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A Little Something Different

Feiwel and Friends

SEPTEMBER

Maribel (Lea's roommate)

"I'm going to get us fake IDs," I say to Lea as we walk to class on the first day of school.

"What? That's illegal!" she says.

Even though we've only been roommates for four days, I'm not surprised by her reaction. I think there must be something about the first few days of college that really make people bond together, because I feel like I've known Lea my entire life.

And I can already say unequivocally that she is a great roommate. She's neat, polite, and quiet without being boring.

"Don't think of it as illegal," I say. "Think of it as helping out local business owners."

"You have a skewed perspective of the world, Maribel."

"Drinking is fun!" I say, throwing up my hands. I've only actually been drunk twice in my entire life, once at my sister's wedding and then prom weekend. But still, I know it's fun.

"I don't even really drink!" she says, also throwing up her hands. She's laughing now though.

"Do you want to?" I ask.

"Maybe."

"I mean ..." I trail off. We're walking onto an enormous green where about half of the academic buildings are located, and I want to take a moment to appreciate the fact that I am actually starting college.

"We're really here," I say, looking around.

"We are," she agrees, smiling. "We should embrace the moment."

"What class are you on your way to?" she asks after a sufficient amount of "embracing the moment" has happened.

"Development of Europe part two." I make sure that my voice is as unenthusiastic as humanly possible.

"I assume that there will be a lot of spoilers if you ever decide to take part one."

"I'll keep that in mind. What are you on your way to?"

"Creative writing."

"How did you get into an awesome upper-level course like creative writing?" I ask as we approach the steps to the English building.

She turns to walk backward for a second and swings right into a very cute guy.

"Oh my gosh," Lea squeaks as she kneels down to help him with his belongings. "I'm so sorry."

"S'okay," he says. He's cute, but super awkward as he tries like four different ways to pick up the books he dropped.

"You're sure?" Lea asks.

He nods but doesn't look at her.

"I just don't want to be late for class on the first day," she says, glancing at me and then back at him.

He settles on the ground and scoops things into his backpack.

He finally looks at her and sort of smiles. "I'm fine."

"Okay, as long as you're okay," Lea says. "See you later, Mar."

I nod and walk toward my own classroom. I think I just got to witness my first collegiate meet cute. I'm sort of assuming meet cutes happen a lot here.

Inga (creative writing professor)

People always expect the first day of school to be crisp and autumnal when the reality is that it's all too often on the hottest freaking day of the year, and the sun burns with the heat of a thousand George Foreman grills.

I stand in front of my latest bunch of creative writing students and look around, trying not to sweat through my thinnest blouse. When I left the house this morning I asked Pam what she thought of my outfit and she said it was like "slutty Little House on the Prairie." I didn't know that was a thing, but I felt proud that I had achieved such a look without even trying.

I hop up on the desk, making sure my Laura Ingalls miniskirt doesn't ride perilously high, and then lean over to check the time on my phone. I'll give them at least four more minutes. It's the first day of school, and even though they're mostly upperclassmen I doubt many of them have been into this far-reaching subbasement before. I swear, it's well below sea level. I would say the depths of hell, but the air-conditioning just kicked in.

There are nineteen seats taken and twenty-seven kids on the roster. I can't help but hope that an odd number of them drop the class. I hate having an odd number of kids in creative writing; it throws everything off when we pair up.

The door opens and my TA comes in.

"Hey, Cole," I say.

"Hey, Inga. Where are we? Twenty thousand leagues under the sea?" he asks, gesturing around confusedly.

"You're telling me. I'm gonna have to leave a trail of Beer Nuts back to my office."

"Why Beer Nuts?"

"Because if I'm wasting food like that it's going to be something I'm not particularly fond of. I would never waste decent nuts."

The door opens again and student number twenty walks in. He's frazzled looking, out of breath, but when he sees us looking at him, he smiles shyly at Cole and me. He takes a seat on the side near the door, next to the angry-looking kid and a girl who looks younger—and more nervous—than the others. He makes blink-and-you'll-miss-it eye contact with the girl before they both blush and turn away.

I glance at the time again and clear my throat. This is the part I'm bad at. I've been teaching my own courses for ten years, but every semester I feel like I mess up my greeting. I always try to be way too cool. I'm thirty-six; what am I trying to prove?

"Hey, hey, hey!" I say, and inwardly groan. I've obviously watched too many reruns of Fat Albert in my life. "Let's get this started," I add, clapping my hands.

At least I omitted the word "party" from that sentence this semester. One year I said, "Let's get this party started!" and then ended up on a tangent about how writing can be a party, it can be fun, but there are no kegs involved and limited opportunities to dance.

The students all look up at me attentively, aside from the angry kid. He scratches his ear and rolls his eyes. Guess he's not a Fat Albert fan.

"I'm Inga Myerson, and this is Cole ... my TA." I blank on his last name and mouth "sorry" to him. He shrugs and smiles. "And in case you've trudged into the depths of Narnia by mistake, this is creative writing."

