“That would be cool. I don’t think I’m smart enough to do coding or things like that.”
“What do you want to do?” he asks, leaning over to my desk and opening one of the drawers to peek inside. I pinch my mouth together to keep from laughing out loud. Nosy, indeed.
“I’d like to work in publishing, I think.” Taking a seat next to him on the bed, he slides into me a bit when the crappymattress bows under my weight. “I don’t know, though. Something with books.”
“You have to do that,” Parker agrees readily, bending over my desk drawer so far that his butt is no longer on the bed. “You should write books.”
I laugh. “I don’t think anyone would read them. I probably wouldn’t be very good at it.”
Finding nothing of interest, he closes the drawer and picks up a book from my stack by the bed. Fiddling with the pages, he frowns at me.
“You read, like, ten books a week. You’re the smartest person I know,” he tells me. “You know everything, pretty much. Remember the puffins?”
I do, in fact, remember the puffins. Desmond always asks me what I read about that week when I go over for Saturday laundry. I’d recently read a book about puffins, and had probably been a little exuberant in my retelling of all the facts. Parker had stood next to me, mouth slightly agape and eyes wide, listening to the diatribe. Once I finished talking, he’d asked, voice slightly annoyed, “What the hell is a puffin?” Desmond had burst out laughing immediately, before trying to swallow it down and admonish Parker for his language. I doubt I’ll ever forget the puffin conversation.
“Yeah, I do know a lot about puffins,” I agree. Parker nods. Honestly, given the amount of random books I read, I know quite a bit about many things. But it feels like useless information. Information that would help me in a trivia game, but doesn’t exactly transfer over into the job market.
“Right. You know pretty much everything about everything,” Parker tells me, standing up to go peek in the desk drawers he can’t reach from the bed. “So, you have to write a book.”
I watch him, not bothering to tell him not to touch anything. There’s nothing at all in this room that I need to hide or protect from curious fingers. Once he finishes with the desk, he wanders around the perimeter of the room, hand on the wall.
“Where do you pee?” he asks suddenly. “Or, like, shower?”
“I have to share with the other people on this floor. There’s a communal bathroom down the hall, with some shower stalls and a few toilets.”
Parker’s jaw drops as he stares at me. I wonder if he’s reconsidering his earlier desire to one day live in a dorm like this.
“I don’t even want to share a bathroom with Desmond,” he muses, coming back to flop next to me on the bed. It creaks ominously, the metal frame protesting our weight.
“I’ve always had to share a bathroom, so it doesn’t bother me too bad. It does kind of stink when you have to take a cold shower, though. Or have to walk all the way down the hall if you need to pee in the middle of the night,” I comment, solidarity coming from Parker in the form of vigorous nodding.
“That would be the worst,” he agrees.
“Some people do have their own bathrooms, though. It’s just…different buildings, and cost and stuff, have different things.” I shrug. “Some people have to share a room, so I got pretty lucky to have my own, even without the bathroom.”
“Oh, wow,” he replies, drawing out the Os dramatically.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. Pulling it out, I see Desmond’s name on the lock screen and immediately flush, remembering his earlier offer for me to go back home with him and Parker. The dorm talk has been a nice distraction, but, as distractions are wont to be, it was fleeting.
Desmond
You guys at the dorm still?
Jack
Yeah. Want us to head back?
Desmond
Walk slow. I’ll be done in about twenty minutes.
Is Parker being good?
Jack
He’s been fine.
Parker, distracted by a stack of books he hadn’t noticed pushed behind the others, is crouched down on the floor and looking at the covers. I count to ten, trying to combat the burn of fear that’s making it hard to type.
