My aunt calls my name, screams it. She's downstairs and I'm watching television, sort of not really awake but not really asleep either. I'm just an amorphous shape on the couch. She screams it again. I rush downstairs like I'm trying to save someone in one of those dramatic movies. Schindler's list. I don't know. I go to open the porch door off the kitchen and she's holding an empty Cool Whip container out to me.
"Cat food," she says, her pudgy arm in the door. "Get me some cat food."
So I go over to the pantry and get her some cat food out of the big, budget bag she has right next to the big budget dog food.

My aunt's house is like Egypt, with these exalted animals swanning around with their high tails and blue and green eyes. There's one she calls Baby, the other one, Buffy, she also calls it little stinker, even though she loves it a lot. Buffy is a Siamese kitten that has more curiosity in life in her little dark paws than I have in my entire useless body. A model body, they call it. Otherwise known as lank and tall and skinny.

My aunt shuffles off in her big green coat down the porch steps to feed the outside cats. Louie and… I don't know. My knees hurt. I go back upstairs to watch soap operas and chill out in front of these fake problems. I have this game where I act like I really, really care. I gasp and widen my eyes and say, "Holy cheese." Like I'm super shocked when Amber bonks Tiffany's boyfriend who turns out to be Amber's long last half brother or whatever. These soap operas have the same plots: Cheating, drug addiction, eating disorders, sixteen year old mommies (accidental.) Only the eating disorders always stop before anybody really gets hurt. And the cheater feels bad. It's sort of a sanitized, dramatized version of real life. But in soap operas, nobody ever really fucks anybody. They 'sleep with' each other. They make love. They don't fuck or screw or bump or do the horizontal mamba. They're too clean for that. Sex is never just the deepest expression of boredom, loneliness and horniness. In soap opera world, everything is symbolic and layered in hidden yet obvious meaning.

I don't know. Maybe I just have too much free time. How I came to live with my aunt is, I had a very messy relationship right before I fled the country. I didn't even say goodbye. To Mr Charles that is. My professor. That's who I was sleeping with, you see. Or bumping. Or fucking.

I suppose it wasn't really the most fantastic idea I've ever had, sweet, nerdy little me who sits in the front row and likes to read murder mystery novels and books about serial killers and rape and pedophiles. Ok, maybe I'm not that sweet, although I do cry when I hear about a puppy getting hurt. I suppose the real test of humanity is whether you cry during that one scene in The Notebook. I did. Just for the record. Sweet, sensitive little me.

The other thing I like to do is bird watch. Or people watch. I think 'stalking' is a pretty harsh word for observing people's activities. How I got into Mr Charles is, I was up in my favourite Oak tree on the university campus doing some people observing I saw him trying to take up smoking. He stopped right outside his car and looked around, then he lit up a cigarette. He takes a puff, freezes up, drawing his chest back, then he splutters everywhere, coughing and choking just like a clean lunged, virgin. He throws the cig on the ground and stomps it like it's an aggressive spider. I knew he didn't smoke, on the regular at least. I sat in the front row, I would have smelt it. Probably mixed with his ice water cologne.

The next week in class I watched him. It took him a while to detect I wasn't just fascinated by his symbolic interactionism lecture. When he was done I made this big show of being real slow with my books, to pack them up. I walked up to the front and he was just staring at me with those big, turtle green eyes. Mr Charles. My new human experiment, my new boredom killer, my new refuge from the safety around me. He had his arms crossed and he said, "Katrina Warner, A plus student, sociology major… all around seemingly friendless genius."

I ask him if he's got a cigarette, like he had the other night. His eyes open up kind of quizzically. It takes him a second to register I'm the bird watcher you hear about on campus sometimes, the skinny one up in the tree. Yeah, that's me. Sometimes I get noticed, but I tend to ignore it. I prefer to have a vague creepy reputation that to be actually known by anyone specifically. That would just ruin everything.

When he drives me home in his car his hands shake. I remember in the sixth grade when my whole class wouldn't stop talking when Mr S wanted to give an English presentation. Or maybe it was Maths. I don't know. Anyway, he keeps everyone in for recess even though I'm sitting there stone still and quiet as a mouse, not sharing a giggle with anyone. Afterwards, when everyone is gone I ask him, "What does being good get me?" and he can't answer. He just asks me if I want a jelly snake on his desk, but there are only the green ones left.

