A Better Fate Than Wisdom

Chapter 4: Weird, Weird, and Weird Again

So this one Sunday, a week or two into October, I'm heading back to my room after lunch, when something weird happens. As I'm about to walk past the girls' bathroom, the door to the can opens, and a girl sticks her head out. It's Erin or Erica or whatever her name is, that girl with the bright orange hair; only right now her hair is dripping wet. She sees me coming down the hall, makes this silly noise – it sounds like "eep" – and jumps back out of sight.

That's not the weird part. A lot of people freak out when they see me coming; I'm used to it, I guess. (Although she never did it before, and I'm thinking it's too bad if she's scared of me now like everybody else is.) The weird thing is what happens after. She sticks her head out the door again, looks around, and then goes, "Max." I didn't know she knew my name.

"Yeah?" I say. I'm standing right in front of the bathroom now, and I'm wondering why she's peeking out the door like she's doing. She's bent over sideways, so only her head sticks out, and it doesn't look very comfortable. She's also shivering, and her wet hair is making a puddle on the floor.

She doesn't say anything right away, and after a moment I start looking around uneasily. This doesn't feel right; I figure it's a joke and any minute a bunch of people are going to jump out and start pointing and laughing at me.

Turns out, I'm not actually that far off. There is a joke, only for once I'm not the one it got played on.

She takes a deep breath, then says all in a rush, "I was having a shower and somebody took my stuff. My towel and my clothes and my bag, everything's gone."

Her face has turned bright pink, and I can feel my ears burning too. That's why she's standing so funny, then, hiding behind the door: she's naked. "Um," I say, looking around, trying to think. "You want me to go to your room and get you some clothes?"

"You can't," she says. "My door's locked, and the key card's in my bag, and they took my bag too... whoever it was." She's embarrassed, but she also looks really pissed off, and I notice her eyes are bright green. Then I quickly look at the floor again.

A door opens down the hall, and we both jump. She slams the bathroom door and I move a few steps to the side and stare at the bulletin board like I'm interested in the stupid clubs and intramural sports schedules and stuff. A couple of girls come out into the hallway and then disappear down the stairs. As soon as they're gone I drop my backpack on the floor and start unbuttoning my blue and green plaid shirt. I've got a grey t-shirt on underneath.

I'm just slipping my arms out of the sleeves when the bathroom door creaks open again, and she peeks out nervously. "Uh, here," I say, holding out my shirt. She pulls her head back and sticks a bare arm out instead, and I put the shirt in her hand. The door closes again, and I'm left standing there like an idiot.

I wonder if maybe I'm supposed to go now, and she can give me my shirt back later. But then I remember she's locked out of her room. Probably she won't want to be wandering around the dorm wearing nothing but my shirt. Then the door opens again, all the way this time, and she steps out into the hall. The shirt looks even bigger on her than I thought it would: it comes down past her knees, and the sleeves are about a foot too long. It looks really cute.

"Thanks," she's saying. "I was afraid nobody would come by. Or, you know, nobody who'd help me instead of just laughing at me."

"Yeah," I say. "I know what you mean." I'm thinking she doesn't look much more comfortable in my shirt than she did with nothing on; she's got the cuffs all twisted up in her fists and she keeps looking around like she thinks somebody's going to jump out and go 'Boo!'. Which might not be too far off, actually; kids who'd steal a girl's clothes while she's in the shower are probably also the kind of kids who'd want to stick around after and watch her try to get back to her room with no clothes on.

"Um," I say, and she looks up at me hopefully, "if you want you can wait in my room, and I can go find the residence advisor, or whatever they're called. They should be able to get into your room, right?"

"Yeah, I think so," she says. "That would be really great."

So I lead the way to my room and unlock it. I step back to let her go first. She goes in and then stands in the exact middle of the floor, like she's afraid to touch anything. I'm glad I made my bed this morning, and thank god there's no dirty underwear or socks or whatever lying around. She's still shivering (and dripping), so I toss my backpack on the desk, and grab a towel from the bottom shelf of my closet and give it to her. "You can sit down if you want," I say. "I'll go get the RA."

