if only

chapter 14

january

My winter break ended, and my new class load started up with a vengeance. It was the last semester I had, and I'd loaded up on courses to fill out my transcript before graduation came in just a few short months.

Mags and I had another class together; we'd both been taking Latin since freshman year, but this was the first time our schedules lined up. We sat together in the back of the lecture; she with her crocheting, me fervently taking notes on the hardest translations I'd come across yet.

"How can you afford to not take notes?" I grumbled under my breath one afternoon. "This shit is difficult."

She shrugged. "Photographic memory."

I stared at her. "Even people with photographic memories have to do some work."

She shrugged again. "I might have the other one. They're doing tests."

"The other one?" I blinked.

"Hyperthymesia."

I looked back at the prof, who droned on tonelessly far below us. I turned back to my friend.

"I don't think I know what that is."

"Yeah, that's 'cause only, like, 100 people have it."

"In the US?"

"In the world."

I whipped my phone out and googled it.

"Wait, you can remember everything?!"

"Most everything."

"Mags! What the fuck are you doing here?!"

She rolled her eyes and sighed. "I still have to learn it, don't I?"

"Yeah... that's fair." I stared at my notes. "But go to like... NYU or something. Or Yale. Or Harvard?"

"Ivy League bullshit. Nah, I'm good here, with my people. I don't need an expensive label."

I shook my head and went back to trying to make sense of my notes.

After class, we drove around looking for something vegan to eat. We didn't have any other classes that day, and planned to use the time to work on papers in each other's company.

"Maybe I'll bring something to Billie," I said, chewing my cheek. "It is lunch time. She's probably hungry."

"Billie is a grown ass millionaire who can order her own lunch. See her later."

"I shouldn't," I shook my head.

"But you should bring her lunch?"

"Mags... I just miss her, okay?"

"Yeah I know," she sighed. She rubbed at a smudged spot on her eyeliner while gazing at herself in the passenger mirror. "She's not that great you know. Her gas is terrible."