Dish Best Served Cold

I jolt out of my daydream during my Thursday psychology class at Lake Valley University in Ashbourne Hills, when I hear my professor’s monotone voice telling us we can leave early. I check my phone to see I have two text messages. One is from my roommate and best friend Emily that says she and her boyfriend Parker went off campus for a date. The second one is from the campus mailroom saying that I have mail waiting for me. The mailroom is on the way back to my dorm, so I decide to make a stop. I walk there, enter my code in my designated locker and take one white envelope with a small light brown box out. When I get into my dorm, I get inside the familiar elevator and press #4 to get up to my floor. As soon as I enter my room, I set my bag on my bed before I open my mail. The first envelope has a birthday card from my aunt Tracey. I look at the package, and do a double-take when I notice that there is no return address, but dismiss it before I open it. After I cut it open with my scissors, I discover that there is a small black book inside with the words ‘Dish Best Served Cold’ engraved in gold cursive writing on the front. I pick it up, flip through it and notice it has names with sentences below them. Faculty members, alumni, students, anyone that is associated with my school in this small book. I sit down on my bed as I read the name Cliff Barkley. He is a senior in my humanities class and vice president of the fraternity Omega Phi. According to this book, he assaulted a young girl named Riley when he was in high school but never got punished for it. It also says that she was put in a mental institution after trying to tell her side, but Cliff’s parents covered it up. I straighten my back when I get a sense of familiarity and empathy. Towards the bottom, the text reads, ‘Get the packages out of locker #39 at Westwood train station with the code 6284. Put package #1 in the mailbox on the corner of Justice Avenue and Orchid street. Put package #2 on Cliff’s car’. I flip back through some pages and notice that all have some sort of instructions on the bottom. That night, I cannot get to sleep, finding myself thinking about Riley and her situation. As I sit up, I realize that if I want to get any sleep tonight before my psychology test tomorrow, I should decide if I should do anything about Cliff. Knowing that if I was in her situation, I would want someone to do something. I was in a similar situation my freshman year of high school, but my incident worked out in my favor. I can’t even imagine what I would have done if it hadn’t gone that way. That’s it, I’ve decided. Tomorrow after my test, I’ll follow the instructions and throw caution to the wind. I am finally able to feel tired and reposition myself. My stomach is still doing flip flops as I think what’s the worst that could happen before my eyes fall closed. The next morning, after I take my test, I drive the twenty minutes in my car to the train station and make my way to locker #39. When I enter the code into the small four-digit mechanical lock, it pops open. I glance around and push the small door the rest of the way when I find that there are two envelopes with writing on them. Before I have a minute to read it, I quickly walk back to my car. As soon as I get inside, I take them out and read the face of each envelope. One has the #2 in the right corner and is addressed to Cliff. The other one has #1 also in the right corner and an address on the face. I put them back while I entered the directions to Justice avenue and Orchid street into my GPS. When I get there, I slip the envelope with #1 in the mailbox and start to drive back to campus. On my way to my designated parking spot near my dorm, I keep an extra eye out for Cliff’s car and it isn’t that hard to spot. It is the only bright yellow pickup truck in all four of the lots. After I park and go a few cars down, I quickly put the other envelope on the windshield before I duck in the back door. That night, Emily, Parker, and I find ourselves at an Omega Phi party, making our way through the drunk party-goers when I hear a familiar voice shouting over the music. ‘Hey, Griffith, still dating that cop?’, Cliff says from the couch surrounded by some other members of Omega Phi. I reply, ‘hey, Barkley, still dating that minor?’ while trying to make my way to the exit. When we finally reach the big wooden double doors and are greeted by the crisp late-night air, I hear Cliff try to make dating a sixteen-year-old sound less creepy. Two days later, Emily and I are sitting in the outside part of the quad and I get distracted from my screen when she suddenly closes my computer almost on my fingers. I give her a confused look right before she nods towards my right and someone slides in next to me. When I meet her gaze, I get a soft smile on my face when I realize who it is. ‘What are you doing here?’, I say to my boyfriend Liam while I notice his partner Ricky is sitting across the table next to Emily giving me a warm smile in greeting. ‘Clifford Barkley is in your humanities class, right?’, Liam says to me while glancing around the quad. I nod and answer ‘yeah, why?’, just as confused as ever. Before he has the chance to answer, Ricky speaks up and asks ‘Could you point him out for us?’ suddenly in a serious tone. Still not knowing what is going on, both Emily and I nod before we start to look around trying to spot him. When I finally see him he is yet again surrounded by some of his frat brothers. I start describing him aloud, ‘the blonde in the middle wearing the red Omega Phi hoodie and a blue hat’. As soon as Ricky matches where I’m looking, he thanks me, and gets up to walk over to Cliff. Hanging back for a moment, Liam whispers in my ear tells me he will see me later and I finally understand what the packages were for. Somehow Cliff was put onto the Ashbourne Hills sex offender list and since a few of the freshman girls are still seventeen, he was expelled. As soon as he is hauled off in a police car, I get this notification on my phone that reads ‘money transfer successful’. Let the anxiety begin. My first thought is someone somehow got a hold of my bank information. For the three minutes it takes to walk back to my room, I am filled with stress. Before I step into the elevator, Emily stays in the lobby to wait for Parker. I am secretly relieved that I can have a few seconds alone to check whatever is going on with my bank account and get it settled. When I unlock my door, I am greeted with the familiar warm interior of our room. I leave the door open while I rush quickly to my computer on my desk to pull up my bank website. When I finally put my login information correctly after trying what seems like ten times, I see that the balance in my checking account is $20,000. I hit refresh about a hundred times trying to see if it is some weird mistake but it won’t go away. As I investigate by going to the statement, I discover that it’s from some sort of group called ‘Phoenix Monarch’. After I open another tab on my computer to google it, I am rerouted to their website and discover that it is completely anonymous and their logo is an orange butterfly with flames on it. There is nothing else on the website to even help me get a clue on why they would send me money, just for doling out karma on Cliff. How messed up is society that the first thing I thought of when I saw my new balance was paying off my student loans. The next thing I know, I hear familiar voices coming down the hallway. Wanting to look as inconspicuous as possible, I set my computer back down on my desk, grab my book bag from the floor before I dump all of the contents of it on my bed as if I’m looking for something. About four seconds later, Emily and Parker walk in with bags of food in their hands. Four hours later, Liam shows up and finally gives us the details on the whole Cliff situation. He tells us that the precinct was mailed an anonymous tape that showed Cliff admitting to assaulting Riley, and she was released from the mental hospital that she was put in by Cliff’s parents. The next day, gossip fills the campus on why Cliff was expelled. Teachers and faculty assumed it must be some mistake, students even started protests without realizing that it could be true. I keep thinking back to the little black book and trying to decide if the whole Cliff situation could be the tip of the iceberg. One after the other, I complete the instructions to the people in the book and slowly expose them. Weeks go by, and after every single thing I follow in this book, ‘Phoenix Monarch’ has sent me more generous amounts of money just for getting some sort of revenge on these people that I have discovered to have one thing in common, Omega Phi. Turns out, Omega Phi has been the source of a lot of terrible things that university President John Richman has been covering up over the years, and the school board has disbanded them completely. Exposing every dirty little secret they have been hiding. Once some of the secrets got out, not of my doing, the whole school was asked to gather as requested by Lake Valley’s previous dean of students, now interim university president Martha Hoover. She starts by telling us that the whole Omega Phi drama was just a misunderstanding but the people involved will not be returning to campus. I’m assuming that she doesn’t want to tell the whole school about everything so I just keep it to myself. She continues, ‘In light of recent changes to our Lake Valley community, the school board has authorized a change in our mascot. It will no longer be the wolf, but the phoenix. It is at this moment where she winks at me and I finally put all of the pieces together in my mind. I guess revenge really is a dish best served cold.