Undeclared (The Woodlands) - By Jen Frederick Page 0,2
quickly to see if I had captured the brown haired guy’s face with any clarity. But in each of the pictures I had taken, his face was averted or blocked. I couldn’t even see a chin profile. I switched to the blond’s image. Was that Bo? I squinted, zoomed in, zoomed out. I couldn’t decide. I had deleted the scanned photo of their unit off my drive at the end of last semester, right before Lana and I returned home to Chicago. It was part of the process of trying to “get real,” as Lana had admonished earlier, so I had nothing to compare to these current photos.
Frustrated, I slammed the top of my laptop shut and laid my head down.
Why was I doing this to myself? Last year had felt like actual torture. My heart jumped into my throat every time I saw a tall, dark-haired guy. I wanted so much for him to be Noah, like I could will his presence from his base in San Diego.
Lana wanted me to go to therapy, worried that I was developing a nervous disorder. It took me a week into the first year of classes before Lana had been able to convince me that Noah Jackson wasn’t now or ever going to be attending Central College.
If I was going to be looking at photographs, I should’ve reviewed the selection for my entry into the art department. I had put that off during freshman year, scared away by the horror stories. The dean of the School of Fine Arts had managed to make more students cry and want to drop out than when the on-campus Starbucks shut down for three days after a water leak.
I picked up my battered college course catalog. If I wasn’t going to get up the nerve to apply to the Fine Arts program, I needed to pick a major, something to focus my attention on, so that the rest of the world became blurred-out background noise. It was all in the perspective, I reminded myself.
***
“Anything wrong, Grace?” I started at the sound. Mike Walsh stood leaning against the circulation desk, holding his ever-present red Nerf ball. Mike maintained that he needed the ball to avoid strangling some of the more obnoxious students, who generally wanted the library staff to do their research for them.
“Nah, just not ready for classes to start again. How was your summer?”
“Can’t complain.” He tipped his head toward my dog-eared course catalog. “Worried you haven’t picked a major yet?”
Mike was my student supervisor and all last year he had watched me page through this course catalog at least once a week. “Kind of. I’m getting so tired of saying ‘undeclared’ to everyone who asks me about it.”
“Just make one up. No one knows the difference anyways.”
“No one except the students who are actually in that major,” I pointed out with what I hoped sounded like wryness. I wasn’t good at lying. For the longest time, I always thought Lana was just super-perceptive, until she told me that every emotion passed across my face like a parade of black ants on a white picnic blanket.
“So, you hear the gossip?” Mike leaned closer, his eyes bright with mischief. Mike was known for two things: his red ball and sourcing more gossip than TMZ.
“Is someone sleeping with their professor already?” That was about the only kind of gossip I figured was juicy enough to account for the eager look on Mike’s face.
“Nope. We’ve got some celebrities in our midst this year.”
“Like movie stars?” I hadn’t heard anything about this, and you’d think that Lana and the sorority girls would’ve been all over this.
“No, mixed martial arts fighters. Two guys who transferred from some junior college in California.”
If my heart had stuttered before, now it completely stopped. All the blood drained from my face, and I may have ceased breathing for a moment.
“Grace, you don’t look so good,” Mike said, leaning back as if he was afraid I was going to infect him.
“No,” I croaked. “I don’t feel so good.” I pressed my fist against my heart again.
“You should go home. There’s nothing going on tonight.”
I nodded my agreement. I needed to go home, and not just to the apartment I shared with Lana, but all the way home to Chicago. Instead, shaking inside, I packed up my tripod and camera with little conscious thought, muscle memory taking over. Mike may have even helped me; I don’t remember. I felt like my head was filled with cotton.