Excerpt: Computer Psi

1
Chris closed his burning eyes, then forced them open. He clicked into his email and his spirits sank even lower.
Why did everything always have to be a Word doc?
Chris shut his ibook, putting it to sleep. Dr. Stacey had been nice enough to send him the lecture notes, even though he made a point of saying that he wasn’t obligated to cover students butts when they did stupid, sophomoric things like get arrested for being drunk and disorderly, and underage to boot.
At least they hadn’t been driving.
Chris lay back on the bed. No can’t go to sleep, he told himself. I’m in enough trouble already. I have to catch up on what I missed.
Only two classes. Not bad. Uncle Steven had sprung him in time for chem lab. He drove from an hour away to do it, but Chris didn’t know who else to call. Nick called his ex-girlfriend, but Chris had no phone with him, and he couldn’t remember any of his friend’s numbers.
Uncle Steven’s phone number had been stuck in his head since he was eight, along with every phone number he knew in third grade and a bunch of car commercials. Maybe that was why had trouble memorizing. His head was crammed with stuff that wouldn’t go away.
Good thing, as it turned out.
Uncle Steven had been pretty cool about it. He put on a stern face, but Chris could tell he was amused. The only bad part was that he would tell his father. Chris closed his eyes.
Maybe that wasn’t so bad. It would save Chris having to tell him. He made himself get up, then wandered the hallway in search of a normal, modern computer.
Kelsey’s door was cracked. He knocked and poked his head in. Nobody home.
Her Dell was sleeping on the bed. Chris stood in the doorway, waiting for her to come back. All he needed to do was open the Word doc, save it as a richtext file and send it to himself. It would only take a minute. Not even a minute. Campus wireless was fast.
He heard the bathroom door open and looked down the hall, fully expecting Kelsey, but it was that weird goth chick. Chris had no idea what kind of computer she had. He had barely ever spoken to her. He ducked into Kelsey’s room before the darkly clothed girl reached him.
The computer was right there. This would just take a second. Really. He wasn’t going to go into any of her files. He just needed to get the notes into a form he could open.
He’d screwed up and he knew it. The least he could do was study.
He waited until the goth girl had passed, then glanced out the door. Was Kelsey ever coming back?
He opened her computer and connected to his email. The Word document opened effortlessly, as it would have for him if he weren’t using a hand me down Mac from 2002.
At least I have that, he reminded himself.
A strange vibration passed though his knee, and his right ankle began to ache. He ignored it and typed quickly, much faster than he ever had before. Must be the bigger keyboard, he thought.
Typing had never been Chris’s thing. Like most of his generation, he had taken keyboarding in middle school, but he barely passed the state mandated test. He briefly tried I-Ming his friends in the evening, but he shared a family computer, and it wasn’t worth wasting his alloted time on chat. Besides, sports were more fun.
Now, he typed as though he he had grown up with nothing better to do than have inane abbreviated conversations on line. OMG! TTYL. He downloaded the document to Kelsey’s desktop, converted it to richtext, mailed it to himself and deleted it. He was gone before she ever got back.
He would have to tell her later. No sneaking around, no underhanded anything. Not anymore. One night in jail was enough for the rest of his life.
At least he hoped so.
His ankle throbbed. He wondered what he did to it and didn’t remember.
“Chris!” Nick hurried down the hall, dribbling a basketball. “Glad to see you’re out” he said when he caught up. “We went back to get you this morning, but you were already gone.”
“I called my uncle.”
“What did you do that for? I wasn’t gonna leave you there.” Chris shrugged.
“Hey, don’t be mad,” Nick said. “We had a great time, dude. This is no big deal.” Chris turned to go into his room. Nick followed.
“Look, this kinda shit happens. Let’s go play some ball. You’ll see. Life goes on.”
“My ankle hurts,” Chris told him.
“Do something to it last night?”
“I don’t know. No. Just an old injury. Crashed a dirt bike a few years ago. Go without me.”
But Nick just couldn’t seem to leave, and while they talked, the pain in Chris’s ankle disappeared as suddenly as it had begun. They left for the gym together, piecing together the events of last night and laughing.
Chris knew he would have to hit the books hard later. Really.
********
“What happened to you?” Chris put his cafeteria tray on an empty table and went to help Kelsey, who was hobbling through the line on crutches.
“Landed wrong. Hey, let’s head over to the salad bar.” Chris picked up her tray and followed her slow progress through the crowd.
“That’s what you get for cheerleading,” he said. “If you had stuck to a real sport –”
“I’m not a soccer player, and I don’t want to hear it. Not now.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, setting aside their running rivalry. “What else did you want to get?”
