UI 101

by M. K. Claeys

  “Because I like you.”

  I opened my eyes. “You do? Like, you like me like me? Really?”

  “Really.” He brushed a stray lock of hair away from my eyes and lightly turned my chin toward him with his fingertips. “Why are you so surprised, Mitzy? You’re beautiful, intelligent, kind, compassionate, a good dancer—although a horrible singer, but so are half the popular music artists these days—and you like people for who they really are, not for who society says they should be.”

  I shrugged and blushed embarrassedly. “I don’t know. I guess because boys back home don’t like me. They think I’m scary or something. You’re, like, the first boy who’s ever talked to me about something other than what did I get as an answer for problem seventeen.”

  “That’s because most men are intimidated by a smart woman.” He smiled. “And then there’s me. I like kissing smart women because I hope their intelligence will rub off on me.”

  “Oh shut up!” I cried, lobbing the pillow Emma had embroidered at him. “Mid-terms are next week. Is that why you kissed me? So you can get better grades on your exams?”

  “No. I kissed you because I like you, Mitzy. I like you. All of you. Even the tone-deaf parts. But now that you mention it, kissing you in hopes that it might make me ace my exams doesn’t sound like a bad idea.”

  And he leaned in and kissed me again. We kissed for over an hour before we went back to his room to grab his books so we could meet up with everyone in the study lounge for a big cram session. We were horribly late, but for once I didn’t mind. Rae and Ryn could probably totally tell, but they didn’t say anything. I tried really hard to study, but it was difficult.

  Because all I could think about was kissing Jamaal.

  And how good he smelled.

  And how his twists tickled my forehead when his face leaned into mine.

  And how when he took off his glasses, it made it that much easier to kiss him.

  And how—

  Whoa there, Mitz. Study. Exams are important!

  But Jamaal was so cute, and he was holding my hand under the table and even offered to go with me when I went down to Buck Buck’s to do a munchies run.

  After our study session was over, Jamaal walked me back to my still-empty room, kissed me goodnight, and turned and walked away. I went in and got ready for bed, but found that there was no way I was going to sleep any time soon, lavender-scented candle and bed finally safe on the floor or no. So I went over to Jamaal’s. I knocked softly in case Derek was sleeping, and Jamaal answered, already dressed for bed.

  “Do you want to stay over?” I asked, looking at the floor in hopes that my hair would fall in front of my face and hide how red it was.

  “Cool! You throwing a party ’cause Tasha’s gone?”

  “No.” My face was getting redder by the second.

  “Oh, you’re inviting everyone over for one last pre-exam shindig, then?”

  “No. Just you.”

  His eyes widened, and his face seemed to flush to match my own, although it was harder to tell since his skin was so much darker than mine.

  “Um, there’s no futon for me to sleep on, Mitzy.”

  “I know. But I still want you to stay over…if you want to that is.”

  He smiled, his eyes lighting up. “’Course I do. Let me grab my pillow.”

  He grabbed it, and we left. We both climbed into my now safe-on-the-floor bed and talked and kissed until we fell asleep. I found it really comforting to wake up in the middle of the night, thinking that I was still on my top bunk and about to fall off only to find that I was nice and safe only a foot off the floor and Jamaal was there in my bed next to me, spooning up behind me with his arm wrapped around my waist, making doubly sure I wasn’t going anywhere. It was the first night since I’d come to Illington that I hadn’t needed to sleep with wool socks on because I was too cold, not to mention the first night where I slept soundly because I wasn’t afraid of falling to my doom.

  10

  Auraelia

  You know, I’m not really sure what the big deal is about all this. You would think that someone was hiding a cadaver from Franrick Hall in their shower. You would think that some guy got busted for selling coke from his room. You would think that someone blew the dormitory up, the way everyone is acting, but no. All that has happened in the past month is that Mitzy and Tasha finally had their blowout that we all saw coming and she and Jamaal are spending the night intermittently in each other’s rooms. My and Ryn’s eccentric suitemate is still smoking pot in the room next door while leaving the bathroom doors open. Not that we’re really complaining about that—it’s like a free contact high. And she still wakes us up at two in the morning with her loud, raucous screaming. The only reassuring thing about this is that we can tell she’s in a monogamous relationship, due to our ability to now recognize the distinct moaning patterns and frequently used sexual phrases issuing from her partner.

