Our professor turned out to just be a grad student math genius named Quan who wasn’t much older than most of his students. He droned through the syllabus as I filled more thought balloons with Charlotte. The guy next to me was busy drawing in his notebook, and seemed to be going for the World Slouching Record.
By the time class ended, half of the people were asleep and the other half were on their way, while the guy next to me, whose name was Stryker as I found out when our professor called roll, had completed four drawings. From what I could see out of the corner of my eye, they were all comic-looking scenes, and they were all good.
Everyone sighed in relief when Quan said we could go, after giving us our first homework assignment. Stryker gave me another nod in goodbye and I returned it. Maybe next class we’d graduate to actual words.
I spent the rest of the day filling millions and millions of Lottie thought balloons and trying to let them go.
I texted Miss Carole about moving in and my first day of classes. She messaged back that she was proud of me and I should check my mailbox because there might be something in it.
Right around the afternoon I started feeling tense. The encounter with Charlotte had thrown me, more so than I thought it would. I’d stopped taking the meds my doctor had put me on to “regulate” my moods this summer. That had also been Miss Carole’s idea, although if my parents ever found out I wasn’t taking them, I’d be screwed. Those pills messed with my head and made me foggy and sleepy and not give a shit about anything. They made everything ten thousand times harder to do.
I had two hours between my second class of the day and my last, and instead of going to the library or doing something smart, I smoked the last joint I had.
My safety joint. I knew when I smoked that last one, it was all I had and I wasn’t going to buy any more. Tate, my supplier, was almost two hours away, and I didn’t drive.
I figured the best place to go was the roof, so I climbed the four flights of stairs and propped the door open with a wet floor sign one of the maintenance workers must have left hanging around.
I lay down and blew the smoke into the sky.
I didn’t know what the hell I was doing here. I didn’t belong here. Being here was only going to fuck things up, and not for me.
When I’d finished the joint I didn’t feel any better or worse than before I smoked it, but at least it had given me something to do for a few minutes.
At least it was out of my life.
I pulled out my phone and texted Miss Carole again.
I can’t do this.
The phone rang a second later.
“Alex, what’s wrong?” She was the only one who called me Alex.
“I shouldn’t be here.”
“And why is that?”
“She’s here. Charlotte. And her brother.”
“Oh, Alex. That must be hard for you.”
“No, shit.” She never cared if I swore.
“That doesn’t mean you should just throw in the towel. It hasn’t even been a week.” I walked to the edge of the roof and looked down at the people below, all going about their lives. They all had shit to deal with, some more so than me and somehow they could function and make it look easy.
“I don’t want you going down the negative road again. It only leads to a negative place. Send out negative energy and you’ll get it back.”
“I’ll try.”
“Do better than try. You can do better. You can be better. Don’t be emo, it doesn’t look good on you.”
I laughed a little.
“I won’t.”
“Call me, Alex. Anytime.” Sounds of children playing echoed in the background. She’d obviously been in the middle of something when I’d called her.
“I will.”
Talking with Miss Carole made me feel better than the joint had. I went back to my room and read for a while and listened to random records I chose by closing my eyes and picking from the milk crate Gramps had given me. I also sorted through my clothes and tossed the worst of them in a garbage bag to donate to Goodwill.
I heard Will and his roommate coming back from their classes and chatting next door. I was surprised Will hadn’t asked me to step outside and settle things. Again.
I’d let him beat the fuck out of me after the accident. He’d been in a rage and I hadn’t cared, so I figured he might as well go ahead. I got a few punches in just to make it look like I was fighting back, but for the most part it was all Will. Not that he was a pansy, by any means. I didn’t think my jaw would ever be the same.
My mother hadn’t even asked when I’d come home looking like I’d been in another car accident. My doctor had accepted my explanation of falling down the stairs without so much as a blink. Zack knew, but he was still too wrapped up with his physical therapy so he could get back to training that he didn’t ask for details.
It would be interesting to see what a fair fight would look like between me and Will. Not that I would go out of my way to provoke him. I’d promised Miss Carole that I wouldn’t get involved in any fights. I’d already broken my promise not to do drugs, so I wasn’t going to break another. At least not this week.
Lottie
My mood lifted a bit when I got to my first class. It was British Literature, and I couldn’t go wrong with that. I was one of the first to arrive, so I took a seat in the middle and got out my copy of Wuthering Heights and started skimming it. That had been another book Mom had thrust at me during my angsty phase.
“Oh, sorry.” A girl who was trying to get into the seat next to me, knocked into my bag.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said with a little smile.
“Thanks,” she said, sitting down. Wow, she was tall. Even more tall than just plain tall, considering she was wearing boots with monster heels. She somehow folded her runway-ready legs under the desk with total grace and took out her own copy of the book. It was well-worn. Clearly, a personal copy.
I looked at the clock and we still had ten minutes before we started.
