I'm going to be ambitious and drag out my day into a few posts, probably one scene today and one tomorrow and maybe a third sometime. It depends on if I still find it interesting after a few thousand words. It'll be short to read, but long to write. It won't be polished, but I hope it'll be worth reading. Maybe I'll publish it someday, but I'm getting ahead of myself
Even now, chilled from the night's wind and finding it difficult to steady my snotty hand, I feel I should recount this. I'm not sure how we got out here, miles past town, past the first cornfield and past a dozen churches to the only spot in town that you couldn't see a church from. The warm day had melted into a cloudy night with thunder in the distance and no more street lights.
"I wish there were stars."
"Yeah," I said. "There's one."
She gave me a look, but I couldn't see any detail because there was no light. She might've raised an eyebrow or yawned. "Those are birds."
"Past them. Right there."
"Ooooh," she said dragging the syllable out then giggled.
We didn't know where we were. We had taken enough turns and gone out past the limits of our knowledge to somewhere where no one was around to help us. We'd have to trace our steps back or just hope to stumble upon the campus.
How did we get out here? Now that I think about it, today had started weird. I went outside.
I'd left the window open all night and it creaked when the wind rocked it against the brick. It was still warm enough for a fan. After dressing, I opened the door and let a draft cool me off and knock my papers to the crumb-top floor. I showered, watched TV, fiddled with my phone, played Solitaire then Spider Solitaire and it was nearly three.
I lay on the bed with my feet wrapped in a blanket, opened Franny and Zooey and continued from where I'd left off, after Buddy's letter. I got about twenty pages in.
"Knock, knock!" she said and thrust a drawing in my room. "You probably slept through Sunday brunch, so I brought you some bacon!" The drawing was of bacon. It had been flapping to wildly with a breeze for me to see that at first. She poked her head in next, sideways so her long brown hair fell onto my dresser. "I figured real bacon would be cold and mushy by now. So this is even better."
"It's great," I kept my finger on the page, hoping this would be a momentary interruption.
"Oh my," she said and looked around my 8" x 10" room. "My bathroom at home is bigger than this." I had a walkway between my bed and the dresser and desk and ended at the mini-fridge. Any parties in here would instantly turn into a mosh pit, which was why no parties were ever thrown here. Yeah, that was why. "How do you function in here? I mean, I figured since you practically live here, it'd at least be nice or spacious."
"It's a lot less messy than it looks. I just don't have the room to spread out the filth."
She walked all the way in and the wind shut my door behind her and she gave me a terrified look. "Do people just randomly shut your door?"
"Maybe they thought I was being too loud," I said, joking. But then it seemed she was serious. "It was just the wind. Or a ghost."
"I've never heard of Hoffman being haunted. Graham is." That was where she lived.
"I thought it was Jordan. Something about an old patient from the mental hospital."
"No, see, the rumor is that Graham used to be a mental hospital. Jordan isn't big enough. Graham is. And there's the penguin lady. Some say she was a nun, others say she had pictures of penguins all over her walls. But if you go up to her room at midnight, and put a piece of paper by the door, it'll get yanked under. It really does."
"Oh good." I shut my book and sat up. I laid it on the covers that my feet had been under.
She leaned her butt against my dress and slung her purse around to the front. "Lovely view," she said after glancing out my window to Pietenpol. The blinds were in the panes and they were all closed, blocking out the daylight, but the windows were up. Some half naked guy with a towel around his waist walked past a window.
"How much time did you spend on this drawing?" I said and examined the border around the bacon, the alternating shaded and blank strips, the bubble letters spelling out "BACON!" It was underlined too.
"I don't know. I was up on the fourth floor, just felt like working on it."
"It's good to see I'm more important than whomever you were with."
"Well, you know." She looked cute when she smiled. She squinted and I could see her discolored but straight teeth.
We spent the next two hours getting to know each other. That's not a euphemism. It was question after question from her. I'd answer, then she'd answer it too.
"People aren't all jerks!"
"They are," I said. I was sweating and it made me more nervous to think she smelled it in my tiny room. My deodorant was on the desk. She could hand it to me. It wouldn't be weird to put it on in front of her.
"No. I like to think that everyone has something interesting about them."
"They do. But we're talking about whether they're bastards or not."
She was still leaning against my dresser. I crossed my legs for the hundredth time, hiding my bare feet and toenails that needed clipping.
"Yes, but most of them try to--"
"No they don't."
"Oh c'mon!" She dipped her head when she said it.
"They don't care. They just do what they want. Take Ethics, you'll see."
"I'm taking it next semester."
"There's this guy, Peter Singer I think, that has an example of a kid drowning in a pond and you're wearing an expensive suit. Most people would jump in to save the kid, ruining their clothes."
"See! They're good."
"Yes, but then you go out to a fancy dinner and spend fifty bucks when you don't need to. You could send that money to a charity where it'll feed five kids for a week instead of you for one meal."
"No, but, no, just no!" She was smiling and squinting.
"He thinks you should give until that dollar you're donating hurts you more than it helps them. He's a utilitarian."
"But, I mean they're not trying to be mean people."
"That's true. But they are."
"They're not jerks though."
"Yes they are." I hugged my knees and wiggled my sweaty toes.
"Well, how do you define a jerk?"
"There's two jerks. The mean people that are obnoxious and malicious, then there are people that don't do the right thing."
"No, I mean, there are good people. A lot of people. Maybe not the majority."
"Maybe five percent."
"No!"
"That's still 350 million good people."
I crossed my legs again and stared out the window at Pietenpol. I could see a dead tree at the end of the building, the branches swaying with every gust.
"You think I could buy your book off you?"
"Maybe borrow it."
"But you're going to Wales next semester and I'm going the one after that. We'll never see each other after you graduate."
"Well," I said and thought about suggesting she could mail it to me. "I guess. Yeah, you can have it. I'll get it the next time I'm home."
"What time is it?"
I leaned over to the desk, across the crumb-top carpet for my phone.
"I keep looking at your microwave, but it doesn't tell me anything." It was unplugged.
"Five."
"That explains why I'm getting hungry. Are you?"
"Not really. I don't get food until about 8 most nights."
"Hmm. So you don't want to go to CUIFS?" (pronounced "kwifs" in the IPA).
"I never go there. It's been two years since my last visit."
"Oh come on!"
"Fine," I said, "But let me put on deodorant."
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