—
“Is anyone sitting there?” I pointed to the chair to a girl’s left.
“Oh, no. You can sit down,” she said.
“This is the room for the grad school presentation, right?” I asked.
“I hope so—”
“—Good,” I said. “I was in the next room and the presentation was on radiation.” I sat down and thought I’d throw in a joke. “I don’t want to get cancer.”
The girl next to me nodded. She smelled like my ex-girlfriend—vanilla perfume and lilac shampoo. The curls of her hair were still slick from a morning shower.
We’ll be starting in a few minutes. Come up to grab some informational papers.
I stood up.
“Hey, can you get me some?” the girl next to me asked.
I didn’t know her name.
“Sure,” I said, “No problem.”
I put one leg over another girl’s leg to my left, then stretched and crisscrossed myself over a guy’s lap at the end of the row, like theater seating. I stumbled into the aisle.
I came back and gave the girl next to me my duplicates. She took the stack of papers and started to shuffle through them. I didn’t know if she felt lost or was putting them in order or was just ignoring me.
Well, let’s start off with any questions.
I raised my hand, glanced at the girl next to me to see if she was watching me, and then I stood up to ask, “How important are the GREs and when should you take them?”
Important. As soon as possible. Know that you can take them multiple times.
The girl next to me bounced her foot—toe pushing off the ground and reverberating up her calf to her thigh. I remembered how my ex-girlfriend used to shake her leg each time we sat next to each other. I checked out the girl next to me. Her jeans must have had spandex woven into the cotton, because the denim stretched so tightly that they looked like a blue lacquer right on top of her legs.
“What’s the difference between a master’s you do research for versus a thesis?” the guy asked on the end of our row, whose lap I almost straddled.
The arm hair of the girl next to me brushed against my forearm. I felt filled with possibility, like my arm was a match rubbing against the friction of her skin. I held onto my papers, tempted to put my right hand with its open palm up in my lap, so that the girl next to me could hold my hand. Like how my ex-girlfriend’s fingers would go index, index; middle, middle; ring, ring; to pinkie, pinkie.
“Here I am, Here I am.” I wanted to echo the children’s song.
The girl next to me bit her nails. She tore the whites off and finished at the cuticle. My ex-girlfriend always destroyed her manicure making jagged zigzags of stray nail from the smoothed rounded edge. The girl next to me started on her thumbs.
♦◊♦
We have time for a few more questions….
And now the girl next to me was putting her papers into her homemade paisley red handbag slung on her shoulder. I didn’t say anything to the girl next to me. I didn’t even try. I just watched her out of my peripheral as she got up to leave—taking the long way, away from me.
This story has been republished to Medium.
I loved this piece. Mostly because, of course, the thing sitting next to him isn’t a girl – it’s a ghost.
Whoever the human was sitting next to him, he wasn’t seeing her as a real person at all. All she was to him was a hanger to hang his memories off.
Someone in another thread (I can’t remember which one) noted that there should be a companion to “He’s Just Not That Into You” for men and boys. While I’ve never seen the movie or read the book, the title is pretty self explanatory and I did see that ‘Sex and the City’ episode that talked about it. Women have traditionally been known to make elaborate explanations, stories, and excuses for being rejected or ignored by a potential lover. Now it seems that men have been doing it more and more (not the author of this article, but a lot of… Read more »
Maybe she had cancer.
nice read. some girls are rather mysterious. they seem to show tell tale signs of being a friendly person. and then come off a calculatedly cautious. maybe it’s a natural trigger they get? when they aren’t too comfortable with themselves, or are the nervous type, they automatically sense the hesitation in us, and switch off. some girls like the bad ass gene to be what they see at first.. some like the nice guy gene first…. i know they all want it all in the same package. some girls just convince themselves of which one they want to see first… Read more »
Hector, are you speaking about women in general or the woman in this particular story?
Hector I think you hit on something important, that sometimes the way a girl reacts to a man has more to do with them not being comfrotable within themselves or being unsure with men. When I was younger I was incredibly shy with men and had no idea how to deal with them. The ones I liked? Forget it. I ignored them and acted like they weren’t there because godforbid they figure out that I liked them. Or I said the barrest minimal things to them. Them knowing I liked them meant giving them some control and I was deathly… Read more »
I think all you can take from this vignette is that she was nervous. She could have been nervous about anything. You just can’t read that much into it. She may have been nervous because she was wondering how she was going to get the money for grad school. Or maybe she could tell the author was paying attention to her and that made her feel shy. Maybe she liked him and was hoping he’d make a move, or maybe she felt freaked out…. The bottom line is, you can’t tell much about a total stranger.