his breath causing goose bumps to rise on my neck. "I saw you from my window, so I came down to meet you. It’s just so awful about Ralph, isn’t it? I