“Alas, I’ve sworn off hooking up with guys before I’ve been properly introduced,” I say.
“Patrick O’Brien, professional sexaholic,” he replies smoothly, jerking me into a handshake before I even realize what’s going on. “And you are?”
Against my better judgment, I find myself grinning. “Harper Reed, stereotypical American screw-up.”
He looks suddenly crestfallen. “Don’t tell me you regret your confessional détente. You’ll ruin all my preconceived notions of your grandeur. Also, can I still make a nun joke now, or should I save it for later, after we . . . ?” He winks again. Definitely not imagining it.
“We are not—there’s not going to be a later,” I sputter, extracting my hand from his. MK and Nick are outright snickering now. Suddenly everything—the realization that half our class seems to know about me hooking up at that party, the fact that I’m going to get the same reputation that I used to have, not to mention this guy’s attitude, seeming to think our hookup is already a done deal, it all hits me at once, and I’m just so done.
“I have to go.” I leap to my feet and toss my papers into my bag.
“Harper, wait.” Patrick tries to follow me, but trips on his chair, and only manages to hop sideways on one leg. “I’m sorry, I was joking.”
“Stay Harps, come on.” MK reaches for me, a pout on her wide lips. “We’ll work on the essay for real, I promise.”
“We will?” Nick says, but she elbows him in the stomach.
“Sorry, guys, I’m just not in the mood,” I mutter as I beeline for the nearest exit.
#
A ghost tour crowds around the Bodleian Library. The tour guide, dressed in a knee-length black cloak and carrying an old-school lantern, is in the middle of a story about some old king’s ghost that supposedly haunts the library. Yeah, sure. This library and about a hundred others across the country, I’m sure.
I skirt around the tourists, my flats slipping on the cobblestones, still slick from the soft drizzle that fell earlier tonight. It’s still thinking about rain, though nothing is actually falling. “Mizzle,” my mother would call this. Thicker than mist, but not quite drizzle.
Thinking about her sends a sudden pang of homesickness through me. I should call her. I haven’t in about a week—hard to when you’re in a different time zone, and you can’t just pick up a cell phone while you’re wandering around campus.
Suddenly the library sounds less than appealing. I pause halfway up the steps, debating if I should just go back to my dorm and try to catch Mom on web cam before she goes to her evening SoulCycle class. I can work on my essay from there. I don’t need to be in the middle of this epic, awe-inspiring library just to write a simple paper. Right?
Never mind that I still have absolutely zero ideas what to focus on about Heaney’s poetry. Or that I really need some place I can just zone out and focus—probably not my dorm room, with the roommate who comes crashing home drunk at 2:00 a.m., or the neighboring suite, which is inhabited by angry wild raccoons, as far as I can guess from the sounds we hear through the too-thin walls.
I’m still standing there in the middle of the cobblestone square as the ghost tour floods around me, some still snapping photos of the library, even though all you’d be able to see on their low-res camera phone screens in the dark would be a few orange street lights and some building-shaped blurs.
This is how ghost legends start. Bad cameras and suggestible minds.
I sidestep the tourists, finally steeling myself. I’m going into the library, and I’ll call Mom later. First things first: finish this essay.
Of course, as I whip around to make good on this promise, I collide with another ghost tourist headlong. At least, so I assume. Until I feel warm hands catch my shoulders, and a telltale baritone above me saying, “Whoa there.”
This is not happening, I think in a panicked mental voice as I tilt my head back to meet his eyes.
“On the contrary, it seems to be real,” Professor Kingston answers.
Oh my god, did I say that out loud? I practically swallow my tongue I clamp my mouth shut so fast. “Sorry,” I say.
He still hasn’t released my shoulders. His palms sear into my skin, so warm I can feel them even through my jacket. He seems to realize this at the same moment I do, and releases me so fast it’s like he’s burned himself. “My fault entirely,” he says, his voice as smooth and unflustered as ever. “The perils of dodging large groups of humans. You always wind up running into one of them.” He smiles, like this is nothing. “How was the tour?”