Frat House Hell

By John Luciew

As a series of real-life college fraternity scandals rocks the nation, journalist John Luciew returns with a ripped-from-the-headlines thriller so current you won’t be able to put it down until the last twist is revealed.

An out-of-control fraternity. A horribly twisted crime. An innocent victim. And a most unusual plan for revenge...
PARTY AT YOUR OWN RISK

Excerpt from Tessa Knight’s blog:

College, it is often said, is the place where we lose our innocence. This is the glossy, idyllic admissions brochure version of the quintessential coming of age story. It is the fiction universities like to sell to unsuspecting young women looking to make their mark on the world. I’m here to tell you, there’s a darker side. I know. I’ve seen it. Hell, I’ve lived it. We all did. Me and my four friends from my freshman year.

Looking back, the thing I remember most, the one thing that haunts me to this very day, is Chelsea’s eyes. Those wide, innocent eyes that could be so awed by every little thing she saw.

Chelsea hailed from small Pennsylvania town, you see. And sprawling Old State boasted a bigger population than her three nearest counties combined. Our state school with its powerhouse college football program was a teeming city of thousands of late teen and twenty somethings, all raging with hormones, driven by ambition and fueled by alternate heavy doses of caffeine, alcohol and whatever other substances happened to be available at the time.

And sex, of course. Lots of sex.

To be sure, there are plenty of ways for a young girl like Chelsea to lose her innocence at a big, bad place like Old State. But Chelsea, the most innocent among us, didn’t lose hers. It was stolen from her, instead.

For along with Old State’s manifold admissions brochure charms lurk dangers, some hidden, some in plain sight and some as handsome as the devil himself.

I can still see her, the moment we found her, naked and so afraid, pawing for her clothes in in the dark, dank and dirty room.

What happened to Chelsea was a terrible crime. Of this, there was no doubt. But how to prove it?

For her part, Chelsea claimed to have no recollection of these events. She never talked about what had happened, acting, instead, like someone surfacing from a fitful sleep roiled by some horrifically vivid nightmare.

We, her friends, wouldn’t forget. We couldn’t. And in revenge, we vowed a mission of utter retribution. Retribution upon the perpetrators, yes. But also upon the entire system that seems to care only about keeping tuition sky high, alcohol sales obscenely fat and which annually serves up freshman women as if on a sacrificial altar.

Our creative means of delivering comeuppance would capture national headlines.

But would it change anything?

I’m still waiting for this. Until then, all I can do is tell my story. Really, it’s our story. All five of ours.

For from the very beginning, we were more than friends. More than mere dorm mates.

We were sisters sworn to a terrible secret.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Luciew
• Release date: Mar 22, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310482144

