Chapter 2 #2
At six-thirty, the alarm goes off, but I’m already awake.
I need coffee right now, and maybe another few cups later today.
I eat the off-brand frosted flakes Gianna pretends to be morally superior about and then spread out my notes on the kitchen table.
I read for forty minutes. I retain — I don’t know.
Some. I keep looking at the laughing jock in the photograph on my fridge and let the rush of butterflies roll through me every time.
At eight, I have Real Analysis. The professor is talking about uniform continuity. I know what uniform continuity is, so I draw tiny boxes in the corner of my notebook.
At nine-thirty, I cross the quad. Late August in Michigan does this thing where the morning is cool enough to make you put on a jacket, and then by the time you’re on the other side of campus, you’re carrying the jacket.
I’ve reached the point where I’m carrying the jacket.
Then I have Cog Psych. I take notes and study for the quiz.
Then I have a statistics methods seminar — the seminar I’m in, not the class I TA.
There are only three people in the room.
The professor calls on me twice, and I get both questions right, but that’s because numbers are easy.
When class lets out, I shoulder my bag, which by this hour weighs as much as a kindergartener, and I cut across the quad toward the dining hall, where Gianna has the team’s Tuesday lunch Camdenk, which is forty-five minutes out of her entire weird equipment-manager day.
She has texted me twice already to ask if I’m coming.
She is at our corner table when I get in. She’s wearing a Wolves polo, her hair is pulled back, and she has a tray with two slices of pizza and a banana. I have a burger I have already lost interest in.
“Oh my god,” she says with wide eyes. “You remember that girl from my English class? Today she had on a mini skirt that cut up her thigh. I could see her pink panties, Lucy. Bright-freaking-pink!”
I chuckle, sitting down. “Maybe she didn’t know.”
“Oh,” she says, leaning back. “She knew. She absolutely knew. She kept looking down at it and taking selfies. Then she left the classroom, talking to the camera.” She makes a gagging sound. “I can’t believe people follow her.”
I tilt my head at her. “Are you still stalking her?”
“I can’t help it. She’s one thing online and something else in person. It drives me mad. Literally don’t trust social media. It’s all an act. I can’t believe my brother ever went near her.”
I still. “What?”
She looks flustered by it. “I know. It’s seriously disgusting.”
“That’s why you’re obsessed with her?” I joke.
She scoffs, throwing her hands up. “I’m not obsessed with her. I just literally don’t understand the male species, including my own brother.”
I swallow the lump in my throat. “If she’s wearing that kind of clothes, I guess it attracts––”
“Hey,” she interjects. “He’s still my brother. Yes, a jock. A really good athlete, but he’s not like the other guys.”
I don’t argue with her because I won’t win.
Her eyes flutter shut. “Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe my brother is like every other guy, and I refuse to see it. Good luck with him today, by the way.” She has a rich sense of sarcasm in her tone. “I can’t freaking stand her.”
I take a bite of my burger, heart racing at the thought of seeing Benson Reeve today. I don’t think Gianna realizes how much hold her brother has over campus.
She pushes the banana toward me. I peel half of it. We sit there for a second in the dining hall noise — somebody’s phone playing TikTok audio at the next table, the chatter of friends coming together to eat, and two girls at the salad bar laughing about something.
I pull out my phone and Venmo my mom forty dollars. Then I shoot her a text message.
Me: The money I sent over is for Bear’s field trip and home lunch. He said it’s due on Friday.
“Are you sending your mom money again?” Gianna asks, peeking at my screen.
I look up from my phone and then turn the screen off. “It’s for Bear.”
“For what?” she presses.
“A field trip.”
She nods her head but doesn’t say anything more.
When I get up, she gets up too. We walk out of the dining hall and across the south lawn to the library steps.
“Text me after,” she says.
“I will.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t introduce you to him before. He tends to take all my friends, and I didn’t want that to happen with you.”
I offer a sympathetic grin. “That’s not going to happen, G.”
She grins. “I know. You’re not his type.”
I shake my head. “Nope. My skirts touch the ground, so definitely not.”
We both laugh at that.
“Hot pink,” she whispers, rolling her eyes. She makes a disgusted sound, and then she hugs me. It’s brief and one-armed, the I-will-see-you-later hug.
Then she’s walking back across the lawn in her Wolves polo, and I am turning toward the doors of the library. I push through them, and the air conditioning hits me like a wall. The silence of any library is the only silence on earth that lowers my heart rate.
I walk through the bookstore first and find a fresh notebook for him, college-ruled, blue cover.
I have washi tape in my bag that I will label with his name, and for a moment, I consider it might seem inappropriate.
I have done this for most of my tutoring students, but it’s going to be different this time since he is Gianna’s brother. I quiet that thought and buy it anyway.
The third floor of the Camden U library is my second home.
I know which study room has the projector that works and which one has the dry-erase markers that have all dried out.
