Madness In Literature

Two

“I’m getting really fond of the room in spite of the wallpaper.”

Mel looked up, startled. The boy sat just a seat further down, looking at her with a half smile on his face.

“What?” she uttered, even though she knew it was a line from the book. Instead of replying, he quirked a brow at the cups of tea on the seat between the two of them.

“For me?”

Mel nodded. She watched as he picked one up and took a sip. When had he came in? And how had she not noticed him?

“Tea with milk,” he declared. “Cold tea with milk. I like it.”

“It was hot. Before.” She mumbled in reply.

At the front of the theatre, the lecturer paused and frowned in their direction. Mel and the boy wisely kept quiet, him sipping his tea and her scrawling illegible notes, trying to sort out her jumbled thoughts. Once the lecture was over, she turned towards him.

“I didn’t see you come in,” she accused.

“If I recalled correctly, you weren’t seeing anything but the slides on the yellow wallpaper,” he replied. He took another sip of the tea and then raised the cup. “Thanks for the drink by the way.”

“It’s too cold now. Why were you late, anyway?”

“Because.”

“Because what?”

“Just because. Walk with me.”

He slid out of his chair and strode out of the theatre. Mel shoved her stuff into her bag carelessly and ran after him, dumping the remnants of her tea in a trash can. Outside, it was chilly despite it being mid afternoon, and the wind sent her hair flying into different directions. Hugging her arms around herself, she wished that she had brought a jacket of some sort. Now all she got was this stupid dress that swished prettily but did nothing against the cold. The boy kept a few steps ahead of her as they headed out of the campus and towards the park opposite, and Mel wondered how they must look to other people; two figures clearly going in the same direction but not exactly together.

“You weren’t in any of my other classes,” Mel started as she caught up with him. When he didn’t reply, she continued. “I’ve been carrying the notes around. How did you do your assignment without them anyway?”

“I didn’t,” he answered.

“But it’s twenty percent of our grades.”

“Right.” He replied without indicating any further explanation. He paused in front of a pretzel stand and bought two pretzels, one of which he passed to Mel. “In return for the drinks.”

“You don’t have to,” she told him, even though her hands were already reaching for the pretzels. “The drinks were in return for the notes.”

“So I bought you pretzels in return for the drinks which were in fact the returns for the notes?”

Laughing, she nodded.

“So technically, you still owe me one.”

“Technically, I don’t owe you anything, because I didn’t ask for the pretzels.”

“I didn’t ask for the tea.”

“I didn’t ask for the notes.”

“Touche,” he replied with a wry smile. “To-fucking-shay.”

They sat down on a bench overlooking a pond, and watched a pair of ducklings waddled back and forth in the water. The water reflected the trees at the edges of the pond and the skies above them, which were grey and overcast. Mel was used to rain; Lynnwood was a rainy city and she had taken to carrying an umbrella in her bag, but just like her stupid dress, umbrellas couldn’t exactly keep her warm.