I roll onto my back, resisting the instinct to reach for my phone and dissociate until the feeling passes, squeezing my eyes tight enough for neon shapes to appear behind my eyelids. I’m going to have to move. I don’t know where, and I don’t know how soon, but I asked for this. I said I wanted out of Geneva, I just didn’t expect some real “Monkey’s Paw” bullshit.
The neon shapes linger even when I peel my eyes open again. They flicker and shift across the high school tchotchkes around my room. The trophies, the books—all of it simultaneously sacred and stupid, a three-dimensional scrapbook of a Murphy who no longer exists. Kat and Ellie are both wrong. I have changed. At least a little. Haven’t I?
I have to believe I’ve moved on from who I used to be. Otherwise, I’m no better than those college kids who wander back into their high school classes the first time they come back home. We used to make fun of those kids back in high school—each one had a visitor’s pass around their neck and looked a little worse for wear as they talked about the good old days, which were all of two or three years prior. We’d cringe and nod and give them a thumbs-up, wondering why they felt the need to revisit the high school memories they’d hardly left behind. God, don’t tell me I’ve grown up to be like them.
I pat myself down, searching for my phone, and knock out the only instantly urgent item on my to-do list: delete Ellie’s number, our chat history, and our photos. I’m done hanging on to things from high school, especially things that were never really mine in the first place.
twenty
The right amount of time to spend on a community college campus is exactly the duration that a class requires. Not a second more, but often, a minute or two less. In two and a half years, I’ve never once stepped foot onto the Weymouth campus for anything that wasn’t required—not for a speaker series, not for a sporting event, and certainly not for tutoring (although maybe it would’ve helped). But on this fully frozen Monday morning, when my calendar app buzzed thirty minutes before an optional study session, I rolled out of bed and started defrosting my car.
Desperate times, as they say, call for desperate last-minute cram sessions.
“Are we ready for the next slide?” Professor Meyers scans the half-filled classroom of C-and-below students and, receiving zero response, clacks her space bar. The projected image shifts to a new page of study guide answers, a fresh crop of buzzwords that I understand even less than the first set.
Maybe desperate is too generous to describe my situation. Doomed might be a little more accurate.
The class marks their wrong answers in silence, and I drum my pen against the gray laminate table, gradually picking up speed until someone has the audacity to shush me. It’s me versus this study guide in a battle for a 98 on this final. A losing battle, sure, but with the “schmooze your way to an A” plan off the table, it’s my only hope. At least it’s better than the 124 I needed last semester. I check off the last wrong answer on my study guide and calculate my score: a triumphant 68. That leaves me four days left to get 30 points better before Friday’s final, or else I’ll be left with two miserable options: take this class a third time or give up on college altogether. I’m not sure which would be worse.
“Are there any specific questions anyone would like to review?” Professor Meyers’s gaze flickers toward me with hopeful skepticism. “Anyone?”
I blink into the fluorescent lights, comparing the correct answers on the screen to the chicken scratch on my packet. Before I can decide if I’m too proud to actively participate in a study session, my seat partner raises his hand.
“Samuel?”
The frail-looking boy next to me offers up a question that I left blank. Much like I would’ve done with the question “What is your seat partner’s name?” had it been asked ten seconds ago.
Professor Meyers uncaps her dry-erase marker and draws a big, red diagram that takes up most of the white board. If she had a feedback box, I’d suggest any color marker but red. I already see enough of it all over my tests. “So there’s Company Aand Company B.” She barely glances at the study guide, reciting the question by heart. “If Company A signs a contract to provide services to Company B for one hundred thousand dollars, and payment is complete before any work has been started, what journal entry does Company A record on this date?”
I flip through my notebook in search of anything about journal entries. Would you believe that I’ve taken the same notes two semesters in a row and still can’t retain this garbage? Maybe accounting is just something I’m not meant to know.
“Murphy?”
Fuck.
I look up from my notes and directly into the expectant eyes of Kara Meyers. Fuck it, here’s my best shot. “Um, debit cash credit revenue?”
Her smile wavers. “Close. It’s debit cash creditdeferredrevenue. Let’s look at the timeline.”
I sink into my seat, the base of my head knocking against the back of my chair. I don’t want to look at the timeline. I want to look at the inside of my eyelids or the WCC parking lot as I’m pulling away. But I guess if I wanted to avoid stuff I already learned, maybe I should’ve passed the class on the first go-round.
My left leg bounces in time with the low tick of the wall clock, each passing second introducing a new reason why I should get up and give up.
Tick. My chair has no lumbar support.
Tick. My pen is dying.
Tick. Professor Kara Meyers can’t go more than a few minutes without staring me down.
The next time she looks in my direction, I force a smile, andshe studies me with the same concentration I should be putting into this review session. Is she waiting for me to speak up? To leave? Last we interacted, I was fleeing her house like it was on fire, muttering some unconvincing excuse as to why her daughter—my alleged girlfriend—might have skipped town without telling me. If the two of them talk as infrequently as Ellie let on, Professor Meyers probably has some questions beyond the ones on the study guide.
An hour of review questions slips away like a good summer, and with five minutes left of class, Professor Meyers opens the floor for one last question. Half a dozen hands shoot into the air, but mine isn’t one of them. If my seat were closer to the front, I might just slip out the door and pretend none of this ever happened, that I never fooled myself into thinking a ninety-minute study session or an elaborate lie to a professor would save my grade. Sadly, I’m stuck in the second to last row, and if I tried to sneak out early, it’d be a whole thing. Instead, I endure the last question of the day: what are all of the elements in a basic financial statement? I actually know this one, which should make me feel marginally better. It doesn’t.
The session ends with the usual shuffling of papers and zipping of backpacks, but my low-scoring study guide has long since been packed away. I sling my backpack over my shoulder and, although I’m in the back of the classroom, make a serious go at being one of the first out.
“As a reminder, the study guide is also available on the Weymouth Student Portal, in case you’ve finished yours and want a fresh copy,” Professor Meyers shouts over the horrible, squeaky rumble of chairs scooting along tile flooring. Oh, to be the kindof person who does the optional study guide not only once, but multiple times. “Number-two pencils only to the final and one note card with equations written on it…Oh, Murphy, would you mind hanging back for a minute?”
My feet freeze to the tile beneath them. Iwouldmind, actually. I need to be anywhere but here. I try to invent a convincing excuse to leave—a doctor’s appointment, a barista shift, a life-saving medical procedure. What comes out instead is, “Yeah, sure.” I guess my lying abilities have officially run dry.
