Stripped

by Mia Archer

  “What about you?” I asked.

  “What about me?” Charlie replied.

  “You’re here awfully late,” I said. “What’s your excuse? Shouldn’t you be out there living your life or whatever it is?”

  “Oh well that’s easy,” she replied. “I’m terrible at taking my own advice, and my life is my own damn business thank you very much.”

  I wasn’t sure if she was serious or not. The smile plastered on her face seemed to say she wasn’t, but I couldn’t tell. Either way it was a very Charlie thing to say. She was exactly the type to stick her nose in someone else’s business and then not bother to take her own advice.

  “Well if you’ll excuse me I need to get some work done here,” I said. “Then it’s back to the apartment where I can watch my shows and live vicariously for awhile.”

  Charlie shrugged. It was a very fatalistic shrug. “Suit yourself. Just maybe remember what we talked about here. You’re not going to look back on your time in college and wish you spent more time studying.”

  “I am if I don’t get into med school this time around,” I said.

  Charlie shrugged again and disappeared out the door. I heard her making her way back down to her office and the door slammed shut behind her.

  Odd, that. Not that what she did on her own time was any of my damn business. A fact she’d be more than happy to remind me of if she could.

  I picked up some of the papers I had to finish before class started. Charlie might think she could waltz into class and start teaching like it was nothing, and maybe that was something she could pull off.

  I was going to come to class prepared though. I didn’t care if it meant I didn’t have a social life outside of class. I told myself it would be worth it when I had MD after my name and I was living the high life. I’d just have to put off having a real life and real relationships for another decade or so.

  That wasn’t a high price to pay. Not at all if it meant I got to live my dream, damn it.

  3

  Keri

  Crowds of students streamed into the science building all around me, but I stopped for a moment to look up at it and reflect on the odd twists and turns that had brought me here.

  I wasn’t supposed to go to the science building. I was supposed to be in the English building on the other side of campus. I wasn’t supposed to be doing math and mixing chemicals and learning about carbon bonds and all that stuff, yet here I was cramming all that stuff in so I could maybe graduate in six years rather than the four I’d been planning.

  “Something wrong?” Charlie asked.

  I turned and smiled at my best friend for about as far back as I could remember. We’d grown up on the same street and been roommates ever since my first year and her second of college. At first in the dorms and now in off campus housing.

  It was her help that had allowed me to make this change in the first place when I decided I wanted to make a change. I’d helped her with her homework from time to time and that helped convince me I could do this when the incident with grandma convinced me it was time for a change.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” I said. “Just thinking about all the changes that have happened in the last four years.”

  “I guess it has been a whirlwind, hasn’t it?” Charlie asked. “But you’ll do fine this year. I wish something had awakened this hard sciences monster years ago. You’d be off at med school right now. I know people who’d kill for that.”

  I grinned right back at her. “Well give it time and I’ll be out there anyways. So what if I’m a couple years late?”

  A couple years late and a few tens of thousands of dollars deeper in debt, but I figured if it all paid off and I did end up getting into med school then a few tens of thousands of dollars would be nothing compared to the kind of debt I’d take on there.

  Gotta love America and the wonderful post secondary education system that bled students dry.

  “Come on,” Charlie said. “You’re going to be late to your lab and I’m going to be late to my office hours.”

  “Oh yeah?” I asked as we started up the steps to the science building. “How’s that going? Any cute TAs this semester?”

  Charlie leaned against one of the doors and let out an overly dramatic sigh. A couple of people trying to get into the building shot her an irritated glance, but she glared right back at them until they moved around her and found another door. There were seven others for them to choose from, after all.

  This was Charlie’s territory. Unlike me she’d been coming to this building since our freshman year, and she wasn’t going to let anyone push her around. Not when she was a TA, which might be nothing compared to a prof or even adjunct faculty, but as far as the underclassmen were concerned that made her a god.

  At least in her own mind.

  “Not a single one of them even comes close to being eye candy,” she said. “Not even sugar free eye candy that sort of looks sexy if you squint at them just right or have a few beers. Can you believe it? The most action I got this summer was from a girl, believe it or not.”

  “I don’t believe it,” I said.

  “You’re just jealous I’ve gotten more action than you since you broke up with that Simone chick,” Charlie said. “If you can call a short kiss more action.”

  I stuck my tongue out at her.

  “You poor thing. Guess you’re going to have to look elsewhere for your hot guy fix this semester,” I said. “Go to the gym. Stuff like that.”

  “I don’t know about that. There are always a couple of cute guys in some of the classes I’m running, but they’re all off limits. Not to mention they’re going to be mostly freshmen. Yuck.”

  I arched an eyebrow. “What’s wrong with freshmen?”

  “Are you kidding me?” Charlie asked. “Maybe things are different over in lesbian land where you hang out all the time, but with guys a freshman is so close to still being in high school that it’s not even funny. They spend the entire time staring at my tits and then talking about me when they don’t think I can hear them. It’s exhausting.”

