The Fire In My Eyes (3 page)

“Hey, Jess, what's up? New game?” Drew asked.

“Yeah.” More flashy explosions followed. “If you're looking for Lisa, she went to the Caf about half an hour ago. She should be back any minute now.”

“Can we hang out until she gets back?” Drew asked.

“I can't stop you,” she replied. Drew walked across the room to an unoccupied chair and flopped down into it. Max slipped past and leaned against the wall near Drew. With them out of the way, I got my first view of Jess. Typical nerd girl. A little heavy, from what I could see. She paid no attention to me. I wasn't sure she even knew I was there.

I stepped around the corner to get out of the doorway. Two beds were bunked against the far wall near where Drew sat. A stack of empty soda cans was in the corner next to Jess's desk. I took another step to get around the corner and stepped on something soft that slipped under my foot. I put a hand on the wall to steady myself and make sure I didn't ruin whatever I was standing on. My hand landed right on the light switch.

“Holy shit!” Jess shouted as the overhead light came on, blindingly bright. “Max! I'm going to kill you! You hear me? Kill you!” She twisted in her chair and lunged out of it toward me. Her hand was an inch from my throat when she stopped dead and blinked at me, green eyes behind thick glasses. “Wait. You're not Max.”

Max cleared his throat. “I'm over here, Jess. Nice to see you, too.”

She looked over her shoulder at him and her hand dropped to her side. “So you are.” She looked back at me. “So, who’s this asshole, and why does he have a death wish?”

“I don't think either of us can answer the second part of that question,” Drew said. “I didn't think he was suicidal. Do you think we should take him to the infirmary now, Max?”

“It might not be a bad idea,” Max agreed.

“Third time today,” I muttered.

“What?” Jess glared at me. Now that I could actually see her, I had to revise my first impressions. She was a classical redhead with green eyes and freckles, and even if she was a little chubby, she still looked pretty good. If she lost some weight, she'd look even better. “Wait a minute,” she said. “I bet Max put you up to this.”

Her personality left a little to be desired, though. It wasn’t as if I had any standing to complain about that. “I had nothing at all to do with that,” he protested.

“He didn't. I stepped on something and accidentally put my hand on the switch when I was trying to catch my balance.” I pointed down at the ground. The offending object was revealed to be a skirt. I promptly moved my foot away. “I'm their new roommate, by the way. Kevin Parker. Look, I didn't mean to blind you in the middle of your game, I know how that feels. Sorry for making you lose.”

She frowned at me, but then shrugged and took a step back. “Jess Kelton. Nice to meet you. So, you’re a gamer? What’s your game of choice these days?” She pointed at the computer.

I mentally slapped myself. I hadn't even thought about it, just shot my mouth off. “I don't game anymore. Broke the addiction.”

“Addiction? Right.” Her lip curled. Her personality definitely could use adjustment. “So, what are you majoring in? Psychology?”

“Right now I'm doing business, but I want to take more general education courses and see what catches my interest,” I said. “How about you? Computer engineering?”

She retreated to her chair and snorted. “I'm no engineer. Computer science with some side courses for graphic design. Looking into the game programming and design field. Why did you think engineering? Do I really look that nerdy?”

“Well, since you asked, yes,” Max said.

“Shut up, Max,” she snapped.

“It was just a guess. Computer science was my next guess,” I said.

She nodded and pointed at the floor beside me. There was a beanbag on the floor next to the can stack. “Sit,” she ordered. I sat. “So what did you play? Why did you give it up? Embarrassed? Did you miss the memo that nerds are cool these days?”

That wasn’t true, at least in my experience. High school had been a series of awkward and embarrassing encounters. I thought that community college would let me have a fresh start, but even there, my past followed me. That was part of the reason I came to Ripley. “I never got into games like that. Was that something new?”

She narrowed her eyes and I thought she'd keep prying, but Max spoke up and saved me. “I didn't know you were a geek, Kev. Don't worry, I don’t think any less of you. Drew might, but I don’t.” Saved me in a manner of speaking, at least.

Drew shook his head. “No way, man. I have nothing but respect for those guys. If my laptop ever screws up, I'm lost. Hell, all I know how to do on it is check my mail, write my papers, and visit websites.”

