"Can I ask you a question?"
"Only if it's not about alleles or chromosomes," Lauren grumbles, taking a long sip of her ice-cold coffee. Around them, the study hall buzzes with quiet chat, the ping of Windows start-up chimes and thuds of books being dropped onto tables. It's quarter to eleven, and she and Dan have nearly finished with their first genetics presentation for Monday. But after three lectures, a lab test and an afternoon rush shift at the café today, Lauren has had enough of any activity requiring brain cells.
"It's somewhat personal," Dan says. "About me."
"Like I said, if it ain't genetics, go right ahead." She leans back in her chair, stretching out her arms wide.
"How do you tell someone you like them?"
"Wow." Lauren grins. "That depends. Who do you like?"
"No one." He shakes his head vigorously. "Not yet, anyway."
"So…you're asking because you're planning on liking someone?"
"Yes, that's my plan for this year."
"Aside from successfully completing your freshman college year, right?"
"Of course. But that part is easy. I've always had my career trajectory planned out: Biochemistry, Biophysics and Molecular Biology here, then medicine at one of the top twenty, followed by a Radiology residency."
"Wow, you really do have a plan." Lauren would give a kidney for that kind of life map.
"Of course, but I have a plan for my personal life, too, and it involves finding a girlfriend." He stares down at his hands. "I've never had one."
"Right," she says slowly. A guy with no track record for whom awkward is his personal brand. That's not the easiest sell.
"And I'm not sure how to tell a girl once I do find the right one except to blurt it out, but that's kind of scared off girls in the past, and Raf says I should try something more, uh, subtle."
"Probably."
"So, what do you say if you like someone?"
"I don't think I really tell them." That would take normal human communication skills. Not exactly Lauren's forte, either. "I usually show them."
"Show them?"
"Yeah, show them. You know, like, I flirt, or just look at them in that way."
"What way?"
Lauren stares at Dan. "I can't exactly show you."
"Why not?"
"Because I don't like you like that—no offence—and because I have to be at least two drinks in before I can do flirty eyes."
"But I don't drink." He looks alarmed.
'It's not an actual requirement." She laughs. "Just for me, because I possess zero self-confidence unless buttressed by alcohol."
"Right." He frowns. "That didn't help at all.'
"Why don't you ask Raf what to do?"
"I did. He just laughed and said I'd know how when I needed to."
"Maybe he's right," Lauren says, but she's doubtful. Dan seems like a guy who needs a road map. On the other hand, Raf, seemed to possess the air of a guy who'd do fine winging it— in the five minutes she was in his presence, anyway. "How do you know him?"
"He's my second cousin. He's a sophomore here, and Mom and Dad thought it would be good for me to live with him up here, instead of the dorms, so he could help me out if I needed anything. So, I live in a house with him and Leyla and Kim—you met them—and a guy who lives in the attic."
"Do you like it?"
It's okay. They're nice to me—especially Leyla—but I know I don't really fit with them."
"Sounds like my dorm," Lauren says, thinking of Steffi and her friends. She sits up, clutching the dregs of her coffee. "Anyway, enough studying. Where are we going to find you a girl to like?" She cranes her neck, glancing around the room. "Might as well start window shopping, right?"
"Uh, right," he says uneasily.
At the back of the café where Lauren works, there's a small courtyard scattered with crates and weeds and broken furniture. It's her favourite place to spend her break. If she tries to sit down inside and it gets busy, she can't stop herself jumping back in and help, no matter what Jay says. So instead, she sits on her crate out the back of the cafe in a small concrete yard and pretends the café doesn't exist for a minute.
It's biting cold tonight. She zips up the thick coat she bought two days into being here when she realised her New York winter jacket wouldn't hold up to a Walla Walla winter, picks at her turkey sandwich and stares into the starry darkness. In just a couple of weeks, it feels like she's sort of fallen into the rhythms of being in this new place. But it's also in quiet moments like this that she's reminded that a few weeks nothing about this resembled her life at all. Instead, she'd be staring at the blinking windows of tall building opposite and hearing the inexorable rush of traffic below. There'd be no stars, either. Only a hum of light blanketing the city.
