‘So that was completely normal for you?’ Jenny merged onto the freeway. ‘Is that just how you normally behave and I haven’t noticed? Because if it is we seriously need to get you some training. Or maybe a manual? You do not just not introduce me to hot friends. That girl could’ve been my soulmate and your rude ass has just doomed me to a life of loneliness and misery and like twenty cats.’
‘The cats don’t sound too bad.’
‘Good luck to you because you are going to be the one to find the body when they eat me.’
‘You think I’ll outlive you? That’s optimistic.’
Jenny let out a groan of frustration. ‘Unbelievable. That’s what you took from that?’
‘I’ll make sure you have a nice funeral?’
‘Not the point, Kate,’ Jenny gestured for Kate to pass her sunglasses. They were large, and black, and pointed. Jenny kind of looked like a raccoon when she wore them. But that was most definitely not the sort of thing Jenny would appreciate being told.
Kate tapped her fingers on the dash. ‘That girl we ran into, that was Emily.’
‘The girl you kissed? The one you slept with?’
‘The girl who kissed me.’
‘I still can’t wrap my head around that. You’re usually the one to make the first move. But this girl just kissed you out of the blue?’
Kate nodded. That sounded about right. Jenny seemed to get the gist of it.
‘Lucky bastard,’ said Jenny, her voice teasing. ‘Why doesn’t that ever happen to me?’
‘I mean you do come on a little strong—’
‘I go after what I want.’ Jenny flicked her hair. ‘And didn’t you say Emily was a blonde? The girl I flirted with was not blonde. And honestly Kate, I didn’t really think she was your type. Which, I suppose, would explain why you didn’t make the first move.’ Jenny barely paused to breath. ‘Also, if we’re talking about it, I don’t think the two of you would make a good pair. You look rather… similar. You don’t want to be confused for sisters or cousins.’
‘I mean that happens anyway, doesn’t it?’ Kate ran a hand through her freshly cut hair. It was much shorter on the sides than she was used to. But she liked. ‘What color hair did her friend have?’
‘I didn’t really look,’ said Jenny. ‘Someone didn’t give me the chance.’
‘The friend was Emily. Not the brunette.’
‘Okay—phew. Good.’
‘Yeah you don’t have to worry about me flirting with the brunette. That’s Emily’s ex.’
‘It does make more sense,’ said Jenny, ‘from the little I could see of her before you dragged me away she did look more your type.’
‘I’m getting a serious case of deja vu right now,’ said Kate thinking back on that conversation with Bryan before she had met Emily. ‘But that is a conversation for alter.’
‘I still don’t get why you didn’t just talk to her in person. You’re being very dramatic. It could just all be a misunderstanding.’
‘Yeah,’ said Kate not convinced in the slightest, ‘a misunderstanding.’
Twelve
On My Mind
All she could do was stare at the clock, ticking away , on the computer lab wall. It was an ugly thing. Old and cracked and far too slow. That wasn’t the clock’s fault. But Kate wished it would just move faster.
She covered a yawn with the back of her hand. She hadn’t slept well. The girl who lived across the hall from her had someone over and they were loud. Very loud. Loud enough to penetrate noise canceling headphones.
She was seven weeks into the semester. And there were no more first week jitters . No more easy content. Mid semester exams were a thing of the past and finals loomed large and ominous in the near future. But Kate had forgotten that when that was all said and done college would commence in its full glory. Lectures you couldn’t afford to miss. Labs that took you days to complete. Tutorials that made no sense. And worst of all there was the ever present threat of group assignments. There was nothing worse than group work. And it wasn’t that she didn’t like learning or anything like that. No. That was not it at all. Kate enjoyed learning as much as the next person. But what she didn’t like was being thrown in the deep end. The first half of semester was always easy. Deceptively so. But after mid-sems? Then all gloves were off. That was when you realized just how little you actually knew.
