Max didn’t return to their dormitory for three days. Three whole days, Cat lived in dread and fear about when the dean would summon her back to his study. Strip her naked. Prop her spread eagled on his table and try and get a different answer out of her than the one that she had provided.

She fell. She fell down a ravine. She must have gotten a concussion. She couldn’t remember how she got back to her room. It was her mantra the entire week. Over and over and over again she repeated it through her mind in case her house patron, personal patron, any number of academic advisors or, heaven forbid, the dean, asked her about what had happened Saturday night. She fell. Down a ravine. Got a concussion. Can’t remember returning to the room, so strange.

Behind this mantra, nightmarish images of sterile rooms with bizarre tables and chairs and equipment set up haunted the back of her mind. Was that where Max had gone? Had she been sent to that dark and dank solitary confinement?! What was solitary confinement?! It had looked, from the little Cat had seen, like a medieval dungeon.

Cat was napping, a habit that she had gotten into lately on afternoons she didn’t have classes scheduled, when Max returned to their dorm. Cat awoke to her friend spooning her from behind, Max’s legs wrapped up around Cat’s, embracing her from head to toe in a warm and cozy hug.

“Max?” Cat mumbled drowsily.

“I’m home, Cat, I’m back,” she sounded so…dreamy.

“What happened?” Cat asked as she began to wake up, process the amount of time it had been since she had last seen her roommate, realize she was being uncharacteristically intimate with her at the moment.

“So much and nothing of consequence.”

“Did you fail your test?”

“Some. Not the big one though.”

“What was the big one?” Cat asked, curious, sitting up.

Max smirked, “I think you know.”

She really, really didn’t. She was completely lost, as a matter of fact. She wanted to be the one to interrogate Max next. Wanted to know what the dean had done with her for THREE whole days. Wanted to know how Max knew about an entire sub-basement maze of tunnels connecting two college campuses. How she knew how to access those tunnels by literally jumping off the edge of a cliff.

“Unbelievably. Miraculously. By some higher power grace of god,” Max stood up to add to the fanfare and curtsied. “I am still a virgin.”

Cat couldn’t help but laugh. What a ridiculous thing to say, of course Cat knew this to be true.

“Oh. They have tried and yet I will not fail! Catty Cat, mark my words, I am fully committed to graduating this college with full honors and my virginity intact. How is that for a promise?”

Cat actually thought it was kind of weird, but she admired the bravado.

“August told me at the bonfire, before everything went crazy, that you and whoever that Jackson was…”

Max doubled over laughing. “Oh god. Three years later and that stupid rumor is still being passed around? You have got to be kidding me.”

“So it’s not true?” Cat was relieved.

“Of course not. That fucker told Sports Illustrated some lie about conquering me in the Olympic village. Only thing he conquered me in was the amount of milk he could drink during one meal. Disgusting, honestly. No one wants to fuck someone who drinks that much fucking milk. Especially an equestrian.” Max shuddered. “No, that fucker Jackson sullied my reputation and apparently thinks he has some sort of claim over me because we both ride horses or some bullshit. He got what he had coming to him on Saturday.” Max laughed.

Had Max started the riot?!

”How did you know where we needed to go to get back here?” Cat asked, desperate for the answer.

Max got serious. Contemplative. Weighed her options about how much she should actually share.

“The night of the mixer,” Max sighed, “The laboratory with the grad students. It was in the tunnels.”

Cat gasped, horrified.

“It was…” her face twisted, she looked uncomfortable but amused? Sad but…a little devious. “That was a really weird night.”

It also didn’t answer Cat’s question.

“Where have you been the past three days?” Cat begged.

”Well first, I was fucking interrogated.”

“I think I was too,” Cat sympathized.

“Oh god, I hope not as brutally as I was,” Max shuddered. “Our dear dean really loves to shock a scholar. Literally. I think he went hard on me since I had nary a scratch on me… unlike you.” Cat’s eye was still purple, slowly becoming a sickly greenish yellow.

“For three days?” Cat asked.

“Among other things. Tests. Lots of swabs in places I don’t think I need to be swabbed again for another decade, if I had a choice in the matter. I’m sure I don’t. I suppose if one of them was ultimately what proved I was still a virgin then I can be thankful for at least one of them.”

Cat was lost. Her head spun. She had never been swabbed…she didn’t think.

“Punishment after punishment after punishment…” Max continued. “God, the man loves some good humiliation porn. Had me naked for like, a full day. Constant parade of academic advisors and staff just come through to tell me how disappointed they were in me. I don’t know why, I’m getting straight A’s in literally every single class. INCLUDING physical education, I might add.”

She went to sit down on her own bed and lovingly ran her hand along the top of the comforter. “Put me in solitary confinement for about 12 hours, I think. That was…” a shadow dropped over her face, “…Not cool. And then it was just, you know, dean stuff.”

No. Cat definitely did not know what “dean stuff” could even possibly begin to cover.

“Am I in trouble?” Cat asked, finally.

“You?!” Max guffawed. “Catty Cat, you are standing on the highest pedestal at this school right now, don’t you get it?”

No. Clearly. She really, really did not.

“What are you talking about?!” Cat begged.

“Cat. You have the dean in the palm of your hand - I’m pretty sure you could literally get away with murder right now if you wanted. I don’t know what kind of pull you, or maybe your freaky parents, have over that man but girl - milk it for everything you got. And in the meantime, you ALSO have the hottest young political bachelor, perhaps IN THE WORLD ready to steal the key for your chastity belt so he can lay claim to you.”

“Wait, really?”

“Cat.” Max gave her a very direct, pointed look that startled her. “The riot.”

Yes! Information! What happened with the riot?!

”The reason the fight broke out was because of us. It was inevitable. Too many guys at the men’s college found out about it,” Max started.

”August said the same thing - blamed his celebrity.”

“Cat, they had our keys,” Max said in a low voice.

“To our room?!”

”No,” Max rolled her eyes. “God. No, your chastity belt, dummy. Mine too.” Cat’s heart stopped. ”The riot broke out over me. Jackson got my belt off. They wanted to do more. To you too.”

”But…only the dean has the key,” Cat reasoned. He’d told her as much himself when she had asked him.

“Keys can have copies, Cat. Especially with your doppelgänger runs the school across the lake,” Max said, her eyebrow raised. She lifted her own keyfob on the golden chain out from underneath her shirt. “You can make some interesting friends in the laboratories. Let’s just say that I found some helpful ones.”