“Yeah, and we all know what sorts of websites you visit,” Max said.

Jess continued to glare at me. Her expression was hard and disapproving, but she let the topic go. “I didn't think you two would be the type to take in a freshman.”

“I’m not a freshman,” I said. All three of them stared at me. “I’m technically a transfer student. I went to community college for about a year before coming up here.”

“That’s weird,” Drew said. “Andreas said we’d get a freshman.”

“I guess we’ll keep you anyways,” Max said to me.

“How generous of you,” Jess said.

“We only signed up for the mentoring program because of the dining plan discount,” Drew added. “Though, it's nice to have someone else around. Max is pretty hard on the eyes after a while, you know?” I winced. Now I felt like a meal ticket.

“Speak for yourself, Fabio,” Max said. “I've seen the way you gaze into the mirror in the morning. Kev's been pretty good so far. Doesn't look like he's going to need much training, and he already knows how to feed himself and use the litter box properly. I think by the end of the first trimester, we might be able to enter him in a show.”

“You know, I can hear every single word you say,” I pointed out.

“Why, so you can.”

The door burst open. “Hey Jess, I just ran into Kaitlyn over at the Caf, and she said...hey, there's people here!” A tiny black-haired tornado swept into the room. She scooped up the skirt I had stepped on and flung it at the lower bunk as she flew straight at Drew. “Max! Drew! I almost missed you during winter break! No, I'm lying, I didn't miss you at all, but I did think of you once or twice.”

“Drew thought of you once or twice too,” Max said.

“I know he did,” she said. “Andreas said you guys were signed up for the mentoring program. I couldn't believe it, but then, I guess you wanted to corrupt some poor freshman. I bet you already took him to meet Andreas to begin the process. I was hoping that I could talk Jess into doing the same thing so we could cancel out you guys, but she didn't want to. I was so mad at her. I still am, by the way!”

“No, you're not,” Jess contradicted her.

“Well, I was!”

“For about five minutes.”

“Yeah, well, I can never stay mad at you,” she said, with a slight emphasis on the last word. “So where is he? Did you already abandon him? Don't you ever think about anyone other than yourself, Andrew Lee Grant?”

“He's right there,” Drew said, pointing at me.

I stood up just as she whirled around. When Max had joked about Drew having a fetish for tiny Asian girls, he wasn't exaggerating. If she was anything over five feet tall, I would have been shocked. She was no delicate flower, though. She ran across the room and threw her arms around me. “He's so cute!”

“Full marks from the Chinese judge,” Max said.

I flipped Max off behind her back. He snickered. I looked down at the girl hugging me fiercely. “Hi, I'm Kevin Parker. Nice to meet you?”

“I'm Lisa Chen, nice to meet you too. Welcome to Ripley! I'm so sorry you got stuck with those two.” She let go of me and jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “They're complete assholes, both of them. If they give you a problem, just let me know, and I'll come beat them up for you.” She growled. It was more cute than menacing.

“I'm not an asshole,” Drew protested.

“Oh no?” Lisa spun away from me so quickly her hair whipped my chest. “Drew, we need to talk about something. Come here. Now.”

Drew stood up. He was over a foot taller, and had to weigh twice as much. Even so, he didn't look too confident as he stepped toward her. “I should probably apologize, right?”

“Oh, no, it's far too late for an apology,” Lisa said. She reached up and wrapped her arms around his neck. How could she reach that high? “You did something very wrong, Drew. Very wrong. But it's all right. I've already forgiven you. Ok?” She snuggled up against him, rather suggestively. I didn't know whether I should keep watching or sneak out.

“Well, that's good, I guess?” Drew looked at me as if I could predict what she'd do next. I didn't know the girl, but she seemed cute and nice, if a little energetic. It wasn't as if she was going to attack him.

“But you did do something wrong. You know what you did, don't you?” Lisa's tone was silky smooth and infinitely dangerous. There was something going here that I was missing and I didn't know what it was. Jess was grinning like a cat and Max covered his face with his hand, then shook his head.

“I think so?” Drew was starting to sweat. He looked from side to side, but there was no escape.

“Then you realize that when you do something wrong, you need to be punished, right?”

