Stranded with My Stepbrother Chapter 102: Sophomore Problems

McKenzie

I was just opening up my e-mail when my mother burst through the door. “Mom!” I cried. “Don’t you kn—?” My complaint died on my lips when I saw how pale she was.

“McKenzie,” she wheezed. Mom must have flown up the stairs. “You need to pack and go back to school.”

“What?” I replied, closing the cover on my iPad. “Why? What’s going on?”

“Now!” she all but screamed.

She was scared. Jocelyn Ann Kent, who I had never seen rattled in all my life, was absolutely terrified. “Mom?” I asked worriedly.

“No questions. Just pack. Take Billy’s truck. He’ll go pick it up later,” she said, already rifling through my drawers and throwing things into my suitcase.

Most of the stuff she was choosing was stuff I’d been planning to leave behind, but she was so desperately afraid, I wasn’t going to argue. I could always come back and get my stuff when… whatever this was… passed. “Okay,” I responded slowly. “Okay. When’s he going to come get it?”

“I don’t know. A day? A week? It doesn’t matter,” my mother grunted, tossing in half my sock drawer.

“Even a day is going to cost a fortune in parking!” I protested. “I can’t let Uncle Billy—”

“Don’t argue with me,” she snapped.

I closed my mouth. She’d never used that tone with me before.

She stopped packing, and her eyes welled up. “I love you, sweetie,” she whispered, grabbing me suddenly in a strong hug. “I love you so much.”

“Mom, please tell me what’s going on,” I begged, a sick feeling settling in my stomach.

“I can’t. You need to leave. We’ll contact you when we can,” she said, handing my suitcase to me.

Pretty sure it was full of socks and zero underwear, I still took it and followed Mom out of my room and down the back stairs. I could still hear Dad talking to someone at the front door.

“Oh. I left the cereal…” I began.

“Forget the cereal. I’ll take care of the cereal.” My mother took a keychain down off the hook by the back door and pressed it into my hands. “Take Billy’s truck. Go back to the U. Pretend like nothing’s happened. Do you understand?”

I swallowed and nodded. “Okay.” I opened the door and started outside, carrying my suitcase instead of rolling it so it didn’t make noise. I dropped it in the back of the cab of Uncle Billy’s truck then got behind the wheel.

There was an unfamiliar car in the wide dirt circle that served as parking between the house and the barn. Though ‘car’ was an understatement. It was a Lamborghini. I wondered who in their right mind would drive a car like that down a dirt road.

Whoever it was, it wasn’t a salesperson or a political campaign canvasser. I knew that much. I quickly memorized the license plate—I had a photographic memory—and then fired up the truck and took off.

The dark-haired man in a nice suit who was standing at the door with my father turned his head, but I didn’t see his face, and I didn’t think he saw mine. I peeled out of the driveway, kicking rocks up to ping off his Lamborghini.

When I looked in the rearview mirror, I saw my mother coming around the side of the house with two duffel bags.

That was the last I saw of her.

***

Chemistry was impossible, both inside and outside of class. Somehow, I’d ended up in a wing of girls who were at the U to get their MRS degrees—or ‘missus’ for those who didn’t get the joke. Basically a bunch of women who’d enrolled in college with the intention of marrying a doctor, lawyer, dentist, etc. with little to no intention of earning a degree themselves.

I couldn’t believe, in my sophomore year, I was still being housed with them. I was even in a different dorm building! But since I was still in the quad, I supposed it was inevitable that transferring from Frontier to Centennial wasn’t going to make a damn bit of difference.

Next year, I was staying in the Comstock building for sure.

“You know what?” My blonde, willowy roommate named Stacey sighed as I tried to do my chemistry homework. “I think I’d like to do laundry for the rest of my life.”

I blinked at her. Just days ago, I’d been helping her with her remedial English paper. In return, she’d held a rager in our room over the weekend and allowed someone to spill beer all over my lofted bed. I didn’t even want to know what else had happened on that bed, but there was a suspicious white stain on my blanket that hadn’t come out in the wash.

“What?” she grumped, looking back at me. “I know Alex is just days away from asking me to marry him.”

“Alex?” So it was Alex this week.

“Oh, you haven’t met him. That’s right. I had him over, over the weekend. He’s staying tonight. He just had to pick up some more stuff,” she said.

Here I was trying to pretend my parents hadn’t disappeared and that I was just being studious while I was internally freaking out. And now she was going to move another man into our 10x10 dorm.

Usually, I’d have been quiet about it. Usually. But I was on the last fraying thread of my last nerve. “Were you going to ask me about that?”

“Huh?” Stacey asked, her blue eyes going wide with confusion.

“I don’t want him here. In fact, you can cancel any other guys staying with us. If you want to go stay with him, that’s fine, but I didn’t sign up for two roommates in a 10x10 space,” I said.

“Hey, you can’t tell me what to do!” she huffed, glaring at me.

I glared right back. “No, I can’t. But the RA can, and I’ve had it with you. This isn’t a hostel. I get to feel comfortable in my own living space and not worry about your asshole boyfriends seeing me naked. I’m not going to put up with it any more.”

