Friday, February 15 – 11:45 AM
Owen
God, tests are so damned boring. Nobody mentioned this part to me when I signed up to be a teaching assistant. Ooh, free credits! Organized homework time! A pretty pathetic paycheck! Sure, they tell you about those parts, but nobody ever mentions the part where you get to stare in silence at a bunch of students for two and a half hours.
To make it even worse, I reviewed Professor Meador’s exam before I handed it out to everyone. It’s stupidly hard, and at least one student is going to burn me in effigy tonight. Whatever. I can deal.
Oh man, I’m so bored. This is the worst!
The clock ticks deafeningly above my head, and I crane my neck and look up at it. Only forty minutes have passed. I am in Hell.
“Bullshit. No I’m not,” I think, and I shake my head in shame. I’ve been to Hell before. I grew up there.
I grind my teeth and force myself to think about happier things, like the obnoxiously large beer I’m going to order tonight.
I don’t usually go out to bars anymore. I feel like I’m too old now, even though I’m only one year older than the seniors sitting in front of me with their heads bowed, scribbling feverishly as they race against the clock. I promised my roommate Craig that I’d meet him at The Nines—his favorite bar—and actually go outside for once. I don’t want to, but a promise is a promise.
“You f*cking hypocrite.”
My conscience hits me with a cheap shot and somehow knocks the wind out of me. It’s right, too... I am a hypocrite.
A promise is only a promise until keeping it might get me hurt. Been there, done that.
The sound of a chair creaking drags me out of my thoughts and back to reality, and I look up to see a girl putting on her puffy, blue and white winter coat. I glance up at the clock again and then back down at her in surprise. We’re only forty-five minutes into the test. Is she done already?
She seems horribly nervous as she approaches my desk. It’s always hard to stand up in front of people—I always hated being the first one done with an exam for just that very reason—but this is a bit much. She looks as if she might faint at any moment.
The girl holds her test paper out to me as she reaches the desk, and I can see her shaking. Poor thing. She must have given up on Meador’s test. That jerk of a professor totally made the test too hard.
“Hmm... pretty quick,” I say quietly, and I hold out my hand to take her paper. “How do you think you did?”
I feel the paper bouncing up and down against my hand as she tries to hand it to me. She’s a nervous wreck!
“I... I think I did oka... okay... I think,” she stammers.
I can tell that I’m making her upset, but I can’t stop staring at her. She’s tall and slender, and her black hair is stuffed roughly into the hood of her coat as if she’s ashamed of it. She’d be really beautiful if she took better care of herself.
Her eyes intrigue me most of all, though. They are a deep, beautiful emerald green, but something about her wide-eyed fear is making me uncomfortable. In the back of my mind, I know why I feel uncomfortable, but I can’t let myself think about it. I know what’ll happen if I do.
“You sure? You’re done really early,” I ask, trying to give her one last chance to sit down and work on the paper more. I don’t think she’s going to do it.
She practically throws the paper at me and then races for the side door. It’s all I can do not to laugh now, because her reaction is just so absurd. It’s just a test, girl! There are worse things that can happen to you than failing a test.
I would know; I’ve had most of them happen to me.
“Maria Ayala.”
I read the name on her paper and then tuck it into the pocket of my backpack on the floor next to my chair. I know better than to try grading it now. I have a bad habit of laughing at terrible answers, and with a reaction like that, she must have failed really, really badly.
––––––––
“Hey, Owen! Over here!”
Craig waves to me from a bench in front of the bagel place as I cross the bridge from campus. I wanted to go back to the apartment and clean up before going out to The Nines, but I ended up stuck with Professor Meador talking about the test. Of course, he wants me to review the stats on some undergrad’s research paper on top of everything else, too. I don’t think I’ve ever once gotten out of a meeting without him giving me more work to do. I thought PhD students were supposed to do all that stuff, not M.S candidates.
Maybe they have even more work to do. It’s hard to say with Professor Meador. He’s a bit... off. Great guy, but I don’t think he’s taken a vacation in fifty years.
“Hi Craig. Sorry to keep you waiting.”
