Forever 21

5 | Killing Time

“As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

“To understand hepatic encephalopathy, you have to understand what went wrong…”

Our teacher, Adelaide, or Addy as she insisted we call her, continued to lull us to sleep with the lilt of her elegant Southern drawl. I would catch bits and pieces of the lecture, but mostly I kept getting distracted by the glint of the huge rock on her ring finger. It kept catching the light every time she waved her hand toward the PowerPoint giving the impression that it was a falling star. Since she loved to make references to her slideshow frequently, it looked like a meteor shower up there.

“And so your patients with liver disease are more likely to build up high levels of ammonia and develop a particularly dangerous condition called hepatic encephalopathy…”

Bored, I snuck another peek at Rachel. Her usually monotone copper skin was alive with light. The light didn’t shine powerfully through her skin, nor did it seem to dance on top of it. It was like watching the undulating waves of the aurora borealis in shades of amber beneath her skin… almost like when you try to shine a flashlight through your hand. It was mesmerizing.

“Camille, honey, what kind of medications would you expect to see them on?”

I sat up straight in my chair, cursing the fact that I had been spacing out again. A quick look at the PowerPoint revealed that we were still on the same subject. Silently, I thanked God for the advent of technology, because otherwise I’d have been caught red handed.

“Um, Lactulose?”

“Very good, but Lactulose is a laxative isn’t it? What makes Lactulose so special… Rachel?”

As sweet as Addy was, a lot of the times I got the feeling that she called on people she felt weren’t paying attention. Perhaps it was my natural dislike for Angela, the snobby overachiever up front, that made me take notice, but she never got called on. Then again, to be fair, she always liked to volunteer the answers. Overachievers – you can’t live with them, but you also can’t go unnoticed without them.

Rachel looked up from her notebook, her face the perfect picture of boredom. “Yes, but that’s how it works. It draws the excess ammonia from the bloodstream into the colon where it can be excreted as waste.”

She didn’t even bother to wait for the impending words of praise, instead lowering her head to continue reading her book. Surprise and pride flashed in our teacher’s eyes. She always loved it when we actually did our reading assignments.

A short while that seemed like a long while later, we went on break. Rachel wasted no time approaching me. Though modestly dressed, she was prettier up close and her eyes, though much like her skin, they were a darker hue of amber with a few flecks of copper. They narrowed on me, her hand reaching out to grasp my wrist.

“Make a wish.”

My mind went blank. Were Fire Jinn like Genies? Did they grant wishes? Assuming they did, at what cost? I’d read once that Genies weren’t all Walt Disney made them out to be. It was a work of fiction, but it had indicated that Genie’s granted wishes for a blood price. One woman got three wishes before her Genie took its pound of flesh. Fiction or not, the scene the author had painted was gruesome. I looked back at Ivy in panic when an uncomfortable warmth began to travel up my arm. She managed to look amusedly bored, the biggest oxymoron ever beside jumbo shrimp.

“You did not make a wish.” Her tone was bland, but her face was perplexed. If I hadn’t been so worried that she might maim me with her powers, I might’ve laughed. Rachel looked sweet enough, but then, so did many of the things that went bump in the night.