Quick Study - By Gretchen Galway Page 0,21

Remembering Bonnie’s phone calls, Paul broke into a grin and flagged it down.

“Here’s your chance, dickwad,” Paul said.

Watching the police approach, and more than happy to provide his eyewitness testimony, Paul was filled with a happiness so complete he thought he’d float away from the weightless joy of it.

So this is what love feels like, he thought.

Parked in front of her apartment building, still shaking with the trauma of the attack, Bonnie sat frozen in her seat and tried to get a grip. Making her statement at the police station had taken longer than she’d expected, and though she’d called Lorraine and Marilyn to warn them she would be home late, they would worry. But she couldn’t make herself get out of the car.

She stared over at the folder filled with questionnaires on the seat next to her and didn’t recognize them, not even the red binder with the white label, not the transparent pink clipboard, or even the box of fine-point rollerball pens shoved alongside.

It was as though she had sleepwalked into somebody else’s life.

With sudden clarity, Bonnie recognized the futility of the past few years and knew, just as surely as she knew she would never be a member of the Starship Enterprise, that she would never finish her degree in the progressive fringe of interdisciplinary social sciences. Because she hated the progressive fringe of interdisciplinary social sciences. And the conservative fringe and moderate core, too. And academia itself, come to think of it, with all its smug self-referential bias and back-breaking loans and shitty pay.

She was going to quit.

She let her forehead rest on the steering wheel, acknowledging the failure with a numb sense of relief. Expecting tears to follow, she was surprised when she could only manage a deep sigh. Even her mother wouldn’t have wanted her to pursue a degree she hated—unless it was in law or business, maybe, with its promises of affluence and prestige—and maybe, Bonnie had to admit, maybe not even then.

Life was too short. How could she have forgotten? Her parents had died at fifty-seven, long before their time. If this guy had raped and killed her, would her last thoughts be filled with regrets about academic paperwork?

Or with the regrets of not truly living?

Paul had been there. She’d been too freaked to talk to him, to ask why he’d followed her.

The rectangular windows of her apartment building glowed into the darkness. Lorraine and Marilyn. They must have told him where to find her. She reached into her pocket and ran her thumb along the smooth edge of his card, wondering what he thought and what he would say. How much had he seen?

The sidewalk in front of her apartment seemed unusually dark, and she hesitated to get out of her car. Damn men. Some men. The ones who could hurt you—or tried to, since Bonnie had followed her dad’s unusually serious advice to learn self-defense.

She clicked on the reading light and dialed Paul’s number, her hands shaking as much as they had after backing the truck over her would-be rapist.

Part of her had wanted to really drive over him—bone-crushing, wheel-to-flesh contact—not just straddle him. But thank God she hadn’t.

“Hello?”

Paul. How good he sounded. “It’s me,” she said. “Bonnie.” Then to her shame, began to cry.

“Where are you?” He sounded frantic. “Did you talk to the police?”

She took a deep breath. “I drove straight to the station and made a statement. They said they had a car on the scene.”

He paused. “They did. I made a statement.”

“Thank you.”

“They took in your friend—”

“Do not call him that.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, sounding truly chastened. “They seemed to know him from another case. They put him in the back of the squad car.”

“My God. What an idiot.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“Of course it wasn’t my fault! I told that loser I was calling the police when he followed me out the door. I even took his picture.”

He laughed. “Man, I—” he stopped himself. “I want to see you. Can I come over?”

“I’ve been sitting in my car in front of my apartment for a half hour. I think I’m afraid to get out of it.”

“I’ll be right there.”

He clicked off and Bonnie closed her eyes, too stirred up to analyze the blurry mixture of lust and affection she felt for him, and when ten minutes later he came humming down the street in his Prius, she got out of the car to meet him.

“Thanks again—” she began, but he had his arms around her.

“I’m so