2. Chapter 2
Chapter 2
VIVIAN
I am a walking zombie as I make my way to the bus stop after class. The bus is pulling up just as I arrive at the stop, and I feel such immense gratitude for the timing I want to cry. I climb aboard and sit in the first empty seat I come to, resisting the urge to rest my head against the window. I’ve fallen into that trap before when I am exhausted like this, and it resulted in me missing my stop. Instead I sit completely upright while waiting for the bus to leave, and when I feel my eyes wanting to stay shut, I pinch my inner thigh. I’d had to do the same thing in class all night. Thank God it was a short lecture.
I am still mad at myself for mixing up the start date and not adjusting my work schedule before the class started. I was positive that it started on Thursday and not Tuesday. Thank God my roommate, Bailey, set me straight when I got home or I would have missed tonight’s class.
I hate messing up. I strive to make sure everything is just right, and that I am organized, but I have been super busy lately. I shake my head to derail my thinking. “No excuses, Viv,” I murmur to myself. That is my mantra, and I remind myself of it as I pinch my inner thigh hard again. It is sore, and I know I am going to have bruises, but I need to stay awake so I can get home and put myself and this day to bed.
I worked a twelve-hour night shift last night at the hospital as a housekeeper and then came home, showered, and went to my day job from nine-to-five at the factory doing piece work. Both of the jobs keep me busy, so staying up for the two has been no big deal. I was beyond tired when I got home to the apartment I share with Bailey at five thirty, having almost fallen asleep on that bus ride.
“You look like death,” Bailey pointed out with a laugh when I came in. She had her uniform on, ready for her own housekeeping night shift at the hospital..
“I feel like death,” I whined. “I am so ready to go to bed,” I said on a yawn. I had been fantasizing about the feel of the sheets the whole way home.
“You aren’t going to class?” Bailey asked, eyeing me like I am crazy.
“Class?” I queried in total confusion. “What class?”
Bailey widened her eyes at me, giving me a look that said she was concerned for my sanity. “Uh, your business class,” she said slowly.
I shook my head. “New classes don’t start until Thursday,” I said confidently, but panic was suddenly taking hold of me.
Now Bailey shook her head. “No, girl, classes start tonight. Last semester they started on Thursday.”
My head spun as I flung my backpack around and reached in, grabbing my dollar-store planner and opening it to this week. And there it was—today’s date circled in red.
I moaned in agony, collapsing into one of the dilapidated chairs at our flimsy table.
“Babe, just skip tonight’s class,” Bailey said sympathetically. “You know the first night is all introductions and syllabus. Email the professor, tell him—”
“No,” I said, defiantly standing up. “I am not taking the easy way out. I screwed up, and I have to face the repercussions,” I told her hotly.
“You are dead on your feet, Viv,” Bailey said in concern.
“I don’t care. It’ll teach me,” I said.
She shook her head, knowing this was a losing battle. We’d worked hard to get out of where we had come from, each of us making promises to ourselves. And I had promised myself that I wouldn’t just accept defeat, or take the easy way. I’d forgotten about class, but it was still my responsibility to go despite my exhaustion. “You do you, girl,” Bailey told me. “I have to get to work; they asked me to come in early and I’m not turning the OT down.”
“Soak it up while you can,” I agreed.
Bailey grabbed her oversized backpack, then came over and hugged me. “Be safe, please,” she pleaded, squeezing me.
“I will,” I promised her, squeezing back, and then watched her leave. I checked the clock. My class started in forty-five minutes. I took a deep breath and headed out. I’d decided it was better to get to class than to stay here and risk falling asleep. I was off tonight and didn’t work until the next night, so I could do it—it was just a few hours.
But it had been torture. And now I am twenty minutes away from sweet, sweet dreamland.
The bus stop at the college is just outside the building where my class is held. I focus on the door I had exited, just looking at anything to concentrate on. A blonde that had been in class bursts through the door. She is gorgeous and looks so flawless. I am instantly jealous and wish I could nail a look like that. Maybe someday.
The bus doors close just as the building door opens again and a man walks out. He has his hood up, and his gaze is straight ahead. He has a presence. I can sense it even from the bus. He gives something off—people move out of his way as he walks down the sidewalk, cars stop as he crosses to the parking lot. He didn’t even look as he crossed the street and yet no one came near him. I wonder if he is in my class. He definitely hadn’t been there when I arrived, since the classroom was empty when I’d gotten there. He could have walked in later, but who knew. I was barely mentally present in the class.
The bus ride is only twenty minutes but it is excruciating. When I finally get home I throw my bag and coat to the floor and head straight to bed.
