My Sweet Escape

by Chelsea M. Cameron

  The class was full of clones of the students I’d left behind. I even saw a few girls with the exact same bag I had shoved in a box back at my mom’s house. Since it was a sophomore-level class, most of the nonserious people had been weeded out, but there were still a few people who looked like they wouldn’t make it through four years of this. And, of course, since this was New England, there were the token Birkenstock-wearing, patchouli-smelling weirdos who were going to spend their time protesting whatever the trendy cause of the day was.

  They were almost worse than the buttoned-up, straitlaced kids. They just had to be so self-righteous about every. Damn. Thing. They also loved to hear the sound of their own voices. Fortunately, I’d brought my headphones, and since they liked to talk so much, they’d take up plenty of class time, leaving that time for the rest of us to do whatever. I booted up my laptop and listened as the professor, a guy in a nice button-up and tie—big surprise—droned on about Marbury vs. Madison. Been there, done that.

  I kept one ear open and the other covered as I listened to some new music I’d found the other day on low volume. I’d also bought some new albums that I needed to review, so I switched to those. The first was a ska group that was way more punk than ska and didn’t have a whole lot going for them. It wasn’t even bad in a craptastic way that made you want to listen to it anyway. They definitely weren’t Streetlight Manifesto, or Reel Big Fish.

  I made a few notes about some of the songs and moved on to the second album that had more of a folky/bluegrass feel. That one was much better, and I found myself transfixed by the complex melodies and haunting lyrics. I didn’t think there was anything else like music for having the ability to transport you to another place, even when you were sitting in a class full of strangers.

  Finally, the class was over and homework was assigned. I’d managed to get a seat in the back and had avoided making eye contact or speaking with anyone, so I called the first class a total win.

  I wasn’t so lucky for my second, American State and Local Government. It sounded like a total yawner of a class, but when I got into the room everyone was talking and laughing like it was a social gathering instead of a class. I sat in the back, closest to the door and with at least two seats in between me and anyone else, and I thought I was set until a girl rushed in and sat with one seat between us.

  “Am I late?” she said, not even looking at me and frantically searching through her bag. All I saw was a huge quantity of very blond, very curly hair that she had tried to shove into an elastic band without much success.

  I looked around, but there was no one else to respond to her, so it was up to me.

  “Um, there’s still a few minutes.” She was up to her elbows in her bag, and she finally emerged, holding a bag of Skittles. I opened and closed my mouth a few times as she ripped the bag open with her teeth and then held the bag in my direction.

  “Want some?” I finally looked at her face and then wished I hadn’t. One half was perfect white skin, and the other was mangled with what looked like a severe burn. “Do I have something on my face?” she said, her eyes getting wide as her hand flew to her face. “Oh, yeah, I do. Duh.”

  She dropped her hand and grinned at me. Somehow her eyes had remained unharmed, but the side of her mouth and the rest of her face going all the way to her ear were shiny and had a weird pattern on them. It extended down her neck, and though her arm was covered, I could see it on the back of her hand, as well.

  “So I’m going to tell you my name and also tell you that you can stare if you want. I’m Hannah, and it’s okay to stare.” She flicked some of her hair back, and I tried my best to look into her eyes, which were a deep brown, in contrast with her pale hair and skin.

  “Jos. I’m Jos,” I said, because what else was I going to do?

  “Nice to meet you. And if you choose to sit on the other side of the room next class, I won’t, like, hate you or anything. I’m a people repeller. It’s kind of my thing. For obvious reasons.” She giggled a little, and I turned to the front of the class, where an extremely tall woman in a charcoal skirt and jacket was writing things down on the numerous whiteboards. She looked like she just stepped out of a Senate meeting. When she was done writing what looked like half of a novel, she turned around and clapped her hands. Everyone shut up.

  “Okay, I see you all made it here for another week of mind-broadening. Congratulations on being sober enough to drag yourselves here.” Everyone else laughed, and I sort of joined in. She picked up a clipboard and read our names off. Of course, since my last name began with the first letter of the alphabet, I was the second person called.

  “Joscelyn Archer?”

  “Here,” I said, listening to my voice echo in the large room.

  She looked up from the clipboard and searched me out. “You’re new to us, yes? Transfer?”

  “Uh, yeah.” I could feel the blood rushing to my face and ears.

  “Do you go by Joscelyn, or is there a nickname you’d prefer?”

  “Um, Jos is fine.”

  She smiled, showing the most perfect set of probably real teeth I’d ever seen.

  “Jos. Lovely. Nice to have you with us.”

  She moved on to the next name, and I slumped down in my seat.

  “I hope you’re not going to do that all the time. She’ll call on you more if she knows how much you hate it,” Hannah whispered as someone else said, “here!”

  “Great. Just fantastic.”

  Hannah was right. Since I was new, the teacher, who went by Pam, didn’t call on me, but everyone else was fair game. She fired questions out like bullets, and if you answered too slowly, she’d move on to someone else. There was a lot of stuttering, a lot of red faces and a lot of people shooting their hands in the air to be called on so they could show everyone just how freaking smart they were.