Normally Kate wouldn’t panic. Finals were more than a month away. There was time. But frankly, after being linked to a website and told to just follow along with what it said, she was, to put it mildly, underwhelmed. And it was not at all the case that she hadn’t expected to be left to her own devices, to be self taught, but this was just a new low. She’d never thought college would be like this. Frankly, considering the website was free, she could’ve just taught herself and not have paid thirty grand for a link; it was probably the most expensive link to ever exist.
‘He’s got to be kidding, right?’ whispered Kate to Sam after the professor went back to his desk and opened his laptop. He’d probably stay like that for the rest of the lab, unless someone bothered him. ‘There has to more to this than just, what, a free website?’
The other girl turned to face her incredulously, with wide dark brown eyes, and said ominously, ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Well, there goes my GPA.’
‘I didn’t know it could get worse,’ said Sam. She swiveled on her chair. Chewed gum loudly. Eyes closed. She was half-asleep. But Sam could get away with it. She was brilliant with computers. Better with them than she was with people. They were second nature to her. There wasn’t a programming language that wasn’t fluent in.
Kate winced. That stung a little. Hit a bit too close to home. But she’d move past it. Sam didn’t mean anything by it. ‘Ouch. That cut deep.’ She paused. ‘We’re pretty much screwed, through, aren’t we? And it’s not like we can just drop the class, it’s a core unit.’
‘A good start to the semester, isn’t it?’
‘A brilliant start.’ Kate twirled in her chair idly as she booted up the lab desktop in front of her and logged in. ‘But how was your summer?’
Sam blinked lazily. One eye opened and smiled. ‘I went home. Which was nice—’
‘The food must’ve been amazing after the stuff you get fed here.’ Kate hadn’t gone home. She’d stayed at college in the dorms. She loved her family. She really did. But they were so different to her. She always felt like the odd one out when she was home. She could never fit in. But then again the food at her home wasn’t great. Not like Sam whose dad was a chef.
‘I’ve never thought I’d miss good food as much as I did, but honestly, it was all I had when I went home. I could not get enough.’
‘I could kill for a good food. Not that I’d probably know what a really good food is. I’d probably be happy with anything at this point.’
‘I miss it already,’ said Sam wistfully. Her eyes glazed over.
‘Well, we’ve got one thing going for us,’ said Kate, ‘at least the beach is nearby.’
‘I do not miss the desert,’ said Sam. She sounded haunted. ‘I do not miss that at all.’
‘Now imagine it without air-conditioning.’
‘I would die.’ Sam nodded gravelly but then seemed to remember something. ‘What are you doing tonight?’
‘Not much, why?’
‘I was thinking of trying to get a study group together. Something to keep us all accountable, if you’re interested?’
Normally Kate would’ve politely declined and that would’ve been that. But normal went out the window the minute her professor decided posting a link was all he needed to do. The time for normal was over. Lines had been crossed. There was no going back. Drastic measures needed to be taken and they needed to be taken now. Before she could talk herself out of it and procrastinate her degree away.
‘I’m in.’ Kate clicked on the link and watched the browser load. ‘When do you want to meet?’
‘I was thinking aroun
d seven. Maybe after we’ve had dinner. We could meet in the dining hall and go to the library together and meet everyone there?’
‘Alright. Sounds good.’ Kate sighed when the page finally loaded. ‘And now to get on with it.’
#
Dinner was good. It was pizza, and pizza was very hard to screw up. Well screw it up beyond redemption, that is. And so frozen pizza was the highlight of her day. A cheesy carbohydrate loaded highlight. And it was worth every single calorie and the discomfort of her jeans sitting to tight around her stomach. Sacrifices had to be made. And for pizza Kate would hesitate to sacrifice her own new born if it cam down to it. She wouldn’t, really. Probably …
She was happy just thinking about the pizza. There was nothing better than carbs, she was convinced of that fact. She would fight anyone who said different.
Sam was waiting for her at the dining hall entrance, the one closest to the underpass that would take them to the library. She hadn’t been waiting long, Kate knew that much. She’d seen her eating with her friends just minutes ago. Kate and Sam were friends, but they just traveled in different circles when they were back at the dorms.
