Chapter 2 #2
She actually did have a paper to work on, and she could try out Word Perfect, but now that she was here, she could admit to herself the real reason she wanted to go to the computer lab.
He might be there. And maybe, just maybe, she’d see him today.
Or—miracle of miracles—actually talk to him face to face.
She didn’t appear to be in luck; the computer lab was completely empty, both the main room with the CompuServe terminals, and the smaller room where the computers dedicated to word processing were set up. Well, at least she could start on her paper for 20 th Century American Literature.
A half hour later, Nora had—she hoped—figured out enough about Word Perfect to get started writing.
Once she got going, it was—much to her surprise—a lot easier than working on her typewriter.
She quickly got into a rhythm, and got nearly two pages done before she was distracted by voices from the main room of the lab.
Both male, but neither one of them was him .
An older man, probably a professor, was looking for someone. “I thought Mr. Keller would be here.”
He was answered by a younger man, definitely a student. “He’s usually here early, Professor Maddox. I’m not sure where he is.”
“I thought he’d want to help take this machine apart. Well, it’s his loss.”
Mr. Keller? Could that be him?
Nora didn’t have to wonder long. She heard footsteps, and then a voice—her voice—speaking through ragged breaths. “Sorry I’m late, Professor. My RA was having a minor crisis with her computer. I ran all the way over from West Hall as soon as I got her sorted out.”
The younger man said, “Good timing, Daniel. Professor Maddox was about to open up the PC here, he didn’t want you to miss out.”
“I can speak for myself, Mr. Thompson,” the professor said. “But he is correct. I’m glad you made it, Mr. Keller.”
Daniel Keller.
That was a good, solid name. For a good, solid guy. A guy who helped his RA, then sprinted across campus so he wouldn’t disappoint his professor. And whose professor thought enough about him to be disappointed by his absence.
She knew something else, too. He lived in West Hall, so he had to be a sophomore, at least. Probably not a senior, though. It was hard to be sure just from a voice, but she didn’t think he sounded old enough for that.
So: smart. Responsible. Helpful. Friendly. Respected. Sophomore or junior.
Not bad for less than a minute of overheard conversation, plus where he lived. All that, and she’d knocked out two pages about The Great Gatsby and the Tragedy of the American Dream. Nora considered that a very successful outing.
Should she push her luck and try to actually speak to Daniel?
It wasn’t to be. When she poked her head out the door of the word processing room and into the main computer lab, all she could see was the backs of two young men, both bent over the innards of a computer.
Which one was Daniel? The dark-haired one in what might be a polo shirt, or the redhead in a ratty T-shirt?
She didn’t wait around to find out; she’d learned enough for one afternoon.
Next time, though.
Next time, she’d catch him alone.
Or maybe the time after that. It had to happen sooner or later, didn’t it?
Daniel, October 13
He hadn’t seen—well, overheard, anyway—Nora in two weeks.
The last time he’d been in the same room with her had been at the used bookshop.
Daniel had been back three times since then.
He told himself it was in hopes of another lucky find like the mint-condition copy of The Hobbit , but he wasn’t very convincing, even to himself.
Regardless, she hadn’t been there on any of his visits. Nor had she returned to the computer lab.
Or maybe she had. He had no idea what she looked like, only how she sounded.
He could’ve walked past her a dozen times these last two weeks and never known it.
Knowing his luck with girls, it wouldn’t surprise him.
It felt like exactly the kind of cruel joke the dating gods would play—dangle the possibility of a smart, funny, wonderful girl just out of reach and out of sight.
And if he ever did see her? That might be the cruelest joke of all. It would be like the Looney Tunes cartoon where the Coyote finally catches the Road Runner, except the Road Runner was fifty feet tall and the final shot was the Coyote holding up a sign reading “Now what do I do?”
Daniel shook his head and turned back to his cheeseburger. He didn’t like eating alone precisely because it usually led to thoughts like that. Not even a piece of cherry pie with whipped cream could lift his mood.
Maybe he could train himself to think more positively?
The brain was sort of like a computer, wasn’t it?
And after all, that’s what he was majoring in.
If he started giving himself instructions to focus only on good, uplifting, encouraging thoughts, that’s what he’d get.
His cousin Bianca told him the same thing nearly every week—without the computer analogy, which she would mock relentlessly.
There! He saw his face reflected in the window. Smiling. It was already working. So what else could he be positive about?
The cheeseburger was really excellent. The Green Lantern Café always did a good job, but whoever was on the grill today had nailed it.
Yesterday, Professor Maddox had praised him in front of the whole class—that had felt fantastic.
And hadn’t he beaten Bob and Phil in that brutal game of Battletech yesterday that went until nearly midnight?
There were plenty of good things in his life. It was just a matter of reminding himself.
His reminders were interrupted suddenly by a voice.
“I’ll pay, Kim. You sat here for an hour reading over ten pages of nonsense about The Great Gatsby , it’s the least I can do.”
Definitely her voice. Nora .
He sat up straight, searching for where it had come from. There was only one booth it could be, right by the front door.
Two girls sat there. One was a redhead, dressed in a school sweatshirt and jeans. The other—it was hard to tell from across the café—maybe had dark blonde hair, and she was a little taller than her friend. She was wearing a frilly orange blouse and a skirt. Both of them were smiling.
Both of them were pretty.
But the blonde girl was more than that. Even from twenty or thirty feet away, her smile was entrancing. That was the only word that came to mind. And her eyes, blue or green, it was impossible to tell from here, but either way, they sparkled .
