Checking Her Out

Chapter Four: Eleanor Brown

Monday

My stomach twisted into nervous knots. Professor Garmin had the unique, torturous habit of announcing that he had finished grading an assignment at the start of class, but he didn't actually hand back the paper until the very end of the period. I already had a hard time paying attention to his monotone lectures without him holding my literature review's grade over my head. I had more at stake than just my GPA or NCAA eligibility now—I wanted to be able to impress Ellie Brown.

Ellie had warned me when we'd gone to bed together that she wouldn't be there when I woke up. I shouldn't have been disappointed, then, when morning came and her side of the mattress was empty. But I still was. I'd spent the rest of the day helping my housemates pick up after the party that had raged on long after Ellie and I had slipped away to my bedroom.

I lamented that I didn't have her phone number. I didn't know where she lived, and I didn't know the significance of the single gold band she wore on the ring finger of her left hand. She might have had a husband or a wife. I could have been a one-time thing—an indulgence or a slip up. I needed to see her again, obviously, but I wanted to come with good news and not suspicion. Maybe if I earned a high enough grade on this paper she would agree to have dinner with me. Maybe we could have a proper date.

My classmates started to stir around me, breaking into my wishful daydreams. The class period had come to an end; Professor Garmin circled the classroom, handing back student essays. Even though we submitted assignments online, he insisted on printing out each paper to return in hardcopy. I wondered if he had some kind of red ink pen fetish.

I watched him set the graded assignment on my peers' respective desks. Crestfallen looks, relief, or jubilation passed over each student face as they saw the letter grade scrawled on their paper. My heart was nearly thumping out of my chest by the time Professor Garmin reached my desk. I looked up at the middle-aged man, surprised to see a smile?

"This was a good effort, Addison," he told me. He set the paper on my desk, flipped over, so I couldn't see my grade.

I waited for him to walk away. I held my breath as I turned over the paper that sat on my desk.

A-

+ + +

I ran out of the academic building and sprinted in the direction of the campus library. I was elated. And I wanted Ellie to be the first to know. I didn't know when her shift at the library officially started—we'd always met upstairs in the seminar room, and it had always been after the dinner hour. I couldn't wait that long to tell her the good news.

I was breathless when I nearly slumped over the front reception desk at the library's entrance.

"Hi," I wheezed. "Is Ellie in yet?"

The woman at the desk was probably in her late thirties or early forties. Her hair, dark brown with visible grey streaks, was pulled back in a stereotypical bun. She blinked at me from behind thick glasses. "I'm sorry, who?"

"Ellie Brown?" I offered, hoping that might narrow it down. How many Ellies could have been on staff? "She helped me with my history paper."

The woman at the reception desk shook her head. "I'm sorry. There's no one on staff by that name. Are you sure you got her name right?"

She didn't correct me when I was moaning her name the other night.

"Oh. I, uh, I must have been mistaken," I excused. "Thanks anyway."

A flood of questions crammed into my brain. Had Ellie lied about working at the campus library? Was she just a random person who liked to hang out with books? Why had she offered to help me if it wasn't part of her job description? I thought back to our earliest interactions, nearly a week earlier—had she ever told me she worked for my school?