#katie dobin

[anthropolowhat]

Test results

When the professor posted the results of the test outside his office, John and Kate raced to check out the results. "I know I missed at least four questions," Kate said, rushing to keep up with her much taller friend. "I didn't even have enough time to fill in the bubbles."

John agreed. "Fucking multiple-choice," he said. "I'm a slow reader, it was impossible to finish the whole thing." 

They marched down the hallway, grumbling and predicting doom, until they turned the corner to the Professor's hallway. 

"Be quiet," Kate said. "He's probably in his office." She jumped in front of John, putting a finger to the paper to find her test number. 

"Crap, was I forty-seven or forty six?" she wondered out loud. "Definitely forty-seven," she finally concluded. 

When they both found their scores near the top of the class, Kate jumped for joy. 

"We did it!" she said. 

John smiled and pulled her into a hug, lifting her off the ground. He sat her down gently and smiled. 

Kate's face was beet red. Ever since she realized she was in love with her best friend, she'd tried her best to keep her distance from John. 

John, to his credit, wasn't completely oblivious that his friend had been acting differently since that night she'd picked up him up at the basketball court. He looked at her, perplexed. "You okay?" 

"Yeah," Kate said, shaking her head as if to erase the warm feeling in her chest. "Yeah, of course! I'm assuming that ice cream is in order." 

John smiled. Kate knew that he loved celebrating with ice cream now that he had gotten sober. 

John offered his arm. "Shall we?"

Kate took up John's offer, though a small voice in her mind told her it wasn't a good idea. They weren't three steps down the hallway before John cracked a joke that made Kate laugh. She completely forgot about her earlier hesitation. Down the hall, their professor yelled for the people in the hall to be quiet. The two friends took off running, laughing quietly. 

[anthropolowhat]

Pep talk

John and Kate made plans to grab dinner and study for an upcoming Anthropology test after John finished coaching junior high basketball on Friday evening. Kate was a little early, as she always was, and instead of waiting in the car she decided to head into the gym and watch the end of the practice. She had never been to a practice, but she had heard plenty of stories over the course of the last couple weeks. Whenever John excitedly told her about his team's progress, she couldn't help but smile. After all, it had been her suggestion that John try out coaching. Despite his initial reluctance, he now readily admitted that he loved it. Kate walked in the far end of the gym to see John facing away from her, his team of junior high boys sitting around him in a half-circle. She couldn't hear what her friend was saying to the young men, but she saw that he had their rapt attention. Kate stopped dead in her tracks, ducking behind a bleacher as not to be spotted by her friend. John continued to speak to his team, and as Kate inched closer, she finally came withing hearing distance. "I know we can do this," John said. "Stay focused, remember what we've been practicing, and I know we'll win. Right?" The boys shouted agreement. "Alright troops, hit the locker room. Your parents will be here any minute, so hurry up! Adam, I'm not having your mother yell at me again for making you late!" Then, the boys broke into a scattered mess, running back into the locker room to change before their parents came to pick them up. Kate had almost stepped out from behind the bleachers to say hello to her friend, when she saw that one boy had stayed behind. John looked down as the young man. "Hey, Terrance," he said. "You okay?" The boy didn't say anything. "I don't think I can do this," Terrance said, hanging his head. "I'm not as good as the other guys." John didn't say anything for a moment, then bent down on one knee. Kate could tell he winced a bit as he bent down, but knew that he was trying his best not to show it. "You know what I like about you?" John asked. Terrance shook his head. "You got guts," John said. "You go out there and you play like you aren't scared of anything. That makes you tougher than anybody else out there." Terrance looked at his feet, scuffing the ground with his shoe. "You really think so?" he asked. "I know so," John said. "So, am I gonna see you out there for the big game next week?" Terrance nodded. "Yeah," he said. John stood up to his full height and saluted the young man. "Alright!" he said. "Then go grab your stuff! Your Dad's probably outside already!" Terrance sprinted towards the locker room, and John shook his head, smiling. Kate turned her back, quickly, and leaned against the bleachers. In her heart she felt something slide into place, like a key turning over the tumblers in her heart. In that very moment she knew she loved John, completely and truly and in every ridiculous sense of the word. She tried her best to ignore this new feeling, jumping out from behind the bleachers to greet her friend. "Hey!" she said, trying her best to keep the quiver out of her voice. "You about ready?" "Hey yourself!" John said, smiling. "Yeah, just gotta wait for the kids to get picked up. Then, we're gonna learn everything there is to know about the Nah--the Nah--how do you say it?" "Nahua," Kate said, correcting her friend. "The professor's only been discussing that tribe all semester." "Gonna be a long night," John said. He threw an arm around Kate and laughed. "Don't know what I'd do without you," he said. Kate sighed. She felt her heart tied fast. "Well, you'd be in trouble with this test, that's for sure," she said. She'd figure out what to do about everything in the morning, she told herself. Tonight, there was dinner and studying to be done. John, for his part, was oblivious, making sure to count his players as they headed out of the locker room and to the sidewalk to meet their parents. He was happy, coaching this ragtag team, and he knew he was going to have dinner and study with the closest friend he had in the whole city, which was as good as it gets, as far as he was concerned. 

