103It's hard to meet new people when you have pretty much dated everyone and their half cousin twice removed. I can't go anywhere without running into someone that I dated. It's sad because I don't remember half of them but they all remember me.
"Hey! Jaime!" Some guy with yellow hair and dark brown eyebrows calls at Starbucks. Did I date him? I wonder, or is he John/Corey/Mike/Rick's brother? I just have to smile and nod at everything they say and hope they will go away before I'm figured out. I sip my tall latte and raise my eyebrows as if I'm interested in what they are saying. I just want to make a break for the door so I can get to campus before someone else recognizes me.
"Nice to see you again," I smile at Sunflower which is what I have decided is his hair colour. Nicknames are my best friend. Later I will tell my sister about the latest encounter and I'll insert the name Sunflower into the story. He'll be Sunflower from now on.
"You too, say hello to Hannah for me," he says and leaves Starbucks. He never even ordered anything. That starts me thinking, did he see me through the window and just have to come and say hello? Was he so surprised by my presence that he forgot to order altogether? I think about pointless things like this all the time. It's what makes life interesting. But wait, Hannah is my sister. Maybe SHE dated Sunflower. Now it's coming back to me. It's not entirely pleasant. She broke up with him after a three-month stint because she thought he was cheating. He was. With me.
I grimace and throw the rest of my latte in the trash. I suddenly feel sick to my stomach. I wonder how I could have done that to my sister. She doesn't have a boyfriend very often and then I go and ruin it for her. Oh well, I'll probably forget about it in a few minutes anyway, no use beating myself up over something that happened... when was that again?
I head to my English class back on campus. We have a paper due comparing The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway and Tender is the Night by Fitzgerald. Personally, I found them both shittier than a porta-potty. But that's just my chic-lit loving opinion.
As I walk back towards campus I wish I hadn't thrown out that latte. I still have the aftertaste in my mouth and it is damn good. I dig around in my bad for my paper and I'm not looking where I'm going. Just my luck, I run right into a metal pole. The sound echoes in my head. I look both ways and see that no one is watching me. No one noticed.
"Smooth," a voice says.
I flinch and turn around. A tall, dark haired guy is standing there, smirk on his face, arms crossed. He looks vaguely familiar but I don't think I dated him. Hannah could never get a guy that good looking so he wasn't her boyfriend.
"I try," I say and back take a step towards him. He doesn't seem to recognize me either. A new specimen? I'm intrigued. I am gripping my English Lit paper in my hand; it is crumpled up. I can't hand it in like that, my teacher will have a conniption. I'll have to get to the library and print it out again. I glance at my watch; I only have ten minutes. I have to hurry.
"Are you okay?" the guy asks.
"Yeah, I like running into poles, all in a days work," I say. I start to walk again and not surprisingly the guy falls into step beside me. This is typical for me. I make an ass out of myself, some idiot guy finds it endearing and he wants to go on a date. Whoever thought embarrassing myself to tears would get me a date, not once, not twice, but multiple times. Maybe I am starting to do it on purpose. I don't know how my brain works.
"You're good at it." He says, "where are you headed?"
"Class," I say. The seconds are ticking by. I have to get to class on time. If I don't hand this paper in when I'm supposed to I could fail the class. I've already missed three assignments; I have to start working harder.
"Where?" he asks.
Nosy guy. I hate the nosy ones. It starts out with you thinking they just want to know about your life but it turns into a catastrophe where a restraining order is needed so he will stop trying to control your every move. Listen to me. I know.
"Campus," I say vaguely. "Look, I'm late, I don't have time for small talk. If you're going to ask me out than do it." No one has ever accused me of being subtle.
"Okay. How about Friday?" he says.
"Sure. I'll meet you at the pole," I say and speed up.
"What pole?" he calls after me.
What pole? What a dufus. If he really wanted to go out with me he'd figure out what pole I was talking about.
"Just look for a forehead print," I call back without turning around.
I forget about him in the next five minutes. The library is packed full of people studying for midterms. I'm in my third year and I've never once studied in the library. It's about as quiet as the launching base at the Apollo 13 liftoff. The sound of two hundred people turning a page at the exact same time is a lot louder than you might think.
I manage to fight my way to a computer. I have to dive at the chair and elbow some girl out of the way to get it. She stands there beside me. Crossed arms? Check. Furrowed brow? Check. Gritted teeth? Check. Yeah, she's pissed. I care more about the ants I crushed under my Sketchers on my way here. I ignore her and print my paper again. I have to swim through the sea of students to get to the printer. I hope it worked since the computer will be gone if I try to get back. I'm powerful but not powerful enough to save a chair from halfway across the room.