I wake the next morning at about six. I slept just over ten hours, and while I am still tired—a chronic problem for me—I feel worlds better than last night. I would probably have still been asleep if I hadn’t been woken by the sound of yelling in the apartment next door. This is a common occurrence, and we often have front-row seats to their arguments because of the paper-thin walls between the apartments. Most times I just ignore it and put the radio on, but I need to get up.
Bailey is coming home in about an hour from her shift, and we try to space out our days so whoever has worked the night before gets the bedroom, the only spot with a door in our small apartment. I am off from my day job today, and potentially the rest of the week. Orders have been low at the factory—we’ve lost several big contracts—so the first thing to go is the part-time help. While I don’t love the job, it pays better than the fast-food job I had prior to this one.
I get up and make a cup of coffee from the instant packets Bailey and I grabbed from the hospital. Maybe it isn’t the most ethical thing, but we take them from patient trays before throwing them out. We reason it is going to be thrown out anyway, so it isn’t really stealing.
I boil the water in the microwave and mix it with the granules. Once it is all mixed, I take it with me back to the bedroom and sip it as I make the bed for Bailey. It is always relaxing to get in a nice clean bed, something we both appreciate.
Bailey and I met when we were both nine and had been placed in the same foster home. We’d clung to each other in the new scary situation and grew close over the ten months we’d been there. It had been an okay situation, but mostly because we had each other. Then I went back to my mom, one of the million times she’d regained custody of me, only to lose custody two months later. The damage had been done though, and Bailey and I were separated.
But two years ago I’d walked into the orientation for my housekeeping job and heard her name called during roll call. We’d picked up again like we had been separated for minutes and not a decade. At the time I had been living in a room I was renting from my last foster family, a situation I was eager to get out of. Bailey was living with some guy, just for shelter, and paying him in, well, other ways.
Over our week-long orientation, we developed a plan and got an apartment together. We both had goals, both eager for a life better than what we’d started off with, and we decided we could support each other to reach them. Bailey wanted to go to nursing school. My goals were set on running my own business. Since our reconnection, we’d spent the last two years taking classes at the community college as we could afford them.
We are also frugal, like extremely frugal; some might call us cheap, but frugal sounds better. We scrimp and save to pay for classes out of pocket, unwilling to be reckless like those who’d brought us into the world had been. We live in the worst area of the city, in the smallest apartment, with the lowest rent that we could find. We eat whatever is on sale and take things like closed sodas and coffee packets from hospital trays to cut costs wherever we can. Our money is there for classes, and for when we get into full-time college programs for our majors.
We are building a better life for ourselves.
I am just coming out of the shower when Bailey comes in. She smiles when she sees me, but I notice the exhaustion behind it.
“How was it?” I ask.
“Busy,” Bailey says with a sigh. “Thelma called out, but it went by quickly.”
“I’m sorry,” I sympathize. “Get your shower then straight to bed, young lady.”
Bailey nods and heads to the bathroom on autopilot, getting her routine underway. Meanwhile, I move to the living space, which is just a room where we’d thrown a thrift store rug over the tile, and put a futon on the rug. I grab my bag and start looking over my syllabus from last night’s class. I initially wanted to take two classes this semester, but I’d spent the money I had put aside applying to a few colleges with business programs. I never will understand why you have to pay for people to read your application. It seems a little pirate-like to me, but it didn’t appear to be changing any second so I’d pulled the trigger.
I have finished most of my prerequisite classes at the community college, and I hope that made me look interesting to the schools I’d applied to. I was admittedly not the best student in high school, but also not the worst. It was hard to focus on grades when I was in and out of homes in the foster system and then at other times with my mom. But because I hadn’t been the best student, I hadn’t been eligible for a lot of grants or scholarships. And I refused to take loans out so early on. Yes, I might have to get loans when I get to upper-level classes, but I have applied for every grant and work-study program I could for each school, in hopes of keeping the loans to a minimum.
I sit down on the futon with the syllabus and my planner and start writing out when assignments are due and planning out my work schedule. I refuse to be a statistic, and am going to get around that by planning and taking charge of my path. If my horrible parents had given me nothing else, seeing their demise has given me the drive to get the hell as far away as possible from what they had been.
And nothing is going to take me off my path.
No excuses.
I get to class early on Thursday, a redo of sorts from Tuesday’s class. I’d gotten a good day of sleep this time and am ready to get down to business, pun totally intended. I am so early I have to wait for the class before ours to finish before I can even go in the room.
I sit in the front row again—it is my go-to seat in every class I take. I know other people think the front row is for goody-goodies or geeks, but I really don’t care. I’m not here for them. I gave up caring about what other people think a long time ago. These classes are about me and what I want to achieve for myself, for my future. This is about me and my success.
