An Unlikely Connection: Part 3

Chapter 6: Conflicted

Three days after the drama with Yosefin's father, she was ready to go home. On Wednesday afternoon, I drove her back. Her mother was in the kitchen when we walked through the front door. Yosefin didn't acknowledge her mother's greeting. She walked past her but stopped at the end of the hallway near her room. Her mother leaned over around the corner to look down the hallway. Yosefin moved out of sight when she saw her. I heard the bedroom door open but not close.

"My husband told me what happened." Yosefin's mother said. "Is she okay?"

"I wouldn't mention what happened," I said. "Or anything related." I walked into Yosefin's room to drop off her beg. She was in her seat. Her arms were crossed around her stomach. She wasn't smiling, even after I came in. "You good?" She pressed her lips into her mouth when she nodded. "If you need anything, shoot me a text, okay?" She nodded again. I kissed her on the cheek before leaving. Her mother and I locked eyes for a second. We didn't nod, blink, or say a word.

Once I closed the front door behind me, I got a bad feeling in my gut about how Yosefin's day would turn out. I didn't know her parents all that well. She didn't speak to them during the three days she spent at my house. I worried they would bother her with more questions about herself or why she ghosted them. Three days weren't enough to clear her head. Sometimes I noticed she would daydream when I talked about something lengthy. She did it multiple times throughout the day. The only times her mind was focused were at night before bed. Her attention was sharp. We were more intimate, yet it never lasted long. Something was eating her and I wasn't bold enough to pry it out of her. I believed she would tell me what was on her mind when the time came.

As the days went on, there were alarming signs. The daydreaming increased. I would find Yosefin staring off into space. She barely paid any attention to the lectures in class. I had to tell her what we learned in class after it ended on some occasions. Another detail I noticed was a lack of makeup. She always came well-dressed whether it was in feminine or the usual tomboy outfit, but I couldn't get my head around the makeup. Lastly, she wasn't acting intimate. I had to engage it even though I sucked at it. She was the best at doing that. Picking up on her slack was not easy. It was awkward. Not all of my advancements had any impact. She didn't want me most of the time. But, when she did, she was back to her normal self.

On a Sunday during Saint Patrick's Day, I headed to the campus to study with Misty and Shannon. They liked my animation submissions and wanted to pick my brain before the midterms. We found an empty study room on the fifth floor. The room had a projector and two long tables flushed together. Misty hopped on the table and sat crisscrossed in the middle of the tables.

"Bro," Misty said, checking out the place. "This place looks like one of the meeting/presentation rooms, yeah?" Shannon posed in front of the projector with her arm pointing at it.

"As you can see here by my graph," Shannon said nearly laughing at her words. "Our stocks are tanking." Her stupid joke made me chuckle. Misty snorted like a pig before laughing. "We're all going to be fired."

"What shall we do?" Shannon looked at me. I shrugged my shoulders. "Okay. That's enough. Let's get this going!"

"Sensei. Show us your ways."

We laid our study guides on the table. Shannon and Misty sat beside me. I could smell their individual perfumes simmering up into my nostrils. Misty smelled like grape soda while Shannon had a sweet peach aroma.

"I can't get my head around this question," Misty said, pressing her index nail on the fourth question of her paper. It had an image of two walls morphing into each other. The question was looking for a single word. "What is it?"

"It's a glitch, right?" Shannon said. There was a question later down the page that would fit that word. The image example showed a 3D model morphed and pixelated.