John Luciew

BREAKING NEWS!! All five of my full-length mystery/thrillers are coming soon in unabridged audio form. ZERO TOLERANCE and KILL THE STORY are already out for 2013 from Audible.com. SECRETS OF THE DEAD is up for full sound-recording treatment next, followed by FATAL DEAD LINES and my newest mystery, LAST CASE. I hope you will check them out. Some serious voice talent has been brought to bear to turn my best ripped-from-the-headlines page-turners into a can't-stop-listening, white-knuckle audio mystery experiences. Now, a little more about me and my books: Journalist John Luciew is the author of numerous ripped-from-the-headlines fictional thrillers that mix politics, corporate power and pulse-pounding suspense, including: KILL THE STORY, ZERO TOLERANCE, SECRETS OF THE DEAD, FATAL DEAD LINES, CORPORATE CUNNING, and now, LAST CASE. His non-fiction titles include the true-crime account, SUSPECT/VICTIM, and the real-life medical thriller, "CATASTROPHIC." FROM THE AUTHOR: If Hollywood was ever going to make a movie of one of my books, KILL THE STORY would be the one. It has everything -- a high concept, a deepening mystery rooted in actual events and more off-beat but convincingly real characters than you can count. This is journalism as I saw it -- both from the outside looking in and the inside out. It says nearly everything I have to say about the state of media today -- all without slowing the non-stop action one little bit. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I loved writing it. Lenny Holcomb, my first literary character, spoke to me in much the same way the dead people of his obituaries speak to him. But after my first book, FATAL DEAD LINES, I found out Lenny and the dead people from his obits had more to say. Much more. SECRETS OF THE DEAD, a specially updated sequel, completes Lenny Holcomb's intriguing saga, finally presenting his incredible story in full. I hope you enjoy it, discovering the many narrative arcs that bridge both books and come to a full and satisfying resolution by the final page. ZERO TOLERANCE Is probably my most unique and unconventional book -- a thriller set in the cloaked, cloistered world of juvenile justice. Namely, a youth reform camp set in the outskirts of Pittsburgh, Pa. It also stands as my most researched novel to date. As a journalist, I spent years covering the Pennsylvania juvenile justice system at a time when the penalties and punishments for young offenders were being ratcheted up. All that authenticity is here -- along with a highly original plot that will have you guessing until the very last page. LAST CASE, my newest thriller, is set in 1978, just as acclaimed horror director George A. Romero is gearing up to shoot his zombie cult classic "Dawn of the Dead" in the Monroeville Mall, just outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I was a bit too young back in 1978 to offer my able body as one of Romero's delightfully desiccated corpses in "Dawn of the Dead." But I will never, ever forget watching the Monroeville Mall - a place where I shopped for school clothes and cruised for girls - turned into a splatter-filled shopping fest for the undead. I guess you could say it's haunted me all these years. --jcl, Feb./2013

Book preview

Prologue

College, it is often said, is the place where we lose our innocence. This is the glossy, idyllic admissions brochure version of the quintessential coming of age story. It is the fiction universities like to sell to unsuspecting young women looking to make their mark on the world. I’m here to tell you, there’s a darker side. I know. I’ve seen it. Hell, I’ve lived it. We all did. Me and my four friends from my freshman year.

Looking back, the thing I remember most, the one thing that haunts me to this very day, is Chelsea’s eyes. Those wide, innocent eyes that could be so awed by every little thing she saw.

Chelsea hailed from small Pennsylvania town, you see. And sprawling Old State boasted a bigger population than her three nearest counties combined. Our state school with its powerhouse college football program was a teeming city of thousands of late teen and twenty somethings, all raging with hormones, driven by ambition and fueled by alternate heavy doses of caffeine, alcohol and whatever other substances happened to be available at the time.

And sex, of course. Lots of sex.

To be sure, there are plenty of ways for a young girl like Chelsea to lose her innocence at a big, bad place like Old State. In fact, this fact is part of its attraction. Old State’s wild, party school reputation is what keeps all those applications pouring in, each year tens of thousands more than there are incoming freshman seats to be filled.

And in the fall, when the air turns crisp, the trees fire with brilliant color and roars rise up from the caldron-like football stadium, there can be few other places on earth that are as perfect as Old State. In those moments, it more than lives up to its admissions brochure billing.

But along with its manifold charms lurk dangers, some hidden, some in plain sight and some as handsome as the devil himself.

My friends and I, we would manage to find out share. We would all lose our innocence in the process. For most of us, this was all part of the learning experience. After all, experimentation is a crucial part of education, right?

All, that is, but Chelsea.

The most innocent among us would have hers stolen from her in the most hellish, horrific manner imaginable. I can still see her, the moment we found her, naked and so afraid, pawing for her clothes in in the dark, dank and dirty room.

Chelsea had fallen victim to a terrible crime. Of this, there was no doubt.

But how to prove it? Especially given the copious amounts of alcohol she had consumed, mostly at the behest of her devious, duplicitous hosts. This, coupled with the ‘he-said, she-said’ nature of such sordid cases, along with several other unexpected complications that you will soon learn about, made the conventional route to justice simply impossible. Or, at least it did in the considered opinion of me and my friends.

