Incarnadine

Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

The Physics assignment turned out to be a workload. Not to mention the notes. It was killing my right hand. Magnetic flux, electrical flux, resistor, capacitor, inductor—

I almost finalize my future major in uni right there and then: English major. A bit too boring for my taste, but at least I’d deal with no complicated formulas or annoying diagrams. Or maybe I should just choose Psychology. Maybe Mr. Zimmerman would turn crazy by his own teachings and needed counseling.

That’d be hilarious.

My eyelids felt heavy, and by the time I decided to take a look at the clock, I found that five hours had passed. Damn. Stretching out my stiff limbs, I wondered where Jamie was going out with Nick this time. I hadn’t asked, because I was afraid she’d drag me as their third wheel. She did that sometimes.

I had these druggie-look-alike heavy bags under my eyes the next day at school.

Another set of notes. Assignments. Notes. Assignments.

God. It was only the second day of school. I couldn’t believe the school would really torture us this way.

People who passed me in the hallways of the school scrambled out of my way when I walked to my lockers. I must have poured off a lethal aura around myself. I didn’t know how they could all be so carefree; I sure felt like life as a student was already killing me enough, and that was still without all the drama.

Jamie hung out with her old friend and Nick. I told them I’d be in the library.

Our school had a very limited range of books. Any research I needed to do, I almost always did it online—not because I was too lazy to go through the pages, but because I couldn’t possibly find any Faraday theorems in the magazines section, classics section, or the encyclopedia section. The latest magazines were 80’s edition. The classic collection would be very helpful if the pages weren’t so ancient yellowish that the words were blurred together. Not to mention the ones with ripped out pages. I’ve found, in one awkward occasion, that the book Julius Caesar on the lower shelf is actually only Julius Caesar in the cover and a copy of some new trashy fiction titled One Night with My Biker Billionaire Stepbrother. Seriously. And the encyclopedia section consisted of no encyclopedias visible, but instead, a bunch of Latin books and Latin dictionaries. Which might have been very useful if only our school had a Latin class or if the dictionaries were not all Latin-Latin.

Inside the library, I worked on my paper in front of one of the computers. The computer, too, was ancient. It had the big cube-shaped monitor people used to use before flat-screens came into invention. I jotted down the information I needed and tried to figure out a problem to solve as an example to the material.

When I woke up at the ringing of the bell, I hit my head on ancient monitor and found that my drool was all over the keyboard. I must have been more tired than I thought. In the clumsy attempt to wipe it, I bumped into my papers and they all went down scattered on the floor.

I reached out to take them, but someone had already gotten there first, scooping the papers in one swift motion and handed them to me.

Groggy, I rubbed my still-blurred eyes and took it from the guy. “Thanks.”

The guy nodded and turned away. It was only after I had the papers slipped back into my file that I realized who the guy had been. The realization made me drop all my papers back to the floor, but I didn’t care. I went after the guy, searching the whole the library even, but he was already gone. Dejected, I went back to where I’d left the mess of papers all over the floor and arranged them.