Loner by Teddy Wayne

marveling at my harpoon-sharp mind.
    I stood up poker-faced, the star running back who no longer needs to spike the football in the end zone to celebrate his victories.
    â€œNice work,” you said as we filed out.
    â€œOh, thanks,” I said. “What did you write about?”
    â€œI got an extension till tomorrow. I haven’t started yet.”
    We stepped out into the honeyed light of a New England autumn afternoon. Students were starting to wear scarves. The air was spiced with the first fallen leaves. A breeze trembled a nearby oak, showering the pavement with acorns.
    I walked with purpose in the direction of Sever, knowing you were heading there for Gender and the Consumerist Impulse.
    â€œWhich book are you writing about?” I asked.
    â€œNo idea,” you said. “I’m fucked.”
    You didn’t mind cursing with me, cursing with a sexual term, with a sexual term that, as a sentence, could also suggest an explicit action.
    â€œWhat about Moby-Dick ?”
    â€œMm,” you said, unimpressed. “Seven-hundred-page books by dead white men aren’t exactly my bag.”
    â€œYeah, I know.” I chuckled. “What’s interested you most so far?”
    â€œI liked Daisy Miller .”
    We were approaching Sever; I was running out of time, and this wasn’t a dialogue I could easily continue in Sara’s room.
    I stopped walking. “I have to be somewhere,” I said—I had nowhere to be, nothing to do, all I wanted was to continue even this seemingly mundane conversation forever—“but if you’re having trouble, I’d be happy to help you come up with a topic later.”
    Your eyes blinked at me once, as if you were taking my measurements for something. Your irises were three distinct hues: a fine outer ring of grayish blue like an overcast ocean sky that yielded to springtime emerald before melting into a striated core the color of bourbon. I couldn’t meet them for more than a second or two.
    â€œHow about Lamont at nine?” you asked.
    Sara spent half her nights there. But Widener Library closed at ten, and there was no good alternative, other than my room, which I didn’t have the temerity to suggest.
    â€œWorks for me,” I said.

Chapter 7
    A fter getting a sandwich at Au Bon Pain, I holed up in my room to reread Daisy Miller along with the secondary critical texts Samuelson had assigned. I graffitied the pages with notes for once, just like Sara did.
    I texted her that I’d be forgoing dinner to work on an essay for my art history class. “Good luck! I’m feeling a cold coming on,” she wrote back. She was perpetually afflicted with some mild ailment, a sniffle or cough or epidermal reaction. A plastic kit in her room housed a pharmacy of purple syrups, nasal sprays, ­blister-pack tablets. The sight of her blowing her nose or swallowing an anti-diarrheal pill always made me consider how poorly she would fare if she’d been born in another time, weeded out by natural selection. Her sneezes, induced by a plethora of allergens, came in quadrupled, body-quaking blasts that pierced the eardrum and embarrassed me by association. You must have heard them through the door.
    â€œAww, feel better!,” I replied.
    As I left Matthews at 8:40 to arrive at Lamont early, I heard my name.
    â€œWhere are you going?” Sara’s voice echoed in the entryway. I looked back as she sped downstairs to catch me, tissue in hand, her nostrils ruddy and chapped.
    â€œTo work on my essay. What about you?”
    â€œCVS.” She honked into the tissue, examining the deposit before folding it up. “I ran out of zinc lozenges.”
    â€œThat sucks,” I said, pushing the door open.
    â€œPun in tended,” she chirped. “Want to come with me?”
    A detour to CVS would set me back ten minutes, maybe more. If there were no delays and I hurried, I would just make it to Lamont by