He didn't talk. Instead, he doodled on my notebook, a self-portrait in number-two pencil. Always the same google-eyed boy, strangling a guitar. I tore out the pages and folded them in my bookbag.
One day, I came late to class. I ran up the stairs and turned a corner. Everybody huddled outside the door, talking and laughing too loud.
"If he doesn't show in fifteen minutes, I'm leaving," said a girl whose name I'd forgotten.
I found him leaning against the railing. He grinned at me.
"Want a screw?" he mumbled.
In my mind, the words smeared together: Wantascrew.
"What?" I asked.
He held out his hand. A silver screw glinted in his palm. I picked it up and tossed it over the railing. Then he opened his mouth.
He said I didn't seem like a Miami person. He said he had a girlfriend back home, but they were "open" about things. He said we could study in his dorm sometime.
"Maybe," I told him.
My best friend, J, searched for him on campus.
"What does he look like?" she wanted to know.
On Monday, we waited under the banyan tree at lunch, watching the moving sidewalk of people. She spotted him right away.
"I didn't know he had purple hair," she said, laughing.
"He must've dyed it over the weekend," I said.
There was a lot about him that I didn't know.
"Are you going to talk to him again?" she asked.
I shrugged.
There was nothing left to talk about.
Crissa-Jean Chappell
Author of Total Constant Order
www.crissajeanchappell.com
http://f-i-n.diaryland.com
www.myspace.com/crissajean
Total Constant Order
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