Thursday, March 19th, 1998: Senior Year
College was the worst.
Hating every waking second, Megan stalked from the cafeteria toward the quad. Each step punctuated by deliberate flips and/or flops. It was too early for this walking shit. What was it, the crack of – she looked up at the sky, the sun directly overhead – noon, maybe noon thirty? Caveman hours, she scoffed.
Friendly hails came from small clusters of peers on their way to class. Poor bastards. Too tired to engage she saluted lamely with her travel mug and continued against the flow. Unfortunately, the greetings kept coming, the burden of ruling campus four years running. She nodded at a passing freshman whose name was not forthcoming.
Passing the Library she cut between dogwoods to cross the grass. Looking out across the lawn between herself and her destination, Meg determined there was no way she could be expected to make it all that way without a cigarette. Besides, stopping gave her a chance to steal a sip of coffee.
Burned her lip, but totally worth it.
Her other hand dug a battered soft pack out of her flannel. With a jerk of her wrist a butt singled itself out as the next to be sacrificed to the goddess. Snagging it between her lips she stuffed the pack back in her shirt pocket and patted for her lighter. Which of course was in the pocket requiring the most awkward contortions to get to. Doubly inconvenient because her jeans had stupid little girl pockets that wouldn’t accommodate anything thicker than a folded note. She had to coax the lighter up through the fabric until it stuck out enough to get her fingers on. It was a whole thing. Everything was a whole thing when she wasn’t high.
She put the lighter up to the end of her cigarette and struck. It let out a sad flick. She shook it next to her ear, as if that told her anything.
Flick.
Flick.
Flick! It lit on the fourth try, but a breeze with a sophisticated sense of irony blew it out.
Flick.
She would be good and goddamned if she was going to put her coffee down and use two hands for this.
Flick.
Flick.
Goddammit!
Metal scraped against metal, and a lit Zippo appeared in front of her. A whiff of lighter fluid stung her nose, but she leaned in gratefully. As she lit her cigarette she noted the simple command ‘Think’ etched into the lighter and grew a smile. “Bitch!” she snapped her head up to see Horatio grinning under his beard and newsboy cap.
“Looked like you could use a hand,” he noted her set of full ones.
“What’s your drop-out ass doing on my campus?” she teased, popping her mostly useless lighter into her shirt pocket. She’d thank herself later.
He frowned. “How many times do I have to tell you people? I didn’t drop—”
“Yeah, yeah, I care,” she interrupted. “Seriously, what’re you doing here?” By her estimation she hadn’t seen the boy in, like, a month.
Thinking better of pursuing the point Horatio motioned toward Wallace Hall where the majority of sophomores and juniors were housed. “Brian said I should stop by. Talk about tomorrow. Make sure we’re all on the same page.”
She chanced another sip of coffee, which had cooled to scalding. “You talked me into it. Lead on.”
Horatio shortened his steps careful not to outpace the hippie’s lazy stride. It was a walk he’d walked before. They shared a comfortable silence, happy to just be in each others’ peripheral vision. Horatio scanned around for familiar faces. He wasn’t around campus as much since January, and while he’d hardly consider himself out of touch, it was easy to fall out of the daily soap opera of small campus life.
Speak of faces he wouldn’t mind seeing. “Where’s your other half?” Horatio indicated the empty spot beside her.
“Jimmy?”
He gave her a look. Unless she started dating someone in the last three weeks, there was only Jimmy.
“I’ll check,” she stopped.
How on earth could she check? He could be anywhere on—
“JAMES!”
Horatio jumped away.
“JAMES!”
Heads all over the quad looked up unappreciatively.
“JAMES!”
Faces appeared at windows to confirm who was ruining the first open-window studies of the season.
From somewhere beyond Wallace came a faint, “what?!”
“C’MERE!”
The closest clusters of students frowned as they passed. Horatio shrugged a few apologies since it was clear Megan wasn’t going to.
“—inute!” came the answering call.
“He’s coming,” Megan sniffed and took a sip of coffee.
Horatio shook his head. “You two amaze me.”
“I am pretty amazing,” she shrugged, and enjoyed her cigarette.
....