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“Do your aunt and mom know she lives like this?” I whispered to Yunie.
“This . . . I don’t even . . .” My friend had gone numb with shock.
Ji-Hyun somehow found enough space on the counter to hop up and sit. “Another thing to know about college is that at any given time of day, there is always something more important to do than clean. Studying, partying, sleeping. Anything else goes by the wayside. Maybe indefinitely.”
She let out a burp. “Microeconomics one-oh-one. Rationality at work.”
“It’s not rational to take out the trash!?” Yunie shrieked, holding up a dripping bag that had been long forgotten.
“Whoops, that one’s on me,” Ji-Hyun said. “Unless you want to repay me for my hospitality and take it outside?”
? ? ?
“I don’t know how you’re hungry after that,” Yunie said. “I may never get that smell out of my nostrils.”
“We still need to eat,” I said. Besides the fact that we’d skipped lunch for the tour, I had the sinking feeling that we’d need a buffer in our stomachs for tonight’s party.
Having abandoned our bags in Ji-Hyun’s apartment to whatever beasts lurked among the wastes there, the two of us meandered along a downtown street full of shops and restaurants. Outdoor seating bled from cafes into the sidewalks. Heat lamps that hadn’t been turned on yet stood guard over the tables, a grim reminder that the weather could still stab us in the back and go freezing at a moment’s notice, the flipside of the Bay Area climate that no one ever talked about. Thin trees spaced themselves down the blocks, a token nicety that probably pleased the local dogs more than their owners.
This town was basically Santa Firenza with money. The boba may have come in reusable glass jars and there might have been more upscale ramen restaurants than the laws of common sense dictate
d, but it was still the same flat, zoning-restricted, Northern California pancake of a burb. Maybe what I needed out of life was to swap places with Boston Mom.
“Found a spot yet?” Yunie asked.
“Everything is so expensive,” I grumbled as I checked another menu posted in a window. Seriously, what they charged for a taco in these parts was criminal. Had none of their customers been to the city before?
Out of ideas, I pulled Yunie into a coffee shop that also had sandwiches. The interior was faintly lit and wooden, stained dark and glossy like a British pub. A hodgepodge of worn-down couches that promised no butt support at all made up most of the seating. A number of bespectacled TA-looking types were buried in the cushions, tapping away at aluminum laptops. The line for the counter was disproportionately long compared to the square footage of the place.
“Grab seats before they fill up,” Yunie said. “I’m assuming you want the Cuban?”
I nodded as I sidled through the gaps in the tables, trying to reach a two-top in the corner that hadn’t been claimed by a single person and their backpack like all the others had. I bumped a charger that had been carelessly placed in the aisle, knocking out the magnetic dongle from its device.
The owner looked up at me with a frown, and then did a double take.
I’ll have to get used to that again, I reminded myself. This wasn’t my hometown school, where everyone had acclimated to my height over the years.
But the college kid’s surprise was only fleeting, without the usual disdain or gawking that came after. He smiled and yanked the cord out of my path. “Sorry, I’m in your way.”
“Yeah,” I said. He was.
I sat down on the free armchair and sank so fast that I had to catch my skirt from riding up. I tugged it back over my knees and glanced around to make sure no one saw.
College Kid was hacking away at a long sentence, but still caught me looking at him. He bit his lip shyly and pretended to be engrossed in whatever idea he would lay down next, but the tapping of his fingers stopped.
“That’s, uh, that’s a striking color,” he ventured.
“Huh?”
He waved his hand around his eyes. “The gold. That’s not natural, is it?”
Oh. That. Quentin and I had long given up on masking my (ugh) golden true sight eyes with brown, and I’d completely forgotten they were such an outlandish hue. I should have gotten them touched up before the long weekend, but he and I—
Man. We were fighting, weren’t we? Quentin and I were having our first fight. Hooray for couple milestones.
I pushed the notion aside for now, or else I’d start wallowing. “No, they’re not natural,” I said.
“Aw. I thought maybe it could have been a mutation of your OCA2. It would have been pretty special.”