  Well, maybe I’m not being completely honest, then. I mean, people do hide things in their showers, but it’s only booze and the seven extra people over the maximum occupancy limit they have crammed into their room when the mentor comes by at three in the morning to tell them to keep it down. And people do have illegal contraband in their rooms, but that guy on the sixth floor only sells pot and mushrooms, not coke or acid—we asked.

  So what else happened this month? Paul finally came out of the closet, and Ryn is still fighting with Brian, although she thinks that I am completely clueless. About the fact that she’s still getting bitched at by her over-protective boyfriend every other hour and that Paul is gay, I mean. But contrary to popular belief, I am not blind, nor am I deaf.

  I’m surprised that all the girls hitting on Paul all the time haven’t realized it, but maybe they aren’t picking up on the subtle clues like I am. Like the fact that his favorite song is “Right to Choose” by Anti-Flag. You don’t even have to do an online lyric search to know what that song is about. And what about how he gets nervous or blushes whenever a guy walks around in a towel or comes in close physical contact with him? It’s just like us girls do when a guy we like puts his arm around us or sits next to us at dinner. And as for Ryn and her lame excuse for a boyfriend, well, just because I have my headphones on does not mean that I can’t hear her side of the conversation. In fact, since he’s typically yelling at her, I can usually hear his side of the conversation too.

  This is why I was glad to be spending so much time with Brad lately. Because it’s like when I go to Brad’s room, the rest of the world just stops for those precious few hours. And I trust the fact that when I come out, it will still continue on in its revolution around the sun, and everyone’s lame little dramatic lives on our floor will continue to suck. I won’t have missed anything, except maybe some guy getting shut out of his room in his boxers or some chick rushing a sorority running down the hall screaming “I love Gamma Phi Whatever” in her bra and panties.

  Yes, despite my attempts at trying to stop time in its tracks, life went on on the fifth floor of East Williams Hall. And although I couldn’t say that I hate it, college certainly wasn’t as exciting as I’d thought it would be. Where were all the toga parties? Where were the kegs being snuck up in laundry carts when the resident mentors went out? It seemed like if I wanted a wild party, I would have to throw one myself. But that was neither here nor there at this point in time. I’d talk to Ryn about it later. I was sure she’d be up for it.

  We needed a little drama on this floor. Don’t get me wrong, there was drama, naturally, as there only could be when you stuff fifty hormonally raged teenagers into a single floor of a college dormitory, but it was just not the right kind of drama. Drama and politics didn’t faze me. I guessed that was something I got from my mom’s hippie side. I would rather sit in my room, drink a margarita, enjoy a free contact high, and play guitar than give a crap about who slept over in whose room last night and who forgot their underwear there in the process. At least here in Williams the guys wil
l stuff them in a drawer until they remember to give them back to you. That doesn’t hold true for all men, though. I mean, for Chrissakes, I’d even seen a room over in Madison Hall where a guy had thumb-tacked a pair of panties onto his wall for every girl that’d ever stayed over. One wall was already covered, and it’s not even November. And it wasn’t like girls’ panties are that big and require a lot of wall space, either. Especially thongs, which most of them were.

  Either way, so far I thought I was doing pretty well at keeping myself to myself. I’d come to Illington with the specific purpose of being able to leave all sorts of that kind of drama behind. My sister Sara Lynn had sent me a care package (complete with cookies), and it was nice to finally have a care package of my own. I had been feeling pretty left out compared to the rather excessive amount of presents that Ryn’s boyfriend sent her and the regular packages Mitzy received from her parents and siblings. The cookies were awesome, but the accompanying letter made the chocolate taste bitter as it melted in my mouth. Sara Lynn had written that Dave Baxter had come round, asking for my contact information in “Bloomington.” Sara Lynn (who knew exactly how I felt about Dave Bastard) had refused to give him any such information (thank God) about my new address in “Bloomington,” and coldly suggested that if he wanted to speak to me so badly, he could actually invest some man-hours and do the work of hunting me down himself.

