It’s the RA, Cynthia. She’s covering her nose with a hand but it’s not stopping the blood flowing freely down her face.

There’s a crowd standing outside our open doorway, fellow dorm dwellers in pajamas with rumpled hair and cell phones at the ready.

I glance from Cynthia and Abby to Fitz and Kevin, who aren’t fighting anymore. Fitz has Kevin’s throat in one hand, his other primed for bashing, but his face is turned to the commotion. Kevin uses the distraction to push Fitz away from him. Fitz immediately shoves back but then the wailing makes them both stop. Fitz has an open cut on his lip and Kevin’s eye is already swelling.

All eyes are on Cynthia holding her nose. So much blood flowing between her fingers, tap tap tapping on the hard floor.

“There are a large number of blood vessels in the nose. It’s never as bad as it looks,” I say. But no one is listening.

Abby is the first to move, shrugging on a red silk robe and rushing to Cynthia.

“Did she hit you? Let me help.” She shoots me a dirty look, like it’s my fault, before dashing out the door, practically carrying the RA while snapping at the assembled crowd. “Somebody do something! Call someone!”

Fitz and Kevin hurry out the door after her.

Over the rush in my ears from the adrenaline and the tapping of fingers on cell phones, someone says, “Who is she?”

The cops in Blue Falls are probably like most cops in sleepy Texas towns: unused to exercise and overly familiar with free burgers from the Frostee Freeze on Main Street.

The last major crime in town was when someone stole three of Mr. Johnson’s chickens and let them loose in the high school principal’s office. That was before I went there.

The police officers don’t know what to do with a bunch of sniveling coeds and the overly dramatic retellings of the “riot” that broke out in Juniper Hall on this humid autumn night.

No one is leaving, even though the officers keep asking for people to return to their rooms.

An EMT shows up and checks out Cynthia’s nose. Not broken, just bruised. They don’t take her to the hospital, instead bandaging it up and giving her some painkillers.

There are only a handful of scrapes and bruises between the rest of us.

Not surprisingly, most people blame me.

“Why did she hit Cynthia?” someone in the crowd of onlookers asks.

“Does she even live here?”

I sigh, but say nothing as the cops lead Abby, Fitz, Kevin, and I downstairs to the main office on the first floor.

Once they’ve got us in the small room, they have us sit in hard plastic chairs facing each other, Fitz and Abby on one side, Kevin and I on the other.

The office has front-facing windows where visitors check in. It’s also where dorm residents go to file complaints or talk to someone about needing light bulbs or simple repairs.