The More We Know

Part Three

When I arrived to class a few minutes late on Monday morning, I spotted Aubrey front and center again, no sight of Ty-guy anywhere around. She glanced over her shoulder, scanning the filled seats around her, trying to look casual about it. The professor was late and every student seemed too caught up in their weekend reports to notice  I went from standing in the doorway in the back to sitting in the front row in the split of a second too short for a scientific calculator to equate.

“Looking for someone?” I asked, keeping a straight face.

 She spun in her seat towards me, her already large eyes even huger, seeming to take up half her face. “When did you get here?” she all but shrieked.

I shrugged. “Just now.” I tried to make the way I was staring into her eyes seem less intense, but I’m sure my attempts made it that much more obvious.

“Wow, so, two consecutive days in a row of attending class? Are you sure that doesn’t break some sort of rebel boy code?” she asked, recomposed and smiling at me from the side.

 “You’re speaking like you know the rules that govern our secret brotherhood,” I answered, always one for playing along.

“I know a guy,” she said, shrugging a shoulder.

“That’s a capital crime for one of ours to include the minions of this world in on our secret ways,” I said, folding my arms over the desktop and leaning foward.

“Yeah, you don’t need to tell me. Poor whistleblower was found dead the next day,” she said, lowering her voice and putting on a dramatic face. “It was a closed casket.”

“We’re a merciless, brutal bunch of rebels,” I said, lowering my voice too, “so you have to swear to me you won’t tell anyone I was in class two days in a row. That’s a sin so severe they’d leave the casket open just to prove a point to everyone else.”

 She put on a face of overdone shock. “How about this? I’ll promise not to tell a single soul about your perfect two day attendance record if you tell me what inspired such an act.”

I looked over my shoulder, then the other, secret agent style, before curling my finger at her. She leaned in, and as I was about to whisper something about the Queen of England and gray aliens, a blotch of purple poked to the surface below her sleeve.

“More bruises?” I whispered, knowing my hackles would be rising if I had any. “Maybe you need to take a multi-vitamin or something.”

She chuckled, but I wasn’t joking. I’d never seen a girl as bruised as her. She had to have some sort of vitamin deficiency or something. Either that or she was a magnet for bruises far and wide.

“What can I say? Volleyball’s a killer sport and I’m not the kind of girl that dodges a ball when it’s firing at me.” She sounded proud of herself. I was about to reply that I hadn’t seen her take any balls or hits to the forearms at Friday night’s game when the good professor decided that late was better than never. I happened to believe in the other way around.

“Sit down and shut up,” he hollered, grabbing his temples and grimacing at his own voice. Looked like students weren’t the only ones that liked to have a good time during the weekend.

 The room went from a dull roar to Sunday morning silent. The man had skills of persuasion, I had to give him that.

“I’m not in the mood to give out a lecture today on Freudian theory and, from the grimaces I just detected on your faces, you’re not ready to hear it either,” he announced, his voice barely making it through the room as he snapped his briefcase open and began rummaging through it. “So I’m going to give you the details—the brief details—on your semester project that will account for half of your grade.”