For her part, Chelsea claimed to have no recollection of these events. She never talked about what had happened, acting, instead, like someone surfacing from a fitful sleep roiled by some horrifically vivid nightmare.

We, The Five, wouldn’t forget. We couldn’t. And in revenge, we vowed a mission of utter retribution. Retribution upon the perpetrators, yes. But also upon the entire system that seems to care only about keeping tuition sky high, alcohol sales obscenely fat and which serves up freshman women as if on a sacrificial altar.

Our creative means of delivering comeuppance would capture national headlines.

But would it change anything?

I’m still waiting for this. Until then, all I can do is tell my story. Really, it’s our story. All five of ours.

For from the very beginning, we were more than friends. More than mere dorm mates.

We were The Five.

Chapter 1

We became fast friends that freshman year, the five of us did. Everything was so shiny and new. Everything was right there, in front of us. Our whole lives. Our loves. The men who would come into our lives at the leafy paradise that was Old State, amongst the mountains of central Pennsylvania. A fantasy land, really. A place to learn, sure. But a place to experiment. A place to be bold. A place to find ourselves -- and each other. A place to become the women we were meant to be.

What a journey! What an experience! What a time in all of our lives!

I won’t bore you with a lot of preliminaries. Suffice it to say that the five female freshman from various parts of Pennsylvania and beyond came together like all coltish freshman women do. We had wobbled out of the nest of home and flown off to the big, wide open and inviting skies of Old State, intent to spread our wings. And how did we find each other? How did we form the friendship -- the fierce alliance – that would become The Five?

Well, I guess you could say we gravitated toward one another because we were the same. And because we were so different, too.

The parts of personality that we lacked in ourselves, we found in one another. And that made the five of us strong. It made us smart. It made us bold. It made us confident. So much more so than we could have ever been alone.

Together, we were more than the sum of our parts. We were The Five. And our classmates, both the college men and the other coeds, came to know and accept us as such.

To borrow a phrase from the guys, we had each other’s backs. Or at least we thought we did. Until terrible things happened to one of our own, changing everything and each one of us in ways we could never hope to understand in the heat of the moment. Nothing less than our very futures were altered that night. But I’m getting ahead of myself, aren’t I? I have a tendency to do that. It’s part of what college is all about. If you aren’t making mistakes, you aren’t going fast enough. You aren’t learning. You aren’t growing.

And from the very day I stepped foot in my college home in what they called the dorms of East Halls, I was determined to grow.

Let me introduce myself. My name is Tessa Knight. I hail from the suburbs of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I guess you’d call me a Daddy’s Girl. My father was chief of police of our safe, little borough in the western suburbs. I thought he was a god – tall and lanky and always so handsome in his uniform. I loved riding in his unmarked Chevy Blazer, which the borough let him take home at night. This, because Daddy was always on the job, always on the clock. One never knew when tragedy would strike and his handheld radio would squawk with a call. A rape. A murder. An armed robbery. A domestic violence situation. A fatal accident. A drowning. You name it.

Our town was idyllic, to be sure. A slice of middle- to upper-class American suburbia that seemed a safe haven, especially when your father is chief of police. But bad things happened. Bad things happened everywhere. I learned this lesson from my father, always such a careful man. And he had schooled me on being careful, too. The lessons stretch back as far as I can remember to when I was a little girl. Daddy knew all the dangers that could befall us in the big bad world. He saw the invisible piano that dangles so precariously over all our heads, held there by the thinnest of strings. He sought to protect me from this. He sought to teach me to protect myself. He sought to keep me safe.

But maybe he made me too cautious? Perhaps, he had sheltered me too well? Because by the time I went off to college, I was busting to break loose. I loved him utterly. I love him still. But I needed to move out from his shadow and shrug off his protective, reassuring arm over my shoulder. I needed to live on my terms. I needed to make my own mistakes and learn life’s hard lessons for myself. We all do.