  “And I’m sure you hate it when they’re going on about how hot you are,” I said with a roll of my eyes. We both knew how much she liked that sort of attention.

  “Are you kidding? I’m far from the hottest TA out there. Like I’m maybe second or third.”

  “Second or third?” I asked. “Someone has a high opinion of herself.”

  “And my students always have a high opinion of me. What can I say?” she said.

  “I knew you liked the attention, you slut,” I said.

  “Okay so maybe I like it just a little,” she said. “But they’re still so totally unfuckable that it’s not funny. They’re nice to look at, but the moment they open their mouths everything dries up down there.”

  “You’re so crude,” I said.

  I glanced around to see if there was anyone listening in on our conversation, but everyone seemed preoccupied with their own first day jitters.

  “Stop that,” Charlie said. “No one cares. And besides, you’re missing the big point here. Even if I did decide to walk on the wild side it’s not happening with one of my students. I’m not risking the nice stipend and tuition package the university gives me for a roll in the hay with someone who isn’t old enough to remember when Tales of Elassa was a strategy gaming series and not an MMO.”

  “If you say so,” I said. “Now can we get inside? It’s air conditioned in there and it’s hotter than one of your dangerously young freshmen out here.”

  Charlie stuck her tongue out, but she followed me into the building. Cool air washed over me and I closed my eyes and inhaled the strange new scent of the science building. It was a mix of smells that were difficult to place. There was the usual college smell of a building that had stood on campus for decades, but mixed in were various chemical smells spilling out of labs all through the place.

  There were no alarms going off so I was pretty sure taking in those smells wasn’t going to
kill me or anything. That was another thing I had to get used to over on this side of campus. The ever present danger of someone screwing something up and causing a building evacuation.

  The only time that had ever happened in the English building was when someone left a bag of popcorn unattended in a student lounge and set off the fire alarm.

  I frowned thinking about the English building. I was going to have to really hoof it after my last lab of the day if I was going to make it to the other side of campus.

  I might’ve switched to premed, but the funny thing they never tell people about premed is it wasn’t a degree so much as it was a collection of classes you had to have if you were going to be considered for medical school. It was up to you to get a degree while you were taking those classes. Most people were biology or chemistry majors, and I was one of the few weirdos who was going for a BA while taking science classes.

  “Ready for another packed day?” Charlie asked.

  “You know it,” I said. “I have a full schedule of the science stuff in the morning then I have to go over and talk to one of my profs about my senior thesis on the English side of things.”

  “That sucks. Low-level science courses in the morning and high level English stuff in the afternoon,” Charlie said.

  I shrugged. “To be honest a lot of the science classes are about as difficult in terms of how much time I have to spend on them. Despite your terror of language arts, English and essay writing isn’t really all that bad.”

  Charlie eyed me sideways. “How much time you have to spend on them? I’ve seen your study habits. It’s a wonder you get the grades you do with as little studying as you do. I had to bust my ass in general chemistry.”

  “Hey, this is still a change for me,” I said. “But I’m going to do it.”

  “I know,” Charlie said. “And I admire that. You were always like that. You decide you want to do something and you do it. I’m proud of you, but… damn.”

  I followed her gaze, but of course what she was looking at was nothing I was interested in. A couple of guys walked past who looked like they could have been kings of their high school when they were still at high school, but here on campus they were just one of a thousand other guys who were also the kings of their high school.

  I guess these two looked okay if you were into that sort of thing. Tall. Muscled. Either they were upperclassmen who still hit the gym or they were freshmen who hadn’t discovered the free booze they could get at house parties off campus or down on frat row if they brought their girlfriends with them.

  The house parties were a better bet though. I’d known a couple of guys who discovered too late that the free beer at the frats weren’t free, and the girl they came with to get into the frat party if they were unaffiliated was usually the price. Even if they were dating.

  “What do you think?” Charlie asked.

  “The same thing I think whenever you point out guys to me anywhere on campus. I’m sure they’re nice to look at for you, but they don’t do anything for me.”

  “Okay, what about that group coming in behind them?” Charlie asked.

  I followed her gaze with some interest. Charlie might not be into girls, but she was a good wing woman. Just like I tried to be a good wing woman for her when we were out on the town. She was usually a pretty good judge of what I liked in women, and the group of bubbly cheerleader types who walked in behind the guys were certainly what I liked. Even if they were probably all straight.

  I’d learned long ago that straight could be a moving target. Life at college was what they called a “target rich environment” in the old movies. Full of girls who were willing to take a walk on the wild side once or twice so they could say they did it, and I’d always been more than willing to provide that experience.

  I really was no better than Charlie. I just wasn’t as vocal about my horndogging.

