Chapter Eight: Mike from Modernist Poetry

Gretchen really wished she hadn't bothered to come to the International Club's Pre-Thanksgiving potluck tonight. She had so many other things she could have been doing – among them emailing Professor Epstein to ask for an extension on her Buffy paper or getting an early start on studying for her Japanese final or thinking of ways to explain her grades to her parents. Instead, she sat alone near the wall watching her fellow International Clubbers dance to Katy Perry's "Firework," a song that Gretchen had always liked.

"You don't have to feel like a waste of space. You're original, cannot be replaced," sang Katy Perry, which was ironic because "a waste of space" was exactly what Gretchen felt like at the moment. Her throat ached from trying to hold back her tears, but she was fairly certain no one would even notice, let alone care, if she started crying. She had been striking out literally all night. Ami and Yuriko both had other plans (probably involving going to bed super early as the two of them commonly did) and Gretchen was beginning to realize that not only did she not really know anyone else in International Club, but she didn't really like them either.

She told herself it didn't matter. It was really just a bunch of stupid, little things – nothing worth crying over at all. But this was, of course, a total lie. It mattered; in mattered a lot. It couldn't possibly have been that every single member of International Club was a snotty asswipe, especially since they all seemed so friendly and open with each other. Therefore, the only reasonable explanation was that it was her fault for being annoying and stupid and boring and gross and ugly and worthless and bad and obviously completely unlovable.

The night had started off inoffensive enough as she stood around the punch bowl talking about finals with a girl she had never seen before. "So, where are you from?" Gretchen asked after a while, because that was the standard place to start in International Club.

"Ireland," the girl replied, snootily but without a single hint of Irish accent.

"Really? I wouldn't have guessed," Gretchen said. "You sound American to me." Actually, Gretchen had noted, over half of the club was comprised of Americans like herself. She wasn't even sure why she asked aside from lack of better things to say.

The girl stared at her blank-faced. "No, I'm Irish," she said coldly and added an exasperated sigh for good measure before turning her back and walking away. Gretchen didn't have any better luck repeating the question to another girl, who practically screamed "Venezuelan, you idiot, snuh!" (Well, she didn't say the idiot part, but her tone certainly implied it).

But the worst part of the evening occurred when she overheard a young Vietnamese man who went by "Cow Boy" (although, she later realized that it was probably spelled "Cao Boi") talking about a paper for Professor Maxwell's Early American Lit.

"Oh yeah. Professor Maxwell? I have him too. For Modernist Poetry." Gretchen said, happy to have an opening to insert herself into the conversation.

Cao Boi gave her a confused look. "Yeah," he said coldly in his thick accent. "I don't necessarily care."

Gretchen knew very well that she should have given up, but she boldly pressed on, mentally cursing her stupid penchant for rambling when she was nervous. "He's kind of a hard grader?" she meant to simply state, but ended up phrasing as a question.

"I wasn't talking to you," snapped Cao Boi. "Please don't barge into our conversation. I don't even know you." For some reason, the rest of the group laughed hysterically at this.

Gretchen's face flushed and she weakly mumbled an apology before slinking away like a dog with its tail between its legs.

Why did she care? It was all so dumb, but Cao Boi's words, which reminded her a lot of Yuriko's recent "it's not my job to talk to you," cut into her like broken glass and sent her mind careening into a dangerously negative place. Sure, it may have seemed like just an offhand rude comment, but it somehow encapsulated her entire Oberlin experience. No one knew her. No one wanted to know her. No one wanted her around at all. She didn't even deserve the same basic curtesy that everyone else in the world was entitled to. In fact, when someone was openly mean to her, it was apparently hilarious to everyone else. Her emotional pain was nothing but a joke. She didn't matter to anyone. And she didn't belong. Anywhere. Ever. Katy Perry may as well have said to her: "you're not a firework, Gretchen. You don't matter."

"Hey, I know you!" a voice said and Gretchen looked up, startled.

To her astonishment, it was Mike from Modernist Poetry, who she had never imagined as the type to join International Club (or, for that matter, any clubs at all). Gretchen had always assumed that Mike was shy, but it now seemed like he was just a tall, dark and handsome man-of-few words dripping with confidence. Which was, of course, even sexier.