  And then there were some, including Hannah, who gave the answers when called and didn’t elaborate unless Pam asked them to. Everyone sort of turned to look at Hannah when she talked, and I could see that more than a few people’s gazes skittered away from the burned side of her face, but she didn’t seem to notice or care.

  I didn’t get out my headphones the entire class. It was just too interesting. How she could make something as potentially boring as Colonial government riveting was beyond me.

  When the class was over, we all sort of walked out like we were in a trance.

  “Is it always like that?” I couldn’t help myself from asking Hannah as she crumpled up the empty Skittles bag.

  “Pretty much. Awesome, huh?”

  “It probably will be less awesome when she starts calling on me.”

  “Just do the reading. You seem like the kind of person who doesn’t have her head up her ass, so you should be fine. So, where did you transfer from?”

  “UNH.”

  “Boo, hiss. Don’t say that too close to anyone connected with hockey, or else you might get your ass handed to you.” So I’d heard. The hockey rivalry between the University of Maine and the University of New Hampshire had been going on for as long as they’d been playing hockey. I’d never gone to a game, but campus pretty much shut down so everyone could go to the games, and I bet UMaine wasn’t any different.

  I had some time before my next class, and I was already starving, so I headed toward the Union.

  “Do you have another class right now?” Hannah said as we got to the doors. “Because, although that bag of Skittles was totally satisfying, I could go for something else. Why does this sound like I’m asking you out? I’m totally not.” She shook her head.

  “Um, no. I’m available. For eating. Not the dating.”

  Her dark eyes went wide. “Because I like boys. I swear.”

  “Yeah, me, too.”

  We shared one of those nervous giggles that turns into full-on laughter, and by the
time we got to the Union, I was wiping tears away.

  “I swear, I’m not normally this weird,” she said as we joined the lunchtime throng and descended into the food court. Only a second later she said, “Okay, that’s a complete lie. I am normally this weird.”

  “I won’t tell anyone,” I whispered as we scoped out what was available. The longest lines were for pizza and burgers and the pseudo “Taco Bell,” so we headed to get wraps since those were the quickest. I happened to be on Hannah’s “good” side, but I was more than aware of the stares she got. It was one of those things. You saw her, realized there was something different about her, did a look again to check and then couldn’t look away.

  She just smiled and giggled and acted like a normal girl. She got a hummus wrap and I ordered the special, known as the “Winslow,” which was basically a chicken caesar wrap with the addition of crushed croutons, which was such a brilliant idea that I couldn’t believe someone hadn’t thought of it sooner.

  Finding a seat turned out to be a challenge, but we found a table for the two of us in a corner. I was about to say something, but Hannah beat me to it.

  “So, in light of wanting to get things out in the open, yes, it’s a burn. It happened when I was a kid and it’s a long story and I’d rather not go into it because it’s a bit of a downer and a bit of a conversation killer and usually after I tell it I never see whoever I told it to again. Which is my weird way of saying that I don’t want to make you uncomfortable this early in our relationship. Wow, why do I keep doing that? I am so sorry.”

  “No big,” I said, unable to stop laughing. “How about you tell me something else? Where are you from?”

  She chewed and swallowed before she spoke. “Up north. The boondocks. The sticks. The butthole of Maine. Whatever you want to call it. I couldn’t afford to go out of state and this was the biggest school in Maine. Great place to get lost in, you know?”

  I did.

  “What’s your major?” she said after taking another bite of her wrap.

  “Poli-sci.”

  “Me, too. Although, that’s only because it sounded better than history and I’m a bit of a law junkie. I have no idea what I want to do, but I figured it was as good as anything else. Plus, in the upper level classes we get to debate and that’s kind of one of my favorite things. You?”

  “I used to want to be president, or a senator or something,” I said. I hadn’t decided quite what yet. I figured I’d start out in local government and work my way up.

  “Used to?”

  “Another one of those long stories that’s a bit of a downer that I’d rather not tell.”

  Hannah nodded. Honestly, the burn wasn’t that bad once you’d been looking at it for a while. You got used to it, and the fact that Hannah didn’t seem bothered about it helped.

  “I hear you, girl.” We finished our lunch and talked more about the class, and Hannah told me that as long as I did the reading and had a reasonable grasp of the current political climate, I’d be fine. I wasn’t so sure, but I took her word for it.

  “Are you on campus?” she asked as we dumped our trays and made our way upstairs to the Starbucks. Hannah said she needed her next caffeine fix.

  “No. I live in a house in Bangor with my sister and a bunch of her friends.” Hannah let out a dreamy sigh.

  “That sounds awesome. I’m stuck on campus. Yay, scholarship.” She sounded so enthused. “I’ve only lived with my roommate for a few weeks, and she’s already stopped talking to me. Luckily, she has a boyfriend with an apartment, so she usually stays there.”

  Once again, been there, done that.

  “It’s awesome if you feel like having three sets of parents always watching your every move.” I hadn’t meant to share so much about myself, but I couldn’t help it. I hadn’t talked to anyone like this in a while, and there was something about Hannah. I’d known her less than a few hours, but it was like we’d met before, even though that was impossible.