[anthropolowhat]

At the table

He fell, suddenly and quickly. And when he dug out enough to see the sunlight, the light was bleak, and the air cold. John met Kate at the downtown Starbucks. He picked a table tucked in a corner, and when he flopped into a chair he hunched over and rested his face in his hands. As Kate entered the coffee shop and saw her friend slumped over a table, she frowned. She was worried. She hadn't seen John in about a week and a half. He'd missed several classes and hadn't responded to even one of her texts until the one that asked her to meet him there, in that coffee shop where they never went, because it wasn't anywhere near the university and because Kate hated all the noise thundering down Jefferson street outside. Kate was right to be concerned. John's face was gaunt, grey skin pulled tight across cheekbones. His eyes were sunken and ringed with deep purple half-moons that seemed carved into his face. He hadn't shaved in several days, and it didn't look like he'd showered recently either. "Hey," John said when Kate came over to the table and silently slid into the chair opposite him. He leaned back in his chair, stretching his back. Kate winced when she heard a sharp pop in her friend's spine. John leaned forward again, and rested his elbows on the table. He couldn't look his friend in the eye, but he started talking. He started to tell Kate about how well the basketball tournament was going, and how he actually liked working with the kids. He started talking about how his car's transmission was going out, and how that was going to be a problem again. He asked her about the classes he'd missed, and what she thought about the upcoming mid-term project. He started talking about everything that they would've talked about, had John not dropped off the face of the  planet for the last week and down into the bottle he'd once resisted that one night, not that many weeks before. Kate listened to him speak, leaning back in her chair as to avoid the bright afternoon sunlight falling in glowing panes across the table. John looked up at her, once, and wondered how he hadn't noticed that her eyes were both gold and green. He looked back down again, and trailed off. He twisted the wrapper from a straw in his hand, tearing it into tiny pieces. "So, uh, I've been gone for a bit," he said. "And I think, well--" John trailed off, at a loss for words. He felt as if he was standing in a boat about to push off. He took a breath, and for a minute he was weightless, floating in the infinite moment before another word was said. "I think I've got a problem, and um, I don't want to live like this anymore," he said. Kate sat back, almost imperceptibly, and nodded. John looked her in the eyes again, all green and gold in the fading afternoon light. "It's okay," she said, her eyes kind and without even a trace of judgment. "We'll figure this out. There's a way out of this for you, you gotta know that." Kate smiled, and John felt himself relax. In the back of his mind he wondered why he'd been so tense. John nodded. "Yeah," he said, feeling stronger already. He could feel the start of a foundation building in his heart. "Yeah, I'm gonna get through this."

[anthropolowhat]

Famous last words

"John," Kate said, her voice insistent, "I think it'd be really good for you. Besides, they really need somebody to help." John looked at his friend and frowned. "I don't know," he said. Kate sighed, and opened her textbook. She and John were the only ones in the classroom. They were early as usual, waiting on their class to start. "I'm just saying," she said, flipping through your textbook mindlessly, "they had somebody back out at the last minute, and one of my friends asked me if I knew anybody that could coach basketball. And didn't you tell me that you used to play?" "In high school," John said, "I mean, that was a long time ago--" "--you said you were on the team that won the State championship. And didn't you tell me you played when you were overseas?" Kate said. John sighed. "Yes, but I just don't know if I have the time," he said. "You've got one less credit than usual this semester," Kate said, "I helped you pick out your schedule." John crossed his arms, leaning back in his chair. "I'm not going to win this argument, am I?" he said wearily. Kate smiled. "Great," she said. "Listen, so it's a six-week program, and then there's a tournament at the end. You'll be with another coach, so you won't have to worry about being by yourself." John laughed. "Kate, I did three tours in Iraq. A bunch of twelve-year-olds won't be a problem."

