Corey had gone quiet, but that was okay, because Stacia was always ready to fill dead air with another of her first-world problems. “My hairdresser says she can’t fit me in tomorrow. That’s so wrong,” my girlfriend complained.
“I’m pretty sure they have salons in Paris,” I said, not that she’d listen. Stacia was the pickiest girl on the planet. The food in the dining halls didn’t meet her standards — so she bought most of her meals off campus. Her shampoo was mail-ordered, because none of the fifty brands at the drugstore would do. She wasn’t exactly warm to new people, either.
And yet Stacia looked at me the same way she looked at a shopping bag from Prada. The fancy girl from Greenwich, Connecticut wanted this guy. This guy right here, the one in the Bruins cap and the Gold’s Gym T-shirt.
I could tell you it didn’t make me feel a foot taller, but I’d be lying.
Corey drained her soda, and then began to stack our stuff back on her tray.
“Hey, Stacia?” I put my hand on my girlfriend’s wrist to get her attention. “Will you do us a solid and bus this?”
She looked up from her phone, surprised. Then she glanced from the tray to the back of the dining hall, as if calculating the effort. For a long moment, she hesitated. I could tell that Corey was just on the verge of offering to do it when Stacia rose suddenly, grabbed the tray and stomped off.
I shook my head, aiming a sheepish smile at my new neighbor. “At her house, the staff does that sort of thing.”
I could tell by the look on Corey’s face that she had no idea whether I was joking or not. Actually, I wasn’t.
See, Stacia was a piece of work. But she was my piece of work.
Chapter Three: The Furniture Genie
— Corey
“So how was the first day?” Dana asked when I arrived home that afternoon. She was perched on our window seat, painting her fingernails.
“Good,” I said. “I found all three of my classes on the first try. You?”
“Yeah! And I really like my history of art professor.”
“Is he hot?” I made a comical wiggle with my eyebrows.
“He is if you’re into seventy-five year olds.”
“Who says I’m not?” I did a wheelie in my chair, because there was really no furniture in my way. Dana’s desk was against one wall, her trunk shoved up next to it. Our room still echoed.
“Whoa! Isn’t that dangerous?” she asked.
“Nope.” I did it again, popping back onto two wheels and then spinning in a circle. “But it does make me dizzy.”
“Isn’t there such a thing as wheelchair basketball?” Dana asked, blowing on her nails.
“Probably,” I dodged. Given my sporty history, more than a dozen people had asked me the same question already. But before my accident, I’d never been interested in hoops. And I was doubly uninterested in some kind of adaptive bullshit. Why did people think that sounded like fun? Why must all gimps love basketball?
Dana capped her nail polish. “So…I’m going to the jam tonight. Do you want to come?”
“What’s a jam?”
“It’s a concert, a showcase for the a cappella singing groups. Are you going to rush?”
I shook my head. “I gave up choir in the eighth grade because it conflicted with hockey.”
“You don’t have to be crazy good,” Dana argued. “There are ten groups, and it’s social as much as musical.”
“Let’s go to the jam, then,” I said. “We’ll check it out.”
“Awesome! It’s right after dinner. I’ll find this auditorium…” She hopped up to dig a campus map out of her bag.
“Nice TV, ladies,” a sexy voice said from the open doorway.
I looked up to see Hartley leaning against our doorjamb. “Thanks,” I said, my heart rate kicking up a notch.
“What you really need is a sofa right here,” he pointed to the empty wall just inside the door. “They’re selling used ones on Fresh Court.”
“We saw them,” Dana said. “But we don’t know how to summon a furniture genie to carry it for us.”
Hartley scraped a hand along his gorgeous jaw. “I guess two gimps and a chick won’t cut it. I’ll work on it at dinner.” He looked at his watch. “…Which starts now. Takers?”
“Sure,” Dana said. “I haven’t been to the Beaumont dining hall yet.”
“So let’s go,” Hartley said, turning his crutches toward the outside door.
Dana and I followed Hartley out of McHerrin and down the street. Beaumont House, in all its Gothic glory, had big iron gates. Dana swept her ID in front of the reader and the gate clicked open. She held the door for Hartley and then for me.
The gimp parade was slow going, with Hartley on crutches, and me driving cautiously. The flagstone pathway was uneven, and I didn’t want to catch my wheels on one of the cracks and do a face plant. It was hard enough being The Girl in the Wheelchair. I didn’t need to be The Girl Who Ejected From Her Wheelchair.