“How much do you want to bet ten percent of the other people in this class won’t actually read the book?” I said to her. It seemed apropos, given as how we were in a literature class.
“What?” I repeated myself. She looked kind of stunned that I was talking to her before she glanced around the room at the other students, all of them female.
“I would say it’s more like twenty percent.”
“I’m Lottie.”
“Audrey,” she said.
“It’s a shame, because even though all the characters are horrible, it’s a really good book. People our age just don’t seem to see the value in reading the classics unless they have to.”
Don’t ramble, don’t ramble, don’t ramble.
She looked a little taken aback, but she hadn’t shifted her desk away, or pulled out her phone and pretended she was really busy texting when really she wasn’t. I had lots of experience with that.
“So, what year are you?” I said. That was a normal question.
“First year,” she said. “Saying freshman sounds so… lame.”
“I totally agree. First year sounds like we go to Hogwarts. Only without the magic and whimsy.” Will groaned every time I mentioned Hogwarts or anything Harry Potter-related when he was around. Good thing he wasn’t.
One of Audrey’s perfectly-sculpted eyebrows flicked upward for a second.
“And apparating and Butterbeer,” she said. Oh thank God. Another Potter fan. We weren’t as rare as I thought.
I smiled. “Exactly.” She smiled back.
As Anne Shirley would have said, I’d found a kindred spirit.
Our teacher turned out to be an actual British guy named Mr. Halloway who looked like he could have been Liam Neeson’s cousin. I could have stayed in the class forever, listening to him read the syllabus out loud. I wasn’t the only one. I swore I heard some dreamy sighs when he told us he was from Hampshire, but had fallen in love with Maine when he visited ten years a
go. Disappointment rippled through the room as well when he mentioned he’d come here with his wife. Too bad, so sad.
He let us go early, after giving us our homework assignment. Ah, literature homework. How I had missed it. Will always made fun of me because I loved reading assignments. I made fun of him because he loved golf.
“I guess I’ll be seeing you on Wednesday,” Audrey said as we packed up our stuff. When she stood up, I had to crane my head back. Yep, she was a goddess with long dark hair and a perfect waist and gorgeous skin.
“Yeah,” was my witty response.
“Stay away from dementors until then,” she said as we parted ways in the hallway.
“Will do,” I said, and waved. I shook my head at my good fortune and went to my next class, which was bio and held in a large room with at least two hundred other people. Most of the core classes were in the large lecture halls, and nearly all of the students attending them were also first year students.
I searched for Will’s hair and he was easy to find. He waved to me and pointed to an empty seat next him. I sighed inside, but climbed the steps and sat next to him.
“You still mad at me?” His hair was in his face again, and not in a good way.
“What does your twindar tell you?”
“Results are inconclusive at this point.” That made me bite back a smile. My twindar told me he felt like and asshole and didn’t want to fight with me any more than I wanted to fight with him.
“Can I please cut your hair tonight?” I said, pushing it out of his eyes.
“If you’ll stop being mad at me.”
“Fine.”
“Okay then.” He grabbed his bag and pulled out his textbook. The room buzzed like a hive full of nervous bees. Some already had their textbooks open and their notebooks ready. Some looked like they’d just rolled out of bed and had randomly wandered into the room.
Like an arrow, I felt his eyes on me.
“Brother of Doom Number Two is here,” I said, nudging Will, who was digging in his bag for a pen.
“What?”
“Look,” I pointed as Zan walked up the steps, his eyes sweeping the room, and taking a seat a few rows in front of us.
“I seriously want to punch that fucker,” Will whispered, cracking his knuckles. The girls in the row in front of me totally heard him and started giggling.
“Keep it down, you idiot.”
“I’m just saying.” He glared at the back of Zan’s head. “At least he isn’t staring at you.”
“Can we please not talk about it now?”
A professorial-looking fellow entered the room while syllabi were handed around and class began, effectively ending Will’s line of conversation. I had no doubt he’d pick it back up again when class ended.
When it came to Will, the only way to get him to let go of something was to distract him with something shiny. Or something with boobs. You had the best shot if you had both.
“So, I think I made a new friend,” I said as we exited after another run-through of class procedures and policies. “She’s of the female variety.”
I watched Zan’s back as he vanished out of a side door. Will didn’t notice.
Point for me.
“Yeah?” Will was instantly all ears.
Another point for me.
“We bonded while sharing Harry Potter references.”
“And?”
“And, she’s really nice.”
“That’s great.” He was less-than enthusiastic. I was totally stringing him along.
“She’s got long legs.”
“You don’t say,” he said, and I could almost feel him getting more interested. Will was a leg man. It was only mildly disturbing that I knew that.
“And long dark hair.” Will was also a hair guy, especially if it was straight.
“Keep going.”
“And she seems smart. She warned me against dementors.”
Will snorted and shook his head.
“A hot dorky girl? Those are hard to find.”
“Thanks, Will.”
“You knew what I meant.”