I hold Mr Charles's hand. His house is big and cool and empty. He's not married. But I already know that. I know he's thirty six and he's been teaching history for ten years since he graduated from Notre Dame. His lounge room is all high loft ceilings and long grey couches that look like they never get sat on. He asks me if I want a drink with those dark green eyes looking sort of sad. I say I don't drink, but I'll have a water. He hands me the glass and his face is all tensed up like he's about to get a needle. His eyes run over my body like he's double checking if I'm there, or assessing whether I'm hot, I don't know. He asks me if he can take my glasses off, and I say no.

He puts his hands on my hips, and asks me if he can call me Kat. I say yes, then walk directly away from him. Don't give anything up too soon. I take off my baggy sweat shirt and I'm wearing a halter underneath. I'm wearing the black jeans that make my legs look impossibly long. He watches me while I walk down his hall. I wait in his study running my hands over the books to see if he dusts them. He shows up a few minutes later and I make him tell me why he has every single book on his shelf. Don't tell me, I warn, that you just need them for school. While he sips his vodka and looks at me, afraid and interested. Mission accomplished.

When I leave I kiss him on the cheek and brush my hand down his chest. I take my glasses off and lean in, whisper in his ear, "I had a very nice time at your house, Mr Charles," and he shudders.

Now don't go thinking I'm a bitch. I was just completing my experiment. You see, I didn't intend to have it work out that way. How was I supposed to know he'd become obsessed with me and that he'd get fired from his job for not showing up to lectures? That he'd stop shaving? That hard to get bullshit, that treat em mean keep em keen, I'm warning you now, it actually works.

I'm lying on his big bed propped up with pillows with my glasses on, pretending to read. I tell him people don't need to live a long time, that if we just stopped thinking we were entitled to our standard eighty years on this planet, we'd have a lot more fun. We'd all get on so much better, if the saying, "life's too short" was actually more than something to say when you can't be fucked feeling angry or sad about something. Life should be shorter, I tell him, so people would make an effort to get more done. Who wants a bunch of friggin old people wandering around congesting the organs of our city? They've reached their productive capacity, they've gone past the point of emotional enjoyment, they really are just bags of flesh and meat and bones that want you to watch game shows with them. But I don't know. My grandparents are dead.

Life, I say while he gets that love look in his eyes, the green all melted and soft and gooey, should be lived like you don't have forever. Not like this day is your last, that's stupid, not to mention impractical. What if all you wanted to do was kill your boss or your wife? Just like, don't assume you'll have until you're forty to have kids, 'til you're fifty five to get married and until you're seventy to retire. Live like you actually want to take a chunk out of life. Feel entitled to that. Feel entitled to feeling something, love, hate, joy, I don't know. Feel entitled to having a sharp career and a witty best friend and a amazing fuck, not to just meandering, getting fat and old and miserable. Like that's the ultimate right of passage. These past their use by prune people and the doctors keeping them alive, they really get my goat.

But Simon Charles just smiles and starts licking my neck. So I roll over and hook my leg over his body while his head is buried in my neck, and tell him, yeah, you can fuck me. Blast off in five. I think it's a part of my experiment.

Simon's calling me and I feel like an asshole. We had sex after two months and I stopped calling him. He calls me. Again. I should pick up the phone, tell him I enjoyed our time together but the experiment is over. But I don't. I don't even tell him, I actually sort of like being at your place, having you cook for me, having your head on my lap while I read Dickinson to you, watching you grade my papers with that funny smile on your face, asking me if you think I'm biasing my grades. I don't tell him, you fucked up my experiment, you nice bastard asshole. I wasn't supposed to like you, you weren't supposed to make me feel good. I just wanted you to be fascinated by me. I didn't want your damp, broken, heart in my palm. This was supposed to be entertaining. I wanted to feel exhilarated and high and addicted. I wanted something neat and tasty and boxed up, an enviable memory to revisit. A sequence of events. I wanted us to share that secret. I wanted us to stop, right at the edge, before people could prove that you were fucking a student. I didn't want you to lose your job.

I wasn't trying to ruin your life, I was trying to make mine better.

I turn off my phone, I pack up myself and leave the country. I know Simon doesn't have my number. Low isn't the right word, but I want to duck my head whenever someone does something nice for me. The customs officials, they leap me to the front of the line for "additional inspection" when they see I have U.S citizenship and I get out quicker than anyone else. I eat a chicken taco and feel shit. I should have at least told Mr Charles I was planning to leave the country. But I'm a bird watcher, a serial killer expert, a sociology major. A friendless genius. I'm just some sort of poisonous substance that thought it was vitamin C. An explosion that looked around surprised at how much damage it caused. But I don't know. Whatever. My taco is getting cold.