That doesn’t make the experience any easier – or less painful. One can only hope to survive it and become the stronger for it. But there is always collateral damage. Someone always gets hurt. Always. And sometimes they don’t recover.

Of course, I didn’t know any of this yet. Hell, I didn’t even know how I would live as an independent woman off at college. I didn’t really know what any of it meant, not really. Not yet. Not even after dad and mom had finished moving the last of my things into my dorm room, back on move-in day.

His work finished, Daddy stood, forlorn, in that small space, not sure what to do with his hands. Mom sat silently on the twin bed she had just made up for me. She looked so tired. At the time, I thought it was simply sadness. Looking back, seeing her drawn face in my mind’s eye, I guess I should have known she wasn’t well. I’d find out later, though. Another bolt from the blue to rock my world. We never know what’s coming, do we? We can go off to college to try to learn all that we can. But the armor of knowledge has no power to protect us from the unexpected. Life laughs at our plans. And time steals everything, doesn’t it?

Time is the ultimate thief, to be sure. But it can’t rob me of my memories, so sharp, like photographs, in my mind. There’s my dad, Chief Andrew F. Knight. All his friends called him Drew. Or just Chief.

I called him Dad. He was my world for seventeen years. Seventeen of the best years of my life. I still believe that. But I had never seen him like this: His head bowed, staring at the floor. His hands fumbling with his keys. He carried the crowded ring of keys of a janitor, and he couldn’t help fumbling with them, though there was nowhere to go. Not yet. Not without saying goodbye to his only daughter.

But Daddy was at a loss for words. And he didn’t want to show the tears welling in his eyes.

I stood before him a 17-year-old college student. I would turn eighteen in a few weeks. I was a woman, about to go off on my own. But in his eyes, I was the little girl in her white Confirmation dress. This was the image of me I’m sure he still had. One I believed he would always have of me.

So how do you show him you’ve changed, grown?

His little girl was now a coed on a college campus of some 25,000 students and in a college town of nearly 50,000. He had already given me the speeches. He had armed me with cans of mace and a loud whistle for my keychain. He had lectured about how sexual assault is the Number One crime on college campuses, especially here, at isolated, alcohol-drenched and football-crazed Old State. And most especially among freshmen women at their first college kegger.

I listened to all his statistics, I really did. But all along, I just knew it couldn’t happen to me. I don’t know why, I just did. Perhaps, it was the aura of invincibility and false sense of security that comes from being a police chief’s daughter. I would be proven right in my assumption, as naive as it seems now. But just barely right. And unfortunately, not everyone would be so lucky. Not this year on this campus, when a monster would move among the fine fall foliage that made this place a picture-postcard of everything that is great and good about American colleges.

The attacks began shortly after the weather turned cold and the colorful leaves fell from the trees and the death of winter beckoned. On those nights, the denuded trees struck skeletal poses as sinister shadows moved across the sprawling campus. And the slightest sound could set a young woman’s pulse to racing. Yet, the biggest of all threats could be the handsome, seemingly smart college man alone with us in a vacant room, when the door is closed, the music is turned up loud and the alcohol-fueled party is raging right downstairs. In those moments, no one can hear you scream.

Growing up is a dangerous business, all right. Growing up at a huge college, fueled with hormones and alcohol and the heady mindset that comes with one’s first experience with complete and utter freedom, can be most dangerous of all.

Indeed, it can ruin lives, just as college is meant to mold and mint lives and careers.

I wouldn’t know just how correct my father was, not for a while yet. But I would come to use everything my dad taught me – all the careful caution and investigator’s instincts he had instilled in me – to fight back against the monsters. In this way, I would become a full partner in The Five. Because we would all fight back, each in our way and according to the special talents and strengths that made us unique. Combined, we became a fierce force for good. A feminist force for a feminist cause – the simple right and dignity for no to mean no. For our bodies to be our own. For our persons to remain free from another’s deranged violence, wounded impotence and misplaced sexual aggression.

