***
In a rare moment of silence, Lexi and I stepped outside and slowly retraced our steps to the accident site. My backpack, discarded in the rush of activity, lay abandoned on the pavement. As I bent to retrieve it, I noticed a lump of dark material had been roughly shoved beneath the pack. I threw my bookbag strap over one shoulder and reached for the wadded up material, which I now recognized as the black leather jacket.
Shit.
“Finn’s jacket,” Lexi explained. “He put it under your head as a pillow after you fell.”
“After Ifell?That’s the story you’re going with?”
“Well, I guess I may have been slightly at fault,” she admitted, her cheeks flushing pink.
“Slightly?Lexi, are you kidding me? You completely—Wait. Did you just say the boy who carried me was Finn? As in…the Finn you nearly killed me by chasing?” I asked, somewhat shocked.
“Yes,” Lexi murmured dreamily. “Isn’t he such a gentleman?”
“I could think of a few other choice names for him. Like asshole, doucheb-”
“Brooklyn!”
“What?! He was such a dick to me!”?
“He savedyour life!” She stared me down indignantly, hands planted firmly on her hips in a show of intimidation.
“Lex, I hit my head. I wasn’t exactly dying,” I pointed out.
“You are impossible,” she huffed. “Only you could beliterallyswept off your feet by the most attractive man on this campus and remain completely unaffected. You know, sometimes I think you’re an alien.”
She tilted her head and peered down at me through narrowed eyes, as if contemplating the odds that I was, in fact, an extraterrestrial. I simply shrugged and started walking toward campus, knowing she’d soon fall into step.
Lexi had never understood my interactions with boys; it was highly doubtful she’d start now. To me, it wasn’t worth making yourself vulnerable for the sake of intimacy. Or worse, letting some boy own a piece of you only to inevitably break it. Most of Lexi’s relationships stopped just short of her boy-of-the-month whipping out his package and peeing all over her to mark his territory. And yet somehow, in her mind, this translated to romance.
Then again, Lexi wholeheartedly believed in things like soul mates, true love, happy endings.
I didn’t.
Humans aren’t meant to be monogamous creatures. Most people would probably disagree, but then, most people would also be overlooking the ever-increasing divorce and infidelity rates. Why anyone would choose to rush into something with a 50% chance of failure was incomprehensible to me.
Personally, I’d prefer to stick with my own definition:
Marriage(noun): betting someone half your stuff that you’ll love them forever.
In high school different boys had asked me on dates and, mostly to appease Lexi, I’d gone out with them. But after a while, they’d all realized that I could never give them what they were looking for. I’d never belong to them –never wear their letter jackets, or hold their hands in the hallway, or decorate their lockers on game day – because I’d never be tempted enough to even consider becoming emotionally involved.
I understood perfectly the benefits of pure physical attraction. It always seemed like fate, or evolution, had played a cruel joke on me – I was probably the one girl in the world who didn’t want a boy’s commitment, yet every guy I dated seemed to expect one from me.
I’d tried to explain this to Lexi many times, but she didn’t understand. To her, any prospect of love, no matter how dim, was worth pursuing. Unfortunately for me, her mentality mirrored that of the high school majority, and I’d quickly earned the charming title of “Ice Bitch” from the male population. Or at least from those who’d tried, unsuccessfully, to date me. The girls in my class tended to call me by a slew of even less flattering names, but I didn’t really give ashit that they thought I was a slut.
Lexi was still muttering under her breath about my astonishing lack of gratitude towardFinn when we parted ways at the Criminology building. Apparently, as the only girl on campus who didn’t turn to putty in his hands, I was a freak of nature destined to die alone with thousands of cats. At least, I’m pretty sure that’s what Lexi mumbled as she sauntered off toward the art studio.
Walking into my first classroom, I realized thatFinn’s leather jacket was still clenched in my right hand. Not knowing what else to do with it, I shoved it into my backpack. It was a tight fit, barely zipping closed with the bulky jacket trapped inside. Examining it, I sighed. I knew by carrying this I’d look like one of the stereotypical freshmen, easily picked out of the crowd by their bulging, textbook-laden bags at the beginning of every semester.
After weighing the pros and cons ofthatunpleasant scenario, I hastily removed my notebooks from the pack, leaving only the jacket inside.Much better,I observed, breathing a sigh of relief and settling into a seat in the middle of the large lecture hall.
The rest of my day passed without incident. With the exception of a handful of stares drawn by the bandage on my temple, I was able to fly mostly below the radar. My classes were, as expected, boring reiterations of the syllabus and a discussion of course expectations.
Criminal Justice and Sociology each had several hundred students enrolled and were graded on a bell-curve so they’d be easy A’s for me. Public speaking would be a different matter – with only twenty students, the professor made it clear that hiding out in the back row wasn’t an option. She’d even forced us to make juvenile folded paper signs, prominently displaying our names on our desks like we were in the second grade. Of course, she immediately noticed mine and decided to torture me in front of the class. It was just that kind of day, after all.
“Your name isBrooklyn?” she exclaimed, her voice artificially interested. “How unique! Is there any significance to it?”