When she talked in class, when she met new people, when she walked around campus, there were no double takes, no furtive second glances. Well, that wasn't exactly true. There were a few. But they were the good kind.
The first time it happened, she and the other girls in her suite had gone to a party. A cute hipster guy scanned their group as they walked in. When his eyes caught Fiona's, she bristled, expecting the recoil. Instead, he gave a flirty smile.
She gaped at him, not thinking to smile back-so he moved on to Bethany From New York, who was more skilled at flirting.
Not that she was looking to meet boys. The few other times the eye-lock thing happened, she stumbled away, clueless about what to do next. Anyway, she and David never had gotten around to the awkward "What exactly are we doing?" conversation. Dating other people hadn't been strictly forbidden-but she was pretty sure it wasn't encouraged.
Notwithstanding the unclear dating guidelines and her inability to flirt anyway, Fiona embraced her growing social life by following one simple rule: say yes.
Zoey From Chicago: Want to go to Much Ado About Nothing? The theater department's putting it on.
Fiona: I'll be there.
Miriam From St. Louis: There's a weird lecture on German philosophers in the student union . Come with me?
Fiona: Sure, sounds fun.
Bethany From New York: Battle of the Bands on Greek Row!
Fiona: Let's go!
Lexie From Des Moines: You've never had kimchi? We must go eat Korean food RIGHT NOW!
Fiona: Hang on, I'll get my wallet.
Yes, I'll go to that party. Yes, I'll come to dinner. Yes, I'll hang out.
Yes. Yes. Yes.
She rarely second-guessed the "Yes" philosophy. Maybe when Miriam talked her into spending Evanston's last warm Saturday in a dark theater watching an art film about doors-wide doors, glass doors, sliding doors, revolving doors. By the end, she just wanted to walk through the closest one.
And maybe these Tuesday and Thursday mornings spent in the "Musical Theory Circle" were nearly as weird as that movie.
She was required to take a music course for her scholarship, and this was the only class with openings. A lot of openings. According to the syllabus, the class would expose her "musical expressions to the echoes and undertones of all the discarded creations preceding it."
There were ten of them in Circle, and, like Fiona, most had guitars, though a few had violins. A boy in her geology course-which pretty much everyone called "Rocks for Jocks"-lugged an enormous double bass to every class.
Professor Edward Fleming, aka "Flem," bowed to the girl with the clarinet and said, "Ah, the mighty reed."
He said this every time.
Flem had thinning brown hair, which hung in a sad ponytail. In addition to his endless supply of neck scarves, he also sported a goatee and pipe.
That's right, pipe.
"My fellow explorers!" said Flem. "We continue our quest! Let us push past our boundaries and reveal the hidden worlds of music seeking to be traveled!"
According to Flem, this was to be accomplished by dissecting 1980s power ballads.
After a particularly sad-or hilarious, she couldn't decide which-class, Fiona called Lucy as she walked home. "I am supposed to, ahem, ‘reinterpret "Is This Love," 1987, Whitesnake'-that's one of my dad's eighties hair bands, by the way-‘in such a way as to reinform its relevance in modern day culture.'"
There was a pause on Lucy's end of the line. "I'm panicking. I have no witty retort."
Fiona laughed. "Wait, there's more." Mimicking Flem's tone, she read from her assignment sheet. "‘Surgically remove any four-count phrase of your choosing, reinterpret it and, after introducing it back to its once familiar and now foreign role in the overall body of work, allow a new arrangement to organically flow around the shifts it inspires, as a river wends its way around the randomly placed detritus of man.'"
"Good Lord, stop. It's like my kryptonite."
Fiona adjusted her guitar case so as to hit as few passing students as possible. Northwestern was a long, narrow campus spanning over a mile-liberal arts to the south, tech to the north, and business in between. She had yet to make a full pass from Flem to dorm without whacking someone.
Despite all these bodies, the walk was a fairly quiet one-just passing conversations in pairs and threes, the rustle of leaves in the brisk Chicago wind. Not so on Lucy's side.
"I can hardly hear you," Fiona said, pulling the phone closer to her ear. "Where the heck are you?"
"In a café. There are about seven within ten minutes of me. I'm trying them all."
Fiona felt a sudden pang for her coffee shop and best friend. "How's that one rank?"
"Quite low-too hipster. Good one yesterday, though. Had all this cool old movie paraphernalia."
"I didn't know you cared about old movies."
"I didn't either." She paused. "It could have something to do with all the girls there."
Fiona laughed. "So you're not the only one in New York?"
"It appears I am not, thank God." Fiona heard rustling on Lucy's end as her best friend said, "'Kay, I gotta go to class. But, hey, be respectful to the hair band. Despite the bluster, it's a fragile creature."
She and Lucy spoke or texted every day-pretty much the same as with David. Fiona had a standing Sunday night call with her parents, but they emailed and texted about little things during the week. Ryan, however, was another animal altogether.
Either he was lying, or he truly had no free time. The few times he picked up his phone, he was out of breath, running from one place to another. He had mandatory athletic study halls in the library every night, so he couldn't video chat. She got occasional quick texts-bbq here sucks or what's iambic pentameter-but nothing more.
Now back in her room, she sat cross-legged on her bed and left yet another voice mail demanding he call back, though she didn't think he would.
Ever since the surgery, things felt different with him.
Fine-he had to get to Clemson early, and okay-she spent the first few weeks after her surgery as a useless lump. But what if Ryan was beginning a new life, too? What if he was leaving her behind?
She grabbed her guitar and played around with Flem's assignment awhile. The arrangement was predictable, with lots of opportunities for "reinterpretations." She might make fun of it, but this type of work was perfect for her. After the open mic night disaster, she'd spent a year becoming Queen of the Cover Song. By now, she was a genius with nearly any cover she touched-Beck to the Beatles.
Exposing a stranger's pain to other strangers was much, much easier than exposing her own.
In fifteen minutes, she finished Flem's assignment. She'd ace this class. But that anxiety about Ryan still needled, so she moved on to the meatier part of her therapy. Going between Moleskine and guitar, she picked out notes and fiddled with words-her own words and notes-until it felt like a real beginning of something.
My pieces got melted / The edges are jagged
I wonder if they see / Only half the pieces cover me
As always, she got lost in it. She glanced at the clock, and two hours had passed. It was probably time to put this one away, anyway. She'd figured out over the years that it worked best that way. Start it, write it down, then leave it alone awhile.
Plus, she was starving.
She walked out of her room and nearly face-planted, her foot colliding with a body sitting just outside her door.
"Ow! What the-"
A boy popped up, catching her by the elbows. "Sorry. I, uh, heard you playing. Singing." Once sure she was steady, he let her go, ruffling a hand through dark, wavy hair and looking sheepish. "I normally don't sit outside of strange girls' doors."
Fiona kept a wary eye on this eavesdropper. "Wouldn't you be the strange one here?"
"I know. It's bad, right?" He cleared his throat. "It's just . . . you sound like Lorde. But like, with maple syrup."
Well, she'd never been compared to syrup before.
He gestured down the hall. "You going somewhere?"
The Eavesdropper was about as tall as Ryan, maybe a little broader. His charmingly imperfect smile played against a background of perfect olive skin.
This boy was cute. "Downstairs," she said. "I was getting something to eat."
"You're from the South."
Fiona rolled her eyes. "Memphis."
Her accent was a constant source of amusement up here. Her Yankee friends randomly commanded her to say pie or my, while giggling at her dropped g's.