  Besides which, um, hello, I am a University of Illington Buck, not an Indiana University Hoosier. And I’ve never even seen that movie!

  I’d completely gone off on that letter, ranting and raving about “wasn’t my dumping my orange soda and granola on him in the middle of the cafeteria a clear enough indication of how I felt about him?” The public display of lack-of-affection in the cafeteria was totally worth the school suspension and weekly sessions with the school guidance counselor till the end of the year. Totally. But this outburst had led to all sorts of “so why did you leave New Mexico?” conversations with Ryn that I was running out of excuses to avoid. Playing that Becky Jackson song had gotten me into more trouble than I’d thought, and Becky herself had never even heard it. Ryn had bugged and bugged me for weeks about what Becky had done to make me hate her so much, but I wouldn’t tell her. Besides, I thought the song’s lyrics had made it pretty damn clear.

  I read some of my notes from my sociology seminar for the quiz on Monday and took a shower. I lounged around in my towel for a while as I figured out what to wear for my date with Brad, but found myself not particularly caring. I knew which outfits he liked the best, but I didn’t know what he had planned for the evening, so I couldn’t really dress accordingly.

  I cranked up my phone on its sound dock and jammed out. What did I care what I would end up wearing? It was Friday afternoon; I was staying in and most likely watching movies with a cute boy. It would be dark in his room. Mostly I would benefit by wearing a nice-smelling lotion or perfume, and Ryn had plenty that she didn’t care if I used as long as I put them back exactly where she’d left them. I lathered myself up in moisturizers that I hoped would make me smell sexy and started brushing out my hair.

  I turned up my phone as loud as it could go and jumped around our room in my towel, singing like mad to Adele’s “Rumor Has It.” I mean, I could dance to other songs, like whatever was trending on Spotify, but I was in an Adele kind of mood. I was so into the song, I barely noticed Ryn and Paul come back from their afternoon classes.

  Today must have put Ryn in an extra-fine mood because she grabbed her curling iron and joined right in, leaving Paul standing in the doorway, laughing his head off. Mitzy stopped by right behind him in her gorilla slippers, like she usually did once she knew Ryn would be back, and tossed Paul my wireless mouse so he could play rock star too. The song changed, and even though Paul didn’t know the words, he jumped around with me and Ryn, still wearing his jacket, and Mitzy ran to grab her cell so she could film us in all our childish glory. I almost lost my towel halfway through, but I caught it just in time. Ryn had flung on her bathrobe over her clothes, and Paul kept stepping on the terrycloth tie. God, we had so much fun. Mitzy and Paul danced around while I got dressed, and Ryn decided what she was going to do with my hair after we ate.

  I was kind of sad to get ready for dinner. I’d been having so much fun with my friends, but evening would come, and I would have fun alone with Brad. It was looking to be a promising weekend. I made my way down to the caf’ with Mitzy, Ryn, Jamaal, Paul, Derek, Kate, and Maliha and headed for the dinner buffet.

  “Is there any Countess of Colon Rot tonight?” I scanned the buffet for macaroni and cheese. “I’m feeling the need for some major carbs this weekend.”

  “No luck.” Paul used his height to view the entire evening’s selection. “It looks like the Baron of Bowel Rot is making another appearance this week, though, so it must be Mexican night.”

  “That’s strange,” commented Kate. “I thought Mexican night was Tuesday.”

  “It was,” grumbled Ryn, loading her plate with carefully constructed layers of chips, refried beans, ground beef, nacho cheese, and sour cream. “But since when has that stopped them from doing it twice in a week? Last week I distinctly recall having Asian food three nights in a row. I’m Korean and Japanese mixed, for crying out loud, and even I can’t take that much rice.”

  “Ooh, look though, Ryn.” I dragged her over to the large vat at the end of the buffet. “They have maggots this week, too! Only they’re imported. Spanish Maggots with fried armadillo kidneys.

  “If you mean Spanish rice with kidney beans,” interjected Mitzy, with her lips pursed tightly together in her y’all-are-being-disgusting face. “Then pass me the spoon because I’m hungry and would like to eat before everything gets cold.”