  “That sucks,” she said as she got in line. I decided to get my second round of tea just for the heck of it. The line was crazy long with everyone jonesing for their next fix like a bunch of junkies standing in line for methadone. Actually, the methadone was probably cheaper.

  By the time we got our drinks and found a table crushed in a corner and two seats, it was almost time for my next class. I downed my tea and told Hannah I’d see her on Wednesday. We hadn’t talked about the rest of our class schedules, but the chances of me seeing her in another of my classes were actually pretty good, and I had the feeling I would.

  I was searching for Neville Hall, which housed my English class, when someone tapped me on the shoulder.

  “Fancy seeing you here, Red.” I pivoted and found the ever-grinning face of Dusty Sharp. He pulled a set of headphones nearly identical to the ones I had off his ears and let them rest around his neck. His wardrobe of baggy everything hadn’t deviated, and I found myself wondering, once again, how his pants stayed up.

  I wanted to say something snarky, but instead a question came out of my mouth.

  “Do you know where Neville Hall is?” Someone yelled hello, and his eyes briefly left my face to wave hello and call out to someone.

  “Sure. Follow me. I’m going there, as well. What class do you have?”

  “English.”

  “Me, too.”

  Jesus, if he and I were in the same class, that would just suck beyond suckage.

  He must have seen the horror on my face. I hadn’t really tried to hide it.

  “Just messing with you, Red. I have calc. Would being in the same class with me be that bad?”

  I didn’t answer as we crossed the road and I saw a building with the words Neville Hall on it. I could have found it if I’d looked, but then I probably would have been late.

  He held the door for me and a few people coming in behind me.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  We paused in the lobby.

  “I’m on the second floor,” he said, pointing toward the stairs.

  “I’m on the third.”

  We walked up two flights and he gave me that little two-fingered wave again.

  “See you later, Red.”

  “’Bye.”

  I joined a few other people and plodded my way up to the third floor.

  I hadn’t fulfilled my English requirements yet, so I was stuck taking Creative Writing. When I walked in, there were only about ten other people there. That did not bode well for being able to hide and listen to music. Great.

  I found a seat in the back and close to the door and looked around. I felt pretty young; most of the people looked like they were quite a bit older than me.

  I’d gotten a decent grade in my English comp class at UNH, but only because I’d been one of the few students who turned in assignments. I liked to read, but writing those insipid papers where you had to analyze what some dude who had died hundreds of years ago had meant by writing about rain or some such crap was pretty much the worst thing ever. Luckily, the more you seemed to bullshit, the better grade you got. Maybe I could do the same in this class.

  A few more people trickled in until there were fifteen of us. The professor was the last one there, and he was everything a teacher of English should be. He even had a tweed jacket with those weird elbow patches and horn-rimmed glasses.

  He called attendance and when he got to my name he asked me what I wanted to be called. I went with Jos again as he introduced himself as Greg and explained how the class would go. I’d skimmed the syllabus, but hadn’t really paid attention to it. As he explained what we’d be doing, my heart sank. We’d have to write something every week, and during at least one class period a week. And we had to read what we’d written. Out loud. And, if that wasn’t enough, he’d make copies of what we’d written and we’d all have
a class discussion.

  Welcome to your nightmare, Jos Archer.

  Once again, since I was new, I didn’t have to do much, but this was going to be another class in which I was required to participate, even if I didn’t want to. At least half of the class looked like they’d rather be getting a lobotomy than be there, so at least I was in good company.

  I suffered my way through and then I was finally done with classes for the day. I scurried away from Neville Hall as fast as I could before I could bump into Dusty again, and checked my phone. There were several missed texts from Renee, asking how classes were going, and one from my mother and another from Darah that was just a smiley face.

  I could have gone back to the house, but I wanted to savor this time I had without anyone watching my every move. It wasn’t too cold, so I did a walk around campus, finding the rest of my classes for the next day and watching the other students go about their lives, wondering what it was like to be them.

  When my legs started to get numb, despite the walking, I went back to my car. My instructions were to go right home, but I didn’t. I’d been dying to go to Bull Moose in Bangor, so I headed toward the mall. Bull Moose was pretty much the best music store in all of New England. I’d discovered them when I went to UNH and I was over the moon when I realized there was one close to UMaine.

  It took some maneuvering and lane-switching to find the place, but I did.

  The great thing about Bull Moose was that they had not only CDs, but records and old movies, and all the people who worked there knew what they were talking about. When I walked in, I let out a breath I hadn’t known I’d been holding. Ah. I loved the comforting rows of cases, all ordered by genre and artist. Yes, most music could be purchased online, but you couldn’t duplicate the experience of going to a store and browsing yourself.

  “Can I help you, little lady?” Jesus. H. Christ. I paused with my hand on a Radiohead CD that I didn’t currently own and turned to make sure he wasn’t a hallucination.

  “No, thank you. I can pick out my own music.” That was a lie. I’d recently discovered The Black Keys, and I was hoping to find more bands like them, but I was never going to ask Dusty. Not in a million years. “Are you stalking me? Because, seriously, it’s getting ridiculous.”