“Tacos. And a Dr. Pepper.”
“Go sit down. I’m at the that table by the window with a tray and nobody in front of it.” He gestured towards a table just past the desserts.
“Thanks.” She smiled weakly, and seemed to relax a little. Chris had a hard time managing high school on crutches. He couldn’t imagine doing college that way, on your own with no parents to help out.
He had been embarrassed that first day after the crash, walking into homeroom with Mom carrying his stuff, but the crutches took some getting used to. His friends, even kids he hardly ever talked to, had offered to carry his cafeteria tray and open doors for him. After a while, he was as fast on crutches as on two feet, but he never forgot those first awkward days of dependency.
He resolved to get up the same time as Kelsey in the morning, to help her at breakfast. He just hoped her first class wasn’t too early.
“I borrowed your computer for a minute,” he said, sitting down to join her. “I missed a lecture, and Dr. Stacey was nice enough to send me the notes. The last thing I wanted to do was tell him I couldn’t open them. But it was just a minute, and all I did was translate them into something I could open. I hope it’s okay. Your door was open.”
“You could just try going to class,” she said smirking.
“Yeah, well, I will next time. Nick and I had a little misadventure.”
“I heard. We all did.”
“I don’t want to talk about it. Not now. My head hurts.” He looked away, and concentrated on cutting a piece of tough chicken with a dull knife.
“It’s okay,” she said. “Nobody cares.”
“I do. And I haven’t heard from my folks yet, but I know they will.” He gave up and picked up the chicken. He took a bite, trying not to think about his parents, but the food reminded him that he missed his mother’s cooking.
“We’re not a rich family, Kelsey. I mean, we’re not poor or anything, but we’re not like Nick’s family. He’s a legacy here. He couldn’t care less about college, but if I screw this up, I don’t get another shot at it until I can pay for the whole thing myself. I need to buckle down. Hey, what time’s your first class?”
“Eight.”
“Figures.”
“What difference does it make?”
“I just don’t sign up for super early classes, that’s all. I like to make sure I’m going to get there. But anyway, I’ll go with you to breakfast. Just wake me up.”
“How come?”
“To help you out,” he said, blushing. He hoped she didn’t got the wrong impression.
“That’s really nice of you.”
“Yeah, well, I broke an ankle in high school, and everyone helped me out. Just passing it on. What time do I need to get up?”
“Nine.”
“Your class is at eight.” Chris stacked the trays and carried them to the dish window. Kelsey hobbled along beside him.
“Don’t think I’ll make it to that one. It’s a dance class.”
********
The hand on his shoulder worked itself into Chris’s dream.
He was in high school, the day after the ill fated dirt bike race. He hurt, felt awkward, and Candace Minor, the popular girl who filled the fantasies of the male half of his tenth grade class, was going through the cafeteria line with him. A senior football player grabbed Chris’s left shoulder, shaking him on the injured side, knocking him off balance when he was trying to look cool. Candace turned to him and called his name, and Chris opened his eyes.
Angela was gently shaking his shoulder.
“Morning, Sunshine. Kelsey asked me to wake you up.” She sat down on his bed. “I told her you weren’t a morning person.”
Chris scooted over as much as he could. He had gone on one date with her, just one, but she seemed to think there was something special between them. Damn. It had only been a movie, a campus movie. It’s not like they even went to a real theater.
He stretched, flexed his ankles. They felt fine. Probably just had that dream because of Kelsey. “What time is it?”
“Nine. She said you told her to get you up.”
“I did.” He sat up on his side. “Crutches take a little getting used to. I just figured I’d go to breakfast with her, help her out.”
“That’s really nice. You’re a sweet person, Chris.”
“Thanks for waking me up.” She showed no sign of leaving.
“Um, Angela? I need to get dressed. I sleep naked.”
“Doesn’t bother me.” She laughed.
“Bothers me.” He didn’t.
“Hey, I’m kidding, okay? Fine, I’m leaving.” She stalked out the door, leaving it open. Chris crossed the room in his boxers, not caring if she saw, and kicked the door shut. He looked over his chemistry notes one last time while he combed his hair. Then he walked three rooms down the hall to get Kelsey.
*********
“Why did you send Angela to wake me up?” Chris put down the loaded tray.
Kelsey eased herself into a chair and took her cereal and her coffee cup off the tray, leaving a more reasonably sized breakfast in front of Chris.
“To piss you off.”
“It worked.”
