The Beautiful Truth

// 48

After class on Monday—my last class of the day—I spent an hour and a half with Dr. Bovich going over our independent study agreement. Well, that is to say, we spent twenty five minutes going over the details about how my study would work in order for me to earn academic credit, and the other hour and five minutes talking about my ideas.

My head was spinning with them. I had written short stories—for my own entertainment—for years. My computer was full of them, now safely held in a virtually inaccessible, randomly named folder since coming to college and living with a roommate who liked to check out my iTunes, and Facebook, and God only knows what else when I wasn't around.

Anyway, none of my ideas were very concrete yet, but it felt indescribably good to say them out loud. I'd never really done that before. The idea of it was kind of intimidating, what with my only pre-college option for a sounding board would have been my award-winning author of a father. No big deal, because it wasn't like giving him my admissions essay to proof wasn't a mortifying experience. Yeah.

My plan was to bring the story of The End of It All into the present day. That would help me—writing in a time period I knew rather than one I would have to research and still not fully understand. But, other than that, I'd leave the story alone. No plot changes, no name changes. I now carried my original copy of my dad's book everywhere I went, and would periodically pull it out to dog-ear a page I wanted to go back to for notes or inspiration.

By Thursday afternoon when my final class for the week let out, my spring semester workload was mounting. In addition to Dr. Bovich's class and our independent study, I had thirteen other credit hours to worry about.

I was dragging my feet as I pushed open the door to my room. Micki was out, and all I wanted was to fall face-first onto my bed, delaying the marathon study session I should probably be having a little while longer.

But that didn't happen.

"Oh my God! You scared me!" I almost screamed, nearly jumping out of my skin when I finally realized Barton was sitting in my desk chair. The door had obscured my view when I walked into the room.

Typically, he laughed. "Sorry, I wanted to surprise you, so Micki left me behind when she left for practice a few minutes ago."

I smiled, and let my bag slide off my shoulder and into the floor. "Hi."

"You look tired, pretty girl," he said, still gazing at me from the chair.

I frowned. "I am. So much work to do."

Barton frowned, too. "So much, or too much?"

I narrowed my eyes. "Well, that depends."

Barton laughed softly. "Um, well...turns out one of my best friends is playing at Bottom of the Hill across the Bay, and I was hoping, since you don't have class tomorrow, that you might want to come with me to the show."

My eyes widened. "Uh, sure!"

He bit his lip and smiled. "Good answer."

I finally started moving again, motivated by the idea of live music just a few hours away. I swung my bag over against my dresser and walked around to my bed. "What time do we have to leave?" I asked before falling backwards onto my comforter.

"You tryin' to take a nap?" Barton asked, moving from the chair to crawl on top of me.

I looked away from his awful eyes for a second, but then couldn't resist looking back. "I was thinking about it, but I'm sure you could persuade me otherwise."

He sank down next to me, lying on his side. "OK, good," he said, tracing my cheekbone with his fingertips as he talked. "Because we really need to go in like a hour, and since I'm sure you're gonna take a shower first, you better get moving."