He shrugged again.
“Shut up.”
He gave me a look.
“Yeah, I know you didn’t say anything. But you were thinking it.”
He rolled his eyes.
“Whatever. Don’t you have class?”
He nodded and tapped his arm as if pointing at a watch.
“Go, get to class. Oh, can you do me a favor? Don’t tell Will. I mean, I’m sure he’ll find out about it, but in case he doesn’t, please?”
He nodded.
“You can talk now.”
He opened his mouth wide and moved his jaw back and forth, as if it was stiff.
“Thank God.”
I just started walking.
“See you later, Lot,” he called as I walked toward the dorm and he walked toward his first class. “Try not to bump into anyone else today. I think you’ve already used up your allotted effs for the day.”
I showed a special eff finger to his back as he walked away, waving over his shoulder.
Chapter Nine
Zan
I saw a moment to say something to her, and I took it. My only intention was to apologize for the other day with the cups, but maybe it was something more. My attempt to start to change her perception of me. My attempt to start showing her how sorry I really was for everything. As futile as that was.
She had every right to lash out at me. I deserved it. I wasn’t trying to stalk her, or bother her, but that was how I came across. Not much I could do to change that, except probably not approach her from behind like a creepy stalker.
I headed off to calculus trying to think of anything but Charlotte.
Fuck that.
The problem was, everything made me think of Charlotte.
I tried using a trick Miss Carole taught me to help me clear out my negative thoughts. I took every thought I didn’t want to have, imagined blowing it into a balloon and releasing it. I blew Charlotte and her hair and her eyes and the way she walked and her laugh and her smile into thousands of balloons and tried to let them go.
I was still working on that when I got to class. I was almost late, so the only seat left was next to a guy with hair that had been bleached recently, and a silver ring in his lip. He gave me a nod as I sat down, and I returned it. A lot of the guys at Carter had rocked a similar look.
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 f**k 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 f**k 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 ago. 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.