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Charles did eventually lose steam, trailing off back into his research. I was exhausted from my first real day of work at Mug Shots, despite my proximity to the espresso machine meaning I could caffeinate at will. Even though I’d taken a shower when I got home, everything still smelled like coffee, to the point where I was convinced that maybe coffee particles were stuck in my nose hairs or something, like bits of pollen on a bee’s legs, so that every breath I took was being filtered through coffee. Hell, maybe that’s why it was so addictive? I’d have to see if Charles had ever heard of a conspiracy theory about that.
The caffeine had clearly worn off, though, because I was staring at the screen where I’d written some notes for my paper and my brain felt like mush. I wrote a thesis statement and immediately deleted it because it was self-evident. I wrote another that I deleted because I knew I couldn’t support it, and another that I deleted because it would be too much work to explain. Ugh.
I closed my laptop and went to see if there was any tea in the hall kitchen. I found a mangled box of jasmine tea that it didn’t look like anyone would miss it and put water on to boil, slumping against the counter in the hope that somehow a paper idea would magically fall into my head.
“You gonna get that?”
I jerked up to Gretchen’s voice and the sound of the kettle screaming.
“Oh my god, I actually just fell asleep standing up.”
“You okay?”
“I have a paper on Jane Eyre due tomorrow and everything I think of is idiotic and I’m so tired.”
There was something about Gretchen that made me accidentally tell her all my problems.
“Come to yoga with me,” she said.
“Oh, no, I don’t have time,” I said. I thought only hippies and health nuts did yoga.
“Well, you’re not getting anything done in the state you’re in, are you? Also, you just majorly over-steeped that.”
I didn’t know you could over-steep tea. I took a sip. It smelled floral and sweet but was intensely bitter. I winced and Gretchen nodded in commiseration.
“Ugh!” I dumped the tea down the drain and slumped. “I can’t even make tea, what’s wrong with me?”
Apparently she decided this was a rhetorical question because she just nodded and said, “It’ll be good, I promise.” Then she took me by the elbow and pulled me after her.
The first twenty minutes were ridiculous, the next twenty minutes were torture, and the last twenty minutes were amazing. I was clumsy and not strong and had no idea that I apparently breathe incorrectly. But the instructor was amazing, telling us ways to adjust our bodies to do the poses more safely, more effectively, more beneficially, and every time I followed her instructions, I could feel my muscles engage differently, feel my breath deepen, feel myself calm down and my mind clear.
With all my attention focused on breathing in and out through my nose, turning my right hip forward and my left hip back, pulling my navel in, squeezing my shoulder blades together on my back, retracting my chin back so my head was in line with my spine, pulling my feet energetically toward each other, and pushing into the inner edges of my feet, along with a dozen other things I couldn’t do, I had no time to feel tired or stressed. I didn’t give a single thought to my paper, or to Mug Shots and all the ways I’d managed to humiliate myself in front of my coworkers, mess up people’s drinks, or spill things on myself.
I didn’t even think of Will. And an activity that managed to take my mind away from him and the fact that he’d kind of blown off my last few invitations to do anything, citing being busy at work? Well, that was worth something.
As we walked back to the dorms, I was alert and energetic, but not bouncing off the walls the way I often felt. I was calm. And how much did I love Gretchen for not asking me how I liked it and saying she told me so.
“I go three times a week” was all she said when we went our separate ways. “Come whenever you want. Good luck with your paper.”
THE NEXT month went by in a rush of total chaos, punctuated by the most fun I’ve ever had. Maybe it’s because of how busy and stressful everything was that the moments with my friends felt so intoxicating. Or maybe it was because I’d never really had friends like these before—the kind who knew about my daily life, who I was excited to run into at the library, or slump next to at a table in the dining hall with plates of pizza that managed to be simultaneously dry and greasy.
