Ramona Wilder:no, not of things I’m buying
like I read them for fun
there are some real gems out there. pulitzer prize-winning pieces of writing, tearjerking narratives, heartwarming tales of pure humanity!
Nick Navarro:I don’t think there’s enough room in the syllabus this quarter to dissect the intricacies of your psyche.
Ramona Wilder:it’s A+ entertainment! look at this review of a banana slicer
Nick Navarro:A banana slicer? You mean, a knife?
Ramona Wilder:no, it’s one of those pointless unitaskers
“This product saved my marriage! My wife no longer yells at me for cutting bananas in uneven sections or unusual shapes. Before the Slice-o-Matic 3000, my bananas were pure chaos. Now every piece is completely uniform. Thanks, Slice-o-Matic!”
Nick Navarro:You’re making this up.
Ramona Wilder:I’m not!
link
Nick Navarro:…wow.
Ramona Wilder:or this one. a classic.
“My boyfriend is practically perfect except for one thing: a tattoo of his ex’s name on his bicep. Every day, the name CHRISTINE taunts me from the moment I wake up until I descend into semi-blissful sleep. I bought this DIY tattoo removal kit because we can’t afford laser tattoo removal, andit worked…kind of. The only problem is, now his arm just says CHRIST. We’re Jewish. Two stars.”
Nick Navarro:This is why you haven’t been doing the reading?
10
True to her word, Ramonais the model of a star student for the rest of the week and halfway into the next. She catches up on the reading. She turns in her missing assignments. She even participates in class, offering up her opinions on episodic and semantic memory.
She hopes Nick doesn’t regret giving her his number. He’s been texting back. Last night he even initiated the conversation, asking how Janet was doing. She replied with a photo of the cat lounging on her bed, sprawled in a sunbeam, Ramona’s white duvet wrinkled beneath her.
Ramona:exhausted from her 80-hour work week and the burden of paying taxes
Then she indulged a minor freak-out that she had just sent her psychology professor a picture of her bed, but all he did was laugh-react to the message.
She feels strangely giddy having someone new to talk to, evenwhen they’re talking about something inane like banana slicer product reviews. It’s just crucial she ignore the fact that this someone new is also the person responsible for her grade at the end of the quarter, and that perhaps the UCLA powers that be would not approve of…whatever it is that they’re doing.Which, she assures herself,is basically nothing.
Nothing, except for when he saw her shaky and broken-down in the bathroom, and when she told him about her panic attacks. When he told her about being in therapy, and his divorce.
Every detail made her ache to know more, to unravel the mystery of this man who may not hate her after all. She feels a bit like a sunflower, her face tilted in his direction.
There’s also the inconvenient fact that he’s really fucking cute, with his auburn hair and deep eyes and wire-rimmed glasses, especially when he lets his face get a little scruffy. Especially when she complimented him at the taco truck and it made him turn that almost indecent shade of red.
Especially when he called hermagnetic.
So she’s a little hot for teacher. Nothing wrong with that.
Sunday night, Ramona sits at her kitchen table, hoping her trio of beverages—tea, a bottled green juice, and her ever-present sparkling water from the extra tap she had installed in her sink—will get her through this psych paper on memory. Her hair is in a messy bun on top of her head and she’s wearing her ugliest, comfiest sweats.
Just last night, she went through her closet and pulled some of the clothes that no longer fit her, folded them into a box to donate.Healthyis a complicated word, one she’s still trying to define for herself, especially with all her shiny kitchen gadgets and spotless quartz countertops mocking her. She let her private chef go a fewmonths back, a luxury she didn’t think she needed anymore, knowing she should really learn how to cook, and tried some YouTube videos that promisedeven a child couldn’t screw this up. Oops.
So she gets sent prepackaged meals every week or orders takeout, and adds things like broccolini and Swiss chard to her weekly grocery deliveries even though she doesn’t quite know what to do with them.
Janet winds herself around her legs, and Ramona reaches down to pet her.