We would call our fight a fight for justice. But really, it was revenge -- and rightfully so. But all this was in the future. At present, on my first day at Old State, I needed to say goodbye to the best man I would ever know in my life. My dad.

In my new dorm room, my emotion-stricken father shuffled his feet. He drew in air, making a wet sound that was very close to a sob.

So, this is it, he managed in a choked voice. I’m so proud of you, Mon.

He still couldn’t raise his eyes to me, lest he lose it. My mom, exhausted on the bed, was already weeping.

I stepped toward my father, me in my blue sweats emblazoned with the college football team’s logo.

I’m ready, Dad, I said in a small, gentle voice, reaching for his fiddling hands and stilling the jingling of his keys.

You made me ready.

Slowly, my father raised his wet eyes. They were red and tired. But they brightened as they looked at me. His quivering lip curled into a smile.

Look at you, he whispered in awe. Look at my little girl.

He dropped those keys with a clatter, squeezed my hand, then swept me up into an oxygen-stealing bear hug, as if trying desperately to hold on.

I felt his breath as he leaned down and kissed the top of my head, inhaling wetly as if to breathe in my scent. He tried to choke it back, but he wept. In small, little sad sounds, he wept. And then I did, too.

My mother, sobbing openly now, stood and joined in the family hug. She wrapped one arm around me and one around my dad. But her hold had none of the strength of my father’s.

We stayed that way for a good while.

Then, Sonya Kessler, my new roommate and the second member of what would become The Five, burst in, one of her colorful, angry paintings in tow.

Oh wow, Sonya said, seeing the three of us, red-faced and teary-eyed.

I didn’t mean to crash your goodbye, stammered the stunning, raven-haired, ethnic-looking woman, who was already an artist.

Sonya had an eye for everything. It devoured the world. And then the world was reflected back in her art. I often wondered what she really saw in that first moment in our dorm room, when she encountered me and my little family, about to be changed forever.

My dad broke his smothering hold on me, and none too soon. He turned his back to the stranger in the room, quickly raising a hand to wipe his eyes. I looked up at my new roommate, and I was blotchy-faced and teary-eyed.

Hi, I muttered.

My mom was already staring at the canvas in Sonya’s hands. It was a jagged, energetic painting of a line of young men in football helmets and jock straps. Nothing else. Sonya set it carefully against the desk on the empty half of the dorm room – her half – then walked up to me, her hand outstretched and a smile on her beautiful but unconventional face.

Her face was angular, and her slender nose had a bump in the middle. But make no mistake, Sonya Keller was drop-dead gorgeous. Hers was the kind of unconventional, ever-intriguing beauty that stops both men and women in their tracks. I would learn that she was Russian on both sides. Her parents were first generation Americans. Her grandparents came over from the then-Communist Soviet Union. She grew up in Johnstown, a second-rate, down-on-its-luck steel town best known for its famous floods. I knew of the town because it was about ninety minutes east of Pittsburgh.

I guess we’re roommates, Sonya said as she pumped my hand. Sonya, she offered. You must be Tessa. At least that’s what it says on my orientation paperwork.

That’s me, I said, forcing a smile onto my emotionally wrecked face. I hope you don’t mind. I kinda staked out my half of the room. I jerked my head to my already-made bed and the suitcases and boxes stacked beside it.

Sonya shrugged. First come, first served, she said. My brother is bringing in a loft. I’m gonna get rid of my twin and bunk up high. That way, I’ll have more wall space for my art.

I nodded uncertainly.

You painted this? my mother said accusingly, as she walked over to the painting leaning against the desk, eying it sharply.

The boys? Mom said. They have no pants.

Sonya walked over, appraising the work alongside my mom.

