Chapter 4 Thea
CHAPTER FOUR
THEA
“Don’t forget! Your literary analysis essay is due Monday, May twenty-eighth at noon. Not a second after.” Professor Milton spins around, trying to catch us all before we bolt. “You are to explore the role of guilt in Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Tell-Tale Heart.’”
Another chorus, this time of groans and muffled curses rises, and I shake my head. Freaking English Comp Two. One of the many useless requisite classes here at North Harbor Community College, especially for me.
I pack my side satchel with my class books and stand, snatching my water bottle off the table.
Sweat slips down my spine in a ticklish line, and my wet tank top sticks to me, clinging in all the worst places.
I’m overheated and gross, but thankfully not the only one.
Around me, my classmates dab at their hairlines and fidget in their damp clothes, uncomfortable.
Compliments of the broken air conditioning.
This darn campus looks like someone pressed pause on it in 1982 and forgot to hit play again.
Condensation clouds half the windows, and the ones that are meant to open are painted shut, trapping the heat until the entire building feels like a sauna.
It’s only the end of May, and I have a whole summer of this.
I groan, lug my bag over my shoulder, and exit the room. My nose wrinkles at the permanent damp carpet smell, old dust, and a rotting mildew tang I can taste on my tongue if I leave my mouth open too long.
As I weave through the hallway, students mill about, excited that it’s Friday.
Since North Harbor is a two-year community college, there aren’t any dorms or campus housing, so most of the run-down houses around the college serve as cramped apartments.
They’re expensive though, and since I can’t afford an actual room in one, I’ve come to commuting from home like many.
Lately, I’ve been crashing on a friend’s couch throughout the week and only going home on the weekends.
I sigh, fighting the broken automatic doors to get outside and walk through the sun-faded brick buildings that are dull under the gray sky.
It’s humid, like someone draped a wet blanket over campus, and despite the minor breeze, yesterday’s drizzle still seems to hang in the air.
In fact, the week has been bleak. Kind of like the entirety of my two years here.
I tell myself that showing up is better than quitting, but I have no plans after I finish my summer semester.
At twenty-one, I’ll graduate with a liberal arts degree and zero future university trajectory.
Granted, I’ve never known what I wanted to do.
When I told people what I saw for my future, they laughed at me and called me old school.
Made me feel like I was wasting my talent, whatever talent that might be.
At least NHCC is cheap. It isn’t glamorous or even comfortable, but I’ll get my credits for now. I don’t need shiny. I need out.
More students exit the other buildings and move in clumps across the quad.
A handful of them gravitate to the lone coffee cart parked crooked on the sidewalk, which has pretty good espresso.
I glance at my phone, checking to see if I have time to stop for an iced latte before meeting Tristan. I don’t.
Instead, I lift my water bottle to my lips and suck the last few drops while the straw lets out a hollow slurp.
Ahead, near the newsstand and flanking the college’s bus stop, an older man sits against the side.
His jeans are torn at the knees, a ball cap pulled low over his forehead, and a cardboard sign resting near his sweaty leg.
The words ANYTHING HELPS are written in faded ink.
Most people pass without looking. I fumble for the few dollars I was going to use to buy my iced latte and fold the bills into his cup. His hand trembles as he takes it to look inside. He squints up at me against the sun. “Thank you, miss.”
I smile at him. “Try to stay hydrated, okay?”
“Always do.” He raises the cup like a toast as I step away.
When I make it to the empty bench, I plop down, removing my bag. After a quick tuck of my unruly hair behind my ears and a grimace when my fingers brush the sweat crusted over my temples, I scroll through the news on my phone.
Headlines: City Council Approves Controversial South Side Rezoning Plan; Weekend Heat Wave Expected to Break Records Along the Lakefront; and Local Billionaire Purchases Private Island by Piper Reeves.
I roll my eyes at what they constitute as news these days and lean back while cloud cover bathes the bench in shadow.
My arms stretch along the top—ugh, I don’t want to move. I’m exhausted from the week, and the weekend … I don’t want to think about it. Above me, the saturated clouds roll, heavy and bloated. I close my eyes, half wishing some rain would spill from the sky.
