The freshman class survived their first round of exams, but the recovery period sent everyone to different, quiet corners in those early days of the new semester.
Brandon W. found Kate Rose in RBU Housing’s dorm lounge. “What the? You’re not Ben.”
“Sorry to disappoint,” she huffed, pushing herself upright.
“Not true, who said that? Hey, dye your hair again? What, new semester, new colour?”
Kate chuckled as she explained, “No, He of Many Questions. The colour fades but the bleach is forever, or until I let Jo touch my hair again. Green was only temporary.”
“A fading phase, huh? Makes sense.”
“Does it? Well, as long as it makes sense to one of us.”
“Pass English?” he asked, groaning at the memory.
“Barely, but also yep. Seen anyone else up and around yet?”
“Nah, I think everyone’s still hibernating.”
“Nothing really, trying to decompress but emphasis on the trying part.”
“Sounds like the classic My Brain Won’t Shut Up schtick.”
“It’s a classic for a reason,” she returned.
“Wanna talk about it?” he asked.
“I better not,” she answered.
They watched TV for a while in silence. At the next commercial break Brandon asked, “You feel any different now that you’re a sophomore? Freshman year was okay, but I have high hopes this semester will be a lot better. What about you? Any high hopes?” He was not-so-subtly hoping to convince Kate to sneak upstairs with him to do bubble, which had to be more fun than sitting here depressed watching daytime talk shows.
But Kate missed his hint completely focusing instead on the word hope, or hopeless. She frowned, quickly succumbing to an urge to talk about her problems after all. She decided to answer a question with a question: “Um, well—You like Deryck, right?”
He kept his eyes glued to that television screen. “Oh, uh, he’s—I mean—”
She also avoided eye contact. “It’s just—he says things, you know? I worry he might be taking this more seriously than I am. Well, when he’s around, tch.”
“Like, he’s super touchy — always putting an arm around my shoulders, waist, chair, it doesn’t matter as long as we’re touching. And he’s so vocal about us being together when we’re out, but when we’re alone it’s, well, not that. And then there’s this.”
She reached for a thin notebook wedged under the couch.
Brandon sat up and gawked at what she held. “Dude, the semester just started. How the hell do you already have homework? You’re worse than Lee trying to get all his assignments done ahead of time.”
“It’s not homework, it’s poetry. Deryck filled an entire notebook’s worth of amateur poetry about me.”
He did his very best to fight off a smirk, or worse — outright laughter. He cleared his throat before feigning, “Oh, wow.”
“Yeah. What do I say to something like this? I don’t get it, I don’t get him. When I told Jo about it, she said it sounded like love bombing. There’s a Psych major’s perspective for yah.”
“I thought she was pre-med with Lee?”
“She’s double majoring Psych and Nursing, and he’s aiming to become a surgeon. They’re both completely out of their mind insane, I know.”
“Well, insane or not, you better listen to the geniuses on this one ‘cause to me that just looks like a real pickle.”
“Don’t you wanna read it?”
Brandon let his laughter go then. “More than anything, but I better not. Barely passed English, remember? What am I gonna do with poetry?”
“Ugh, those are my thoughts exactly.”
She crossed her arms, leaned back, exhaled through her nose, and shook her head. “I shouldn’t be talking to you about him. I’m sorry, forget it.”
“No, no, it’s cool,” he lied. “You can talk to me about whatever you want, nothing’s changed as far as I care. Well, you know, besides everything.”
She snorted. “Yeah. Thanks. You remind me of him, sometimes.”
Kate’s stomach dropped like they just drove over a hill too fast. Why did she say that? Brandon and Deryck couldn’t be anything more opposite in appearance or personality. Her brain connected them so quickly like snapping magnets together, and only when that happened did her voice fall a little with the qualifier “sometimes.”
That was Brandon’s clue that “sometimes” she doubted her own words. “Sometimes” Brandon was just like Deryck, the guy she liked. He was stuck on that when she tried to cover quickly with:
“So, we’re all still going to the bar tonight? The place is probably totally dead like everywhere else. Campus is a ghost town right now, we might even be the only ones there. Should be fun.”
“Y-yeah. Uh, actually that’s why I was trying to find Ben. Gotta make sure he’s on my team for foosball.”
“Illegal scouting before the match? Brandon Weasel Weseman. Is cheating the only way you know how to win?”
He grinned. “I haven’t the slightest idea what you mean.”