He raises his gloved hand for a high-five, but there’s no way I’m pulling my bare hands out in this freezing cold weather. My gloves are back on my kitchen counter because I’m an idiot and left for class without them.
“Fine, be a spoil-sport,” he grumbles, and he brushes his messy brown hair back with one glove. It only looks even messier now.
The sidewalk is packed with Friday-night partiers, and I feel like a modern-day Balboa as I carve a path through the dense, human forest separating me from my beer. All I need now is a snazzy plumed helmet.
I accidentally run straight into a short, blond-haired girl going the other direction, and I instinctively grab her by the shoulder to stop her from falling over.
“Hey, watch where you’re f*cking going!” she snaps and then roughly shoves my hand off her shoulder.
“Oh Jesus, I’m so sorry! I didn’t see you!”
I feel terribly embarrassed, and it only gets worse when I realize I’ve just accidentally made fun of her for being short. My face turns red as I stammer an apology for the accidental slight, and she bursts out laughing.
“Hey, don’t worry about it,” she says, and she waves to Craig with a grin.
“Hey, Tina! I haven’t seen you in forever!”
“Yeah, been a while. You still hanging in there?”
Tina forgets about me and chats happily with Craig. I gather from their conversation that they were in the same dorm on North Campus back when they were freshmen, but that’s about as clear as the references get. Everything else is a long string of inside jokes.
“Well, we’ve gotta get going,” she says. “If you get bored, though, come find us at Stella’s, okay?”
“Sure thing, Tina. You two have a good night,” says Craig, and he waves goodbye.
I wave goodbye to Tina, but as I turn away start to follow Craig again, I suddenly stop dead in my tracks.
“Two?”
I spin around again, and my jaw nearly hits the floor as I see the tall, black-haired girl walking beside Tina. It’s Maria from my class this morning. How did I not notice her the entire time they were talking? Her long, straight black hair is hanging free now, no longer tucked into the hood of her coat, and she is laughing and talking excitedly with Tina as they walk up the street. The paralyzing fear I saw this morning is gone completely.
As I stare after her, Tina suddenly looks over her shoulder and glares at me. Her defiant, protective expression is so clear that not even a megaphone could have gotten the message across any clearer.
“Back off, buddy. Leave her alone.”
She nudges Maria and whispers something to her, and then Maria turns and looks back at me. Her beautiful green eyes grow wide and dark as the laughter in them fades away, replaced instead with abject terror.
I am floored by the fear I see in her eyes, but even worse is that it’s directed at me.
Maria is terrified of me, and I have no idea why. Does she think I’m going to tell everyone about her bad test score? I haven’t even graded her paper yet! There’s no way on God’s green earth that I’d waste my Friday night doing that.
I shake my head as an uncomfortable memory flits into sight for a millisecond. I recognize the fear in Maria’s eyes, and it’s too late to close Pandora’s box now.
The memory roars to life and hits me so hard that I nearly fall over. I gasp in shock, turn away, and grab onto the back of a nearby bench to steady myself.
I’m seeing Samantha’s eyes. Maria has the same sad, broken look in her eyes that I watched choke out the joy and happiness in my little sister as Dad grew more and more violent.
I close my eyes and shudder as memory after memory suddenly resurfaces, each one just as painful as ever.
“Deep breaths, Owen... long deep breaths. You can do it,” I think. I can usually calm myself down, but it isn’t working tonight.
“You okay dude? What’s wrong?” asks Craig, and he grabs me by the arm. “What happened?”
“I’m okay. Really,” I lie, trying to shrug him off. In my mind, Samantha is falling again. She strikes the floor at bottom of the stairs with a terrible, sickening thud, and I shake my head as if it’ll make the memory go away.
“I’m sorry... I have to go home,” I blurt out, and I snatch my arm away from Craig. “I’ll catch you later.”
Craig shouts after me in confusion as I weave through the thick crowd of students, but I don’t answer him. He doesn’t understand what goes on in my head, and he’d treat me like a nutcase if I told him even half of my nightmares.
I need to be alone.