"Gretchen, right? I'm Mike," he said, which, of course, Gretchen already knew.

"Hi!" she said a little too enthusiastically. "I didn't know you were in this club."

Mike shrugged good-naturedly. "I'm not," he replied. "My roommate saw a flier up and neither of us could resist free food."

Gretchen stood up. "Yeah, cool," she stammered. "There's a lot of good food here." She suddenly felt very shy and couldn't think of what else to say, so she just nodded stupidly and smiled like a complete dork.

"Have you started the final project yet?" Mike asked, coming to her rescue. For Modernist Poetry, each student was supposed to write his or her own poem, memorize it, recite it for everyone and then write a paper analyzing the process. Gretchen was beyond not looking forward to it.

"No," she said and groaned. "Have you?"

"Yeah, sort of," said Mike. "But it's not very good."

"Well, I'm sure mine's going to be even more not very good!" Gretchen said and then mentally kicked herself for using such bad grammar in a conversation about an English class.

"I bet it will be good," Mike replied. "I liked your comment in class today," he added.

"Aw, really? Thanks!" Gretchen's participation style in Modernist Poetry (and most of her classes for that matter) had always been more about quantity than quality. Mike, by contrast, had only offered his opinion in discussion twice, but both times had been brilliant. "Um, what was my comment about again?" Gretchen asked because she honestly couldn't remember.

Mike thought for a minute. "Uh…I can't remember exactly. It was pretty insightful though." They both laughed nervously.

"Well, don't get used to it," Gretchen said. "Me being smart is a total sometimes thing. Actually, it's pretty much a never thing. You probably don't remember it because it didn't happen!" She laughed, but Mike remained quiet.

"Why do you say that?" he asked, looking at her intently.

"Oh, um…I don't know," Gretchen said quickly, her voice catching in her throat.

"Hey, there you are!" a familiar-sounding voice said and suddenly Simon appeared, carrying two huge bowls of Pho, both of which were dripping over the sides. "I don't know what this is, but pretty much everything else looked vaguely inedible." He handed one awkwardly to Mike and then looked at Gretchen in surprise.

"Hey!" he said a little too loudly, suddenly breaking into a huge grin.

"Wait, you guys know each other?" Gretchen asked.

"Yeah," said Simon, suddenly blushing. "H-he's my roommate. I didn't…I didn't know you two knew each other."

"Modernist Poetry," said Gretchen.

"Wait," said Mike, taking a huge slurp of Pho, "how do you two know each other?"

"Rainforest Bio," Simon said.

"Huh," said Mike. "You know, sometimes I really hate how small this school is, but it's always kind of cool when stuff like this happens."

They all laughed but then fell into an awkward silence. "Is that any good?" Gretchen asked, motioning toward the Pho. She knew Cao Boi had made it and had heard him rattle off a long list of ingredients that included sheep stomach and cow tendons.

Mike shrugged. "Well, it's free," he said and smiled.

"Could I get you anything?" Simon asked her, which made Gretchen suddenly worry that he was going to bring up Herbert-Gate again.

"Nah, I had ramen before I got here," she said. "And vegemite," she added. "Here at this thing," she clarified, "not before I got here."

Mike wrinkled his nose. "Vegemite? What's that? Sounds vaguely gross."

"Not really sure," Gretchen said, "but I wouldn't recommend it."

"It's Australian," said Simon. "Some kind of sandwich spread. Do you have a lot of Australian people in this group?"

"I don't think there are any, actually," Gretchen replied. For some reason, all three of them burst into hysterics about this, causing nearly everyone to turn around and stare (or, more accurately, to glare).

"Hey," said Simon suddenly, "you wanna come over and play video games? This is kind of boring."

Simon and Mike had a surprising combination of video games which included everything from Borderlands and Halo (which Gretchen kind of figured Simon would be into) to Guitar Hero, to Grand Theft Auto to Mario Kart to something called Disney Infinity, which seemed to basically amount to Disney characters beating the shit out of each other. After they had played several rounds of Mario Kart (which Simon won every single time), Guitar Hero (which Mike was surprisingly awesome at) and Super Smash Brothers (which Gretchen won – as Pikachu), they sat around talking about classes and clubs and Oberlin in general.

