UI 101

by M. K. Claeys

  “He likes Dave? You should definitely keep him around, then!”

  “I’m planning on it.” She blushed.

  Whoa! She likes him! Mitzy totally has a crush on Jamaal. And I would totally bet a case of Red Bull that he likes her, too, if he’s making her a mix of all his favorite songs. But now is not the time to discuss that.

  Her issues with Tasha were running a lot deeper than I had originally thought. If it had been me, I wouldn’t have cared what LaTasha thought about me. But not Mitzy. Mitzy was too much of a do-gooder who tried to see the nice qualities in everyone. I swear if you just asked her to, that girl could find something kind to say about the Devil himself.

  Mitzy just couldn’t accept the fact that not all people are goodhearted and kind, like she is. So she thought that Tasha must hate her for something she did, even though I would bet my next term’s financial aid check that Mitzy didn’t do a damn thing and Tasha was just hypersensitive due to her background. Neither one of them could change where they were from, but cultural clash aside, Tasha had no excuse for being a grade-A, first class, number-one bitch.

  “Can you think of anything I might have done, Rae?” Mitzy asked, interrupting my thoughts of an omnipotent Tasha surrounded by flaming minions.

  I pretended to think for a moment, when in reality I was now imagining getting up from my bed, shaking Mitzy until she finally understood that she was not at fault, and screaming that no, she did not do anything and Tasha was just a fucking bitch who couldn’t tell her own fucking reflection from God Him/Herself because she was so blinded by her illusions of perfection. I wanted to tell her that people like Tasha weren’t worth the effort it would take to get them to like you because in the end they wouldn’t be good friends anyway.

  I wanted to beat that point into her head. But I didn’t. She had to learn that on her own. Like I did.

  “No, Mitzy, I really can’t think of anything.”

  Because there wasn’t anything. Except for being nice to a fault and letting people walk all over her, something I knew about all too well, Mitzy had done absolutely nothing wrong. Unless, of course, you were Tasha. And then, according to you, Mitzy had done everything wrong from birth on up, since she had obviously decided what family she wanted to be born into.

  Nothing with Tasha would be fixed until Mitzy realized that she hadn’t done a damn thing to deserve the way she was being treated and started standing up for herself.

  “Look, Mitz, I know it’s hard. I couldn’t imagine living with someone who hated me, and I give you a lot of credit for being willing to stick this out until you can fix it.”

  “Thanks, Rae. I sure hope I can.”

  “Will you do me a favor, though?”

  “Sure.”

  “If you need a place to sleep, or even just to get away, come here. You’re always welcome, and more importantly, you’re always wanted.”

  “Thanks, Rae,” she sniffed. “I will.”

  I could tell those baby blue eyes were filling with tears again, and this time I hoped they were happy ones.

  “And Mitzy?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Will you at least think about what I said? About getting rid of the futon and moving your bunk to the floor? You could get Jamaal to help you,” I added teasingly, hoping to make her smile a little.

  “I’ll try, Rae. I really will.”

  Well, it was a start.

  8

  Kathryn

  God, make it stop. The rattling, it sounded like thunder. I did not want to go outside in the rain. If it was raining, I was skipping class today. Having class during the rainy part of October should be illegal. Why couldn’t it just be quiet and leave me alone? I still had time…

  “Ryn?”

  “Mmmph.”

  “You phone is vibrating. You want me to answer it?”

  “Mmess.”

  I heard Rae push back her chair and hurry over to our dresser, where I had plugged in my phone to charge the night before, but it was too late. As she checked the ID to see who had called, I heard the telltale “wah-wah.” I had a new voicemail. Rae had barely set my cell down when the landline extension to our room rang.

  “Motherfu—just toss it here!” I yelled. Rae tossed, and I put on my best awake-sounding voice. “Hello?”

  “Ryn? Oh, baby, I was so worried! You barely said three words last night before you hung up.”

