I'll Take Two

Chapter Three

"When I saw you, I fell in love, and you smiled because you knew." -William Shakespeare 

      Justin sat across from me, his hands only inches from mine as he set his tray down. Reilly sat beside him, and proceeded to eat what to her was a dinner. Mashed potatoes with salad and peaches covered in cottage cheese. Strange, but I'm not one to judge a person on their food choices.

  "So you guys must know each other pretty well?" I said, smile at Reilly and Justin's closeness with each other. "Yeah," Justin sad, looking at me with his dangerously blue eyes. "We met in high school." Reilly smiled then said, "we're not dating," as if she knew my thoughts. Justin laughed to himself and said, with a mock whisper, "Reilly has been a lesbian since the tenth grade." She smiled, but punched him in the arm, and he faked injury and acted hurt. I laughed at their silly antics, and finished my food.

  We walked back to our new room and talked about the following three days before school. Reilly and Justin were second year students, and Justin lived in a house off campus. Reilly had wanted to move at least into er own dorm room, but she was on a scholarship, which meant she got last choice of everything. i kinda felt bad for her, but I think she didn't mind as much as she pretended to.

  After we got back, Justin helped Reilly make her bed, then he said goodnight, and went home. I sat on the edge of my bed, and took a deep breath. Then, I found my bundle of bedding, and made up the bed, where I would sleep for the next year, or until the summer at least. I was excited. And for once I felt like my own person, not some attachment to my family. 

  My dad, Jeff, had worked in physiological therapy  for nine years, having found a job straight out of his eight year degree. He married my mother when they were in his third year of college, and she was going to become a mathematics teacher. Three months after they were married, my mother discovered she was pregnant. My father was twenty five, and had not planned for a child, but he was still delighted. At that point their, our, whole life changed. My mother luckily had just finished her last semester of college when i was born. My dad had a day job, and transferred to night classes. He was often exhausted, but he pushed through. shortly after I was born, my mother unexpectedly was pregnant again. Me and my sister Alice are what you we call 'Irish twins.' 

  When I was five, and my sister was four, our dad finished school, and got his first job, as a counselor at the local high school. Though we should have been celebrating, we weren't. My mother felt a pain in her chest, and the doctor said she had advanced lung cancer. Though we tried several things, nothing reduced the cancer. My mother told us to stop the treatments, and that she wanted to spend her last moments with us. My grandmother, my mothers mother, came to stay with us, and shortly after rented the house next to ours. After five months, my mother died on November 29th, when I had just turned was six, and Alice was about to be five. I had started school in august, but I missed a lot of it for my mother. The only thing that kept all of us going, was each other.

     I woke up to the sound of a slamming door coming from outside the dorm. I had fallen a sleep in my shoes, and now was uncomfortable. I looked at the little alarm clock I had set on the little bedside table. It said 2:45am on it, and I wondered what on earth could be happening in the room beside us, where the door slamming had come form. Then the sound of a squeaking bed frame told me more than I anted to know. "The walls are so thin..." I though, as I desperately tried to go back to sleep.

  The next time I woke, it was six, and the slight light of the morning came in through the window. I heard Reilly's soft breathing, then reached for my phone on the table beside me. I texted Alice, because I knew she would be up reading some fantasy book, or even fan fiction. She was a sucker for made up world's. 

"Hey, I made it through the night without to much problem." I typed, smiling  to myself about the neighbors' activities of the night before, but best not to mention that. Alice replied, "I see, how's that Reilly girl, she seemed like a head case?"  I thought of how Alice had just jumped to judgment before even getting to know someone, maybe she'll just grow out of it. "She is actually awesome!" I said, even though I hardly knew her. "That's good," Alice said, then "I got to go, I'm gonna go for a run before school." I reply, "I'll go for a run around campus too, then we'll be running together." I add a smiling emoji, and sit up to put on my sneakers.

  I get outside, and the sun is just barley touching the trees. It's about 6:30 now, and I see people leaving in their cars, going who knows where. I decide to run around the dorm building area, then I see a small garden that has a path way to the class buildings. I take it and begin to get oriented with the campus, that is to be my knew home. 

  I round the corner of what looks to be and art building, by the projects hanging in the windows, and see the river that i was subconsciously looking for. there was a bridge that over looked the small river, and I saw a boy smoking a cigarette, leaning against one of the support beams, where the lights were going off. 

  "Hey," he said as I stopped running to look over the wall of the bridge. "Hey," I replied, shyly glancing at him, catching my breath. We stood in silence, watching the water under the bridge. An obscure poem by Pablo Neruda came to mind:

     "Everything on the earth bristled, the bramble, pricked and the green thread, nibbled away, the pettal fell, falling until the only flower was the falling itself. Water is another matter, has no direction but it's own bright grace, runs through all imaginable colors, takes limpid lessons from stone, and in those functionings plays out the unrealized ambitions of the foam."

  "Would you like a cigarette?" He says, holding out the box. And I, for some reason, except, hold the lighter to it, and begin an unbreakable habit, that I would probably never loose. It feels like fire on my throat, but there's also a pleasure in it. The way I feel, and how it makes me feel. To me surprise i don't cough or choke, just breathing how I would the sweet clean air. The stranger smiles, a smile that is on of those half smiles were is teeth show on one side, and all manner of seduction is in his smile.

  "I'm Devin," he says, holding out a hand, and on it I see four letters on his knuckles, "T-O-M-0." I take his hand and say, "I'm Sandy." Then I see his other hand holding the cigarette. The letters "R-R-O-W," are on his left hands knuckle. "Tomorrow," I say out loud, and he smiles. "Guess I'll see you then Sandy."

  He walks away, across the bridge, his laughing smile never leaving is face. "Til tomorrow then," I whisper, but I'm sure he didn't hear me.