At the same time, she already finds it hard to remember exactly what her life felt like ovr the summer. Just the basics: patchwork of images of their plush prison of an apartment, Vanessa rolling her eyes more than she smiled during that last summer as she became a full-blown pre-teen, endless nights of her mother's parties and their messy aftermaths, Lauren at her own summer celebrations trying to feel connected to these people she grew up alongside, but really just waiting to leave all of it behind.
A shadow moves slowly along the fence line at the back of the courtyard, a small, skinny cat, crouched low, its belly almost scraping the fence. Even in the darkness, Lauren can see how scrawny it is. She pulls a piece of turkey from her sandwich and tosses it onto the ground. "Hey kitty," she calls softly, her breath making clouds of mist around her face.
The cat freezes, pressing itself even lower.
Lauren throws another piece. "Come on. Don't you know what's good for you?"
It sniffs the air but doesn't move.
"Be brave, cat. Trust me."
The cat looks at her, looks at the meat, and then away, as if it's preparing its escape route.
"Okay, well I'll be gone soon, and you can come eat then," Lauren tells it. "But don't blame me if it's frozen bird by then."
"Who are you talking to, weirdo?" It's Ray, a bag slung over his shoulder. "And don't worry, I'll take out the trash," he grumbles, throwing it into the big bin.
"The trash is already out here."
"Oh, nice one. I see what you did there."
She points towards the fence. "That's who I was talking to." The little cat's eyes have turned wide and terrified at the sight of Ray. It turns and scrambles down the other side of the fence.
"There were a couple of strays out here all this summer. My dad would have shot that thing if he saw it on our farm."
"Well, that's a delightfully brutal take."
Ray shrugs. "They kill native wildlife."
"So, the obvious solution is to kill it."
"That's how we do things around here, city girl."
"Back home that cat would be holding a knife to your neck and demanding your wallet, country boy." Okay, muggings never happened in Lauren's neighbourhood, but he doesn't need to know that. Some guys catcalled at her mom once when she got out of a cab, and she acted like she'd been assaulted for a week.
"I actually kind of wanted a kitten when I was a kid," Jay says, dusting off his hands. "They're sort of cute and crazy."
"I had a cat for a while. We called him Frank."
"Frank," he repeats. "Suitably weird. What happened to Frank?"
"He disappeared. Went out one night and never came back."
"That's too bad."
"Well, that's what we thought, anyway. Until one night, like, five years later, when my mom and her friend Howard were completely sozzled at Thanksgiving and decided to reminisce. Howard starts telling us about one night when my sister and I were staying with Dad, when he and Mom were at the apartment celebrating who knows what—probably opening another bottle of vermouth—and Frank kept meowing to be let in. Then five minutes later he'd be meowing to be let out. I'd kept asking Mom for a cat door, but of course she didn't want to destroy solid oak with something so unsightly. Anyway, Howard starts telling us how this went on for hours and Mom was so annoyed about it that she convinced him to take 'that stupid stray the girls picked up' with him in the taxi downtown with him and drop him off somewhere." Lauren throws the last piece of turkey from her onto the ground in case the cat comes back. "So, he did."
"He did it?"
Lauren nods. "That's exactly how drunk they were. Howard told us he just pushed him out of the cab by some basketball courts on the lower-east side. The taxi driver thought he was insane. They thought the story was hilarious."
Rat shakes his head slowly. "That is whack."
"Yep." She tosses the remainder of her turkey-less sandwich into the trash and pulls on her gloves.
"I know I said my dad would shoot a feral wild cat, but your mom is seriously savage."
"Believe me, I know." She stands, brushing crumbs off her lap.