  “Hi, Brian,” I said sweetly, giving Rae a shrug at the questioning glance she threw me. She shrugged back and put her headphones on.

  “Babe, are you even listening?”

  “Of course I am,” I lied.

  “Well, were there?”

  I racked my brain for an answer. Were there what? Oh, I know. “No, Brian, it was just us girls last night.”

  It wasn’t all a lie. It had started out at just us girls, meaning Kate, Maliha, Rae, Mitzy and I, but then Quentin, the gay guy from four stopped over. So I guess that still sort of counts as “just us girls.” Until Brad showed. And then Jamaal and his roommate, and then Paul and Jack…

  “Oh, good. Because you know how I worry about you. I wouldn’t want to see you get hurt. Not all guys are as nice as they make themselves out to be.”

  “I know. So what’s up?”

  “Nothing. I was just calling to see if you were coming home again this weekend. I miss you.”

  I bet he did. He had surprised me last minute the previous weekend with tickets to one of our favorite band’s shows. Rae had been kind enough to drop me off at it. It had been an awesome night that ended with a very happy ending in Brian’s car before he dropped me off back at the dorm.

  “I wasn’t planning on it, no. I mean, Rae can’t drive me home all the time just because you and my mom”—I added quickly—“want to see me. Besides, I was just there last weekend. It wouldn’t be fair to ask her again.”

  Another reason I was glad Rae was listening to her headphones. Had she heard me talking about the possibility of going home, she would have been more than happy to drive me, and I really didn’t want to go. Not wanting to inconvenience her is a highly convenient excuse for me. My parents couldn’t come to pick me up all the time—they worked a lot of weekends—and the public transportation was disgusting, not to mention it would take three times as long.

  “Babe, I could come get you. It’s no problem. What time do you want me to get there?”

  “I know you would, Brian, but really, I’ve got a lot of things to do this weekend. I just got assigned another paper, and I don’t want to leave it to the last minute like I did last time with my thesis on Rage. I didn’t end up with a very good grade.”

  “Well, I told you to write it on my band. Maybe you would have gotten a better grade if you’d listened. And you can always do your paper at home, Ryn. I really want to see you this weekend.”

  “Brian, it’s Friday. I just saw you on Monday when we went out to lunch with my—fuck!”

  Rae was signaling me and pointing to the clock.

  “What’s wrong? Is someone trying to break into your room?”

  “No, Brian, don’t be absurd. I’m going to be late for my lecture! I’ve gotta go. I’ll call you after it’s over.”

  “All right, God, you don’t have to be so angry.”

  “I’m not!” I cried, frantically pulling on my socks and shoes. “I just cannot miss this lecture. I’ll call you later, okay?”

  “Fine.”

  “I love you, Ryn.”

  “You, too, babe, gotta go—bye!”

  I slammed the phone back in its cradle and ran to the bathroom to brush my teeth. Ryn met me at the door with my messenger bag, an umbrella, a baseball cap that I presumed she had “borrowed” from Brad, and a granola bar from the economy-sized box Mitzy had insisted on giving us.

  “Here,” she offered. “Take my headphones for the walk. You’ll make it if you hurry. You’re only five minutes behind schedule.”

  I smiled gratefully at her. She was such a lifesaver. “Thanks,
Rae, I really appreciate it,” I called as I made a mad dash for the elevator.

  Among all the other things Rae had done for me lately, she had let me use her Bluetooth noise-canceling headphones to walk to class quite a few times. I loved that little piece of microtechnology. It gave me freedom to ignore annoying things as I crossed campus, things like my phone, which was now ringing for the second time in the past fifteen minutes. I checked the caller ID. Brian.

  Well sorry, Brian, not right now. He’d nearly made me late, and the cramp in my side was not making me any more agreeable. I shoved my phone into the dark recesses of my black messenger bag.

  Take that.