"Okay," she says, and smiles up at me. "Thanks."

I go down the hall to the RA's room, and as I'm walking I'm keeping an eye out for giggling girls or maybe some clothes sticking out of a trash can, but there's nothing. And when I get to 302, where Michelle or whatever the RA's name is lives, I see there's a sign on her door. "Back at 2," it says, and that's not good, because it's only ten to one now.

So I go back to my room. Erin-or-Erica is leaning on my desk, looking at the pictures I have taped to the wall above it (she has to stand on her tiptoes to see them), but looks around quickly when I come in. "Is that your family?" she asks.

"Yeah," I say, coming over to look too. There's one picture with all of us, Gram and Grim and Worm and Worm's mom, and me in the back looming over everyone, that our neighbor took for us over the summer, and a couple pictures of just me and Worm. My favorite is this one where we're sitting on a bench by the millpond, that her mom took; we didn't know she was going to take a picture, and Worm had just told me this dumb joke and we're both laughing fit to split.

"That's my sister, Rachel," I say. I don't want to say more cause I don't want to have to explain why I live with my grandparents, and where my mother and father are, and I also don't really want to talk about the Worm. I miss her too much.

"Oh," the girl says, and I can feel her looking at me. Maybe she sees on my face that I don't really want to talk about my family, cause she doesn't ask, she just says, "So, is Michelle coming?"

Oh yeah. I forgot. "Um, no," I tell her. "There's a note on her door that says she'll be back at 2."

"Great," she says, and starts chewing on her lip.

"You can stay here till then," I say quickly. "I mean, if you want." Then I feel stupid cause of course she won't want to sit around talking to me for an hour.

"Really?" she says, and she's smiling up at me again. "That would be awesome. Thanks, Max."

She said my name again. And I'm still not sure what hers is, so I ask her.

"Aerinah," she says, and spells it. "It's kind of weird, I know."

I'm picturing the spelling in my head as I sit down in my desk chair. Even when I'm sitting down she's still a couple of inches shorter than me. "I like it," I say. "It's cool."

"Thanks," she says, and she's still standing in the middle of the floor, so I ask her to sit down. She climbs up on my bed kind of awkwardly, and tucks the tail of my shirt tightly around her legs, and I blush cause I just remembered that's all she's got on.

"Um, you want a blanket?" I ask, and when she says yes I give her this afghan that Gram made for me a couple of years ago. It's the most godawful colors, pink and brown and green and yellow and black, but it's warm and really soft.

As she's spreading it out over her lap she gives this little laugh that doesn't sound very amused. "You know," she says, "I thought university would be different. I thought people would be here cause they want to learn, and you'd be judged on how smart you are, not how pretty or thin or rich or popular. I really thought maybe I wouldn't get picked on anymore."

That kind of surprises me. "What'd you get picked on for?" I ask. She has orange hair, yeah, and she's really short, but other than that she seems pretty normal to me.

She blinks at me, like she's surprised she has to explain. "For being fat and ugly, and for being such a geek," she says, and now it's my turn to blink at her in surprise. Cause she's sort of curvy and plump, okay, but she's not ugly. Actually, she's kind of pretty.

I'm not sure what to say. I don't think she's fat and ugly but I can't say that; I mean, could I sound any more lonely and desperate? "So, are you a geek?" I ask instead.

"Yep," she says proudly. "I love Star Trek, and dinosaurs, and chaos theory, and quantum physics. And sci fi movies."

"Yeah, dinosaurs are cool," I say, cause I have absolutely nothing to say about chaos theory or quantum physics. "I'm taking an intro paleo class."

"I know," she says. "I'm taking it too."

"Oh," I say, and now I feel dumb, cause class has been going on for like a month and I hadn't noticed.