After a while, she couldn’t meet my glare anymore. “Fine, whatever,” she muttered at her laundry basket.

Knowing her, I was going to find something unpleasant in my bed later or have pop ‘accidentally’ spilled on my laptop. But for now, I felt pretty good. Aside from the fact my parents were missing and Uncle Billy, Uncle Jake, and Uncle Horace had all forbidden me from contacting them from anything other than a pay phone. I hadn’t even known pay phones still existed!

I went back to chemistry, the numbers all swimming around my lab homework. A week ago, I could do this. A week ago, I’d have been all over this.

Now?

I could barely add two plus two.

Stacey sniffed and put her laundry away then stormed out of our dorm room, across the hall to Kelly, her best friend and minion, to complain about me. I couldn’t muster the energy to care.

The door was open to the hallway, and I could see some more of the MRS Brigade, or as I liked to call them, TWITs (Trophy-Wives-In-Training) gathering in Kelly’s dorm. I had a feeling this was going to lead to something bad.

“Fine, whatever,” I muttered, echoing Stacey’s earlier sentiment. I had bigger things to worry about than whether or not I found a used condom under my pillow tonight.

I glanced up several times as I worked on my chemistry lab write-up. The TWITs kept looking over at me and whispering. Finally, the entire posse of them started across the hall.

“Let me guess,” I said before any of them could open their mouths. “Snitches get stitches and end up in ditches?”

The TWIT collective stared at me, not comprehending.

“We’ve decided Alex gets to stay,” Stacey announced, finally just forging ahead.

“You did? That’s nice. And again I say, ‘no.’ Unless he wants to stay with Kelly.” I turned in my chair. “In fact, why don’t you both stay there? She has a couch, and I’m sure she’d just love to hear the two of you going at it all night.”

“You don’t get to say, ‘no.’ We voted,” she replied confidently.

I rose. “You can go ahead and tell that to the RA.”

“Oh come on, McKenzie. Don’t be a bitch,” she griped. “It’s just until he proposes.”

I swallowed a retort about buying the cow when he’s getting the milk for free. She was a vindictive idiot, but the idiot part wasn’t her fault, and I wasn’t going to be spiteful. That would be stooping to her level. “He’s not staying here.”

“Ugh!” She folded her arms. “Why don’t you just go stay with your parents or something? You go there every time we have a break, anyway.”

“Gee, I wonder why,” I bit back.

“Oh, come on, you act like I’m a bad roommate,” she scoffed.

“You are a bad roommate,” I ground out. This was all so stupid and pointless. Why was I even engaging with her? My parents were missing, for the love of Christ!

Stacey jutted out her lip in a mutinous pout. “That’s not true.”

“You’re standing in our room with all your friends trying to tell me who gets to stay in our room when I already told you ‘no.’ And you got beer and cum on my bed while I was gone—don’t try to tell me you didn’t,” I snarled, my patience snapping. “Last time I checked, we’re all nineteen/twenty years old. I don’t mind you drinking, but if you get me in trouble for your bad choices, I will unleash holy hell on you, Stacey. And I’ve got better things to do than talk to you and your friends right now.” I looked past her at Kelly and the rest of them. “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”

They all gaped at me as though no one had ever told them off before. Maybe they hadn’t. But I was tired and confused, and I was scared for my parents, and my mouth just wasn’t going to stay closed anymore.

“But… we voted,” Kelly mumbled.

“Is this your room?” I asked.

“No,” she replied.

“Your vote doesn’t count. Now get out,” I snarled.

I don’t know what expression was on my face, but I’ve never seen a group of girls scatter so quickly.

Only Stacey stayed. She was white with rage. “This isn’t over,” she said.

“Bring it on, bitch,” I growled.

She lifted her chin and stormed out the door.

I was actually kind of disappointed she didn’t stick around for a physical fight. That thought alone told me I was way, way not myself.

Shaking with anger, I sat back down at my laptop, but I still couldn’t get the numbers to make sense. With a frustrated sigh, I picked up my iPad and decided to go read out on the Northrup Mall.

When I left, I could see Stacey sneaking back into the room. Lord only knew what she was doing. Something deeply unpleasant or destructive for sure.

I decided not to circle back. I’d deal with whatever happened later. Just one more thing I could document to get myself moved to a different dorm room. I wished I could have kept my roommate from last year. Valerie was a real gem. But she’d unfortunately dropped out toward the end of the last semester, and I’d had to pay roommate roulette again.

I’d sure been shot in the face this time.

It was crisp and cool outside. I walked the few blocks to the Northrup Mall quickly, enjoying the way the air burned just enough in my lungs to make me feel alive. Buses blared past as well as cars, but this was the one place in Minnesota where people walked across the street willy-nilly and no one questioned it. Pedestrians reigned supreme.

When I got to the mall, I could see all the trees were taken, but that was okay. On a cool day like this, I wanted to be in the sun, anyway. I sat down on the dying grass and started to read Shakespeare.

A long shadow fell over me.

“McKenzie Kent?” a deep voice asked.

I looked up…

… into the blue eyes of the most handsome man I’d ever seen in my life.