The Havinghurst Pact
A life worth killing for
Kasey Turman
Sydney Mulford
The oak and maple trees along Slantwalk swayed with the wind. The orange leaves played their part in a fall song that dominated Miami University’s campus. Right there, between the trees, Howard Jones stumbled away from Uptown, getting closer to King Library with every step.
Howard was returning to Peabody Hall, the dorm he’s called home for a semester and a half. He’s one of what seemed like millions of first-year students at Miami. And just like the other first years, he spent his Saturday night at New Bar — his shoes sticking to the ground, fighting for a spot at the bar and hoping his fake ID would work.
His walk back was a blur. He passed King Library, his burps still tasting like his last Jack and Coke. Then he strolled by Armstrong, where he nearly tripped over his own feet before the ground finally flattened out to a point where he didn’t have to brace himself from falling every step.
He edged around the fences surrounding Bachelor Hall and finally over the small footbridge outside Hodge Hall. That’s where Howard slowly reintegrated back into the real world around him.
He looked up to see Havighurst Hall, where a few guys he knew lived, and decided he should text them to see what they were up to. After all, it was only 12:30 a.m.
Just as he looked down at his phone, he heard a thud outside Havighurst. More drunk than scared, Howard kept walking.
He was about to text his friend Jimmy when he heard someone scream. Howard locked in for a moment and drunkenly scanned the windows on the south side of Havighurst until he found one on the second floor where the blinds were moving and shadows flickered on the wall.
Despite the commotion, Howard didn’t think much of it. The windows on either side of that one were filled with purple and red lights that changed to the beat of the music he could hear two floors below. It was just another party.
Howard sent Jimmy the text, walked the rest of the way to Peabody and collapsed in his bed without thinking twice about brushing his teeth.
—
The Sunday scaries hit Howard as hard as anyone when he woke up, with many questions bouncing around his head.
I have so much homework. Why did I even go out last night? What the hell was happening at Havighurst?
As quickly as those questions populated his mind, they flew out. Howard had to focus on what was happening right now – his stomach was rumbling.
He shivered through a cold shower, the only type Peabody offered, before putting on a pair of black sweatpants, a gray sweatshirt and Crocs. He was ready to make the seemingly 20-minute walk to Western Dining Hall.
After battling winds that tried to blow him around like a piece of paper, he made it to Western. When he scanned his student ID, Howard saw Jimmy, Ben and Jacob, three of his best friends who live in Havighurst, sitting at a booth on the top floor.
Jimmy was the tallest and most put-together of the group. He was 6 feet, 2 inches tall, had medium-length hair with a middle part that could land him a leading role in “Friends” and would routinely talk to the best-looking girls at the bars.
Ben was the scrawniest. He was about 5 feet, 9 inches tall and 140 pounds, with no fat to speak of. His black hair was as thin as straw and fell halfway down his face. Ben got along with everyone he talked to, but they had to talk to him first.
Jacob was just Jacob. He was somewhere between Jimmy and Ben in about everything. He was above average height, but no one asked him if he played basketball. He had a cookie-cutter frat boy hairstyle, despite not being in a frat, that complemented nothing about his face. He had friends, but he had to work for them.
The three had been friends since before high school. They met through various travel hockey teams throughout elementary school. When each of them chose a college, they included the others. Thus, they ended up rooming together in a triple on the second floor of Havighurst.
After seeing them together, like always, Howard joined them after grabbing bacon, scrambled eggs and a biscuit from one of the counters. The group was strangely quiet before Howard got to their table.
“Hey, guys. What’s going on?” Howard asked as he sat down next to Ben.
“Nothing much, just trying to get the taste of Trash Can out of my mouth,” Jacob said, grimacing at the memory.
“Yeah, man. We went a little too hard last night,” Ben said while chewing. “Well, everyone but Jimmy. He was too busy in his room with a new girl.”
“Oh, really?” Howard asked.
“Yeah, yeah,” Jimmy responded flippantly. “I don’t want to get into it, though.”
“Oh! It was that good, huh,” Howard said.