"Damn," said Simon after a while, "I'm still hungry!"

"That Pho didn't fill you up?" Gretchen asked.

"Seriously?" Mike chuckled. "That's how it's pronounced?"

"Yeah, watch your language, young lady," Simon added, smirking.

"Oh, I called it 'Foe' the first time Cao Boi made it and wow, was he ever not nice about it," Gretchen said. "'It's FUUUHHH not FOOOEEE', she said, attempting, but failing miserably, to imitate Cao Boi's accent. Mike and Simon laughed so hard they squirted beer out their noses and nearly peed themselves. Gretchen had to admit, she was feeling pretty good about entertaining them – especially after the nasty way Cao Boi had treated her earlier.

"Wait," Mike added after he had finally regained his composure. "Cao Boi? That's the dude's name? Seriously?"

"For realizes," Gretchen said. "No joke."

Sometime later, Simon went down to the dorm kitchen to make nachos, leaving Mike and Gretchen alone.

"So…Simon hasn't ever mentioned me?" Gretchen asked, as soon as Simon was well out of sight. "I mean…I am his lab partner."

"Yeah, he's brought you up a few times," Mike replied and electricity charged through Gretchen's blood stream and veins.

"Um…what does he say about me?'

Mike shrugged. "Not much, really. Just that you're really smart and good at all the lab stuff."

"Oh," she said, suddenly feeling overheated, but relieved that Simon and Mike had never discussed her fainting spell. "That's it? Wait, he said that I'm smart and good at lab stuff? That's kind of really random. It's probably just because he has a crush on me or something. He's obviously way better at it. I mean, I'll be lucky if I even get a C in Rainforest Bio at this point."

Mike looked at her for a few seconds. "Why do you always do that?"

"Why do I always do what?"

Mike chewed on his lower lip. "Why do you always say stuff like that about yourself?"

"Because it's true?" Gretchen said her voice small and weak. "My grades pretty much suck across the board." She felt like Mike's eyes were boring into her and that he could see all the way to her rapidly sinking heart. She cleared her throat, but couldn't think of what to say.

"Why don't you think you're smart?" Mike asked, ignoring what she had just said about her grades. Gretchen suddenly felt exceptionally weird as if she were somehow ice cold and overheated; clear-headed and dizzy; completely exhausted and wide awake all at once.

"I just... " she said. "I just feel like everyone knows what they're doing and who they are and why they matter except for me," she said. "Like, there's some secret to being a college student that everyone else has figured out and I'm just not getting it. Or more like, there's some secret to being a person that everyone knows and it should be really obvious but I'm just too…I don't know…too stupid to figure it out."

Mike suddenly grabbed her hand and her heart leapt into her throat. His was unexpectedly soft and warm. "Well," he said quietly, "if you haven't figured it out, then I guess neither have I. But, hey, at least you talk in class. I'm always too scared to say anything."

"Really?"

"Yeah," Mike said. "But you're just willing to give your opinion even if it's-"

"What? Dumb?" Gretchen asked, cutting him off.

"No," he said firmly. "Even if it's…I don't know…different. I think that's really kind of badass."

Gretchen gave a surprised laugh. "Badass?" she couldn't stop smiling. "That's not the typical word to describe me, but thanks, I'll take it. And also? I know you don't say much in class, but every time you did, it was SUPER smart. Really."

Mike flushed and the awkwardest of silence fell upon them. "So…uh," Gretchen said after a while. "Simon didn't tell you about how I fainted in class, huh? That's really, really cool of him."

"No," said Mike, clearly feeling more at ease. "Jeez, what happened?"

She shrugged. "I was hungry. Like not normal hungry like I-haven't-eaten-in-a-whole-week hungry."

"Y'know, I've had concussions at football practice. Never fainted before, though. What's it like? Is it scary?"

"YES!" Gretchen said. "But I think I got a concussion too. I didn't need stiches or anything, but that cut took forever to look normal again."