Lips brush mine, and my eyes flutter open to see Tristan standing behind me, a grin stretched across his face. He pulls away while I sit up and then plops down next to me.
“How was class?”
“Same as always. Hot and boring,” I answer, scooting closer to him and resting my head on his shoulder. “How was yours?”
“Meh. Stupid.” Tristan is worse than I am when it comes to not wanting to be at college. Except his reasoning stems from something completely different from mine.
He dips his face, catching my eyes, then dives in for my lips again. His black hair is messy, but his golden-hazel eyes sparkle when he finally pulls away. He tugs his bottom lip between his teeth and twirls a finger around a coil of my curls.
“Your hair reminds me of my collection of pennies.”
I blink.
“Flattering,” I deadpan. At least he didn’t comment on the unruly curls. Boys teased me throughout elementary school for my long copper locks. They used to call me curly fries.
My mother said the boys picking on me had a crush, but it sure didn’t feel that way. Especially when I was eleven. It took until my senior year of high school for me to embrace my hair, and now I can’t seem to go out in public without someone commenting on it.
Tristan included.
He grabs my hand and pecks a dry kiss on my knuckles. His lips are rough. “Want me to take you home for the weekend? Make sure everything is … okay?”
I swallow and shake my head. “No. It’ll be fine. I’ll see you back at school on Monday.”
Taking Tristan home is not an option. He can’t see where I come from, or how the once beautiful home, despite its slum location, has since turned rancid from my father’s neglect.
Heck, I don’t want to go home. But it’s the weekend, and the couches I surf during the week fill up with drunk college kids.
Plus, I’m not heartless. I do my best to help my dad clean up the house, and I figure one drunk is better than thirty.
Featherlight touches smooth over the dandelion tattoo on my forearm, and I shift away. Tristan sighs, tugging at his white T-shirt. “Spending weekends apart is getting old, Thea.”
I slide farther from him, raising my eyebrows and shrugging. Tristan was supposed to be the casual college boyfriend. The distraction—something light and temporary. For a while, he was exactly that. Lazy kisses, someone to make the weekends feel a little less heavy when I came back to school.
Somewhere along the line, it changed.
For him.
He started looking at me like I was the thing he wanted to build a future around, and I let it happen.
Sometimes when he smiles at me, I wonder if I’m supposed to feel more.
I care about him—I do. He’s kind, funny, easy to be around—one hundred percent uncomplicated.
But I catch myself pulling back from his touch, and when he says, “I love you,” I hear it, nod, smile.
Only, there’s this dull thud in my chest where something should be lighting up.
He has it all planned. We’ll graduate, get jobs, work, and travel.
But he hasn’t once asked what I want. He only assumes.
The snickers from my old friends, and the guidance counselor’s forced smile when I said I wanted to be like my mom—they all come back, fueling the same old doubt that he’d never truly get it.
“You’ll call me then?” Tristan searches my face as I offer him a tight-lipped smile and nod, then he glances down the paved campus loop. The city bus lumbers closer, its headlights cutting through the wispy fog settling over the road.
“Have a good weekend,” I say as he moves onto the bus.
He jogs up the steps and is swallowed by the dull gray interior and flickering lights. The door hisses shut behind him, and through the ad-covered windows, I watch him hurry to the back. His shoulder dips as he dumps his backpack down and presses his palm against the window.
My stomach roils as he mouths the words, I love you against the glass.
I lift a hand as the engine gives a low groan and rumbles forward. With a sigh, I turn and dig my keys from my bag, then spin them around my finger.
My car looks like it’s survived three decades and at least one apocalypse.
Phil purchased the little two-seater from one of those auction sites—one of the nicer things he did for me as a father—and I still can’t get the fried chicken smell out of the cloth seats.
The chipped red paint, or what’s left of it, is flaking off, being replaced by rust spots.
When I open the door, it squeaks, but I start her up despite the rattle of protest she offers me. At least she’s running today.
I coax the driver’s side window open and let the stagnant air slip out while I take off from school and make the drive home. It isn’t far, only about twenty minutes.