“Thanks, Nora. But you have to let me pay next time, deal?” It was the redhead.
Nora was the blonde. The girl who was as beautiful as she was funny. The girl who was smart and read out loud in the middle of the bookstore. The girl who even knew who HAL-9000 was.
Now he knew.
Now he’d seen her.
And now he had to do something about it.
Nora, an hour later
Nora hadn’t been paying attention to the time at lunch with Kim, and she’d run all the way from the Green Lantern Café back to campus and Addison Hall to try to make it to her two-thirty class on time. Well, jogged. Mostly jogged.
Half jogged, half walked—either way, it hadn’t mattered, because when she got to Addison Hall and dragged herself up the stairs to the third floor, there was a sign taped to the door of Room 307. Professor Madison was sick, and class was cancelled today.
That left her afternoon free. Really free, since Kim hadn’t found anything in her Gatsby paper that she needed to edit, and she had no other assignments that were due this week, or even next week.
She didn’t know what to do with herself. There wasn’t much to do on a Thursday afternoon, really. She wasn’t hungry. She didn’t feel like going shopping anywhere—not that she had a lot of extra money to spend anyway. And she definitely didn’t want to go back to her room.
Indecision, and a perfect October afternoon, made the choice for her. She sat herself down on the steps in front of Addison Hall, enjoying the cool-but-not-cold breeze and doodling in a notebook.
She was engrossed, filling several pages, not paying the slightest attention to her fellow students walking past her, chattering about this or that. Not until she heard a gasp, followed by her name.
“Nora?”
She looked up from the notebook to see a dark-haired boy wearing a Yankees T-shirt standing at the bottom of the steps. He had the prettiest blue-gray eyes, and a voice that she recognized. His voice
“Hi,” she said, her breath catching. “Daniel?”
His jaw dropped. Nora didn’t think that actually happened in real life.
“You know who I am?” He was almost smiling, almost laughing. And it only hit her now that he somehow knew who she was, too.
“I think we both know who each other is. I’m not sure how, but there it is.
” It was obvious, wasn’t it? Just like she’d been overhearing him in different places the past few weeks, he’d been overhearing her.
“God, we’re both so dense, huh? You’ve been in all the same rooms I have, of course you know me.
If I could hear you, obviously you could hear me, too. ”
He looked—she couldn’t describe it. She saw embarrassment, frustration, relief and joy all together on his face, as though there was an argument going on inside his head about how he should be reacting right now.
“Would you believe that never occurred to me?”
Yes, she would. “Well, I didn’t think of it until right now, either, and we’ve been just missing each other for more than a month, so, yeah.”
Daniel, a moment later
When he saw her sitting on the steps—all by herself, there couldn’t possibly be a better time to introduce himself and actually talk to her—he hadn’t managed anything beyond blurting out her name.
Maybe the positive thinking really did work. Maybe it had even convinced the dating gods to look kindly on him. How else to explain that she knew his name, knew who he was, and that she seemed genuinely glad to see him in person?
“It is kind of wild,” he said. And then he went on, not sure where the words were coming from.
“I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but a couple of weeks ago, I was one shelf over at Turn the Page and I heard you and your friend, and you were doing all the voices from that terrible book.
” He shouldn’t have said that. It made him sound like a weirdo. Or maybe even a stalker.
But all she focused on was one word. “It was not terrible!”
“I heard you,” Daniel said. “You yourself said it was trash. But I’d listen to you read it out loud anyway. You’re funny—no. You’re the funniest girl I’ve ever met.” He shouldn’t have said that, either. But, again, she wasn’t reacting as though he’d just made an idiot of himself.
“You’re just saying that. That’s a cheesy pick-up line, you don’t mean that.” Except her tone didn’t match her words. Like she believed him, but she was having to convince herself of it. Bianca did that sometimes. On the very rare occasions she let her guard down, his sister Lisa did, too.
“It’s true. And not just because you do great character voices.
I was in the next room when you were talking with that brown haired girl, I guess she’s in one of your classes, when you were playing around on CompuServe.
You were hilarious. And sometimes when you were by yourself—you know you talk to yourself, right? ”
She was staring at him now, hard. He still couldn’t say for sure whether her eyes were greenish-blue or blueish-green. Either way, she was looking for something from him, and then—whatever it was, she found it.
“I guess I do, don’t I? I—like I said, I didn’t think about you hearing me.
I was concentrating on you. The way you’re always helping people out in the computer lab, and how you always know what you’re doing.
Or how you rendered Professor Steinberg speechless when you showed PageMaker to him.
Everybody was talking about it. And on top of that, you’re pretty funny too. ”
Now he was staring into her eyes, looking for proof that she meant what she was saying. He couldn’t define what he saw, or explain it, but he believed her. She really did mean it, all of it.
“Wow. That’s… I… okay, I’m just going to say it, before I lose my nerve.
” Yet another thing he shouldn’t have said.
But maybe she was the one girl in a thousand, or a million, who could hear what he meant instead of the awkward words that came out.
She hadn’t laughed at him, or gotten up and run away yet.
“Would you—would you want to go out? Dinner, maybe? Tomorrow night?”
She smiled. It was the sweetest, most open and welcoming smile he’d ever seen. “Yeah. I’d love that.”
“Really?” He wanted to kick himself. But she was still smiling that same smile. She really was that one in a thousand, or million, girl, wasn’t she?
“Yeah, really. Seven o’clock, does that work? You can pick me up outside Morris Hall.” She stood up, reached over, patted his arm. “And thank you. For saying I’m funny. That—it means more than you know.”