by Cara Malone
Out of the corner of her eye, Max saw Ruby settle into her seat, angling her body slightly away from Max’s desk which was unfortunately close. To fit twenty-five desks into this little room, they had to be nearly on top of each other, and there were less than five inches between Max’s shoulder and Ruby’s – that is, if she were sitting upright. As it was, Ruby was leaning heavily into the aisle away from Max, and she didn’t need to consult her non-verbal communication notes to know this was a sign of repulsion.
“We’re not going to be reading the syllabus today,” McDermott was booming. “So for those of you hoping you could sleep through tonight’s class, you’ll be disappointed. We’re actually going to learn something.”
Max tucked her syllabus neatly into the back pocket of her notebook and surreptitiously watched as Ruby folded hers in half and slid it into her bag on the floor, then pulled out a spanking new MacBook and put it on the desk, her eyes flitting momentarily to Max’s spiral notebook and then back to her computer.
Max turned to a fresh page, dating it and labeling it ‘Information Theory – First Class’ while Ruby opened the computer and pressed the power button. The startup chime carried through the whole room and actually made McDermott pause in the middle of his sentence to give a quick glare in the direction of the sound.
Except he wasn’t just looking at Ruby – Max was apparently guilty by association, and the professor narrowed his eyes at her, as well.
Mira told her to be nice to Ruby, but this ruffled Max’s feathers. She was only about ten minutes into her graduate studies and already her professor had glared at her twice. In Max’s experience, the more someone bristles at the sight of you, the harder it is to ace their exams. Max fully intended to graduate with honors, and it was starting to irritate her that Ruby seemed so hell-bent on undermining that goal. It was her fault that Max was late to class in the first place, causing her to linger in the conference room instead of making it down the hall in a timely fashion, and now she was drawing negative attention on both of them with her ridiculously overpriced computer.
Ruby may be one of the most physically perfect humans Max had ever encountered, and sitting so close she might smell like sunshine on a summer morning, but Max had had about enough of her.
She put her head down and concentrated on filling up the blank page in front of her. McDermott was giving a rudimentary explanation of information theory and Max was determined not to give Ruby another moment of her attention when there was learning to do.
***
Two hours and five pages of notes later, class was coming to an end. Ruby had been tapping away on her keyboard, taking furious notes. Even though Max had an excellent memory and generally followed the Cornell method of notetaking, wherein one only writes down bullet points for the most salient information, Max found herself secretly competing with Ruby.
She’d scribble a few things down, and then Ruby’s fingers would fly over her keyboard like she was writing a damn novel, so Max would write more, too. She wasn’t about to let this saboteur walk away with better notes.
By the end of the two-hour session, twice as long as any of her undergraduate classes, Max’s stamina was running thin and her hand was cramping. She wanted desperately to stretch out the muscles and tendons that were screaming for a break, but she couldn’t let Ruby see that she’d been writing so hard she hurt herself, so she tried to think of a way to casually put her hand down by her side where Ruby couldn’t see it so that she could work the kinks out. Maybe reaching for her backpack…
“The last thing we need to discuss tonight,” McDermott boomed, “is your group project.”
A collective groan rippled through the room and this time Max didn’t have to try to feel what everyone else was feeling. She hated group work. It was bad enough being beholden to your fellow classmates for your grade, but every group she’d ever been in was full of slackers and moochers who left all the work to her. She might as well have been working alone.
Max glanced around the room, sizing everyone up and wondering who she’d be working on behalf of this time. Some of them seemed okay – the ones that had paper or computers in front of them and appeared to have taken notes during the lecture – but she prayed that she wouldn’t get stuck with the likes of the guy sitting to her right, who spent the entire session texting and playing Candy Crush under his desk despite being in the front row.
In any case, the only person in the room who didn’t seem upset by this development was Ruby. Of course she would like group work, thought Max.
“The details are in your syllabus, along with everything else you need to know about this class,” McDermott was saying, “but I’ll give you an overview of the project. You’ll be conducting a little primary research, selecting an environment in which people seek and gather information and studying the ways they go about that task.”
Max could hear people beginning to whisper around her, partnering up and making arrangements, and this was the other part of group work that she hated – she always ended up the odd one out because most group projects came down to popularity contests. Eventually she’d be taken in by some bleeding heart who felt bad for her, or worse, she’d be assigned to a group by the instructor. She couldn’t help feeling salty as she wondered how quickly people would start fighting over Ruby.
Unfortunately for them both, the next words out of McDermott’s mouth sent the biggest groan of all through the room. “Don’t bother partnering up - I’m assigning the groups. Since you’re all evenly distributed thanks to the seating arrangement, your group will be the people in your row. The report writing up your findings is due in one month, and I’ll give you the last five minutes of class to start brainstorming ideas.”