“I guess you could say that,” Jimmy vaguely responded.
“Is that why you never texted me back last night?” Howard asked.
Jimmy nodded before the other guys took over the questioning.
Howard, Ben and Jacob spent the next 20 minutes berating Jimmy about this mystery woman, but he never budged. He didn’t give up the girl’s hair color, height or grade. Becoming restless with his non-answers, Howard turned his fury of questions onto Ben.
“What about you, Ben?” he asked. “I haven’t heard you talk about a single girl all year.”
“None of them are pretty enough for me, man. I just can’t lower my standards to what Miami offers,” Ben said with a grin pasted on his face.
“Maybe you should just date the Cincinnati girls then,” Howard joked back. “I mean, they seem more your type anyway. You know, losing football games and having a terrible campus.”
Howard chuckled while Jacob and Jimmy smiled. Ben’s smirk was gone. He shoveled more eggs into his mouth.
After shooting the shit for half an hour, the group couldn’t put off doing their homework any longer. Before getting up, the foursome agreed to meet in Jimmy, Jacob and Ben’s shared dorm to watch March Madness that night.
When the group put their dishes on the conveyor belt, Howard noticed a mark on Jimmy’s arm that he hadn’t seen before. Multiple red scraggly lines moved horizontally across Jimmy’s wrist and forearms. None of the lines were straight, and multiple got shades darker and lighter throughout the line.
“What’s that man?” Howard asked.
“Oh, that?” Jimmy said. “Someone slashed me pretty fucking hard during the broomball game on Friday.”
“That doesn’t look like any slash I’ve seen,” Howard responded half-heartedly.
Before Jimmy could answer, Jacob turned around to join the conversation.
“You don’t remember that bulldog-looking motherfucker that tried to put me in a headlock?” he asked Howard. “He did that to Jimmy when he tried to score that extra goal before the end of the game.”
“What a dickhead,” Howard responded.
When the group left Western, Howard said goodbye before turning toward Peabody. He decided to cut the corner through the grass around Havighurst. When trekking up the small hill on the south side of the dorm, he found a laptop partially sticking out of the wet ground.
What the hell? How did this even get here?
Howard picked up the laptop. It had no stickers, identifiers or a personalized background to help him find the owner. With Miami’s tech center closed for the weekend, Howard decided to keep the laptop until the morning when he could turn it in to them.
After returning to his dorm, Howard attempted to focus on his homework. He would do a problem for his required statistics class and then watch TikTok for 15 minutes. During his breaks, Howard would look at the laptop. It had tempted him all afternoon to open it. Eventually, he couldn’t take it. He had finished his homework, and the games wouldn’t start for hours.
He had to try to get into the laptop.
Howard tried every password he could think of: 12345. Miami. Trees.
After 10 attempts, a new screen appears. “Do you want to send a recovery email to stephc@miamioh.edu?”
I know that email. That’s the guys’ RA.
Howard knew Collin Steph because he had talked to him in passing while hanging out in Havighurst.
I guess I’ll just head over to Hav early and give this back to Collin.
After another windy but warmer walk across Western, Howard snuck in the back door and went straight to Collin’s door on the second floor, just a few doors down from Jimmy, Jacob and Ben’s shared room. Howard knocked three separate times – no answer.
Just then, Dave, someone Howard knew through Jimmy, walked by.
“Do you know where Collin is?” Howard asked.
“No clue,” Dave responded. “No one’s seen him since yesterday. He was supposed to host a bracket competition this morning, but he never showed up. I guess he’s just too busy or something.”
I guess I’ll go to Jimmy’s room and ask him instead.
Just a few doors down, Howard repeated his knocking, but this time, someone answered.
“Hey, man. What’s up?” Jimmy asked when he answered the door.
“Have you guys seen Collin any time recently?” Howard asked. “He’s not answering his door and I found his laptop in the grass randomly around the building.”
Jimmy turns to look at Ben and Jacob, both sitting at their desks. The three of them make eye contact quickly.
“Nope,” Jimmy calmly responded. “Haven’t heard from him since last week.”