Yeah, Sonya enthused. Isn’t it great? I wanted to strip the crazy culture of football down to its elements. Guys in their helmets and jocks. I got the guys on my high school team to pose for me. We tried it first with them butt-naked, Sonya went on. You know, just their little helmets down there, and their big helmets on their heads. But I felt that would be too much for people to take in. So we went with the jockstraps.

Naked? my mother protested. The boys were naked, standing right there in front of you?

My mother was aghast.

Sure, Sonya said. I love painting penises. Each one is so different. But it just didn’t work artistically with this piece.

You have naked men pose for you? my mom went on. In here? With my daughter to see?

Mom! I protested.

I work in the studio, mostly, Sonya assured.

Mostly?

My mom just wouldn’t let it go. By now, even my dad, having recovered his composure, was taking an interest in this controversial panting -- and in my new, free-wheeling, artistic roommate.

I assure you, it’s completely natural, Mrs., ah. Sonya glanced down at her paperwork. Mrs. Knight. Every artist works with nudes. It’s just part of the development.

My daughter has no interest in developing like that! Mom scolded.

Mother! I cried again.

Sonya shifted her big, brown mysterious eyes to me and cracked a sly, knowing smile.

I’ll keep her safe, Mrs. Knight, Sonya said.

My dad shifted his perplexed gaze from the painting to me, then back again. In that moment, he realized that a risqué painting by a feminist college freshman was the least of his worries. He also recognized that mom was embarrassing me in front of my new roommate.

All right, Cynthia, my dad said, taking my mother by the shoulder. We best leave these young ladies to get acquainted.

My father turned to Sonya. You won’t need to protect my daughter, he said in a neutral tone. I taught her to protect herself. But you two, you look out for each other, okay?

He smiled one of his handsome smiles at my new roommate.

Yes, sir, Sonya said, instinctively showing my father the respect that his bearing demanded of almost everyone, even the suspects he arrested.

Good, he said, then nodded at the art.

I like your work, Sonya, he added. You have a good eye. You see a lot. I should know. I’ve been training my eye to see everything since I first walked the beat.

Sonya’s jaw dropped. You’re a cop! It wasn’t so much a question as a confirmation. I should have known! You have this thing about you. This presence. I’d love to try to capture it on canvas. Would you consider sitting for me?

My mom looked up at her husband, her face filling with skepticism, even disdain.

As long as I can keep my pants on, Dad joked in that winning way of his.

Sonya laughed. So did I.

Deal, she said, holding out her hand. My dad shook it.

Alright then, he said, as my mom shook her head in silence. How about you walk us out, Mon?

My dad, his arm around my mom, held out the other for me. I tucked under his wing one last time. Sonya watched us leave the room where our lives were about to change.

Little did any of us know then just how much they would change. Then again, no one ever does, do they?

Chapter 2

Watching my dad and mom pull away in the unmarked Chevy Blazer, amid all those other incoming freshman and their families on move-in day, I felt sad, sure. But underneath my nostalgia for the first seventeen-plus years of my life as a doted-on dependent was a buzzing energy. Part of me was ready to burst, even as I waved goodbye on the curb of East Halls. Behind the wheel, my dad’s jaw was set against another tide of emotion, and in the passenger seat, my mom’s fragile features were already dissembling again in a torrent of tears.

I stood there like a good little girl until the last trace of the Blazer was gone -- out of the parking lot and down the road, past the towering football stadium and out toward the interstate for the long ride back to Pittsburgh.

And then I was free. I was Tessa Knight, college freshman. It happened just like that. A wave washed over me. I transformed on that very spot on the curb.

I probably didn’t look any different, clad in my college-branded blue sweats, my sandy-brown hair tied back, little to no make-up on my face for moving day.

But I sure as hell felt different. And as I registered these strange feelings, then turned back toward my new home in East Halls, I stepped toward an exciting, uncharted place called the future. A place known as adulthood. I place that had no rules, no limits. The only guidepost was experimentation. Trial and error. And there would be no more lectures but the ones in my college classrooms.