“I'd much rather not-”

Lisa's knee lifted sharply, at a very unpleasant angle for Drew. I realized at that moment that I was very wrong about her. His eyes went wide and he made a strangled noise, an uncomfortable noise, a noise that I had made once or twice during my life as well. “That, my dearest Andrew, is why you shouldn't stand a girl up. It gets them upset.” Lisa's voice was sultry and dark and it promised things I didn't want any part of. Drew didn't reply, not even when she let go. He pressed his hands to his crotch, spun, staggered, and collapsed onto the lower bunk. His head clunked against the wall and then he curled up into a ball.

I found that I had turned sideways. Jess caught my eye and snickered. It was time to cut our losses and retreat. “So, Max, do you think it's time to take our leave?”

“I think you might be right, Kev, we should probably get out of here and come pick him up later, maybe in a couple of hours, maybe in a couple of days-”

“I didn't hit him that hard!” Lisa protested. “Come on, you guys can't even take a little tap? I was just showing him who's the boss around here. Me. Right?”

Drew grunted from the bed. Whether he was agreeing with her or not, I didn't know, and I didn't want to know. “You know a tap like that is exquisitely painful? It's probably an order of magnitude worse than just slamming your knee up there. He's probably going to be there for a while,” I told her, against my better judgment. Giving her more information like that might backfire someday.

Max shook his head as we both moved toward the door. “He might throw up in your bed,” he added.

“He better not! I'll do it again!” Lisa snapped. Drew grunted and curled up more. “But I don't think he will, because he's learned his lesson, and now we can start over. Right, Drew?”

I looked straight at her. “Lisa, you're one scary chick.”

She beamed. “I know! Guys think they can walk all over me because I'm tiny. But you know what? A girl has to think about her reputation. And you're going to think twice before you ever stand a girl up now, right?”

Max and I looked at each other. “I hate to admit it, but she's got a point,” he said. I nodded.

“Like you'd ever get a date, Max!” Jess laughed directly at him.

“Are you saying you'd never go out with me?” he asked.

“I wouldn't say never,” she said. “But I don't think you'd survive to be the last man on earth, so it's sort of a moot point.”

“Hey, that's harsh, I'm date material,” Max protested. “You know that. Hey, Drew, back me up here. Date material, right?” Drew groaned and declined to answer. “Kev? Back me up, man. I'm counting on you.”

“I don't know about that. I wouldn't date you.”

“What if I was a girl?”

“Max, you'd be a really ugly girl.”

Lisa and Jess both burst out laughing. Even Drew laughed before subsiding back into painful groans and grunts. Max rolled his eyes, then punched my shoulder and grinned. “Jackass. I think I like you. You'll do just fine here.”

“As long as you give up on that fantasy of entering me in a show,” I told him.

By Sunday afternoon, I wished I had brought my computer from home, regardless of the damage it would do to my social life. I had gone to breakfast with Drew, picked up a few things at the campus store, and come back to the dorm. Max had still been asleep by the time we got back. He woke up close to noon, mumbled something about lunch, and disappeared. Drew had a lunch date, so he took off as well, leaving me alone.

At home, I was used to solitude. Dad and I had been more like roommates than parent and child. It never bothered me then. Here, away from home, it was definitely getting to me. If I had brought my computer, at least I’d have something to do.

“Stop being such a coward, Kevin,” I told myself and sat up. There had to be something interesting going on somewhere. Orientation was still ongoing, too, so I could always head to some of those sessions. Maybe I’d run into the girl from yesterday. That settled it for me. I swung my legs off the bed and got ready to head out into the cold.

Just as I reached for the doorknob, the door opened. “Kev! You heading out?” Drew and Max pushed past me, Max shivering noticeably.

“I was going to see if there was anything interesting going on,” I said.

“You were going down to campus to see if you could find that chick,” Max said. “Never give up. Never surrender. Stalker in training.”

“Stop being an asshole,” Drew told him as he took his coat off. “Hey, Kev, don’t want to derail any plans you have, but do you want to meet our dorm assistant guy?”

“Residence assistant,” Max said.

“Yeah, that.”

I shrugged and took my coat off. “Sounds like a plan.”

“Good man. Andreas is a cool guy. Friendly, smart, and the most likely to blow the building up by accident.”