Jodi’s smile grew bittersweet. “I’m sorry that’s a big deal.”
“What do you mean?”
“Wanting to know you, listening without interrupting. Those things are sort of baseline decency, you know?”
“They don’t feel like it.” Lucy gave herself a moment to ponder. “But you’re right. At one time they did.”
“Good for Jeremy, bringing your standards back up.” Jodi winked.
When the brownies were cut into unreasonably large squares and topped with mint chip ice cream, Lucy and Jodi took their plates to the dining room. Lucy nudged aside a few stapled papers left out on the table.
“How goes the proofreading business?” she said. On principle Jodi wouldn’t write papers from scratch or even correct another student’s sentence structure, but for an affordable fee she corrected typos and punctuation.
“It’s been great the last few weeks. I’m almost done with those.” Jodi pointed to the stack.
Lucy glanced at the paper on top, then stared.
SOC 203, Ms. Worth
An Introduction to Social Dynamics in Lupine Communities
by Katharine Gregoire
“Interesting subject,” she said.
“Itis,” Jodi said. “I thought I’d be bored to death, but I really liked that one. And it really makes you think. How they sort of…walk among us, you know? According to Kate’s paper, lupines make up possibly five percent of the world population. There are more lupines in the world than vampires, which is just mind-blowing, because how often do we even hear about their existence? But vampires show up in the news and stuff, in Hollywood, openly at college…” Jodi shook her head. “If you know a hundred people, you might know five lupines.”
Lucy nodded as she flipped past the title page. She had to read this paper. Every word of it.
“I bet there are one or two lupines on our own campus.” Jodi leaned toward her as if to read along. “And we have no idea who they are. That’s wild to me.”
Definitely not commenting onthat. Lucy scanned the table of contents.
I. Introduction
II. Demographical statistics and typical psychological profile of the individual
III. Social attachment
IV. Possessive behavior
V. Aggressive behavior
VI. Community hierarchy
VII. Mate bond: fact or myth?
VIII. Conclusion
Wait…what? Mate bond? Lucy itched to flip to the final section, but she should read the whole thing. Good thing she was a speed-reader.
“Distracted much?” Jodi waved a hand between Lucy’s face and the pages in her hand. “We were discussing your boyfriend.”
“Sorry, but now you’ve got me intrigued and I have to read this for myself.”
“Or I could summarize.” Jodi shrugged.
“It’s twenty double-spaced pages; I can read it faster than you can summarize it. Just give me a minute.”