She laughs. "I only know you're in the class cause I saw you come in late the first day," she says, like she knew what I was thinking. "Otherwise I probably wouldn't have noticed you. I'm not usually very observant; I tend to daydream a lot." Then she laughs again. "Which explains my annoying habit of walking into people in cafeterias."

Before I can stop to think about what I'm saying, I blurt out, "How come you weren't scared of me?" Damn, that was lame. But I've been wondering about it a lot.

"What?" she says. "Like scared you'd beat me up for walking into you? I don't know, you didn't look pissed about it…"

Now that's weird. It's like she really doesn't get it. "No," I say, and run my hands through my hair. How do I explain? "Everybody's scared of me cause I'm bigger than they are," I say finally. That's not exactly the whole story – people at home are also scared cause they think I'm going to turn out like my father – but I figure the whole student body at the University of Chicago probably doesn't know about Killer Kane, and they're still scared of me, so it must be cause of my size. "And, I don't know, I would've thought you'd be even more scared, cause…" I trail off, cause it occurs to me maybe she likes people telling her she's really tiny about as much as I like people pointing out I need my own zip code.

"Cause I'm so short?" she asks, and when I nod she doesn't get angry. Actually she looks delighted. Weird again.

"Well, think about it," she says. "If I was scared of anybody who's bigger than me, I'd have to be scared of pretty much everybody, wouldn't I?" She looks at me thoughtfully for a moment, then looks down at her hands (she's twirling the fringes of the afghan around her fingers). "Anyhow, you don't seem scary," she says to the afghan. "You seem like a nice guy."

"Oh," I say. Like an idiot. I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't that.

After that the time flies by, cause we talk about all kinds of stuff. She says she's from Drumheller, which is this small town in Alberta, Canada, where you can find more dinosaur bones than just about anywhere else in the world. She gets all excited telling me about it; watching her talk about Edmontosaurus and Pachyrhinosaurus and the Bearpaw Sea and the K-T mass extinction makes me feel almost like I'm watching Freak talk about knights and dragons and chemistry and robots.

She trails off after a while and grins at me. "Sorry, Max," she says. "Didn't mean to give you a lecture. What are you doing your degree in?"

"English Lit," I tell her.

"That's cool," she says. "Much more useful than paleontology. What are you planning on doing after? After you graduate, I mean."

"I don't know," I say. Honestly, I never thought I'd even go to college; I have no idea where to go from here.

"Me neither," she says cheerfully, and that makes me laugh.

I don't really know what to say next, so I ask her if she has any brothers or sisters, and she says no. Then she says, "You know, I think I saw your sister the day I got here. I was in the courtyard behind the building, and she was leaning out of a window. Or someone who looked a lot like her, anyhow."

"Yeah, that was her," I say. I'll have to tell Worm that Aerinah remembers her. "She liked your hair."

"Oh," she says, blushing.

"So how come you dye it orange?" I ask. Then I wonder if maybe that sounds rude, so I add quickly, "It looks really cool, I was just wondering."

"That's okay," and she smiles. "I just like it. It's so bright and, I don't know, different. It just makes me happy."

I laugh. "It made Worm happy too – she loved it."

"How come you call her Worm?" Aerinah asks.

Oops, I didn't realize I'd said her nickname out loud. "Well," I say, "The first time I met her, this bully was teasing her. He took her backpack and ripped up her books and stuff, and he was calling her Bookworm. And later I heard some other kids calling her that too, and Worm for short. I didn't find out her real name till later."

Now Aerinah looks confused. "When you first met her? I thought she was your sister."

"Oh, yeah," I say. It's funny, but sometimes I almost forget. We've been a family for over three years now, and it feels natural, like it's always been this way. "Well, we aren't really related. But her stepdad's a real asshole – he was beating her mom up, and hurting Worm too. So we ran away together. Then, when he got put in jail, Worm and her mom came to live with me and my grandparents." I figure now she'll ask me where my parents are, but I don't mind anymore. I don't know why, I just feel really comfortable talking to her.