  I made it to class just behind the professor and managed to snag the seat right by the door in the back. I didn’t think she noticed my out-of-breath, near-tardy disheveled-ness because she began her lecture in the same boring way she had for the past four and a half weeks. I sighed, uncapped my pen, opened my notebook, and slouched in my chair, preparing for another mind-numbing sermon on collegiate papers in today’s MLA format. I read her revised template for the class on the board and compared it to the syllabus she had given us the first week of lectures. She had decided to push back revealing the new subject and due date of our next paper until Monday. Because of that, it also looked as though I had rushed to class for nothing. Having no new paper assignment left today to review grammar, something she felt we had all done poorly on in our initial assignment.

  What on earth is she talking about? My grammar is just fine, thank you very much, and she must have thought so, too, because that wasn’t what I had been marked down on!

  I had spoken to my professor—well, via email, anyway—and she had informed me that the reason for my less-than-stellar mark had been due to the “subjective approach to my paper’s topic.”

  Okay, just because the punk rock scene is not part of mainstream American history and it consequently is not documented in the books does not mean it has no impact on American society in general. And why would I want to write a paper I didn’t have an opinion on? It would be so boring!

  She didn’t have to agree with me; she just had to give me a decent grade because I presented my paper in the manner she’d asked. I had followed the required MLA format to the letter, with only a few mistakes discovered by Mitzy, which were easily corrected. I mean, it wasn’t like I wrote my paper in the first person or some other elementary mistake such as using their instead of they’re, as she was now illustrating the difference between on the board. I just thought I should stick to my guns and write what I knew. And what I know is punk rock society, its music, and how said music affects said society. So that was what I’d told her in my email.

  I chanced looking up at her and saw she was shooting dirty looks in my direction. She always did that if she caught people not giving her their complete attention. Well, she could stare all she wanted, but I didn’t care because unlike some people, I was both an auditory and visual learner, and today I happened to prefer not to look at her subjective ass.

  I started doodling in my margins, thinking back to the email I had written to her after her sorry explanation for my grade. Subjective topic, my ass. I’d told her that I thought her grading process was entirely subjective and felt that if she had graded my paper objectively in the first place, we would not have had a problem, seeing as I had followed her template to every precise direction on structure, length, thesis, supporting details, and conclusion—which was what she’d claimed to be grading on in the first place. How is it fair for her to mark me down just because she didn’t agree with my topic? I thought the whole point of English class was more for her to educate me on how to present my line of thinking in a proper format and not so much for her to see if I can persuade her to agree with my line of thinking? Wouldn’t that be, like, a debate class or something?

  Grammar, grammar, grammar. Did I somehow sign up for the remedial English course on accident?

  I reached into my messenger bag, rooted around for my phone, and prepared to send a text message to Paul, who was in a lecture two floors below me.

  * * *

  What up?

  Bored & hungry. Thinking of ditching 4 food.

  I’m down w. that. Overslept & missed lunch. Meet me in study lounge?

  Cool. C U in 5.

  * * *

  I waited until someone asked a question, and then I bolted. There was no way in hell I was sticking around for that a moment longer. I would take my parents’ two hundred bucks a credit hour and spend it on something useful, like feeding my sorrows with a burrito from the caf’. That class was a complete waste of time, and the professor was a dipshit who wouldn’t know a good paper if I hit her in the face with one.

  Ten minutes later, Paul and I were in line at the cafeteria. “So,” he asked, “what made your lecture so boring you wanted to ditch?”

  “She was talking about grammar,” I moaned as I slammed my tray onto the metal slide holder. “She apparently thinks that we’re all such complete ill-bred clevis-heads that we need to review first-grade grammar.”

  “First-grade grammar? Somehow I don’t think a first grader would know how to spell the word grammar, let alone use an antiquated adjective like ‘clevis head.’”

  “I know. She’s killing me. She kept writing elementary things on the board, like the difference between it’s and its. But my paper wasn’t marked down because of grammar; it was marked down because she is completely ignorant of underground social conundrums.”