My paper is in the printer tray, waiting for me to pick it up and unite the pages together with a single staple. I grant its wish and hurry to the doors. I have thirty seconds to get to class. It would normally take me at least five minutes to get there. So I run. I watch where I'm going this time since slamming my head into a metal pole at this speed will be considerably more painful. My paper is flapping in the breeze. I hope it doesn't rip.
I get to my classroom a second before the bell goes. The teacher looks at me with a grin. He didn't expect me to make it. He is standing beside the door, ready to slam it in my butt-kissing face. Too bad.
"My paper, Mr. Collins." I hand it to him with a satisfied sigh and head to my seat.
"Miss Carter, I'm sorry I can't take this," he says.
I turn around. Everyone is watching me. This happens a lot. I've dated most of the guys in the class and they like to see me suffer. It's as if the guys and Mr. Collins are in cahoots and they are out to destroy me, shred of dignity by slice of pride. I can do what they want but they'll never be happy.
"And why is that?" I ask, narrowing my eyes.
"There is no title page and it is all crumpled up," he says. He starts to hand it back to me but I refuse to take it. I didn't run to this shit hole classroom so he could tell me he wouldn't take my paper because there was a tiny, barely there, fold in the bottom corner of the third page. No fucking way.
"C'mon Mr. Collins, give me a break here," I say. I'm not about to plead with this chubby little bald man. He takes pleasure in watching me suffer. What kind of person does that? Chubby, little bald men, that's who.
"I'm not inclined to give you a break Miss Carter. Not when you haven't handed in half of my assignment," he says.
"But I'm handing in THIS assignment," I say.
"What do you think class? Should I cut her some slack?" he addresses the entire class and I know I'm screwed.
"At least read it," a voice says. The sound is deafening as everyone turns around to shoot daggers at the one, lonely person on my side.
"Who is that?" Mr. Collins says before he can stop himself. He reveals that he doesn't know half the people in his class. He has his favourites and he has the people he picks on, like me and the rest of them are dirt under his shoe. They'll pull a seventy in the class and everyone will be satisfied. They don't fail a class and he doesn't have to subject himself to extra students that don't matter. That's his point of view.
"Caleb Masters," someone says. I don't know Caleb Masters. I'm just as bad as Mr. Collins. The world might as well implode right now because I'm no better than the chubby little bald man.
"I have a better idea," Mr. Collins says. Here it comes. The write a two million word essay on the importance and function of dung beetles and I'll let you hand it in speech. The guy had a thing for dung beetles. Who knew how many essays he had on the nasty things by now. He just never got sick of making people research them and write about them. He probably sat at home with a tumbler of scotch in his sweaty little hand, laughing at the colour, shape and size of the average dung beetle night after night after night.
"How about Mr. Masters and Miss Carter write an essay on the significance of punctuality in a individual's success in post-secondary education," he says.
"Excuse me sir, but that is bullshit. I was on time!" I blurt out. His face turns twenty different shades of purple. It looks like his head is going to explode, spraying everyone with his ugly, deficient brain. I am ready to duck and run when he lets out a breath of stinky air right in my face.
"Fine. Write about the decline of acceptable vocabulary that students have these days," he says.
"Better than dung beetles." Caleb steps up beside me. He is tall and skinny, with brown, wire rimmed glasses and shaggy straw coloured hair. He grins and puts an arm around my waist. He leads me out of the room and the slamming of the door behind us echoes like the sound of a jail cell door being slammed for good.
I yank myself out of Caleb's grasp and glare at the back of his head. "Who the hell do you think you are?" I ask.
"I'm the guy that's saving you from suspension," he says, not turning around.
"I wouldn't get suspended. Mr. Collins is a jackass, not God," I say, smirking. It was true that Mr. Collins would much rather torture his students than put them out of their misery by sending them home for a few days of complete and utter relaxation.
"Okay, I saved you from writing an essay on dung beetles. I know what that brand of pain is like. I've written three," he says.
"I've never seen you before," I say. I realize we aren't heading towards the library. But I can't complain about that. What books would we research from anyway? Swearing for Dummies? The Potty-Mouth Chronicles?
"I've been there all semester. And last semester and the semester before that. This is my third time in the course. The guy has it out for me," he explains.
"We have something in common then," I say. "Where are we going?"
"Starbucks. I'm jonesing for an espresso," he says.
Jonesing? What a dork. But, a surprisingly likeably dork