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Thomas nods, his eyes a little darker than they were a few minutes ago. “Okay then. Rose has taken a walk on the wild side. I applaud that,” he says, throwing me a fist bump.
I roll my eyes at him. “I admire you guys for following your calling. I really do. And I hope it works out to be as rapturous as you want it to be. But the weeks are passing infinitely faster every week, and before you know it, you’ll be wearing those long cassocks and little white collars, and women in parishes the world over will be pining for you.”
The three of them look at me like that never crossed their minds.
Really?
“If I were you,” I continue, “I’d be getting as much nut as possible in the next few weeks. Like as much as you can squeeze into your schedules before departing for God School. Otherwise, you may live to regret it.”
With that, I toss my hair back and head to my room on the girls’ floor, making sure to shake my little bottom as sweetly as I can.
“Hey, Rose. Care to help us with that?” Matthew calls after me.
I turn, walking backwards. “Dunno. I mean, I don’t see what’s in it for me. Do you?”
CHAPTER THREE
While Professor Dickwad drones on about limits and derivatives, and I’m as lost as I’ve ever been in calculus, I look around the room.
Since at least half the class dropped out, wisely anticipating that what lay ahead was nothing more than a giant fucking disaster, not to mention failing grades, those who remain are the diehards and the crazies. Two camps. No more, no less.
In the first group are students acing the course. They love math and the challenge calculus has ushered into their lives, and see all the possibilities of the universe opening as their knowledge of this strange science flourishes. These odd people will go on to be masterful Wall Street investors, programmers who develop the next cool app to take the world by storm, or college professors themselves.
I am not in that group. Not by a long shot.
Group number two, as far as I can tell, has only one member. That would be me. I’m the person who doesn’t know when to quit, when to take no for an answer, and is unable to read the writing on the wall.
I’ve never been good at taking hints. Instead, I like things laid out loud and clear so I can consider all options. But, because clarity like that doesn’t usually exist, much as I would like it to, people like me keep sniffing around, waiting for things to get better, because no one has explicitly told us they won’t.
Like taking a class I have no business being in.
My mother calls this stubbornness. My father calls it optimism. I call it the way I do things.
In this instance, my future is on the line, all because I can’t graph a damned integral to save my life.
This will give my mother immense pleasure, to see me fall on my ass. Sad as it is to say, not all mothers are nice, and my mom could be president of that club. She doesn’t want anything for me that she couldn’t have. She married young instead of pursuing her dream of becoming a professional pianist.
Her thinking is that if something is good enough for her, it’s good enough for her oldest daughter too.
She didn’t get to go to university? Then I shouldn’t be able to either.
A therapist I once saw said it was the result of a ‘psychic wound.’
I just say it’s fucked up.
Even if I did want to marry young and start having babies like my high school friends, the decent guys in my town are slim pickings, anyway.
It’s all so damned depressing.
While I’ve been lost in lamenting thought, Professor Dickwad must have ended his lecture because everyone around me is standing, gathering their books, and stampeding to get the hell out of here. I join them in stuffing my things into my backpack, carefully avoiding chitchat that might let on how lost I really am.
That’s when I glance at the door and see the three seminary-bound guys from my dorm.
John, Matthew, and Thomas.
They’re weaving their way into the classroom, going against the tide of students desperate to get out. There are a lot of excuse me’s, but then the politeness dries up and they shoulder chuck their way through the crowd, ending up the recipients of a lot of over the shoulder stink-eyes.
What the hell are they doing here? They’re done with this class and scored well in it, as they gleefully told me. Are they gluttons for punishment? Is this like when you’re in high school and you go back to visit an old middle school teacher because you liked them and want to tell them thank you, their teaching changed your life?
