Social Media
When Jon walked into the fraternity, one of the brothers waved him over. "You've got to see this," he said, grinning. The cell phone screen displayed a video that showed Andrew Lodge strike Jon, and everything that happened next.
Lodge returned from the hospital with big bandages over his broken nose. He had two temporary plastic teeth that weren't the right size or color. Someone managed to sneak a photo and post it to social media. Both the photo and video were copied and forwarded all over campus, and by the end of the day most of the students saw both. The photo came with an interesting caption: Courtesy of The Dentist of Delta Delta Delta. From then on, Jon's nickname was The Dentist.
There were plenty of fraternity brothers who thought Lodge was a rich, entitled snob - which was absolutely true - but there were others who thought Jon had violated some unwritten rules. Lodge came from a rich, powerful family; that was why he consistently got away with bad behavior that got ordinary guys in trouble. A bully like Lodge didn't have friends; instead, he had toadies. They gathered in Lodge's room and agreed that they needed to put Jon in his place.
Jon was a smart guy who realized that Lodge and his entourage were surely plotting against him. They didn't know Jon was wealthier than all of them combined. Before leaving home, Jon's father gave him some good advice: Don't let others know he had money. "Money attracts the wrong kind of people," his father said, advising him to avoid displays of wealth.
Jon arrived on campus with the kind of possessions you'd expect of a guy from the middle class. He had a nice car, but it wasn't new or fancy; it certainly wasn't the kind of chick magnet driven by Lodge the other rich guys. He had a nice laptop, cellphone, and wardrobe, but nothing extravagant. He'd removed a lot of content from his social media so it didn't show photographs of vacations to exotic places. It had worked; no one suspected Jon was the son of one of the richest men in North America.
Jon had to watch his back. But he also wanted to do everything he could to let Lodge know he wasn't intimidated. He found himself looking at the wolf's head mounted on the wall, and it gave him an idea. That day he went to the art supply section of the campus bookstore, where he bought some sandpaper and epoxy. That night, while everyone was asleep, Jon used the sandpaper to clean every speck of blood from the teeth he'd knocked loose. He mixed up a small batch of epoxy and sneaked downstairs. There, he glued the teeth to the front of the wolf's snarling fangs.
It looked very, very weird - as though this wild animal had somehow grown two human teeth. The epoxy cured by the next morning, but no one noticed Willie the Wolf's strange new smile. The day came and went, and Jon was a bit disappointed. The whole point of Jon's little art project was to humiliate Lodge in a new way.
But the day was nice otherwise. Leah asked him to come for a visit, which they both knew meant she wanted to have sex. And that's just what Jon gave her. Once again, Leah made a lot of noise in bed, and Jon felt a bit conspicuous as he walked out of the sorority.
The next morning, one of the fraternity brothers finally spotted Jon's dental work on the wolf. Jon had tucked the upper part of both teeth beneath the wolf's upper lip, making it seem like they belonged there. The frat brother pointed the teeth out to other guys immediately, and everybody knew it had to be the work of The Dentist of Delta Delta Delta. Photos were on the web within minutes.
Lodge was one of the last of the brothers to see Jon's work. He tried to pry the teeth loose, but they were glued so securely Lodge couldn't remove them without destroying the trophy. He was outraged, gathering his toadies together to make plans to show that little peasant the consequences of challenging an aristocrat.
"Nice dental work on the wolf, Major," several brothers said.
"I have no idea what you're talking about," Jon replied, an answer that invariably triggered boisterous laughter.
They hate Lodge,
Jon thought.
How has he gotten away with so much crap for such a long time?
Because Jon's family was so rich, and Jon was the kind of guy who always followed the rules, he hadn't yet learned that most rules don't apply to rich and powerful people. But Lodge knew. He'd been breaking rules for his entire life, and his parents had ensured that he never suffered consequences.
The photo and video of Lodge made quite an impact on the sisters at Sigma Phi. By now most of them had heard about the way Jon rescued their sister Leah from the clutches of a predator. They knew he'd fought with Lodge. They'd heard about Noelle. But it was an abstraction - something they knew but didn't understand.
Seeing the extensive damage done to Lodge's face clarified the issue for everyone. Damn. That little freshman upstart had big, heavy balls. The video made a particularly powerful impact on Margeaux Laurent. She'd been there when Jon returned the drunken Leah to the safety of the sorority. He was funny. He was handsome. And that video showed that he had big, heavy balls. She watched it over and over. It made her heart go pitter pat.
It turned out that Margeaux had been searching for a guy with balls. She hadn't been laid since arriving on campus the previous fall. It wasn't because she wasn't trying. She'd had dates with a handful of young men who seemed to have potential. But she soon realized that they were all boys dressed in men's clothing. Jon was the real deal. He possessed an actual backbone. As Margeaux admired the photo of Jon's amateur dentistry, she decided that she would do whatever it took to get his attention. Margeaux was one of the most beautiful coeds on campus, and she felt confident that Jon would be her boyfriend soon.