The two sitting on the other side of Max started introducing themselves and acting like they were fine with this ridiculous twist of fate, but Max’s head immediately snapped to the left to look at Ruby, who was already looking at her with an expression Max was pretty sure mapped to dread. With a sigh, Max wondered if she should just volunteer to do the whole project from the get-go, but from what she’d seen of her so far tonight, Ruby didn’t seem like the type to give up control.
Shit, Max thought. This is going to be a long month.
Ruby got up and went over to the other two, introducing herself, acting like they were old pals, and turning on the charm just like she had in the GLiSS meeting, and Max sat reluctantly in her seat. She’d had such high hopes that grad school would be different, but here it was exactly like undergrad, and high school before that. The people with the gift of social grace rose to the top, and Max had to struggle every step of the way.
The three of them decided to meet in one of the group study rooms on the second floor of the library on Saturday, with Ruby volunteering to make the reservation. Max just sat there nodding along with whatever the group wanted until finally class ended and she could go back to the sanctuary of her dorm.
CHAPTER 6
The first week of library school was a lot rougher than Ruby thought it would be, although when she attended her other two classes and found that Max was not enrolled in either of them, she breathed a sigh of relief and things started going a little better.
Lydia, the shy girl from the GLiSS meeting, turned out to be in Ruby’s History of Library Science class, and she also happened to be in her group for McDermott’s project. Ruby made sure to sit next to her in class when she found that out, hoping to make an ally before their group meeting on Saturday.
Max sure hadn’t made first impressions a priority, and Ruby wasn’t looking forward to finding out what other snide remarks she had in store. Max seemed like exactly the type of person who would look at Ruby and see nothing but an airhead sorority girl, and she was trying so hard to start her life over that she simply didn’t have the energy to debunk that old stereotype.
So she made friends with Lydia, whether she liked it or not. (“What did you study in undergrad?” “Photography.” “Where are you from originally?”
“Here.” “Why do you want to be a librarian?” “What’s your record for consecutive questions asked?”) Ruby even convinced her by Friday afternoon to go have a beer together. It seemed like she’d only succeeded in wearing Lydia down, but she’d take the victory either way.
Ruby never liked spending much time in her dorm, especially now that she was living alone and found it so easy to slip into depressive thoughts of her ex-girlfriend, Megan, and how hollow it felt to be on her own after four years of having someone right by her side almost every minute of the day, and six years of being one half of a couple. They lived together, walked to class together, went to sorority meetings together, hell – they even got the same minor in art just because it sounded like a fun thing to do with their electives.
Ruby had spent the entire summer thinking about how much she lost by moving away instead of staying by Megan’s side while she went to med school at Northwestern. But Megan didn’t want to put in the effort to make a long-distance relationship work, and Ruby got into library school at Granville. If it wasn’t one of the best library programs in the country, she might have stayed in Illinois and tried to figure out another career path. But it was, and here she was, so she was grateful to Lydia for agreeing to have a beer with her to celebrate the end of their first week.
“Almost,” Lydia said, tipping her bottle at Ruby as they sat at the bar. “We still have to meet about that project for Information Theory tomorrow.”
Ruby let out a groan and drowned her sorrows at the bottom of her beer. “Please don’t remind me.”
“I know, group projects suck,” Lydia commiserated. She was friendlier, or at least more open to conversation, when she had a little alcohol in her system, and Ruby felt guilty over the fact that she liked her better this way.
“It’s not that,” she said, waving the bartender over and gesturing for another round. She asked Lydia, “Have you had the pleasure of meeting Max yet?”
“Not really,” Lydia said. “She doesn’t seem to talk much. Is she that bad?”
“Just wait,” Ruby said with a roll of her eyes.
***
A few hours and two more rounds later, Ruby and Lydia slid off their bar stools just as the undergraduates were beginning to pour in and the music was turning to loud electronic dance tunes that were hard to talk over.
On the sidewalk where the music filtered out the door periodically but didn’t drown out every word she said, Ruby asked, “You okay to get home?”
“Stone sober,” Lydia answered, putting her fingers to her nose a few times to prove it.
“Okay,” Ruby said. Her head was swimming slightly from the beer, but she only had to walk across campus in order to be home and the autumn breeze would do her some good in warding off a hangover in the morning. “I’ll see you tomorrow for the fun, and you can see for yourself about Max.”
“You know, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that Max is hot,” Lydia said, narrowing her eyes at Ruby.
“What? What’s that got to do with anything?” Ruby asked, stuttering slightly over her words and blaming the alcohol.
“All I’m saying is you spent a lot of time talking about her tonight. It seemed like quite a few topics led back to Max,” Lydia teased as she started to take a few steps away, heading toward her car parked down the street. She pointed at Ruby and added in a sing-songy tone, “Thou doth protest too much.”
“I… doth not,” Ruby objected, but Lydia just shrugged and turned around. Ruby muttered it again to herself. “I doth not.”
Then she sighed and made the short trek back to campus, across the quad and to the graduate dorms. It was a nice night with clear stars in the sky and a crisp breeze that brought a slight chill to her cheeks and nose, but the only thing Ruby was paying attention to was that accusation. It was ridiculous – Max was sarcastic and uptight and the complete opposite of Ruby. And even if Ruby did like Max, which was a hard no, it was pretty clear that Max detested her.