I know that Study Room 3B has a window that faces north, which means it doesn’t get hot in the afternoon, and that the chair on the door side of the table has a wobble in the back left leg if you lean on it.
I have tutored in 3B at least a dozen times.
I sit down in the door-facing chair at 1:04 p.m., and I unpack my bag on the table. I spread the materials out in the order I need to study. I had to dig for my sophomore-year Stat 215 notes this morning, which are, I will say without modesty, immaculate.
I pull out the fresh notebook for him. Two pencils.
Not one. Always two. Athletes Camdenk pencils.
A calculator. Not the cheap one. The TI-84.
Highlighters in pink, yellow, and green.
Sticky tabs. A printout of the syllabus, which I downloaded from the public class page.
I know I’m not supposed to have it, but no one polices.
I look at it all laid out before me. I am profoundly overprepared.
I know I am, but I don’t care. Overpreparing is, and has been since I was small, the way I move through the world without falling over.
I look at the clock above the whiteboard. I have two hours and forty-nine minutes.
I let myself, briefly, recall the athletes.
I do this in part to reassure myself. Coach Kowalski’s football kid sophomore year, who could not, in the most fundamental sense, read a graph.
He could see the lines but couldn’t determine which axis was which, no matter how many times I labeled them, even after I got out the colored pencils.
The basketball forward who got it after twenty minutes and was, after that, frankly delightful, asked good questions, sent me a thank-you email at the end of the semester.
The wrestler who flirted, whom I told, mildly, please stop, and was professional after that.
The soccer midfielder who, at our fourth session, in March, looking at a problem about limits, started to cry — not sobbing, just leaking quietly, because he was so tired and he didn’t understand and he hadn’t slept.
I sat with him for ten minutes. He aced the final.
He sent me flowers. I cried about that one in my room.
Athletes are, in my professional and considered statistical opinion, as dumb as socks. Some of them. Most of them. Many of them. I am a mathematician, and I am allowed to make bounded probabilistic claims.
I am bracing for Benson Reeve to be the same. I’m putting on the patience-armor I don’t actually have but have to force upon myself.
At two-thirty, my hands aren’t quite shaking yet, but I can feel the twitching in my bones. I hate that the past three years have done this to me. I don’t endorse this kind of reaction ever, if at all. And I hate that my body’s reacting this way, like I don’t have enough on my plate.
I decide to go get another coffee. I tell myself it’ll help. Coffee has never, in the history of my life, helped. And I know coffee Camdenth isn’t the best, but I don’t want to be stuttering over my words. Plus, it’ll give me something to do with my hands when he comes here.
I leave 3B unlocked, which is fine — the library knows me, and the swim team girl who tutors out of 3C waved at me earlier, she’ll keep an eye — and I take the stairs down.
The student union is across the quad. The walk is not helping my nerves.
A group of girls go past me laughing about somebody named Chris.
A kid is selling something out of a folding table for a club I cannot see the name of.
The dining hall has its vent on. The smell from the vent is institutional macaroni.
The coffee place is full. The line has six people.
I get behind a girl in a sorority sweatshirt who is on FaceTime with her mom.
I think about leaving, but I’m already here, so I have to commit.
The girl in front of me tells her mom that she can’t wait to receive her things in the mail, thanks her mom, and then hangs up. The line moves.
When I get to the front, the barista smiles at me. His name is Matty. “Lucy, hey. Usual?”
“Hi. Um.” I look up at the menu. I don’t think I want my usual. I open my mouth. “Hibiscus tea,” I hear myself say. Surely that won’t give me bad Camdenth, I hope.
“On it. Four eighty-five.”
He steps away while I search for my card. I see him grab something from the fridge and pour it into a plastic cup. I tap my card and leave a tip. Matty hands me the cup. I smile and thank you. I turn on my heel and walk out of there.
On my walk back to the library, I think, briefly, about Benson Reeve.
I wonder if he is currently around here somewhere.
I wonder if he is anywhere near nervous about this.
Gianna said he could be benched if he doesn’t bring up his grade, and I can’t imagine that feels good to hear.
But he is the captain of a Big Ten hockey program and people who are the captain of a Big Ten hockey program would not be nervous about a tutoring session.
That’s ridiculous of me. I wouldn’t even be surprised if he’s forgotten all about it.
It wouldn’t be the first time an athlete has stood me up.
I could get a text in approximately twelve minutes apologizing and asking to reschedule, and I will say, of course, no problem.
The room is just like I left it. I take the first sip of this hibiscus tea, and it’s very sweet. I wince at the taste filling my mouth. It’s fruity, for sure. I set it down and sit in the chair facing the door. The clock above the whiteboard says 3:55.
If I wanted to avoid this, I still have time to make a run for it. I could say that I got sick, or I had too much on my plate at the moment. I could make any valid excuse and get away with it. Right now’s my last opportunity.
I look at the clock, and my gut sinks.