  That ended that. We finished loading up our plates and sat at one of the larger tables to enjoy our hodge-podge of nasty cafeteria food. And even though the food wasn’t really that bad, I thought we just had to joke about it to vent the frustration we felt about not being able to enjoy our dads’ breakfasts or our moms’ stuffed peppers any more.

  I couldn’t believe the fry-cook girl when she’d told me she’d never heard of sunny-side up before and she only knew how to make scrambled. So I guess you can mess up bacon and eggs after all, if you are a complete duf-muck and haven’t recovered from last night’s session of binge drinking. And how did that girl get put at the eggs-cooked-to-order station anyway?

  Post-dinner, we all wrestled our way through the doors to piss off the door guy, whose sole purpose in life was to stand there all burly-like and make sure no one was stealing food, and Ryn, Mitzy, and I went back to our room so Ryn could do my hair and Mitzy could review her English paper. I loved having Ryn do my hair because it meant I could sit there and do nothing, and when she was done, my hair looked cool. And it just felt nice to have someone brush my hair. So an hour later, I was ready to head over to Brad’s, and Ryn was arguing with Mitzy about her paper title. Apparently Ryn thought ‘Vote That Idiot Out of Office’ was a good title for a paper relating to problems in the current economy and how to solve them.

  While I could see that the president did have a lot to do with what was or wasn’t happening to fix said problems with the economy, I could also see how her professor might be a little miffed at such a blatant attack at the ruling party she was a registered member of, or so it stated in her professor profile. Either way, this was another reason why I was glad to be escaping tonight. And the way Ryn had pinned up my hair with the blue Hawaiian flower clip she’d given me made my neck extra accessible for Brad to be able to smell the totally sensual perfume I’d put on. Not to mention kissing. I walked across the hall to Brad’s just as Paul was walking out of the door and pulling on his jacket for the walk to his IT study group.

  “Hey. Have fun tonight. Brad’s on the phone, so I guess just make yourself at home. My guitar’s out if you want to play it.”

  “Thanks, Paul. Have fun with the techno-nerds.”

  “Will do,” he
said, grinning. “There are some pretty cute techno-nerds, you know. You might want to give them a try.”

  I walked in and did exactly what Paul had advised—picked up his guitar and made myself at home. I was so lost in my guitar playing that I didn’t even realize nearly twenty minutes had gone by before Brad was off the phone.

  “Hey, babe. You look great,” he said when he had finally hung up.

  “Thanks, Brad. So what’s the plan?”

  “Oh, well, I thought we’d go over next week’s math assignments and then try to solve a Rubik’s Cube for extra credit.”

  I frowned. “Okay, well, the Rubik’s Cube I’d be up for, but the math, not so much. Because for a Rubik’s Cube, you can just go online and find all sorts of websites that will show you how to solve it.”

  “Rae, don’t be so literal. Paul recommended we do a Flashback Friday and watch Edward Scissorhands on Netflix. He said the cinematography was good, or something, so I thought we could watch it.”

  It is so cute how clueless Brad is to Paul’s sexual orientation. I mean, what guy watches Edward Scissorhands and likes it for any reason other than the fact that Johnny Depp has machetes for fingers?

  “Cool.”

  I kicked off my Birkenstocks and settled in on the futon. I liked how Brad and Paul had put a loft in, but it wasn’t very conducive to movie watching from bed.

  In the end, though, it didn’t really matter to me what was on the TV because I wasn’t planning on watching it. I was planning on making out with Brad. Well, eventually, anyway. A girl has to maintain some sense of dignity these days, and it wouldn’t hurt to have something playing in the background while Brad went to the bathroom or something. But we hadn’t even gotten fifteen minutes into the movie when his cell went off again. I told him I didn’t care if he picked up, but I paused the movie because he seemed genuinely interested in it, and picked up Paul’s guitar again to keep myself occupied. Brad seemed agitated throughout the entire conversation. He kept saying things like “I know you do” and “I’ll be there. It’s fine” and “You know I do” Another twenty-minute phone call later, he was finally back on the couch with me.