“Weird,” Howard responded.
He could tell something was up.
“Alright, guys. Just tell me what happened,” Howard jokingly asked.
Jimmy grabbed his sweatshirt and pulled him into the room. The door clicked behind him before anyone said a word. He didn’t let go of his sweatshirt.
“What do you know, man?” Jimmy asked in an aggressive but shaky voice.
Howard was confused. He didn’t know what Jimmy was asking about, and when he looked to Ben and Jacob for help, all they did was stand up and circle him with flat faces.
“About what? What’re you talking about?” Howard responded.
“I know you saw something last night,” Jimmy said. “You sent me that text about it. What did you see?”
“I-I have no idea,” Howard stammered out. “I was drunk and saw something happening near your room. That’s all. I don’t even remember texting you.”
Jimmy looked down. Ben and Jacob were still silent.
Howard was more than confused now. Jimmy’s grip was unrelenting; the guys all knew something he didn’t, and he worried that his answers wouldn’t be good enough.
“What did you actually see in that window, huh?” Jacob asked.
“Nothing. Nothing,” Howard responded nervously.
“Oh, really? Then why are you out here trying to find him?” Jacob interrogated.
“What?” Howard asked confusingly. “I just found his laptop this morning and wanted to give it to him. This makes no sense.”
“I bet you know exactly what happened, and you want us arrested and kicked out,” Jimmy said angrily.
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about. I love you guys. You’re all my friends,” Howard responded.
“Oh, yeah? Then why would you want to find Collin?” Jacob questioned.
“I have no fucking idea what you’re talking about!” Howard shouted. “I already said I just wanted to give him his laptop!”
Howard shoved Jimmy away from him. His grip finally loosened. Howard stepped toward the door, but Ben got to it first.
“How could you do this?” Ben asked.
“I really have no idea what you’re talking about,” Howard said.
“Sure you don’t,” Jimmy piled on. “You just hate us because we knew each other in high school and you’re jealous. You can’t stand it.”
Howard shook his head.
“What?” he said. “You know that’s not true.”
The three roommates stared at Howard.
“Look, I don’t care what happened to Collin, and I’m not here to get you guys in trouble for whatever argument you got in or whatever,” he said.
“You really think we’re that dumb?” Jacob questioned. “You think we’re just going to admit to it?”
“Admit to what? I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Howard defended.
“We know you do,” Jimmy said. “You knew this morning when you were pretending to be our friend.”
Howard just put his hands up in frustration. He was more confused than anything else.
“You didn’t even know him,” Ben asserted.
“Know who?” Howard asked.
The three roommates looked at Howard. No one moved.
“Collin,” Jacob said, “Or what’s left of Collin out in that trash can.”
Jacob pointed towards the end of the hall where a large dumpster sits outside.
“What? You killed Collin? What the fuck guys?” Howard yelled back with tears forming in the corner of his eyes.
“We had to. He was getting in our way,” Jacob said. “All we wanted to do was live the college life we were promised, but he kept knocking on our door and taking away our beer. The final straw was when he was going to tell his boss that he found us doing cocaine in the bathroom.”
Howard couldn’t breathe. He was piecing together a seemingly impossible reality and felt more uneasy than ever before in his life.
“There’s no way you did that,” Howard said, almost out of breath.
“Like he said, we had to,” Ben said matter of factly.
“Just let me leave,” Howard said. “I don’t want to be here. I just want to go back to my room.”
“It’s too late,” Jimmy said flatly. “You know now, and that’s too much to let you leave.”
Just then, Jimmy slowly grabbed his broomball stick behind his back and started to raise it over his head.
“I just wanted to give back a laptop,” Howard said. “I can just leave and say I couldn’t find Collin.”
“No. You don’t understand Howard. No one can know.”
“But I thought we were friends,” Howard said.
“I just hope you don’t put up as much of a fight as Collin did. I don’t want another nasty mark on my arm,” Jimmy said.
He swung down as if he was hammering a nail into place. Howard tried to cover his head, but he was too late.
