Study break, p.17
Study Break, page 17
By the end, the entire room is silent, and they’re staring at her. Percy is staring at her with a soft look in their eyes that Trina ducks her head away from.
“That’s really fucking rad,” the tech chair declares. “House and electronica are super tied, right?”
And then, they’re all talking about house music and asking questions and want to know who she listens to. They want play-lists and derivatives and everything in between. Trina loses herself in every thread of conversation and grows looser with each passing moment. The conversation shifts to instrumental work and who was better—Prince or David Bowie—and Trina realizes that she actually has an opinion and she joins the fray.
Briefly, she slips out of the conversation as Maxine turns to her and says, “I really like your hair. Did you shave it just before school? Growing out your natural curls?”
“Yeah,” Trina says with a grin, because her friends never asked her, they don’t really know what it’s like. They’re all Black and brown, but being a Black girl is different on its own. “It was totally fried from high school.”
“It looks mad healthy. If you ever need someone to braid it, I’ve got you,” Maxine promises. “Lemme get your number.”
And Trina gives it to her, and Maxine actually saves it.
Trina learns that Percy is an applied mathematics major, which is a little less hot, because Trina hates math, but it makes Percy more real, which makes them more hot—it’s confusing. Rin already knows she’s going to be a philosopher one day, and Trina feels something like relief and a little bit of interest when Maxine says that she had no idea what she wanted to be so she just made her own major.
“What about you?” Maxine asks. “What’s your major?”
“I don’t know. Undecided. Super undecided,” Trina says. And then she scrambles to add more context: “Not like you, though. I’m not good at planning out something like a major.”
“Well, what do you like to do?” Percy asks.
“What does that have to do with anything?” Trina asks bluntly.
Percy looks so taken aback, their eyebrows nearly disappear into their bangs. Maxine barks out a laugh.
“I know parentals always tell you to be practical—be a doctor, be a lawyer, be a whatever-the-fuck—but it helps to like what you’re studying,” Maxine teases lightly. “So, what do you like to do?”
Trina hasn’t really had time for hobbies at all. She works. She studies. She—
“Radio. God, I love doing radio,” Trina blurts out, and it sounds like a line. Like she wants to really impress upon these people that she loves radio even though she’s been weirdly antisocial. But she thinks it comes through—how much she’s not lying at all.
“Comms major, then. Think about it,” Percy declares.
And Trina nods. She’s grateful when the focus moves off her. Liz likes to say that she’s above it all, that she likes to pretend that she’s too cool for it, but really, she likes to listen.
Trina smiles through everything, the knots in her stomach slowly coming undone with each nugget of information. Each one feels like a shared puzzle piece, a fragment of what makes someone whole. It’s a puzzle piece that Trina is allowed to keep, and she finds that she has none of those from Isra or Liz or even Malik. She doesn’t know what kind of music Isra listens to. She doesn’t know why Liz likes her boyfriend or how Malik feels about his new stepfather.
But Trina does know that Maxine is the third of six. That Rin used to be a vegetarian. That Percy isn’t so perfect, because they have a terrible opinion on the current state of rap.
It’s nearly one thirty in the morning when Trina yawns, and immediately, Rin hops up and says, “Do you wanna walk back to campus together? That’s where I parked. I gotta drive back home before it gets too late.”
Trina nods excessively. “Yeah, for sure.”
They start the great exodus. The PR chair and tech head move closer, their conversation not yet over, but the programming director heads toward his room, dragging his blanket behind him. Percy immediately starts clearing up with Maxine, talking in hushed tones.
“We’re heading out,” Rin calls, and Percy immediately drops trash into Maxine’s hands and rounds after them, walking them out.
Rin hops down from the porch and backs away.
“What are you doing?” Trina calls.
Rin waggles her eyebrows and swiftly turns her back on Trina, not saying a word.
“Thanks for coming tonight,” Percy says.
