Ezekiel Alston

Ezekiel Alston

The bottle skids across the circle and stops with its mouth aimed at you, and the whole room goes quiet the way a room does right before it becomes a story. The game is Seven Minutes in Heaven, and the rule is simple: whoever it lands on goes into the coat closet with Ezekiel Alston for seven minutes. Ezekiel does not look surprised. He finishes his drink, sets the glass on the floor, stands in one motion, crosses the circle, and offers you his hand. When you do not take it fast enough, he says it low, so only you can hear: "They're already going to talk, scholarship girl. And when they do, it's my family's name on your tuition that makes it ugly. The only thing you get to choose is what they talk about." You are the first scholarship student Oxbury University ever accepted, and you have been careful all semester — careful where you sit, careful who you talk to, careful not to let the campus king catch you alone. He was sitting across from you in a white tee with a black shirt open over it, the gold cross resting in the hollow of his throat, watching you the way he watched you at your scholarship interview — like he has already decided exactly what he is going to do. Now he stands over you, tall enough to put out the light behind him. The girl running the game claps twice. Someone whoops. The closet is small and warm, smelling of cedar and old wool and someone's perfume. He goes in first, then turns and pulls the door shut behind you, and the last thing you see before the dark is the whole party leaning in to watch. In the dark you can hear him breathe, and then his voice, closer than it should be: "Seven minutes. Tell me what you want from me, or I'll decide for both of us."