  Paul nodded. “A double bonus for you, Ryn. Nice usage of the word conundrum. Did you use all those words in your paper? Maybe that’s why she marked you down—she didn’t understand what you meant.”

  “She’s such a stupid bitch,” I pestered, using the spatula to scrape off all the gooey cheese on the bottom of the burrito tray and add it to my plate. “Mmm, ground oxen and essence of Mexico. Couldn’t ask for a better lunch.”

  “Have you come up with a name for burritos yet?”

  “Hmmm…no. Can you think of one?”

  “What about beaner bombs?”

  I considered it, then shook my head. “Neither specific nor gross enough, and also could be considered derogatory because of the use of the word beaner. But a good start. What about Baron of Bowel Rot?”

  “Perfect. Pass me the spatula; the Baron is looking pretty good today.”

  Paul and I grabbed seats in the middle section of the café toward the window so we could people-watch. It was our favorite thing to do when we ate lunch together after our classes.

  “Ooh, look at that guy!” I indicated Mr. Fine next to the soda machine. “The one with the fur-lined coat. It’s not that cold out yet. I wonder what his deal is.”

  Paul chewed thoughtfully and then answered, “He’s meeting his boyfriend after class. Either that or the coat is brand-new and he wants to show it off.”

  “He can be my boyfriend as long as he doesn’t wear that coat!” I snorted. “And as long as he takes me back to his Hawaiian seaside bungalow with him. That must be where he’s from—it looks like there’s a surfboard down his pants!” I giggled.

  Paul cocked his head to see what I was talking about. “Mmm, he can be my boyfriend as long as he lets me ride his surfboard,” he commented casually, sipping his lemon soda.

  “I bet he would,” I stated sincerely with a firm nod. “He looks like someone who learned how to share in kindergarten.”

  Paul looked at me guardedly.

  “What?”

  He set down his drink and stared me in the eye. “I said he could be my boyfriend as long as he lets me ride his surfboard,” he repeated.

  “I suppose so, but you’ll have to fight me for him.”

  Paul smiled at me, almost as if in relief.

  “I wonder if he waxes his surfboard?” I pondered aloud.

  Paul snorted into his soda, and I had to slap him on the back so he could breathe again. “All right?” He nodded. I grabbed the hot sauce and sprinkled it on my burrito. “An
d either way, I think he’s too feminine for you, what with the whole fur-lined-jacket thing he’s got going on. You need someone not so prissy.”

  “You’re probably right. I bet he listens to Maroon 5 and Sia. He would never come with us to a punk concert.”

  “See? There you go. We need to find you a nice punk gi—guy.”

  We ate the rest of our lunches in relative silence, and it started to get a little uncomfortable. I didn’t know what to say. I mean, lots of girls in our dorm flirt with Paul constantly, myself included—only I do it just to be ironic, and Paul knows that. Even the preppy girls who are just looking to take someone home that their parents will have a massive coronary over love Paul.

  I guess now I know why he never returned their advances.

  Funnily enough, I had given up on ever pursuing anything romantic with Paul after about a week, although I didn’t realize why until now. My womanly intuition had warned me off, somehow knowing it wouldn’t work out, that Paul would be a stronger ally in a platonic sense than an intimate one.

  “Are you all right, Ryn?” Paul asked tentatively as he opened the door leading out of the café for me. “I mean, I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable or anything, but I mean, you were the only person I felt I could tell. You’re my rocker girl; you understand. I had to tell someone, and I mean, there’s no way I could tell Brad.”

  That made me laugh. “For real. He would probably freak out and start changing in the bathroom or something. It’s a shock, yeah, but in a way, it explains a lot of things. Like how you can braid hair better than I can. And how you have girls from three floors down wanting to jump in the sack with you, yet you don’t do any of them, and they still come back in hopes you will. I bet if you approached Brad from that angle, he’d hang all over your every word.”

  “Maybe.”

  I grinned at a sudden thought. “Hey, now that I know how you feel about these things, and speaking of your roommate and all, can I ask you something?”