But then she discovered it wasn't possible. Margeaux was walking down the hall to her room. The door to one room was open, and several sisters were inside, giggling. Margeaux walked to the doorway and realized what was happening. Leah's room was next door, and it was especially easy to hear the loud moans and groans of lovemaking through the thin walls.
"What's going on?" Margeaux asked.
"Can't you tell? Leah's got a boyfriend. From the sounds of it, he's a keeper," one girl said.
Indeed. Leah's sexy sounds made it obvious that whoever was in there with her knew what he was doing. Margeaux felt it was wrong to eavesdrop on a sorority sister like this, but she couldn't pull herself away.
"Who's her boyfriend?" she asked.
"Jon Major. Who else?" a girl replied.
Of course. The damsel in distress. The knight in shining armor. It made perfect sense that Leah and Jon would become a couple. It also made perfect sense that Jon was the kind of lover who could pleasure a woman well enough to inspire the sounds that came through the wall. Amateur dentistry was not his only talent.
"Leah sounds like she's having a fit," one sister said.
"Yeah. And a tight one, too," another said.
The girls giggled. "What is Jon doing to Leah?" one sister asked.
I wish he was doing it to me
, Margeaux thought. She felt jealousy. Envy. Margeaux had no reason to dislike Leah; she was actually happy for her. But she felt disappointed that the man she wanted for herself was taken.
It was hard to know specifically what was happening in the room next door, but then Leah called out in a way that could only mean she was having an orgasm. A big one. In the silence that followed, one of the sisters said it was time to go. "No, the show is just starting," said the girl who lived in that room. "Give Jon a few minutes. There will be a sequel, and it will be better than the first time," she said.
Some of the girls opted to stay to hear what would happen next, but Margeaux went back to her room. She felt lonelier than at any time since starting college. When she got back to her room she closed the door behind her and stripped out of her clothing. Margeaux got her vibrator and climbed into bed.
Hello again, lover
, she thought.
Let's have some me time.
She imagined it was her in that room instead of Leah. She imagined Jon was doing to Margeaux whatever it was that he did so skillfully to Leah. It was a fantasy that she wished could be real, but Margeaux would never try to steal another girl's boyfriend. She couldn't help but wish something would happen that would cause the couple to split up, but she knew that was petty. Leah was lucky. Good for her. If Margeaux couldn't have Jon, it was fine that he was with the girl he'd saved from an experienced predator.
Margeaux came quickly and put the vibrator away. She got out her cellphone and took another look at the video showing Jon knocking out Lodge's teeth. He needs more than a good beating, Margeaux thought. Somebody needs to figure out a way to knock him off his pedestal.
That's what she was thinking as she began falling asleep. But then she had a thought so shocking it jolted her wide awake. She knew what to do. Jon had knocked Lodge down. She would make sure he never got back up.
XXXXXXXXXXX
The brothers of Delta could talk about nothing but Jon, The Dentist. Who was that guy? What was his deal? What kind of freshman knocks the teeth out of the mouth of his fraternity president, then uses them to improve on the work of the taxidermist who produced Willie the Wolf trophy on the fraternity wall? Once, when Jon found himself walking past Lodge, he faked a sudden move that caused Lodge to jump away. Lodge wanted to punch Jon again, but he didn't dare give Jon an excuse for removing a few more teeth. Lodge told one of his toadies that he was thinking about filing a police complaint against Jon.
"Are you out of your mind?" the toady asked. "There was a room full of witnesses who saw what happened. There was a video. Think about it. Jon walked in the door, and you threatened to kick his ass. Then, you punched him.
"All he did was defend himself. If you complain to the police, you're the one who'll get charged with assault. I don't think that will help you when you are applying to law schools. You're lucky nobody called the police when it happened. If that had happened, you'd have a lot more to worry about than a broken nose and a dentist bill."
What happened next was something the brothers came to call The Big Ka-Boom.
As Jon's fraternity brothers looked for clues to explain his behavior, one of them noticed something interesting about his social media. Jon had eliminated all the blatant evidence of his family's wealth, but he hadn't thought to conceal the fact that one of his online friends was his father. Clicking on that link revealed that William Major was CEO and majority owner of some corporation with the boring-sounding name Major Fasteners, Inc. But a few more clicks revealed that the corporation was a global giant, and that Jon's father ranked 27th on the Bloomberg list of the world's wealthiest individuals.
Ka Boom.
It took about a nanosecond for the news to reach Lodge, and not much longer for most of the other students. Instantly, Lodge was terrified. He'd gotten away with so much because he knew ordinary rules of behavior did not apply to rich and powerful people. But he also knew that in a conflict between two rich people, the richer one always won. Jon's father was orders of magnitude richer and more powerful than Lodge's dad. Lodge had already discovered that Jon could beat him in a fair fight. It was infinitely more horrifying that Jon would win any unfair contest, too.