I fall into my usual creative writing spiel and pass out syllabi while I chat. I put it on autopilot and try to pick out the two students who I want to see get together this semester. I have a weird knack for this. It all started when I was a TA for my favorite professor back in grad school. She said she liked to think about the students as stories and enjoyed writing one in her head as class unfolded. I took it one step further and made it a romance.

There were a couple of boys I picked in a seminar in the late nineties who are now happily married with two kids of their own. They're my most successful pairing, but pretty much every semester I see the couples at least get to the point of in-class flirtation.

"I'm going to take attendance, because I like to get everyone's name right eventually. We're going to have to get to know each other in this class, so I hope everyone is comfortable with that idea. There's no way to become writers together without knowing each other at least a little."

The angry kid's name is Victor. I'll remember that.

The nervous-looking girl is Azalea, though she quickly amends it to "Just Lea is fine." She seems less nervous after that.

The last kid who walked in is Gabe. He's got a quietness about him that I like. He has the kind of posture that makes me want to tell him to stand up straight, but I'm sure he has a mother who likes to tell him just that every time she sees him.

There's a girl named Hillary who is everything you imagine a Hillary to be. At least everything I imagined a Hillary to be before Hillary Clinton came on the scene and smashed all of my previous Hillary prejudices, like hair tossing and talking like a Valley girl. This girl is setting that movement back twenty years.

There are other kids, obviously, but these four stick out more than the rest.

When I finish taking roll, I jump back into my spiel.

"I've got a theory," I say.

"That it's a demon," Lea says, so quietly I almost miss it, and I probably would have, but she slaps a surprised hand in front of her mouth. I see Gabe turn to her and smile.

"A dancing demon?" he says quietly.

And then in my finest Rupert Giles impression of all time I say, "No, something isn't right there."

No one else seems to get the joke, but it's in that moment that I know my couple of the semester is going to be Gabe and Lea.

The quick eye contact they shared was good, but the fact that they both picked up on my inadvertent Buffy the Vampire Slayer reference makes me feel like they must be kindred spirits. Also it makes me happy to realize that kids these days still watch Buffy.

Now I have to figure out a way to orchestrate this relationship.

I hope Cole's into it. I've had TAs in the past who were wet blankets about my little game. I look over at him and he chooses that moment to give me jazz hands and I know we're going to be on the same wavelength.

Bench (on the green)

I'm the oldest bench on this green and I get no respect.

I'd like to say there are worthwhile things about the job. And maybe sometimes there are. Sometimes you get a really perfect butt; however, all rear ends are not created equal.

The one currently seated upon me is the kind I appreciate; it's the kind of behind that I would invite back time and again, if I had the ability to speak. And the best part is that it seems to be attached to a person who wants nothing more than to sit. No chatting, no moving around, no graffiti or gum. I could get used to this.

"Gabe," a voice says, sitting next to him. I'm not a big fan of this tuchus. It's ruining the quiet time I was enjoying.

"Sam," the good butt owner says.

"Did you notice that you're sitting like a millimeter away from bird shit?"

"Is there a reason you're here?"

"No. Mom gave me money to buy you lunch on the first day. She was worried about you not eating enough."

"Why would Mom worry about that?"

I imagine there's a meaningful look here and that seems like just enough to make the best butt I've ever known stand up and walk away.

Sam (Gabe's brother)

"So, how's your first day back going?" I ask.

He shrugs. My brother has never been much of a talker but in the past nine months he's practically become mute.

"No, seriously, you have to tell me something to tell Mom, or else she's not going to believe me that I took you out for lunch. She's gonna think I kept the money to buy a keg or something."

"Take a picture of me eating," he mutters.

"Or you can tell me something about your day." I pull on his arm to get him to stop and actually look at me. "As your older brother, it is well within my rights to force you to talk."

He sighs. "Fine, tell her that I'm more tired than I expected, but that's what happens when you sit on the couch for nine months. But everything else is going really, really well."

"You're tired?" I prod. Gabe is not a sharer. Gabe is a holder-inner. A holder-inner who is punching me in the arm. "Ow!"

"Why can't she ask me herself?"

"Because she thinks you lie to her."

"Whatever. Why are we still talking about this?"

As we're about to turn off the green, a girl sitting on a bench waves at Gabe and me. Mostly at Gabe, I'd imagine, because I've never seen her before in my life.

He waves back, so I guess it was meant for him.

"Who's that?"

"Just some girl," he says.

"We should invite her to lunch! She's not doing anything." I turn back toward her and he grabs for my backpack to haul me around.

"No we will not."

"You're never gonna get a girl if you ignore them."

"I didn't ignore her."

"I think she's talking to that squirrel."

"She's ... quirky."

"How do you know her?"

"She's in my creative writing class."

"Oh. Excellent. How was that class?"

