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With time to spare between classes, Anne bought a sandwich from the food vendor situated in the library’s study area next to the lobby, grabbing a bottle of water while she was at it. She had just left a session with her freshman; the girl needed some help developing an outline for the composition paper that had been assigned as part of her mid-terms.
Anne, having a two-hour break between her Art History class and her next education class, seized the opportunity to earn a little extra cash.
Once that session had ended, the freshman calmed down and was reminded about the generic outlines she had been taught in high school and was shown how to manipulate them for college essays, Anne decided to grab some lunch and people watch from the wall near the Humanities Building. The October weather was perfect and she had plenty of time to waste. It would have been perfect if she’d brought her sketchbook with her to campus, but she hadn’t been sketching that much lately.
That was where Derek found her as he headed towards his next class.
They both knew that he had been avoiding her as much as possible. He had barely spoken to her ever since her failed apology almost a month ago.
Even though he had stopped avoiding her as much, it surprised them both when he sat down next to her on the wall.
“Why didn’t you say anything when we had that Biology class together three years ago?” Anne asked him. That question had been circling around in her brain ever since she had found out at the beginning of the semester, taunting her ever since she had found out that they had shared a class.
“I was bitter,” he answered her truthfully. “My whole world had come crashing down around me six months before,” he added, tapping his right knee.
“Why here?”
“Maybe I’m just a glutton for punishment.” Looking away from her, he added, “You were supposed to be in Chicago. What happened?”
“Mary and Elizabeth happened,” she whispered, the bitterness tainting her tone. “I came home for Winter Break and the house was a mess. Dishes were piled high in the sink. Mary had her boyfriend upstairs. Laundry had multiplied in the laundry room. Somebody had even forgotten to take a load out of the washer and put it in the dryer,” she remembered. “I had to throw that load away. They had left it there for over a week. If not longer. It took ages for the laundry room to air out.”
“Oh.”
“Elizabeth had dropped out to help take care of Mama when the diagnosis had gotten worse.” Anne shrugged the rest of her comment off. “Only after Mama died, and I’d gone to Chicago, was when we all realized just how much I had been doing around the house. Things Mama had warned me about not doing so that Mary and Elizabeth would learn to stand on their own two feet. But I wanted to make things easier for her while she was still alive.” Looking at Derek, she asked, “Remember? Remember all of the times I complained to you about them. That’s part of the reason I wanted to go to Chicago. I didn’t want to have to take care of anybody else for a while. I was eighteen and all I wanted to do was...”
“Be a teenager,” he finished for her. “I figured that one out later.” Looking at his knee again, “I had plenty of time to think between surgeries and P.T.”
“P.T.?”
“Physical therapy.”
“Oh.”
“We were too young,” Anne agreed.
“If I had...” Derek started to ask before Isa bounded up to them.
“Derek!” she beamed, grinning from ear to ear as she greeted him. “Anne,” she smiled, less enthusiastically. She wasn’t blind; she recognized that something had happened between them once. Something that left them not talking to each other, barely looking in each other’s direction if there was a chance the other could be looking back.
Nineteen-year-old Louisa Musgraves did not care. She knew what she wanted and she went after it.
“What are you two doing?”
“Eating lunch between classes,” Anne answered, holding up her half-finished sandwich.
“Taking a break before I have to walk over to the Business Administration building.” Glancing over at Anne, “I didn’t realize how many Business classes I would need to take as electives.”
“That’s right in my direction!” Isa exclaimed, climbing up on the wall they were sitting on. “My class is in the next building. Walk me to class?” she asked, not waiting for an answer as she wedged herself in the small space between them.
Closing her eyes, Anne shifted further away from Derek as Isa managed to manipulate herself between them.
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Derek didn’t know exactly when it happened, but he was in the middle before he even realized he had begun. It was unfortunate. He probably wouldn’t have allowed Isa to form the habit if he hadn’t realized she did it all the time.
“Catch me!” she had taken to crying out from where she was walking on top of the decorative brick walls lining the flower beds, sidewalks, and other places along campus.
Then she’d jump down, expecting Derek to catch her.
It was a pain in his knee. Literally. Sometimes he could feel his bad knee wanting to buckle when she landed just a tad too heavily into his arms.
“Louisa!” Anne snapped once after witnessing him nearly falling after she had made a particularly high jump off of the wall that most students only sat on to eat lunch outside of the humanities building. “Don’t forget about his knee injury.”
“That was years ago,” Isa dismissed Anne, ignoring the use of her first name. “He’s all better now. Right, Derek?” she asked, grinning at him winningly as she waited for his confirmation.
“Actually, it does still hurt sometimes when the weather is about to turn...” he trailed off as he realized that Isa wasn’t listening to him. Glancing at Anne, he added for her benefit, “Arthritis build up.”
“And it’s supposed to storm tomorrow,” Anne added, also aware that Isa wasn’t listening to them.
“Yeah,” Derek sighed. “I never realized it would rain so much in October.” He resisted the urge to rub his knee. He didn’t want to admit that Isa’s leap had jarred him more than he expected.
“That’s the Tennessee fall for you,” Anne quipped. “Unpredictable. One day it’s summer and the next it’s winter and fall has decided to take a break for a few days.”
“Derek!” Isa called after them, realizing that Derek and Anne had fallen behind her. “Hurry up! You said you would walk me to class.” Even though he hadn’t.
Looking back at Anne, Derek shrugged a shoulder and walked off towards Isa.
Closing her eyes, Anne sat back down on the brick wall Isa had been jumping off. “Figures,” she whispered to herself.
He glanced back long enough to see her normally guarded expression fall and her mouth move with the word, her head shaking slightly as she stared at the sandwich in her hands.
“Derek,” Isa called again.
He’d fix this somehow.