But damn it if Lydia wasn’t right about one thing. Max was hot. Something about her – the galaxies she held in her eyes, the cut of her jaw, the way she carried herself, the fit of her shirt around what was clearly a tight body – made the drunk version of Ruby want to sink her teeth into Max.
She sighed, letting herself into her dorm.
It was basically just a tiny apartment with cinderblock walls and university-provided furniture. She went into the bedroom and flopped down on the bed. Her heart was racing and for just a minute, she allowed herself to think about what she would do if Max was in the room with her.
Then she closed her eyes and tried to clear the thoughts from her mind, telling herself that she was just thirsty and lonely and maybe even misplacing some of her heartache over Megan, putting it on Max just for proximity’s sake.
Ruby sighed again and tried to fall asleep. Why did Lydia have to be right about that, of all things?
***
By the time she fell asleep, Ruby was almost hoping that she would wake up with a hangover just because it would be a distraction from this new idea that Lydia had embedded in her mind. She had no such luck in the morning though, waking up bright-eyed and cheerful around eight a.m. – about four hours before anyone else on campus would be stirring on a Saturday morning, if Granville was anything like Northwestern.
Ruby grabbed her backpack and headed over to the student union for a peaceful breakfast in the deserted dining hall. She ate waffles and sausage links at a leisurely pace and pulled the Information Theory syllabus out of the bottom of her bag where it had been crumpled beneath her laptop, preparing for the group meeting which she’d scheduled for eleven o’clock.
By the time she was done eating, a few more early risers had wandered sleepily into the dining room, and Ruby checked the time. There were still almost two hours to kill before the group meeting, so she slung her backpack over her shoulder and decided to spend the rest of the morning exploring the campus. She checked out the rest of the student union, the sports complex, and the walking path that circled all the way around the grounds, and when she realized there wasn’t much left to see except dorms and academic buildings that didn’t pertain to her, she wandered a little way into the surrounding city.
Granville was large, smack in the middle population-wise between Evanston and Chicago – but the streets immediately around the campus had a slightly more quaint vibe to them than the rest of the city. It was hard to tell where the university ended and the small businesses surrounding it began.
Ruby found a cute little coffee shop, where she got an after-breakfast latte even though drip coffee was free in the dining hall. There was a second-run movie theater, more bars than she could count, and a quirky little yoga studio called Get Bent that she decided to check out when she had a little more time.
For now, she needed to head back to campus and get this group meeting out of the way. Ruby was about halfway to the library when she felt her phone vibrating in her pocket.
Her heart skipped a beat – every time her phone rang since this summer her first thought was that it might be Megan – and then Ruby saw that it was her mother. Of course, it was never Megan – she hadn’t said two words to her since Ruby moved back to Chicago at the beginning of the summer.
Trying not to let the disappointment infiltrate her voice, Ruby answered, “Hi, mama.”
“Hi baby, I was just calling to ask how school’s going,” her mother replied, and Ruby felt instant regret at having wished that the caller was anyone other than her mother. Her sweet voice made Ruby homesick, and a little lump rose in her throat. Her mother asked, “Do you have time to talk now?”
“Yeah,” she said, clearing her throat. Granville was the farthest she’d ever lived from home, and Ruby felt silly getting choked up over it at twenty-two years old. “But I’m on my way to work on a group project so I can only talk for about five minutes.”
“That’s plenty,” her mother answered, “at least for a quick talk. So how is it?”
�
�It’s okay,” Ruby said a little hesitantly. “The classes are interesting – did you know librarianship is a female-dominated profession because Melvil Dewey thought repetitive tasks like cataloging and shelving were well-suited to women, who would become hysterical if their fragile minds were subjected to any amount of stress?”
“Is that so?”
“Mm hmm,” Ruby said with a laugh. “Oh, and I decided to run for president of the library department’s student organization. The election is at the end of the semester.”
“That’s good, baby. I’m sure you’ll get it, my little social butterfly,” her mother said. “But what I really want to know about is how you’re doing. Have you made friends already?”
“A few,” Ruby lied.
She wouldn’t exactly call it friendship to get a beer with someone who looked like she was on the verge of telling the bartender she was the victim of a hostage situation, and she’d struck up conversations with a lot of people in her classes, but they weren’t banging down Ruby’s door to hang out yet, either. She felt bad lying to her mother, but she also couldn’t stand the concerned tone that crept into her voice. That was her ‘I’m worried about you because you’re all alone and heartbroken’ tone, and Ruby had gotten to know it quite well over the summer.
So she fibbed and said, “I’ve made a couple of friends from class. We checked out Granville’s night life yesterday. Oh, and I made a sworn enemy.”
She said this last bit just to get a laugh out of her mother, but it turned out to be the wrong thing to say, or maybe her delivery was just too deadpan.