She smiled at him and took a sip of her coffee. “I told her I was going to wake you up and she offered. Ooh. I think I have yours. I got hazelnut.” She switched mugs with him.
“Yuck, how can you drink that stuff? It’s not hazelnuts, you know. It’s a weird chemical process they do when they roast the beans.”
“Shh. Don’t tell me. I like it.” She took another sip “What’s with you and Angela, anyway?”
“Nothing. She just can’t get it through her head.”
“She said you used to date.”
“Once. One time. Big mistake. Maybe even a bigger mistake than getting arrested.”
“Ooh. She’ll be thrilled to pieces.”
“Don’t tell her.” He tried to think of a better subject, but none came to mind. Everything he thought of seemed stupid and shallow. He was glad that breakfast was a quick affair.
“Feeling any more comfortable on those things?” he asked. Kelsey picked up the crutches she had leaned against the wall.
“Not yet. How do I shower?”
Chris looked at her firm legs. The right one ended in a purple plaster cast, which was already covered with signatures and little drawings. It wasn’t a very long cast, not like the one he had worn. “Just stick it out of the shower curtain. You can wrap it in a trash bag, but you might not need too. Oh, and when it starts to heal, it itches like a . . . like crazy. I’ll make you something to scratch it with.” His dream skated briefly across his thoughts, Candace pointing to his cast. He pushed her out of his mind.
“Thanks. Thanks a lot Chris.” She looked at him like she had never noticed him before.
“Yeah, well, it’s really depressing to get hurt like that.”
“Like you feel stupid, and everyone can see how stupid you are. I know just what you mean,” Kelsey said. It wasn’t exactly what Chris meant, but he didn’t let on.
Maybe cheerleaders weren’t so dorky after all. Watching Kelsey crutch down the sidewalk, her right leg awkward in its colorful cast, his dream pushed its way into his mind again. Why did it keep coming back?
He shoved Candace aside in favor of chemical properties. He needed to bring his grades up, party less. He knew that, but he never seemed to follow his own advice.
The dirt bike was bad enough. How was he going to explain this escapade to Dad?

2

“Check this out.” Nick stood in Chris’s doorway holding his laptop, his high score flashing purple and lime green.
“Cool.” Chris turned back to his chemistry notes, checking the answers to all the questions he remembered from the test. The feeling that he had missed something important had been nagging him all day.
Nick opened the small refrigerator tucked under Chris’s loft style bed and pulled out two beers.
“Later,” Chris said. “I’m working on a paper.”
“Since when do you write papers for chemistry?” Nick handed Chris a Corona, peering over his shoulder at his friend’s notebook.
“Since never, and I don’t want a beer yet. Just gimme, like, ten minutes.”
“Don’t say I never offered.”
Chris grinned, then opened his iBook. It was his own beer, but he didn’t really care. What mattered was that when he finally talked to his folks, at least he would be caught up in school. He dreaded the call he knew was coming.
He read over his Contemporary Civilizations paper one last time, saved it in richtext and loaded it into his flash drive. The campus printers didn’t speak Appleworks 6.
“Feeling like walking down to the print center?” Nick was sprawled on Chris’s bed, playing another game.
“Can’t, not yet. Wait. Dude! Awesome, Oh fuck!.”
Chris heard Angela talking to someone in the hallway. He quickly shut the door.
“That chick drives me nuts,” he told Nick.
“I blew this one. Come on, let’s go.”
“Not yet. Let me have a shot at it.” Chris wanted to give Angela plenty of time to get wherever she was going. He hoped she wasn’t going to plunk her stupid self down in the commons room. There was no way for him to get out of the suite without either going through it or setting off a fire alarm. Both would bring unwanted attention.
Chris sat down with Nick’s laptop and began a new game. The print center would be open for another four hours. They were college students. These were the best years of their lives. He relaxed as his fingers flew through the game like they were born to it, a game he had played only twice before.
BAM! There went a spy. Chris takes life too seriously. Needs to lighten up. BAM!
Chris shook his head. SInce when had he ever thought of himself in third person? Maybe art majors did stuff like that. Bet the goth chick thought of people in the wrong person, just to be weird. Angela’s not so bad. At least she’s practical, kind of cute.
BANG! One of his snipers bit the dust, done in by a virtual grenade.
On his last turn, Chris let go of his mind. He sprinted through a maze of alleyways fighting terrorists, his fingers doing tricks his mind knew nothing about.
I’m being Nick. I’ve played this game a zillion times, and I’ll play it a zillion times more, while fools plug away and life passes them by. On the screen, another sniper rescued his ally, and Chris soared into a first place tie with Nick’s original score.