He smiles at that. "It was good actually. Aside from the fact that I was almost late because I had no idea there were two levels of basement in the English building."

"Oh, subbasement classes. Yeah, I've been there. They're in many fables, but few have experienced them. I heard there's a clan of mermaids who live in one of the bathrooms."

I'm surprised when Gabe laughs out loud at that. It's really not a great joke to begin with and he hasn't been a big laugh-out-louder recently. He just hasn't been Gabe. I've tried to explain that to our mom, but I don't think she gets it. I think she assumes there's more she could or should be doing, but the secret is that there isn't. This is something Gabe needs to deal with in his own way.

"Anyway, the professor seems cool and the other kids seem okay. It might not be so bad."

As we approach the diner, I want to get one last sentiment out, even though I know he's going to sort of hate me for it.

"You're allowed to talk about it, you know."

He rolls his eyes. "I promise I know."

Squirrel!

I notice the girl eating peanuts. I love nuts.

Nuts, nuts, nuts.

Acorns!

I hop across the grass, trying to be as cute as possible, hoping that maybe if I'm lucky she'll drop one. And her loss will be my gain.

She sees me and smiles.

I'm in! Hooray!

She purposefully drops a peanut on the ground and I eat it up.

Then she drops one on the bench next to her.

Is this a trap?

I take my time eating the first one, watching her, trying to see if she has a net or a cage or a brown bag that she's going to capture me with.

I decide it's all clear, so I hop up on the bench.

She watches two boys walking away across the lawn.

"Do you think they're brothers?" she asks. "They have the same eyes, and maybe the same nose; it's hard to see from here."

I sit up straight. She's talking to me. No one ever talks to me. Oh, how I wish I knew human and could answer her.

Instead I nibble on my peanut.

Victor (creative writing classmate)

I hate everything about this stupid class. We're only a week into the semester and it's already the bane of my existence.

I hate the professor's dumb jokes, I hate the location, I hate the other people in it. In particular, these two idiots who insist on sitting near me every freaking class make me want to stab my own eyes out with my mechanical pencil.

I take a couple of deep breaths. I need to calm down. I need to make it through this semester. This was the only lit class that fit in my schedule; I need it to graduate. I do not want to worry about taking a lit class next semester when I want to be concentrating on my kickass internship.

But seriously, I thought the people in my own major were awful—the comp sci guys can be pretty annoying—but these English majors are the dopiest bunch of assholes this side of the Mississippi. They think they're so deep and filled with meaning. They are not.

And if this dude behind me kicks my chair one more time, I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I know I probably couldn't take him physically, but I would definitely win in a battle of wits.

As I'm thinking that, he kicks it again and I turn to give him a death glare. He sits up straight, moves his freakishly long legs into the aisle, and begins his assault on the chick sitting next to him. Or at least, an assault on her bag. He kicks the shit out of it.

I'm not shocked. He has the biggest feet ever. I suppose they go along well with her abnormally long neck.

Does he realize he would be a lot more effective helping her pick up her bag if he would bend his elbow? He's like Frankenstein's monster over there, all jerky movements and no movable joints.

I tune it out as Big Foot makes random noises of apology and the Giraffe squeaks that it's not a big deal.

I hate them both so much.

How many days until the semester is over?

Bob (a bus driver)

I have hundreds of kids getting on and off this bus every day. Some kids are real sweethearts and some kids are complete jerks and some kids are neutral. Some are loud in a good way, some in a bad way. There are always a couple who stand out. Sometimes it's because they're just noticeable looks-wise, or sometimes it's a simple case of logistics, like they always get off at a weird stop. My wife, Margie, loves to hear about all of them.

Lately I've been telling her lots of stories about these two kids, a boy and a girl. There's something different about them.

I noticed the boy because he grips the standing bar awkwardly. It's a funny thing how you can be an expert on gripping the standing bar, and this kid is doing it all wrong. He's awkward and it kind of looks like it hurts. I want to give him in a lesson in making it less painful.

And then a couple days ago, I realized that he does it so he can sort of hinge into her personal space every once in a while, because I see him do it even when the bus is almost empty. But he doesn't ever want to get close enough to her to sit near her; it's like he's happy to lurk.

The girl is a different story. I always notice the readers on the bus. I can't read when a bus or car is moving. I get motion sick.

But she's always reading. And he's always holding on like it hurts his arm. And I'm sitting up here thinking about them.

I make the next stop and they get off together, though they don't talk to each other at all. Both of them thank me, and they're the rare kind. Makes me happy, makes me think that maybe they should talk to each other, but I suppose I don't have any control over those things.

I watch them walk until they part ways, her going toward the cluster of dorms, him veering off toward the student center. Then one of them little devils in the back calls out, "Are we going already?"

Some of these kids are just dicks.

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Excerpted from A Little Something Different by Sandy Hall. Copyright © 2014 Sandy Hall. Excerpted by permission of Feiwel and Friends.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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