Trina nods. “Thanks for inviting me,” she says, and then, there’s an awkward silence where they just stare at one another. Suddenly, she feels a little brave. She wants to tell them that she likes them, that she thinks they’re the cutest person on campus, kind and funny and perfect. But. She doesn’t. Instead, she says, “I think you are really cool and intimidating, and I’m really excited to be your friend.”
Percy’s mouth parts, and they tilt their head. Trina doesn’t know them well enough to read their expression just yet, but she wants to. She wants to know them properly, so badly.
“I think you’re really cool and intimidating too,” Percy confesses. “You always saying no before … really bruised my ego, gotta admit.”
“I’m sorry.” Trina laughs quietly.
“Well … forgiven, as long as you keep coming, and … Will you actually text in the GroupMe instead of being a lurker?” Percy asks.
Trina snorts. “Gotta admit, I didn’t even lurk, I muted it.”
“Yikes, that hurts, I’m the admin of that GroupMe,” Percy teases.
“It wasn’t personal,” Trina says, backing away and nearly tripping off the porch. She smiles one more time. “Bye.” And then she runs off to join Rin, falling into step with her halfway down the block. She pretends not to see the look on Rin’s face.
“So—”
“We’re not close enough for this yet,” Trina declares.
Rin leans in, nudging her shoulder against Trina’s. “But we will be?”
Trina can’t stop smiling.
Maybe.
MARCH Ruby
By Camryn Garrett
Ruby Gardner had one presentation, three papers, and a test to study for.
But all she’d managed to do this morning was get out of bed, put on her fluffy red robe, and sit at her desk. She stared at the blinking cursor on her screen. Quite frankly, she felt like she was going to cry.
It wasn’t her fault; it seemed like everything was falling apart. School had always come easily to her. She was the type to sit quietly and absorb everything a teacher was saying. The type to take endless notes, to highlight everything in textbooks, the one people came to when they needed help. Somehow, between her freshman and junior years of college, that had changed. Now it felt like she was barely treading water.
The cursor blinked at her again. What was she supposed to be writing about? The relationship between Black women and labor during the nineteenth century? What kind of idea was that?
Her eye caught on the stacks of books piled up near her desk.
Right.
It had been her idea. A final paper for her capstone class. Although she wasn’t a senior, Professor Higgins had taken a liking to her, and she was doing senior coursework.
Several months ago, at the start of the semester, Ruby had been excited. It was a dream to be in an advanced class. But now it seemed like a burden. Had she even retained any of the information from the books and articles and journal entries she’d spent weeks reading? How many notes had she taken that she couldn’t remember?
Ruby tried to take a deep breath, but it seemed a little harder to let it in all the way. What was she going to do if she wrote this paper and it was bad? Would Professor Higgins hate her? Would juniors be barred from taking senior classes again?
She glanced down at her phone, but didn’t see any messages from her friends. The only other history major she knew was a senior named Gali who she sometimes asked for notes but mostly complained with. Gali, though, wasn’t answering. She was probably busy studying for midterms instead of staring at a blank screen.
God. Ruby might as well drop out of college. There was no way that she would get to all of this homework, that all of it would be good enough to keep her spot on the Dean’s List, that her professors would continue to be proud of her.
She pushed herself away from the desk and sucked in a deep breath. Suddenly, her dorm room seemed too small. When the scholarship office had let her know that she’d be receiving a single in Greathouse, the upperclassman dorm, Ruby had been thrilled. But now she just felt lonely. Knotting the tie around her robe, she forced herself out into the hall, not even bothering to close the door behind her.
Unlike the dorm she’d lived in freshman year, Greathouse was actually like a gigantic house. Since most upperclassmen moved off campus, the space was separated into apartments. Instead of a tiny dorm hall, one where she could hear and smell everything, it was like stepping into a hallway in a house. Sure, she could hear the TV playing downstairs in the common room, smell the popcorn someone had burnt again. But it felt more private than Desai, the dorm she’d lived in her first year. Safer, almost. Almost like being home.
