Excerpt: Who's That Girl?

Not that life wasn’t trying to tempt me anyway, now that it had already crushed my hopes and dreams. Over the course of the next few weeks, the same girl I’d noticed noticing me earlier in the year appeared conveniently around campus wherever I went. The first time I saw her, I was buying hot chocolate at the little coffee shop in the library. Blowing into the sip hole to cool it off, I browsed the periodicals for something to distract me from my homework. On the other side of the stacks, two big brown eyes peered back at me, and I jumped back so quick I almost doused myself with my whole scalding drink.
“Oh, careful!” she shouted, drawing glares and shushes from the rest of the students studying. She rounded the corner of the shelves to inspect the damage, nodding her head when she realized I was okay.
“Sorry to startle you,” she said in a much lower tone. “I was stocking the shelves when I saw you, and I thought I’d surprise you by saying hi. I didn’t mean for it to be that big a surprise.”
She shifted the stack of magazines she had in her arms and extended a smooth, tan hand. I clasped it lightly, fearing a strong handshake belonged more for a teacher or librarian and not a fellow student.
“Heather,” I told her. “Do you work in here, uh, what’s your name?”
“I’m Claudia. I do work here, just to help pay what my student loans don’t cover. I saw you at the meeting the other week, but you haven’t been back. How do you like it at college?”
We chatted for a few minutes about Alderman University and classes before one of the librarians called for her to get back to work. She gave me a pained look that begged me to stay and keep her company, but I had already put off an important paper far too long. I dashed off to a snug corner upstairs and tried to focus on it, peeping over my shoulder every so often to see if Claudia might be shelving books right behind me. She never did find an excuse to come back upstairs and talk with me some more, but I was proud that I had at least introduced myself to someone and held a conversation without spazzing out. So far I had few friends outside the dorm, and wasn’t used to walking through a crowd without somebody to wave hello to.
A few days later, Claudia spotted me reading a book on one of the benches on the lawn. She plopped down beside me, gray messenger bag thumping to the ground and her breezy skirt sending out a waft of something smoky and spicy. I offered up the book I was reading, after dog-earring the page I was on, for her to read the back cover.
“This looks really good,” she said. “Did you get it from the library? God, I can’t remember the last time I had the chance to read something just for fun, even at work. Enjoy this first semester while you can.”
“What year are you?” I asked. “Please tell me it doesn’t get busier than this. I’m already swamped with stuff. Every time I get caught up with everything once and for all, they dump another six or seven assignments on my plate.”
“I’m a junior. And oh, it gets much busier. They go easy on you your freshman year so you can get accustomed to it. But don’t let it scare you off.”
She told me she lived over in the college apartments, and I briefly wondered if she was the culprit who had made off with Rachel after my night was interrupted. She certainly came across as forward enough to pick up a girl at a party. But the more I listened to the swagger in her voice, the more I realized she would never be the one leaving dozens of phone calls and missed messages. She would be the one to turn off her phone and chuck it into the river, just because she couldn’t take it anymore. Still, something about her confidence kept me from sprinting off like a scared deer. Where Rachel’s flirty games eventually crossed the line to desperate, Claudia’s were just a part of everyday conversation.
“So are you coming to the meeting again tonight?” she asked me. It took me a second to remember what she was talking about. I had so many papers and quizzes running through my mind that I had all but forgotten that I’d missed three weeks’ worth of Rainbow Alliance meetings. At least, I tried to tell myself that I hadn’t been back because of my schoolwork. Really, though, I’d met too many kids who had gone to my high school back home to do anything like that without looking over my shoulder.
“Well, I can try to put off some of my work,” I offered. “I mean, if I have time to take a break and read, I guess I have no excuse not to get involved with a club.”
“Good! A few people have asked about you to your friends. We hate to see people drop out, just because we’ve never had a big group to begin with. And tonight we’re going over stereotypes, and that’s always hilarious. So what do you say?”
I agreed to join them that night. A peaceful sort of silence fell over us, and I went back to reading my book. Something about Claudia took away all the pressure I felt to fill the silence. The way she leaned back in the bench and let the October breeze tousle her wedge of curly hair told me that she had no problem just sitting back and enjoying the day.
“Oh, look at that kid,” Claudia said, pointing to a boy trying to maneuver his skateboard onto a picnic table. “I love the boarders on this campus. Let’s see how long it takes for him to bust his face on the sidewalk.”
It didn’t take long at all for the boy in question to slip and fall onto the concrete. I felt a pang of guilt for laughing along with Claudia until the boy dusted himself and tried to strut away like he had meant to fall along. The amount of arrogance in such a small gesture immediately evaporated any sympathy I had for him. Claudia laughed without remorse until there were tiny beads of tears in her eyes.
She and I spent the rest of the hour watching people go by, trying to guess what they were thinking or doing. After awhile her arm stretched out and rested behind me on the bed, not quite brushing my shoulders. I sat up a little straighter, not too quickly to offend her, and casually shifted to put a few inches between us as I gestured to someone else. I wasn’t about to get sucked into another romancer’s games after failing so miserably at Rachel’s. Claudia’s carefree attitude and confidence drew me in and made me genuinely like her, but I couldn’t see myself hanging off her arm until someone new interested her. With every motion she made towards me, I made another away from her, maintaining a careful ignorance of her intentions. Let her think I just didn’t pick up on her flirting, and we could still be friends.