  “I see you checking out those girls,” she said. “You know they were in middle school when you were graduating, right?”

  “Shut up,” I said. “Don’t you have to get up to your office or something?”

  “Yeah, I guess I do,” she said. “And you have a class to get to, don’t you?”

  “Definitely,” I said, my eyes following those girls as they walked down the hall.

  It really was a distracting target rich environment around here. I wondered which one of those girls had been the prom queen. Maybe all of them. They all looked like the type.

  That was the thing about college. At their schools those girls had probably ruled the roost, but here they were one of hundreds of prom queens running around.

  I reminded myself that I was here to learn, not to ogle attractive girls. I did have a lab to get to and I was going to be late if I didn’t get my butt up there. I wasn’t going on a victory lap for nothing, and I sure as shit wasn’t going to waste precious time and a potential grade on that victory lap by missing the first bit of class.

  “Do you know who your TA is for that class?” Charlie asked. “I might know her. I wish I was teaching your lab, but they don’t let us pick our students.”

  “Is that policy for all the TAs, or just the ones who sit and play video games when they’re supposed to have office hours?”

  Charlie stuck her tongue out. “What they don’t know isn’t going to hurt them or my prospects for teaching one of those classes.”

  “Here’s the printout for my schedule. Looks like some guy named Reynolds?”

  Charlie snatched the paper out of my hand and looked it over. Her eyes went wide and she let out a whistle before turning to me and grinning.

  “Reynolds, all right. You have fun in that class and be sure to stop by my office after to tell me all about it,” she said.

  “What are you talking about? I thought you said there weren’t any hot guys this year? Besides, how many times do I have to tell you I’m not into dudes before you realize you can’t live vicariously through me with this stuff?”

  “Nothing like that,” Charlie said. “Trust me. Have fun in your class and let me know all about all the fun you had.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Fine. You’re lucky I have to get to class, otherwise I’d get to the bottom of whatever you’re pulling.”

  “Trust me, you’re going to have a great time in your lab! Don’t forget to stop by my office after and tell me all about it!”

  And with that she was gone, leaving me standing there with a sparse crowd of students flowing around me. They were thinning out as people got to class.

  I was going to be late myself, so I turned and jogged up the steps taking them two at a time so I wouldn’t be too late, wondering the entire time what the heck Charlie was talking about when she said I was going to have a great time in my chem lab.

  4

  Ashley

  “You can do this Ashley. This is the big leagues, but you’ve got this.”

  I looked at the reflection in the small mirror I’d taped to the cinder block wall of my office with some goop that was supposed to leave stuff hanging without peeling off paint. I’d find out if that gamble worked at the end of the year.

  The chemistry department hated it when people did stuff to the walls and they had to call maintenance in to paint things over. Legends still spoke of one guy who made the mistake of drilling into the blocks. They said he was a promising phd candidate until that incident and after that his career was sunk before he even got it off the ground.

  The rumors said he still haunted the halls of community colleges in the region to this day. I shivered thinking of that. I wasn’t going for my phd, but I also didn’t want to risk the wrath of the faculty.

  I was here to get my masters, bolster my grades and get a better score on the MCAT, and then it was off to do what I really wanted and get the heck out of academia.

  I turned back to the video I’d been watching. It was some motivational thing from a teacher. Sure the teaching she did was elementary school, but I figured there wasn’t much of a difference between teachin
g elementary school and teaching a bunch of college sophomores when you got down to it.

  I hit play.

  “And remember that if they’re starting to get crabby it might be because you’re getting close to nap time. I find that can be the most difficult half hour of the day, but if you get through it the rest of the day is snack time and fun until the buses arrive!”

  I snorted out a laugh. Nap time. Now there was something college underclassmen got plenty of. I sighed thinking back to those carefree days when I didn’t have anything to worry about.

  Of course at the time I’d been sure I had plenty to worry about. Get good grades so I could get into a good school.

  Not that those good grades had done me a damn bit of good when it came to applying to the right sort of schools. Still, I’d thought I had it bad back then. Then I got to grad school and found out the true meaning of being busy.

  Something pulled on my earphones. I let out a surprised yelp and looked up, letting out a sigh of relief when I saw Charlie standing in front of me smiling down with a knowing grin.

  At least it wasn’t Spencer. He’d come into my office a couple of times and it was impossible to get rid of him once he was in.

  I didn’t like it when Charlie smiled down at me like that. It usually meant I was in for trouble. I didn’t like trouble. I liked sticking to the program and making sure everything was going according to the plan. Charlie coming in here and terrifying me while I was watching pointers on teaching a class was not part of the plan.

  “Why are you watching videos of some lady with a bunch of kids?” Charlie asked.

  I blushed and quickly minimized the window. “It was advice on teaching classes.”

  Charlie stared at the screen for a moment longer and shrugged. “Good point I guess. There’s not much difference between first graders and underclassmen.”