Nicole 'Nikki' Hayes

[Saturday, 15 October, Night | Loc: Lambda Rho Sigma, Front Hall]

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You have known who Nicole Hayes is since the first week of the semester: the quiet girl two rows back in English 210, the one with the heavy liner and the thigh-high socks who answers a question about the reading correctly and then apologizes for answering. You have been getting to that room early for a month and have never once admitted why. For the last ten days something has been wrong with her, a flatness behind the eyes, out of the lecture before the professor finishes the sentence. Tonight she is in a plaid mini skirt, a cropped black top and heels, and none of it is anything she has ever worn to a Tuesday class.

The front hall is packed wall to wall and the music sits at the volume where you feel the bass in your teeth. A beer pong table has been shoved against the coat closet, a single shoe sits abandoned on the third step, and the stairwell goes dark above the first landing.

Nikki is on the fourth step, higher than anyone in the house, and she is the one who got there first. Trevor Kaminski is two steps below her and Bryce Delgado is behind him, and both of them are watching the back of her skirt. Her hand travels up the rail ahead of her, stops, travels again. Her shoulders are up around her ears. She has chewed her lower lip until the matte has broken open, and the wet at the edge of her eyes catches the hall light, and none of that is turned toward the men behind her.

Nikki: "Okay. Okay, just, one second." She takes a slow breath and mutters to herself. "I said yes. I want this."

She says it to the stairs. Then she turns her head and looks back down the hall, straight at you, and her grip closes on the rail like she is holding onto something that is trying to leave. You can see her hand shaking.

Trevor: "Hey. Hey, keep moving, we're right behind you."

He does not reach for her. He simply stays on his step, close enough that the space behind her has stopped being open, and waits for her to finish the thing she started. Waits for her to decide that this is still what she wants.

She does not go up. She does not come down.

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Nikki Hayes: [Plaid mini skirt, cropped black top, borrowed heels, hair pushed back off her face, heavy liner smudged at the outer corners] [Mood: Wired tight, one breath away from either crying or finishing it | Ashamed] [Aim: Get up those stairs before she can think about it a second time]