Page 162 of You + Me – Against the World

Doing what? Who knows…

She scrambles to her feet and throws her arms around Timothy’s neck before saying hello to the swarm of basketball players forever trailing in his wake. These guys only move as part of a pack. They don’t exist as individuals, only when they form part of a unit with their buddies—who are always ready to defend them—or their girlfriends, who are prepared to drop everything the moment their man shows up.

Wallace drapes his steroid-pumped arm around his girlfriend’s shoulders, but it’s me he looks at as he asks his next question. I’m still sitting on the grass. I’d rather die than even raise a hand to greet him.

“Don’t you have class?”

He has the smug look of a cop who already knows the answer to his question.

“Yes, we’ve got to go back in half an hour,” Alma says, jumping in before I have time to say anything. “We were trying to find a topic for our first-semester project.”

“Don’t they give you a classroom in film studies?”

Tim’s little joke clearly goes straight to his head. He basks in his friends’ mindless laughter.

“You know that students are free citizens who can roam around this beautiful country as they please, right?” I reply, flashing him my best smile.

“Arcadi, Arcadi… now that doesn’t sound very American, does it? I reckon it must be much nicer here than in Poland.”

“Tim!”

I don’t need Alma to come to my defense. I stay calm.

“I’m of Russian descent. And I was born in the United States. But it’s nice of you to care, Wallace.”

He can joke all he wants; I can see his jaw tightening and his fists twitching. If I push him a little further, he might just lose his temper… and that could be fun. But the problem is, when guys travel in packs, it’s often six against one, and the game gets a lot less entertaining.

Wallace chooses to ignore me and pulls Alma a little closer. I get the feeling his massive arm is gripping her so tightly to release some of the frustration he feels from not having smashed my face in. And something tells me she isn’t particularly enjoying this public display of affection. But he continues to practically hold her hostage, with a lovestruck look on his face that makes me sick.

“Well, if you don’t have anything to do for the next half hour, I was going to grab a bite with the guys. Do you want to come?”

“I’d love to, but I don’t know if I have time.”

“We need to work, Alma,” I state, interrupting their nauseating love-fest.

“Do you mind? I was talking to my girlfriend.”

Alma’s head swings from him to me. She looks lost, trapped. Her smile twists into an uncomfortable grimace.

But I’m not going to beg her to stay here with me. And I’m certainly not going to give Wallace the satisfaction of seeing that I want what he has. I don’t play those little games. If she is incapable of making a decision, I’ll make it for her. Taking my time, I get to my feet, pick up my bag from the grass, and plant myself in front of them.

I need to lose this habit of running my hand through my hair.

“Forget it, Lancaster. If you need a bodyguard and you don’t want to put time into this, we can each work on our own. You can tell Abrams that all the ideas were yours. Or that you want to change partners. I really don’t care.”

***

I’m not going to set foot on campus again today. I don’t know if Alma trotted off after her boyfriend, and I don’t care, but she definitely went back to class at some point. I don’t know if she waited for me until the very last moment or what she told herself when she realized I wasn’t coming back. I have no way of knowing what her nosy friend might have said to her, either. And I’ve got no idea what she might have told Abrams when he asked her about our short film topic and what happened to her partner.

Did the professor gloat when he realized we’ve already imploded?

Did he tell her to stay away from me or not to give up?

It shouldn’t matter.

I don’t need some college professor running little experiments at my expense. Alma Lancaster’s world and mine simply cannot meet, period. I’m not in the mood to have a failed filmmaker try to prove me wrong and challenge me to work with my exact opposite. I don’t have time for a rich kid who’s afraid of everything: afraid of the professors’ opinions, afraid of her boyfriend, afraid of what people will say if she doesn’t do exactly what’s expected of her.

Afraid of me, even. I’m sure she’s afraid of me.