He closed the laptop, his mind reeling. It suddenly became urgent to print his paper, even though he still had nearly four hours. He knew how the night could get sucked away. A beer here, another there, stop in to visit in someone’s room, run into someone else in the elevator. The little flash drive in his pocket weighed heavily on his mind.
“Dude. That was awesome. How’d you learn to do that? That was my best score ever.” Nick stared at the laptop.
“Let’s go,” Chris said. He opened the door and turned out the light, leaving Nick little choice but to follow.
*********
The beautiful girl in his chemistry class was printing out an assignment. Chris had started out the semester sitting behind her, staring, dreaming. He finally changed seats when he realized he was ignoring the professor. He had yet to speak to her, had never really expected to.
“How do you think you did on the chem test?” he asked, immediately feeling stupid and wishing he hadn’t said anything. She turned to look at him, and he felt his face grow hot.
“Good, I hope.” At least she didn’t act like she’d never seen him before. “Chem’s not my best subject, but I have to get it over with.” She had a pretty laugh.
“I keep thinking I missed something big, but I can’t figure out what,” Chris told her. This was a conversation that would get nowhere.
“Well, good luck with it.” She picked up her paper and floated out the door.
“She’s hot,” Chris whispered to Nick.
“She’s okay. Not my taste. I don’t go for jock types.”
“Not jock. Just healthy. Strong. Girls that look like they’re made of popsicle sticks don’t do it for me.
“Not popsicle sticks. Graceful. Like Angela.”
“Angela’s driving me crazy.”
“Send her my way.” Nick whistled.
“Take her, please.” They left the print center, Chris fully intending to do math homework before it got late. He would get a good night’s sleep, awaken refreshed and ready for class in the morning. The screw-up, mischievous Chris of his teen years he would leave behind, someone he could laugh about later.
*********
Nick’s computer was still open to the game when they got back to Chris’s room, only now, Phillip was playing it.
“Good score,” Phillip said, pointing to the high score. “Whose is it?”
“Mine,” Nick said.
“Actually, mine,” Chris told him.
“I’m close, but I can’t get to the next level. How do I get up there?”
“Dunno,” Chris said. “I’ve played it, maybe, three times.”
“No way!”
“Don’t listen to Chris,” Nick said. “He’s a pool shark, too.”
“It was a fluke,” Chris told them, and took the laptop before Nick could get to it. Once again, he relaxed as soon as he sat down with it. Gone was the math assignment, the call he was sure to get from his father, the appointment he needed to make with the campus lawyer. There was only the game. His fingers drove his soldier through levels he didn’t understand. Phillip watched over his shoulder, amazed.
Chris handed over the laptop and opened another beer before he remembered that he had a math assignment. Oh well. Just one. Then he would kick everyone out of his room and do math problems. Shower, early to bed, early to rise. The new Chris.
“Awesome,” Phillip said, looking over Nick’s shoulder. Angela poked her head in the open door.
“What’s awesome?”
“You,” Nick answered. Chris rolled his eyes. Nick handed the laptop to Phillip, helped himself to a beer, and offered one to Angela.
Jill came next, followed by Jared and Akiko. Seems like it always happened this way. It took only to a small group to attract a large crowd. Chris liked having friends, and reminded himself of all the people who studied alone, wishing they had what he did, a spontaneous party wherever he and Nick settled.
Nick’s a party. No, not just Nick. It’s us. We’re happy drunks, and he can stay that way, but I can’t. I don’t have a Daddy’s business to go into, and my parents aren’t going to be amused. My antics might have been funny in fifth grade, but it’s amazing I got into a good college at all.
Chris had a party, but he needed what the shy, quiet people studying in their rooms had: good grades. Instead, he had a zillion friends.
Did it have to be a trade off?
Nobody noticed when Chris picked up his math book and slipped away from the party, away from people. If they would just leave him alone, maybe he could study, but he didn’t want his friends to leave him alone, not really. Even Angela was okay, and maybe Nick would take her off his hands.
Avoiding temptation, Nick took the back stairs, even though he lived on the seventh floor. He ankle felt fine. That was weird, how it just starting burning out of the blue, like it had the day he broke it. He took the stairs two at a time, enjoying his athletic, youthful body.
He stepped out into the darkness between the back of the dorm and the dumpster, and the dream slid into his mind. Why did it keep coming back to him? Alone and in the dark, he mulled it over.