‘Ready?’ asked Sam.
‘Willing and able,’ said Kate.
‘You’re in a good mood.’
‘Pizza,’ said Kate as if that explained everything, and it did.
‘The others are already there. Matt was able to get us one of the big desks on the bottom floor, so we can study in something other than deathly silence.’
‘So, instead, we’ve swapped it for overwhelming noise and chatter?’
‘You can listen to music.’ Sam tied up her hair with a scrunchy as they walked passed the old sociology building. ‘If our chatter gets too much for you.’
Next they passed the theater department, it’s main building the shape of an octagon. The walls were lined with posters of student plays that were being performed this semester. Shakespeare being a favorite. Kate didn’t care much for Shakespeare. Which was probably why she wouldn’t have made a good literature major. High school had killed his work for her. She was not going back.
They passed the food court next. It was late enough that most of the small stalls and restaurants were closed. Only the kebab shop was open. It had just opened. It served a different clientele than the other restaurants on campus. That late night, drunk at three in the morning, crowd were drawn to it like moths to a flame. Kate knew that from experience. That had been her more than once.
The library was busy. Very busy. It was a three story building with a spiral staircase and elevator that was permanently out of order. For the three years Kate had been at college it had never worked. Not once.
They made there way through the doors, slipped between the throngs of people, towards a glass walled room at the furthest corner of the bottom floor. There was one person there. Matt, presumably. He was lanky and tall and pale. A programmer. He was one of Kate’s people. Her gaydar may not have been great but she could spot a computer nerd a mile away.
‘Matt.’
‘Sam.’
‘Where are the others?’ Sam pulled out a chair. Made herself comfortable. Pulled her laptop out and got to work. She typed without looking at the keyboard. Not breaking eye contact with Matt. ‘I thought we’d be more than three.’
‘Late,’ he grunted. He didn’t look up from his blinking screen.
What a warm welcome, thought Kate sarcastically. Always good to make new friends.
She thought about Emily’s friends, then. The two she had met at the poetry slam. She wouldn’t have mindeed if they were her friends. They seemed fun. And nice. Which was a combination of traits that didn’t often go together.
No, thought Kate with more force and displeasure than was warranted. Stop it. You think about them the you think about Emily and then you can’t stop thinking about Emily. Enough. It’s a slippery slope. And you’ve done so well not to let the heartbreak get the better of you. And besides that, you don’t have time to let it get the better of you. You are not going to fail your exams just because you couldn’t concentrate. Not going to happen.
With that promise to herself made Kate logged on to her computer. She opened the terminal and began to type away.
For about twenty minutes it was just the three of them. And Kate had begun to doubt whether more people were ever going to come. To be frank, she’d begun to doubt they’d even existed.
But that was fine by Kate, even if she thought it a strange thing to lie about, as she could spread the contents of her bag over her side of the desk. She could really make herself at home. And she did.
Kate didn’t notice the first of five new people come in. Not till it was too late. She’d been to caught up in her errors that blemished her code. Obnoxious, unmistakable, red marred her screen. Her night was just beginning. The debugging would take ages …
‘Do you mind?’
Kate’s head snapped back like she’d been sucker punched. It certainly felt like it. Her heart plummeted. Her words caught in her throat. It felt like she had just swallowed Staten Island and it had got stuck somewhere along the way between her stomach and chest.
It was Emily. She’d know that voice everywhere. Could feel it in her bones.
Kate sprung to life. She moved her stuff and watched as the other girl sat at the far end of the desk. Far, far away from her.
And that suited Kate fine. It was perfect. More than perfect. It was ideal.
God, she was such a liar. A stubborn liar. And not a good one.
Kate could only stop herself from looking at Emily for all of five minutes. Just long enough to make her glaces inconspicuous. Kate frowned, peeked over the edge of her screen slightly, and stared.
