Yeager Chronicles: After Extinction

23: Tessa

The smell of coffee and lavender incense wafted around the living room from the light blue and oak kitchen. All things were calming, even the slight static to the radio that came through, blurring words that otherwise were clear.

Blonde hair folded into a messy side bun only barely held together by a tie, bounced and shivered with even the slightest movement. Tessa sipped at her coffee, letting the nipping heat envelope her mouth, sweet with a hint of bitterness as she read. It was a chemistry textbook for one of the classes that she was supposed to have attended. It was early in the book, with electron configuration and valence electrons. She had only looked at it to remind herself how either went.

Not that knowing either would help her at the moment. Her appeal to the Houston University, she could swear, was still sitting in the Dean's office for at least the last two months to the minute. She knew she did not disclose she had a gun, and perhaps that is what made everything slow. The tests, there was nothing wrong with them, merely practice tests. The antidepressants, those she needed. She sighed as she flipped through, revealing even more electrons.

"You alright deary?" Shane's grandmother asked, sitting in a green and teal armchair with her coffee. "You've done nothing but sit there and sigh into that book." She set down her drink and with ease, liberated the book from a weak one-handed grasp. "Why don't you startin' talk to me." Oddly, the encounter made her think about what a mother would do, what her mother would have done. That, if she were still alive or alive at all during her childhood.

"Mary," Tessa started, taking her feet from the couch to the floor, wooden and cold. "Is -- should I even still be trying?" It sounded childish and she knew it. Silver and thinning hair parted down the middle swept over a sweatered shoulder, red argyle knit contrasting with the silver.

"What would make you ask that?" Mary Anne inquired, looking back at the textbook. "You're a smart girl, smarter than I was at your age, with all this kind of things," referring to the book. "Of course you should still try. No one got anywhere on looks alone." Tessa looked at her, how her old eyes crinkled at the corners, how they seemed to twinkle in the light. She knew that Mary was right; she had at least fifty years under her belt, listening to her now would be beneficial.

"Looks never did anything good for me. I always got in trouble," Tessa supplied, thinking of junior year, sophomore year, and one teacher that was determined to keep her out of class. Or that is what she wanted to believe instead. I can see your collar bone! I can see your strap! You're being distracting to the boys! the voice played in the same boisterous way that she recalled it. And how annoying too. Michael, Larry, Jeremiah, they all said that the only thing that was distracting was Mr. Louis and how he interrupted his own lectures to announce that she had been out of code.

"Then you already know that you can't rely upon it." Mary leaned in, the book resting on her knees. Tessa nodded, slowly reaching for her coffee that had been close to the edge. "You've made good headway. All you have to do now is just keep moving. No sense in wasting time over things that can't be changed." She waited a moment, watching as grey eyes looked over a dark blue mug. "You best accept and move on. It saves you a hell of a lot of trouble." Mary leaned back, her back curving with the cushion there. Tessa's chem book still atop her knees, atop a grey skirt and leggings. "Lord knows we don't live forever," she added with a huff, flipping a couple hundred pages forward.

Tessa didn't reply, feeling both chastised and a little dissatisfied with what Mary Anne told her. She knew it was the truth but it was one pill that she did not wish to swallow. Her coffee, although barely touched, was placed back down on the table in front of her. It had done little to warm her, and the cold had gotten to her feet which did not help matters either.