“Yes, Mr. Baines.”
“Amoebae’s most obvious features include one or more nuclei and a contractile vacuole to maintain osmotic equilibrium within the cell. Amoebae are unicellular eukaryotic organisms which reproduce asexually through mitosis, and they move by using their pseupodia or false feet, which throws out their ectoplasm followed by their endoplasm moving inward. And so, yeah. They move exceedingly slow.”
The class laughed again.
Professor Peabody smiled. “Excellent, Mr. Baines. I see you have done your homework, unlike some of us here.”
Richard Baines leaned over and whispered to Jessica, “Hope your boyfriend doesn’t move too slowly.”
Jessica flushed.
After class, she rushed out of the lecture hall to check her email. It was Kyle!
The message said:
‘Great! So happy you will meet me. How about tomorrow night at Spago’s? See you there at 8 pm. I’ll book a table for two in my name.
Kyle Smith.’
Kyle Smith!
So that was his name!
Everything in the message deserved an exclamation mark!
Jessica was so happy that she felt like spinning round and round, except . . .
She stopped short. What would she wear? What if he didn’t like what he saw in the flesh? What if he had lied about the way he looked?
All her insecurities came rushing back again.
No, no, no! She didn’t like being this way, as if she’s an emotional yoyo! If anything, she deserved to go on this date with a gorgeous guy who hopefully was every bit as gorgeous as his stock photo suggested.
*
Lyla and Jessica settled on a loose-flowing chiffon black dress which made Jessica look slim. It had just a hint of cleavage (“You don’t want to come off as cheap,” Lyla said, “but you want to show off your best assets anyway”) and a flouncy skirt which covered Jessica’s thighs. To compensate for height, Jessica wore three-inch black heels.
All this cost her entire allowance for the month.
“But it’s worth it,” Lyla declared. “Besides, I can always lend you the money if you need to eat.”
They appraised her in the mirror.
“Oh,” Lyla moaned, “you look absolutely gorgeous.”
Jessica had to admit this was a good choice of dresses. Unlike the last tight disastrous black number, this allowed her flesh space to breathe – if flesh could actually breathe, of course.
“Wait,” Lyla said. She ran to her chest-of-drawers to retrieve a little necklace with a pendant. She lifted Jessica’s hair and put it around her neck. “There. This will point him to your cleavage.”
Jessica gasped. “That is not the intention!”
“Oh shush. If he really is as good as he looks, you’d want to keep him.”
“What if I don’t like him?”
“Be that as it may, which I sincerely doubt, we’ll resort to the old powder room text message rescue. If you don’t like him, you excuse yourself to the ladies’, and you text – ”
“SAVE ME,” Jessica completed. She knew the routine. It was one she had to employ for Lyla many times.
“Then you go back to your table and I’ll give you a call five minutes later. It’ll be an emergency. Your Great-Aunt Hortense has just been admitted to the hospital for appendicitis and you have to leave STAT.”
“Hortense? Who has a name like Hortense these days?”
“That’s why she’s a great-aunt. Nobody names kids like that anymore. I’d have appendicitis too if I had a name like that.” Lyla glanced at her watch. “Oh scoot! It’s thirty minutes to eight! We have to go. I’ll call you a cab!”
They both ran out of the dorm in a trail of chiffon and heels, with Lyla busy dialing a cab all the way downstairs. When it finally came, Lyla hugged Jessica.
“You look great. Remember that. You are great, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”
“Thanks.” Jessica hugged her best friend back. Tears came into her eyes, but she quickly suppressed them because it wouldn’t do to have her mascara run all over her nicely made-up cheeks.
She got into the cab. Lyla slammed the door behind her. She stepped back and waved.
“Goodbye, good luck!”
As Jessica turned to tell the cab driver where to go, she wondered why there was a strange premonition lurking around her subconscious.
FATHER’S REQUEST
The Enclave was imposing, as always. Forbidding. It was actually a mansion squirreled away in a vastly wooded forest area which belonged to the clan. As Kyle drove up its driveway, he was reminded of a Gothic cathedral. The Enclave resembled exactly that with its towers and sharply pointed roofs.
Plenty of people lived in the Enclave, but the Alpha of the pack was Kyle’s father, Jericho. Neither was the family name Smith. Kyle never went by his real name in the dating websites and forums. And if you looked for his profile in Big Beautiful Dating, you would not have found it. His was a profile specially manufactured for Jessica.