INTERLUDE

- 2 -

I'd arrived at the university on a Sunday morning which, in my opinion, partly justified my distaste of the clown in the hall on monday morning. The other element of that justification would have obviously been the enormous volume of vodka I drank the day before. I had only one class that day and it was professor Amber's. He was a cross between a gentleman and a madman, sometimes brilliant and sometimes frightening.

As I rushed into the classroom, professor Amber's voice was echoing through the room as he mindlessly paced around his desk "In all writings you must kill your ideological selves. You must become the monster you are at heart."

I swiftly made my way to a seat in the back of the class, holding in one hand my bag and in the other the coffee Jude had given me. It was now cold but still full of caffeine and so it was worth drinking. I remember looking out of the window and thinking about how grey the city was. I'd never lived in a city as big as New York and so the images I had constructed of it in my labyrinthine mind were way less grey and bleak. I sat down in one of the plastic chairs and abandoned my mind to the mindless lecture that Amber was delivering. It was only after the third time someone kicked my foot that I noticed and looked up at the intruder.

It was a girl, blonde hair and full lips. Of course I noticed her lips. And her voice sounded like warm milk when she asked me if I wanted to trade my coffee for her water because that lecture also made her sleepy and I looked like I could use some hydratation.

"Yeah sure" I said as I handed her the coffee. She downed the rest of it in record time and smiled at me.

"I'm Frances"

"And I'm Theodore" I said with a smile.

She smiled back "Nice to meet you! Hey I know this park, want to hang out after the lecture?"

I nodded my head and gave my attention to professor Amber for the rest of the hour. When he finally stopped talking we exited the classroom and walked towards the park opposite to the university building. We walked in silence until we settled down under a tree and lied down to face the sky.

"So, Theo," Frances started "who are you?" She turned her head towards me, not looking at the sky anymore. The sun reflected in her eyes and she was squinting which made her nose crunch up pretty adorably.

"Bit of a rich question isn't it?" I said, uncertain of the answer I was expected to give. It was the same question I'd asked Jude when we met and I realized now that it was hard to answer. She held out her hand and softly traced the scar on my cheek with her fingertips, from the eye to the lip, and then she stopped. She stopped and brought her face so damn close to mine, almost kissed me then backed out when she heard him. Jude.

"Wow! Get it Theo!" he said while chuckling.

I shot up and yelled back. "Go away, cherry"

He kept walking as he replied. "Freshman. Hurry up, meet us at the pit"

}{

"It appears we have a problem" Jude later said at the pit.

"We do?" Arden questionned as she lit her fifth consecutive cigarette

"Yeah we do. Little Theo's crushing on foxes"

I set down my bottle and muttered my words "Is that what you call Frances?"

Jude slurred his words, already drunk from his vodka "yeah. She's no good man"

"True, stay away freshman" Arden followed.

"Why?" I asked.

My interrogation was followed by a heavy silence. The kind that makes a ringing sound go through your ears. We all stared at each other, selfish in what we knew of the situation, no one shared any information. Then Arden moved on to her sixth cigarette and my question didn't matter anymore. We stayed silent the rest of the evening, the only source of sound being Arden's lighter once in a while. It puzzled me how we all stayed there, as if bound by an unspoken contract. We weren't talking, we didn't want to talk and yet, we all sat on the roof of that rusty car and stayed comfortably in our selfish silences. It was Charlie that left first. He simply got up on the roof and jumped onto the ground. Then he left. Just like that, without saying anything. Then Arden did the same, and so Jude and I were left sitting on the car alone.

"I don't even like her" I said defensively, trying to implant that thought into my own brain. I didn't know if I liked Frances, or if I wanted to like Frances.

Cherry stood up, facing the fence three meters away and whispered "I can't," he gulped down a little bit of vodka. "I can't tell you just, don't trust her" he sighed. He hopped off of the roof of the car and climbed over the fence, leaving me alone in between broken car corpses.

I walked alone through the streets of New York this time, the cold wind blowing on my face and messing up my hair and exposing my scar to the world. When I finally made my way to the residence, it was pitch black and cold outside. Jude was on his bed, organizing polaroids and he didn't even bother looking at me when I opened the door. Just as I was about to go to sleep he questioned me.

"How did you get that scar?"

I chuckled nervously and replied "I'll tell you if you tell me what uh, Foxes, did"

His face turned cold and he turned off the lights.

"Goodnight, freshman"

}{

The next morning I got to professor Amber's class early, with two cups of coffee. As you've probably guessed, I didn't exactly follow Jude's advice of not trusting her. I'd taken the resolution of at least being nice to her before hating her for something I didn't even know. So I got her a cup of coffee and sat down in a seat close to where she'd sat the day before and I waited until her blonde hair passed through the door.

She arrived three minutes before the beginning of the class and sat down right next to me, took the coffee after I'd explained it was for her and set down her note taking material next to her.

"So," I started "what happened between you and Jude?" I asked innocently.

"You mean Cherry?" she laughed. "Ask him. With that pretty face of yours he'll certainly tell you"

I kept a puzzled look on my face the whole class, unable to fully process her sentence. And when the class was done, I headed to what was now my home and reminisced over it there.

}{

Wow it took me a while to write that and it's shorter than the first one. I needed to figure out a bunch of details. Anyway, let me know what you thought! [word count; 1163]