right up until the TA cleared her throat. Apparently, even though I wanted things to change, I still needed to be pushed from the ledge. I wasn’t ready to jump.
But the results would be the same. I put on my coat, handed in the test, and walked out into the cold morning. The sky was a bright, cloudless blue and the bells of the campanile were chiming. Across the street, two men on ladders used ropes to lift a giant Christmas wreath over the front doors of Strong Hall. The men did not speak to each other, but their movements seemed coordinated; the wreath slowly rose, perfectly centered. I found a bench and sat down to watch. I could do things like this now. It was over. There was nothing to cram for, no deadline looming over me. I didn’t have anywhere I needed to be.
And so the ache in my chest returned. During the exam, and only during the exam, I had been free of the heavy sadness that I’d gone to bed with the night before. Now, again, I had nothing to distract me. The bench was concrete, and the longer I sat there, the colder I felt. But I didn’t get up. The wreath turned blurry in my eyes, and I pulled my hat down low on my head.
“So how’d it go?”
I looked up. Tim stood in front of me, no coat, just the same sweater he’d been wearing the night before, his hands in the front pockets of his jeans. I started to smile, but the expression on his face stopped me. His dark hair was combed, his chin cleanly shaved, but I could tell, just looking at his eyes, that he hadn’t slept.
“I was at the library.” He nodded behind him. “I saw you over here. I just thought I’d come over and see how it went. The test, I mean.”
I shook my head. I hated that I was the reason he looked so tired and sad. If I reached out, or even tried to go near him, he would stop me—I could tell. But he kept looking at me, waiting. He really did want to know about the test.
“I failed it,” I said.
He shook his head. “I’m sure it wasn’t as—”
“No. I did. I really did. But I’m fine with it. I don’t care.” I looked at the sidewalk by his feet and focused on not crying. If I did, he would feel sorry for me, and that wasn’t right. I tried to pretend I was yawning.
He shifted his weight and crossed his arms. He gestured for me to scoot over. He sat on the bench, as far away from me as possible, and started rooting around in his book bag. He took out a calculator, another calculator, a book titled Thermofluid Systems, a can of Coke, the Sports section from some newspaper, and an orange. “I thought I might have some Kleenex,” he said. “I had that cold a couple of weeks ago.”
I smiled, wiping my cheeks with the back of my mitten. “Thanks for checking,” I said. I looked away from him, out across the street. The wreath was up above the doors now. The workmen stood below, looking up, one of them pointing at the red bow.
“If you didn’t want to move in with me, you could have said so.” Tim looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “If that really was the problem.”
I nodded, still looking at the wreath. This time last year, my parents were married. I was getting ready to go home for Winter Break. The Roofer was maybe already on the scene, but I didn’t know it yet. On Christmas Day, my family opened presents in the morning, and we ate turkey at the dining room table, and then we walked to Mr. Wansing’s for the neighborhood pie party, just like we did every year. When we were little, it was the Wansings, the husband and the wife. Mrs. Wansing died when I was in third grade, but I have a clear memory of her carefully getting down on her knees to look me in the eye and ask, very seriously, if I wanted pumpkin or pecan. After she died, my mother hadn’t thought that Mr. Wansing would keep inviting everyone over. He did, though. He bought pies at the store, and they weren’t as good as the ones that she had baked, but everything else was the same. He set out polished silverware