[anthropolowhat]

Self-control (John)

John was tired, so when he got home from class he microwaved a burrito and grabbed a Coke from the refrigerator. After heating it up to an acceptable, edible temperature, John stood in the kitchen and ate his dinner. When he finished, leaned against his counter and surveyed his tiny, dingy apartment. He saw the empty bottle of whisky that he'd downed the night before, and next to it, the bottle he'd bought ahead for this night. It was a miracle he'd made it to class, given the amount of alcohol and prescription pills he'd consumed the night before, but John was a soldier and he would always report for duty. But it was getting harder than it used to be, and in the mornings, his thoughts were slow and inarticulate well into lunchtime. John finished his burrito and took a sip of his Coke. He checked his phone. It was only nine o'clock. John grimaced, knowing that it'd be a struggle to get any rest tonight without self-medication. Just then, John heard his phone beep. He had a text message. It was from Kate. Hey, just checking on ya  -k His phone beeped again. It was another text. If you need anything, I've got your back  -k John looked at the bottle on the table again. He felt a prickling in the back of his mind, all hot and cold, planting him to that spot in his kitchen, pressing him against the sink as if it was the edge of the world. He took a deep breath, and as he felt his chest expand he could sense some semblance of self-control slip back into his heart, wrapping around him in a thin film that held him in place. John pressed against this new tension in his mind. It pulled him, creating an insurmountable divide between himself and what sat on the table. He knew that if he pressed hard enough, he could tear right through that film like he'd done so many nights before, and drink himself into oblivion. For several minutes, John stood in his kitchen. He held onto his phone as if it was a lifeline. He looked down at the phone in his hand, and he sent Kate at text. Thanks kid. Get to bed already, will ya? We've got that project to work on tomorrow.  -john Kate sent back a quick joke, and John smiled. He turned off his cell phone and put it on the counter. He went to bed right after that. He didn't throw away the whisky. He didn't ask Kate for help. Just on this night, he let that tension suspend him over the abyss, and he didn't fight to fall any further. 

[anthropolowhat]

John and Kate

Back right after John got back from Iraq, about a year or so ago, he enrolled in classes at IPFW. He was thinking about getting a History degree, thinking about maybe becoming a teacher. Seemed like something he would like to do. Around this time Kate was still taking classes at IPFW. She wasn't quite sure what she wanted to be, so she just racked up credits and kept working at the bank. Kate and John had a lot of classes together. John always sat in the back and Kate always sat in the front. But they both always got there early. So Kate, uncomfortable with the silence, turned around in her chair and struck up conversation with John, and the rest is history. After their night class on Thursdays, they and a few other students would end up getting drinks at Henry's. Those were some of the best times, I think. They way they met was simple, and accidental. Kate couldn't really relate to anything that John was going through, and John really didn't understand what Kate was talking about most of the time, but they both had some really bad stuff happen in their past, stuff they didn't really know how to deal with. I think John and Kate recognized this defect in each other, and I think that's what drew them together, made them such good friends. You'd never guess, looking at the two. Couldn't be more different on the outside. But they were drawn to each other, I think, because of that sense of otherness. They were a pair of misfits at a place full of outcasts and second chances, and that made it perfect, really. 

[anthropolowhat]

Kate Dobin

"No, seriously," she said. "Can you even remember the last time you've gone eight days without a drink?" Her friend laughed. "Not since studying for the bar." "Exactly," she said. "That's what I'm saying. Before I got sick, I couldn't remember either." She paused and looked out the window. Outside, the city was quiet. What once had melted in the light of day now covered the streets in a sheet of black ice. "I've only got two days left," she said. "Before the medication's over and life goes back to normal." Her friend laughed. "You're always so dramatic," she said. "You'll be fine."