Candace Minor might really have gone through the cafeteria line with him that first day after the accident. He didn’t remember, but maybe his subconscious did. He pictured the dream, Candace on the right, his left ankle trying to swell against the rigid cast. He could just about see the food: spaghetti, jello, iceberg lettuce, food often served in the cafeteria. It seemed so insignificant.
What am I missing?
He nearly walked into a couple hidden in the shadows and jumped back.

3

“Oops. Sorry.” He walked on.
“Chris? That’s your name, isn’t it?”
He turned around. Looked like the goth chick that lived down the hall, but he couldn’t be sure in the shadows. Carolyn? Seemed like he had met her in one of those Meet your Suite affairs they had when they first moved in. The wind. Something about the wind. And they called the wind Mariah.
As though in response, a breeze shook the leaves above, moving dappled streetlight across her face, rendering her even more unrecognizable.
“Mariah, right?”
“That’s right. Where are you going?”
“The library.” He showed her his math book. “I need to study, but my room is full of people.”
“Let me go with you.” She abruptly left the lanky man she had been standing with and caught up to him.
“Yeah. I could use some protection,” he joked. He was aware of all the warnings that went out to women not to walk alone in the dark. This was not the first time females he barely knew hitched a walk to the library, the gym or maybe back to the dorm at night.
“I can protect you,” she said. “I can protect me, too, but why fight if you can avoid it? I used to assist my Hapkido instructor. I’m thinking of starting a self defense class for women in the dorm. Oh, and I’m Carolyn, by the way.”
“I thought so. But then I thought maybe you were Mariah, and the wind blew. I’m not real good with names.”
“Works for me. Now he’ll think I was lying when I told him my name was Carolyn. What a creep!”
“Did you know him?”
“Casually. But then he started getting real pushy, you know, physically. I didn’t want to get in a fight with him. Not sure why, but I usually keep my martial arts a secret.”
“I never would have guessed it.” Chris held the library door for Carolyn, but she stayed in the wide entryway.
“Um, would you mind walking me to the Java Jive?” She gave a small, sheepish laugh. “I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.”
Chris looked down at his text book. He could do math one place as well as another. For that matter, he could do it in his room, if he could get everyone to leave.
“Sure,” he answered. “Are you sure you’re a martial artist?”
“Yeah. I’m just shook up. I’ve never had to use it. I’m great in competitions, but that’s different. I don’t know if I could really hold my own against a big guy, just because I know more than he does.”
“I’ll bet you can.” Chris had no idea if she really could.
“Think so?” Her lip ring glinted in the streetlight.
Without warning, Chris grabbed her wrist. In less than a second, she had broken loose and stopped just short of elbowing him in the temple.
“Told ya,” he said, grinning.
She dropped her arm and smiled back. “Thanks.”

It was nearly three when Chris finished his math and turned out the light. He shut his eyes and thought of Carolyn, and how wrong he had been about her. He had only seen her as a wispy goth girl, assuming she wrote depressing poetry. He never would have guessed she could move as quickly and precisely as she did. He also would never have bothered to find out that they were both forestry majors, since she was a year ahead of him and in none of his classes. Her minor was creative writing, but she wasn’t that interested in poetry. She liked mysteries. In fact, she had confided, after chatting for an hour over strong black coffee, she wanted to write a mystery series about a forest ranger.
There already was one, Chris told her. The writer was a ranger. He couldn’t remember her name, but promised to look it up. The protagonist was Anna something, and the mysteries took place in different National Parks. He kept picturing doves, and wanted to call the protagonist Anna Byrd, but he had been wrong about the wind and Mariah, so he left ranger Anna without a last name. He read a lot of mysteries when his leg was broken and he was grounded for being an idiot, although he left out that last part.
They talked about camping, about trips they had taken and how beautiful the Grand Tetons were. One of them could hardly finish a sentence without the other jumping in to counter with an experience of their own. They stayed until the Java Jive closed for the night, then walked off the coffee buzz and talked some more.
Back at the dorm, she showed him one of her stories. She was good. As he scrolled down the page, he could almost smell the flowers, see the sunrise, hear the rain. Her writing was filled with mysterious little passages, and he understood them all, as though he had written them himself.
The math problems got pushed to the back of his mind, but they still nagged at some little part of him. The later it got, the more the homework cried out for attention in his hormone addled brain.
Somewhere in the early morning hours, Chris finally heeded the call. He walked from her room to his own, down at the other end of the suite. The goodnight kiss was still on his lips when he settled on his bed with his math text.
Tomorrow, he thought as he closed his tired eyes. Tomorrow I will be a better student.