She rushed down the hall, her flip-flops flapping noisily, loud enough to embarrass her. Her friend Emma lived on the same floor. Her door was decorated with a whiteboard with her name in big purple letters and the name of her roommate, Lily, underneath. Ruby knocked on the door. She wasn’t sure, but it seemed like her hand was shaking.
The door opened—yes! Emma was here. Emma would know what to do and how to fix things. She usually did.
Lily appeared in the doorway. Her eyebrows bunched in together as she took in Ruby’s appearance. No doubt she was judging the hell out of Ruby’s robe and flip-flops and generally disheveled appearance.
“Emma isn’t here,” Lily said, leaning against the doorframe. “Is everything … okay?”
Ruby felt herself nodding, even as she took a step back.
“Okay? Of course everything’s okay.” She cleared her throat. “Totally fine. Uh, when Emma comes back, tell her I was here?”
She didn’t give her the chance to reply before heading toward the stairs. Lily was nice enough, but the fewer people who saw Ruby like this, the better.
The only problem was that she felt like she couldn’t breathe. Ruby knew there technically wasn’t anything wrong with her, but she barely made it three steps before feeling like her chest was going to explode.
She sat down on the staircase and tried to exhale. It was okay. It was all right. Somehow, she’d figure out a way to get everything done. She always did, didn’t she? It didn’t matter that she no longer felt the excitement she did when she’d first come to college. God, she’d been so excited to come here when she got the acceptance letter. Back then, history seemed interesting. It seemed almost like magic. It seemed unbelievable that there were so many stories and people and fights and funerals that people didn’t know about. She wanted to know everything. When she was still taking AP history classes, it felt like maybe she could.
What had happened?
Ruby had no idea. The act of having to actually find things out herself, to track them down in archives and artifacts, didn’t seem as magical as reading them from books. But admitting that felt … sad. More than embarrassing. Like she was turned off by hard work. And she, Ruby Gardner, was most definitely not afraid of work.
She just didn’t like this kind.
“Do you need help there?”
Ruby shrieked, banging her head on the wall in the process. She winced, and someone made a hissing sound next to her. Then there was a hand on her shoulder. She blinked to see Violet, her supermodel-tall RA, looming above her. This close, Violet’s messenger bag was almost touching Ruby’s shoulder.
“Damn,” Violet said. “That looks like it hurt.”
Oh. This was embarrassing.
It was odd that the upperclassmen still had RAs, in Ruby’s opinion. Sure, it made sense to have someone to guide you, help you adjust to dorm living when you were a freshman. But when you were a junior, like her? She didn’t need someone to make rules for the common areas or plan events every Friday night. But here Violet was.
Anyway, it wasn’t that Violet was annoying. She seemed to understand that the other occupants of Greathouse were older and didn’t constantly want a babysitter checking on them. Instead of weird events like parties in her room, Violet had spa nights, and there was no pressure to stay if you didn’t want to. Ruby had been to one. She’d barely said a word, leaning back with a mask on, listening to everyone chatter about their favorite shows and who was dating who on campus.
It was … nice.
“No,” Ruby said, rubbing her forehead. “I’m fine, I think.”
“Are you?”
“Yeah,” Ruby said. “Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?”
Instead of answering, Violet just raised a brow. It was bad enough that Ruby had run into an actual person while having her freak-out, but Violet also happened to be Black. Meaning that she, unlike the non-Black people in the dorm, could probably tell that Ruby’s cornrows were in desperate need of rebraiding. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Violet’s twists looked fresh, as if she’d just walked out of a salon. Ruby wanted to sink into the floor.
“You don’t have to lie, you know,” Violet said. She smiled kindly. “Do you want me to get you some ice from the kitchen?”