From now on, I would grow as a person – as a woman – by feeling my way forward. Feeling my way into love or lust. Into seduction and sex, should I want it. Feeling my way into the life that beckoned. All of it, right before me. Wow! What a moment!

Still, as much as I felt these things washing over me, I had no idea what was in store. All that was in store. I just knew it would be big. For better – and there would be a lot that would be better – and for worse – there would be bad stuff, some very bad stuff – all of it would be big. Game-changing big. And it would help shape who I was and the direction my life would take.

From then on, my life would be my doing. And there is no better feeling in the world than that. For me, college was worth every penny, right then and there. Just for me having experienced that single, thrilling moment.

One probably gets a similar transformative thrill the first time she steps into her own apartment, or gets a great job, or buys a house, or accepts a marriage proposal. But for me, on that day, there had been no bigger moment in my life.

I didn’t know how to express what I was feeling. Heck, I didn’t even know if my fellow freshman all around me were taking a moment to feel the same thing, as they toted their boxes, hugged their parents and waved at departing vehicles as they vanished from sight. I hope they did. People say I’m too much in my own head. But I like it there. Because I take the time to process things like this. Things like my first, free steps on campus as a coed.

And where did those steps take me? Probably the least glamorous place on earth. As I made my way back to our dorm floor, I ducked into the bathroom. All those tingling feelings of my newfound freedoms had worked their way down to my temperamental bladder.

I had to pee.

The bathroom was no-frills. Showers with plastic curtains to the right, and a line of about four stalls to the left. There was a wall with sinks and mirrors in between.

I ducked into a stall with a half-open door. I slipped down my sweats, hovered over the seat and looked up at the ceiling as my flow began. My tinkle was like a little song in the toilet. Kinda cute and cuddly, actually. Then, from the stall next to me, came the shuddering thunder of flatulence, then the warm stench of a beer-fueled bowel movement.

Gross, I thought, as I pawed for the toilet paper. But before I could make it out of this suddenly vile place, a sarcastic voice sang from the next stall.

Ohh, Dude, the male voice intoned. This is one hell of a download, if I do say so myself.

A guy, I thought, panicking. There was a guy in the next stall. A gross guy, taking a stinky shit – right there in the stall next to me!

I couldn’t help but protest.

And you’re proud of this? Why? I curtly asked.

Wonders of the human body, the grunting guy said, then let loose with another trumpet call of flatulence.

Oh God, I groaned, trying not to breathe as I wiped, then hiked up my sweatpants. Why don’t you flush, instead of letting it marinate?

I always check the color of my stool when I’m done, the disembodied voice from the next stall answered. It’s a good way to keep tabs on one’s health.

I was fighting with the lock on the stall door, trying to free myself from this god-awful gas chamber.

I’m sure it has something to do with whatever beer you consumed last night, I squeaked, just as the door unlatched and released me from this colon-laced confinement. I sprinted to the sink, taking shallow breaths through my mouth.

I fiddled with the water knobs, then pounded the liquid soap dispenser. I heard some rustling from behind the closed stall door, then the watery whisk of a long-overdue flush.

I was scrubbing my hands as the stall door swung open. My face was crimson with embarrassment. I don’t know why I should have been embarrassed, but I was.

I glanced up in the mirror and glimpsed the tall, lanky guy buttoning his jeans. When he looked up, I was struck by how handsome he was. His hair was long and unkempt in that surfer-dude kind of way. He sauntered toward the sink.

I had enough soap on my hands to prep for surgery. He studied me in the mirror as I averted my eyes.

Sorry about that, he muttered, taking his place at the sink next to me.

I’m Josh, he said, turning to me and holding out his hand – his unwashed hand.

I glanced over and looked at his hand, which I wouldn’t have touched if he paid me. Then my eyes found his very