Emily looked the same. Of course she did. It had only been a few weeks. A whole two of them. A fortnight. Fourteen days. Three hundred and thirty six hours. Twenty thousand one-hundred and sixty minutes. Not that she was counting. That wouldn’t be the sort of thing Kate kept track of. Not normally, anyway. But she hadn’t had her heartbroken in three years. So normal didn’t apply anymore.
Kate had never been ghosted. Never. She’d let her fair share of conversations run their course. Which was till they were dead and there was no point responding anymore. But never outright ghosted.
But there was a first time for everything.
‘You alright?’ Sam whispered.
Kate leaned back against the her chair. She didn’t have to think about it. She wasn’t remotely okay. But she wasn’t going to admit it.
The desk was long and beige and seemed to walked straight out a conference room. It’s length was a blessing. Kate and Emily weren’t close to one another. They were separated by four girls who Kate recognized but couldn’t put names to. They were the girls who had cornered her. Who had interrogated her about Bryan. It all seemed laughable now. If only they knew …
‘Yeah.’ Kate turned to look at Sam. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’
‘You look constipated.’
Kate spluttered. Her eyes grew wide. She was speechless. She did not look constipated. Sam had to be kidding. She had to be. Right?
‘You’re screwing with me.’ She didn’t sound as sure as she might’ve hoped.
Sam laughed. ‘I am. You need to chill, dude. You’ve been glaring at blondie over there for the better part of five minutes. You can be happy she hasn’t noticed. Girl was too engrossed in her book to pay you any mind. I figured you’re luck was bound to run out eventually. Because I’m such a kind soul, and wanted to do my good deed for the day, I figured I’d stop you from embarrassing yourself.’
‘I didn’t know I was that obvious.’
‘Yeah, well, hate to break it to you but subtly is not a strong point of yours. Not right now.’ Sam seemed to be thinking. She paused, slightly, weighed her options and settled on what it was she was going to do. ‘You want to go for a walk? Clear your head?’
Kate nodded. Seeing Emily again had thrown her. She hadn’t thought she’d have t
o see the other girl again. She had hoped, of course. But as the days went by, and the likelihood of Emily responding to her texts grew less and less likely by the day, her hope had slowly cannibalized itself till there was nothing left but disappointment and a light sprinkling of severe embarrassment.
Kate and Sam left. There was a vending machine around the corner just outside the library. It didn’t exactly have a lot to offer. But it did have iced coffee. And any caffeine was better than none. Even the sugary, take years off your life, kind.
Kate risked a glace, just as they existed the room, backwards. Just one more look at Emily to see if she’d even noticed that Kate had begun to leave. Any sign that she cared.
Nothing. Emily didn’t so much as look up from her book. It was just her and Shakespeare and Kate the fool who had hoped for more. She had never thought she’d be jealous of book. But right now she was more jealous of the Merchant of Venice than she’d ever thought possible.
‘You want to tell me what that was all about?’
Kate pushed at the vending machine. Her coffee was stuck. The bottle stopped just short of falling. It taunted her.
‘Nope.’
‘Good. Wouldn’t do for you to be an emotionally healthy individual and talk about your problems instead of bottling them up till you explode. That wouldn’t be fun for anyone. Least of all me.’
‘What do you care?’ Kate pushed at the machine again harder than the first time. The bottle fell down and Kate stuck her hand in to grab it. ‘It’s not like we’re friends. We barely speak to each other outside of class.’
‘Oh.’ Sam scoffed. Kate saw her face fall for a second. It was barely noticeable. She recovered quickly. Though her smile was mocking. ‘Good to know where I stand. Here I was thinking we were friends. My mistake, then. Forgive me for giving a shit.’
Sam turned on her heel and began to walk back to the library.
‘Shit. Sam, wait!’ Kate felt like a jerk. An utter dick, really. She hadn’t meant it, not at all. Sure, they weren’t that close. She’d just lashed out. Sam didn’t deserve that. But maybe they were friends?
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