"I live with my dad," she says instead of asking me anything. "I mean, I did until I came here. My mom died two years ago."

"Oh," I say. I'm not sure if I should say anything about her mom, like 'I'm sorry' or 'How did she die?' or whatever. I hate it when people say stuff like that to me. So instead I ask, "What's your dad like?"

"He's awesome," she says, grinning. "He's a crusty old bastard, but he's a lot of fun. He's like William Shatner but without… the dramatic… pauses." She's gesturing theatrically and talking like Captain Kirk at his most eloquent, and I burst out laughing.

I know she didn't ask me, but I just feel like I can trust her for some reason, so I say, "My mom died too. When I was four."

"Oh." She doesn't say anything else for a minute, then she says slowly, "And... your dad?"

"He's in jail," I say. I take a deep breath. "For killing my mom." Well, and for almost killing Loretta Lee, and for trying to kill me too, but I figure that's enough detail. I was looking at my hands but now I look at her real fast, to see how she reacts.

She looks surprised, but she doesn't look like she's about to jump up and run out of the room. "Wow," she says softly. "That's really horrible."

"Yeah," I say.

I glance at my alarm clock, and I'm surprised to see it's already five after two. I feel like we've only been talking for ten minutes or so, but I guess it was a lot longer.

"Hey," I say, "Michelle should be back now. I'll go get her, okay?"

"Okay," Aerinah says, tucking her damp hair behind her ears. She still doesn't look freaked out, and I'm thinking she's pretty cool.

So I head down the hall again, but I don't bother going all the way to 302, cause now there's a bunch of clothes and stuff strewn all over the floor by the garbage can. Grey sweats, black t-shirt, purple panties, black bra, blue and purple striped socks, black sneakers, and a black canvas bag with bottles of lotion and stuff spilling out. I shove everything into the bag (I look over my shoulder before grabbing the underwear, and yeah, I can feel my face turning red) and take it back to my room.

"Still not there?" Aerinah asks when she sees me back so soon.

"I don't know, but look," I say, and hold out the bag. "Is this your stuff?"

"Hey!" she exclaims. "Yeah, where did you find it?" She's going through the bag, making sure everything's there I guess, or maybe looking for her room key.

"By the garbage," I say.

"Hmmph," she says, frowning; then, "Oh well, whatever. At least they put it all where I could find it." Then she grins up at me. "Or where you could find it, rather."

I grin back at her. I'm glad her stuff turned up. But I'm also kind of glad somebody took it in the first place, cause I liked talking to her.

"Um," she says, looking kind of embarrassed for the first time in a while, "Not to kick you out of your own room, but would you mind if I, uh, got dressed here?"

"Oh," I say. That makes sense. "Yeah, sure; I'll come back in a few minutes."

"Thanks!" she calls as I head out the door.

I go to the bathroom, and then kill a couple more minutes reading the posters on the bulletin board. There's nothing exciting; used textbooks for sale and ads for tutors and of course the club notices and stuff.

I knock on my door and Aerinah opens it. She seems totally relaxed now that she's fully clothed. Which I guess is normal, but it makes me feel kinda weird. Cause except for Rachel, people just aren't relaxed around me. Like, ever.

"I put your shirt on your desk," she's saying.

"Okay, thanks," I say.

"No, thank you," she says. "You really saved my ass. I hope I didn't wreck your afternoon too bad."

Now that's a laugh. If not for this whole incident I probably would've been doing homework, or maybe just contemplating my navel. "No, not at all," I say. "Uh, my pleasure." And it really was. I don't want it to end, either, but she's already on her way out the door.

"See you in class tomorrow!" she calls over her shoulder.

Oh yeah, I'm thinking as the door closes. Paleo tomorrow. Suddenly, I'm really looking forward to it.