“Sure.” He gave me a leading look. “Yes, I will casually mention you the next time I talk to her, if it’s not creepy.”
“I just have one favor to ask you. Please, I beg you, don’t do that thing where you ramble and tell all sorts of personal information. Please.”
“So you don’t want me to tell her about the time in kindergarten when you got lost going to the bathroom and peed your pants?”
“Christ, Lottie, keep your voice down.” He glanced right and left, but everyone was too busy with their own crap to notice.
“Or how about the time you tried to burn you report card and ended up setting the kitchen on fire? Oh, how about the time –“ My word flow was dammed by Will’s hand. I reached my hand out and got him in his ticklish spot. The hand vanished from my mouth as he fought to get away from me.
“Duckling! Duckling!” He yelled as he thrashed and got a hold of my thumb. That made me laugh, which gave him an opening to get the upper hand.
“I surrender, I surrender,” I said, letting go of him.
“So,” he said, pretending to dust himself off, “how long are these legs?”
Chapter Ten
Zan
I almost skipped bio, but at the last minute, I decided to go. I knew it was going to be hard finding a seat, but I had no idea I’d be looking for an empty seat and find her. Not just her, but Will too. I immediately went for a seat that was as far from them as possible, and forced my neck not to turn to glance back at them. That didn’t stop me from feeling their eyes on me, especially Will’s. If he could have punched me via eye contact, I’m sure he would have.
It was harder being in class with Charlotte than I thought it would be, and I bolted through the first door I could find.
I also kicked the first trashcan I could find before punching the first thing I could find, which turned out to be a wooden sign.
Not the brightest thing I’d ever done, but I didn’t know how much longer I could deal.
“Shit!” I screamed after I realized I’d probably broken my hand. The sign remained intact. Miss Carole wasn’t going to be very pleased. Ignoring the horrified faces of my fellow college students, I went back to my room to bandage my hand.
It was swelling pretty badly by the time I got back, but I wrapped it with some tape and grabbed an ice pack from the freezer. As long as it didn’t turn black, I was probably okay.
My hand was hurting like hell, but I was going to make myself feel it.
My brother had left me a message saying that he was busy with Katie, but he wanted to hang out at some point. Zack’s idea of hanging out was getting as shitfaced as possible and passing out wherever he fell. It usually meant me dragging him into bed and turning his head so he didn’t choke on his own vomit. The only person that was fun for was Zack.
I zapped some chips and cheese in the microwave and dragged out Gramps’ records and thumbed through them, looking for something to soothe my mood.
My fingers found Leonard Cohen’s Various Positions. Perfect. I put the record on and set the needle. I waited while the pops and static disappeared into ‘Dance Me to the End of Love’.
I munched my snack as I started my calculus homework. The numbers floated in front of my face, and I couldn’t make them settle. I kept thinking about Charlotte.. And her voice. Her deep, throaty sexy voice that made me think of sex and skin and tangled sheets.
I closed my eyes and let Leonard’s voice wrap around me.
“Hey,” Devin said opening the door, blinking rapidly like he was trying to clear his eyes. Or he was trying to figure out if I was really there. I could spot a stoner a mile away.
“Hey,” I said. “You staying tonight?” Devin had only spent one night in our room so far. I was curious about where he went, but I never asked.
“Nope.” I’d also never seen him with books, or a backpack or give any indication that he’d
gone to class. That was also a mystery.
He put is bag down and went for his computer without another word. I let the music play, figuring if he had a problem with it, he could say so. I had headphones. He hadn’t said anything about my music yet, except for asking about the record player.
“What the hell is this?”
“Leonard Cohen.”
“Never heard of him,” he said, giving me a look like I’d said Adolf Hitler.
I didn’t have much hope for the future of the human race if people didn’t know who Leonard Cohen was.
“What happened to your hand?”
“Nothing,” I said.
Before I could ask if he wanted me to put on my headphones, he stuffed some earbuds in his ears and turned up something that sounded like crushing trash cans from where I was sitting.
I tuned him out and focused back on Leonard.
He left a few minutes later with barely a good-bye. My phone buzzed with a message from Miss Carole.
How are you doing?
Fine. Surviving.
She messaged me back right away. Have you talked to her?
Sort of. She yelled at me.
I could almost hear her laugh, even though she wasn’t here.
Oh, Alex. Maybe actions would speak louder than words. You should do something for her.
Like what? Showing her my busted-up hand didn’t seem like quite the gesture Miss Carole was thinking.
You’re a smart boy. You’ll figure it out. Talk soon?
Definitely.
The record ended, and I got up to flip it over.
I glanced around the room, looking for an idea. My eyes settled on the top of the microwave, on my tin of tea. She’d been trying to get it the other day when I’d bumped into her accidentally on purpose.
I had an idea. I just needed a coffee cup, a packet of tea and a black marker.
It was probably fucking stupid, but seriously, did it matter? Did anything matter when you came down to it?