I get a notebook and pen ready and set the syllabus out on my desk. I had visited the bookstore the day before and found the best used copy of the book I could. It still cost me a small fortune, but I am prepared now. It all takes a little bit of my stress down.
I zone myself out, ignoring everything around me, a coping habit I have acquired over the years. I slouch a little in my seat and sort of curl into myself, becoming small and not drawing attention to myself. The habit has served me well, and I have no desire to change it anytime soon. Keeping the attention off me allows for fewer distractions. I zone all the way out until the teacher comes in and I sit up again.
“Good evening, everyone!” Professor Edwards says jovially as he places his jacket and briefcase down. He scans the room and claps his hands. “Well, it would seem we have lost some classmates,” he says, then shrugs. “It happens. Okay, first things first, let’s rearrange ourselves. I’d like to organize us in a circular fashion to allow for better discussion.”
There is some groaning, but everyone complies, standing and pulling their chairs into a circle. Or at least I thought everyone had. But as we all move, I notice a guy in the back just sitting in his seat. It works; I mean, he doesn’t move and I can’t see where he would have needed to. But I still think it’s a little rude that he didn’t even try. But to each his own.
Once we are all seated, the professor takes his place in the middle. “Ethics and business, what a fabulous oxymoron, am I right?”
I smile at his joke. I love professors who don’t take themselves too seriously, making the classes way more bearable.
“But I will tell you that even the great Palmer Lexington has been quoted as saying, ‘Playing dirty will never make a rich man.’ And he is a billionaire, so maybe he is someone we should pay attention to,” he says with a shrug.
Professor Edwards continues, and as I listen intently to him, I get this insane feeling like someone is watching me. I ignore it, hoping the feeling will go away. It’s probably just the circle arrangement that’s giving me that feeling. But another few minutes pass, and I just can’t shake the feeling that I am being stared at.
I glance around the circle of my classmates slowly and lock eyes with the hooded figure I’d noticed earlier. It is the guy who hadn’t moved when everyone else had, and his stare is more than just a look. His eyes bore into my own as soon as our gazes meet. He doesn’t even blink. Weirdo , I think as I break the stare and return my attention to the lecture.
But it isn’t as easy to break the connection as I hoped. Despite me having caught the man looking at me, and then me looking away in obvious irritation, he continues to stare at me. I feel his eyes on me, following me with every shift and move I make. It’s creepy. I force myself to not meet his stare again, hoping that eventually he will stop if I ignore him long enough.
But he doesn’t.
The hooded guy continues to stare and not hide it; he just blatantly drills his gaze into me. I continue to pretend I don’t notice by dutifully taking notes and listening to the professor. I offer answers for questions asked, and involve myself in discussions with the other students. I do basically anything I can to try to distract myself from his hard stare. But he doesn’t participate. And no matter who is speaking, his gaze stays on me. By the end of class I am officially creeped out.
“Okay, guys, that’s it for tonight. We’ll pick this up next week. Also, next class, we are going to talk more about the group project for the class.”
I internally give an eye roll at this news. I hate group projects; I prefer to do things independently. I mean, who actually likes group projects, I think miserably. Probably the people who don’t do the work in them, I sulk. I push my angry thoughts aside just then though, because I want to get out of the room, like ASAP, and away from the creepy peeper.
I leave my chair in the circle, and I don’t even put my things away carefully like I usually do. Instead I gather everything in my arms and head out the door before anyone else. I regret not putting my jacket on when I get outside and feel the single-digit temperature and wind cut through me, but once again the bus fairies have blessed me and the bus is already at the bus stop. When I get on it and sit down, I release a shaky breath I hadn’t been aware I was holding.
I watch the door as the bus pulls away and connect eyes with the creeper as he comes out of the building. From the safety of the bus, I’m not nervous like I was in class having him look at me. He stops when our eyes connect, like he wants to give me space, which is a silly thought, I tell myself. But he just stands there and looks back at me. I feel, well, odd. Not scared or nervous. I’m not irritated with it like I was during class. There’s something about the way he is looking at me; he isn’t looking at me like a psychopath. There’s something in his gaze, something I can’t name. I stare at him until he is no longer in my view and then sit back.
And finally the name of what I saw in his gaze comes to me—admiration. He’d been looking at me like someone might look at a beautiful artwork, looking at all the features, memorizing it. And it brought me a strange comfort. It felt familiar, like I knew him. I felt okay with it.
And now I feel like I am the psychopath.
Maybe I had met him over the years? Maybe he’d been in one of the foster homes I had been in?
I close my eyes and shake my head. Who knows? The whole thing was still weird no matter what I think of it now, from the safety of a vehicle taking me away from him. I am just glad to not be going back to class for several days. Hopefully he gets his staring out of his system before then.