Ruby meant to shake her head, to make an awkward goodbye and disappear back to her room. What she didn’t mean to do was burst into tears. But that’s exactly what she did.
“Oh,” Violet said. “Oh shit.”
“I’m sorry,” Ruby said, rubbing at her face. “It’s just…”
What was it? That studying history was nothing like she thought it would be, and she’d been ignoring that realization for more than a year? That college itself was nothing like she thought it would be?
She settled on “I don’t know. My entire life is falling apart.”
Violet blinked rapidly, eyelashes almost waving. Then something like recognition settled over her features.
“Oh,” she said. “Midterms are next week.”
“Well, yeah.” Ruby swiped at her nose. “But everything else is fucked, too.”
Violet put an arm around her shoulders and settled next to her. For a moment, all Ruby could hear was the sound of rummaging in the kitchen below, someone washing dishes. She’d been in the kitchen enough times to know they probably couldn’t hear her. Still, she found herself praying that no one would decide to climb the stairs anytime soon.
“Okay,” Violet said. “Everything, like what?”
“Just everything,” Ruby said. “I’m probably gonna get kicked off the Dean’s List, and I think I hate history but I decided to major in it, and now I’m going to graduate soon, and I don’t even think that I’m going to get a job or be able to finish any of my work, probably?”
“Whoa,” Violet said, eyes wide behind her glasses. “Let’s take a deep breath, okay?”
She rubbed a hand on Ruby’s back. The touch almost shocked her, but after a moment, it felt normal. Like Violet always rubbed her back. Ruby sucked in a breath.
“If you don’t like history,” Violet said, “why don’t you change your major?”
Ruby laughed. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I mean…” Ruby shook her head. “No one changes their major junior year.”
“I’m sure lots of people do,” Violet said. “I didn’t choose my major until junior year.”
Ruby swallowed. What if she could change her major? She’d disappoint her professors, maybe, but if it made her happier … Were things moving too fast? Or had she waited too long?
“I don’t know what I like.” Ruby sniffed. “That’s the problem.”
Violet made a humming noise.
“Well,” she said after a moment. “That’s what college is for, right? Finding out what you like? Maybe take some gen-eds that you’re interested in. I didn’t know I wanted to major in psychology until I became an RA last year.”
“But what does one have to do with the other?”
“When I became an RA, I got to help people,” Violet said, gently bumping her shoulder against Ruby’s. “I get frustrated a lot. It seems like there are always horrible things happening all over the world and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. But when I’m on duty for the night and someone needs a first aid kit or even just to talk, I feel like I’m helping. When a transfer doesn’t know anyone and I help them find their group of friends, I feel like I’m having an impact. Even if it’s small. Does that make sense?”
This close, Ruby could smell Violet’s orange blossom perfume. She bit her lip. Violet sounded so passionate; an hour ago, Ruby wouldn’t have believed that anyone actually liked being an RA. When was the last time Ruby had felt that way about something? She wasn’t sure if she ever had.
“I can’t change my major now,” she said instead. “I’ll be behind.”
“There are summer classes,” Violet said. “And, if you need, you can take another year.”
Ruby rubbed her face again. She wasn’t sure if her scholarship would extend more than four years. But it was worth asking, wasn’t it? She could take another political science class, or maybe a class in communications.
“I wouldn’t worry about the job part,” Violet said. “Not to freak you out more, but it seems like we’re all going to have a hard time finding work, no matter what the major.”
Ruby giggled, surprising herself. “Yeah,” she said. “I guess you’re right.”
Her throat felt less hoarse. She sniffled again, but she didn’t feel any more tears coming.
“It’s just weird,” Ruby said. She slowly stood, wrapping her arms around her middle. “When I was a senior in high school, I had a whole plan. I was so completely sure about the future. And now that I’m here … I don’t think I know anything.”
“Yeah,” Violet said. “I mean, I didn’t know anything about anything in high school. But that’s how it works, right? We always think we know more when we’re younger.”
