WILDly (5 page)

Lisa’s
expression changed into a weak smile. “Anything will do right now.
I just don’t want to be... on my
own
. And... and besides,
astronomy sounds kind-of interesting.”

Oh. Alex had
dumped her. I felt sorry for her.

“Let’s get
going. It’s almost time.” I threw my bag over my shoulder as I got
up and collected all three plates. “Can I grab you another cold
drink for the way? This heat is killing me,” I offered.

“I
know
!
That’s what’s making me even more worried!” Lisa freaked.

Her logic
didn’t make sense to me, but she sounded close to tears.

“I guess
there’s a storm building. I mean, with the heat and all.”

She didn’t
respond to my feeble attempt to figure out her concern about the
weather, so I went to get the drinks. She looked more settled when
I returned. We walked in silence for a while, sipping the heaviness
away.

As we walked, I
scanned the area for a tallish guy with black hair. It was second
nature by now, looking for Duncan whenever I walked around on
campus or entered a public place. I had spent the last few weeks
searching madly for him all over, and eventually gave up as I was
only driving myself to the petting zoo.

Except for the
fact that my glow exactly matched the colour of the sky every day,
nothing abnormal had happened since. It almost seemed unreal by
now. But my curiosity was still firmly intact. I just had to figure
out a way to contact Duncan to find out what exactly had happened
to me.

I finished my
can and glanced at Lisa. I didn’t know what to say and decided to
distract her.

“Hey, let me
get you into the astronomy mood. About your phone: did you know
that the sun can affect the weather and cause terrible mobile
network interruptions? If I remember correctly, it has something to
do with sunspots. Come to think of it, it’s very possibly the cause
of what’s been going on over the last week!”

She didn’t
react immediately. “That’s very...
interesting
.” She paused,
then stopped walking. “Valerie, I... I think I need to go. Maybe
astronomy isn’t such a good idea after all. I’ll see you
later.”

I didn’t
understand her sudden change of mind. Not to mention the unusual
emphasis of the word
interesting
. I guess I scared her out
of astronomy. Maybe I sounded too much like a textbook recital.

“Don’t worry
about the silly class, you just take a deep breath and calm down.
I’ll see you in philosophy. Or do you want me to stay with you?” I
meant it. I didn’t feel like bunking anymore; the walk woke me up
and besides, I was sorry for Lisa.

Lisa shook her
head. “Don’t worry about me. See you later.” She turned and
disappeared.

Even though the
lecture was on the accelerated expansion of the universe, I spent
the whole time trying to remember the previous lecture on the sun.
I paged through my textbook looking for the section on sunspots but
stopped after a reprimanding look from the Professor.

When the class
finally ended, I rushed to philosophy to save a seat for Lisa.
Philosophy was a big class and as it was compulsory for all the
science students, it was always full to the brim.

I should have
read the signs better. Lisa never showed up for class, so I took
notes to share with her. It kept me busy even though the topic,
evolution, didn’t interest me much.

My hand was
aching by the time the Professor ended his lecture. “But remember,
the concept of evolution is only a
theory
. Ladies and Gents,
we will have a guest speaker next week, a Professor from our
satellite campus. He will elaborate on
where exactly
during
the evolution process
dead
became
alive
.”

I didn’t spend
another thought on evolution and headed back to the dorm. On my
way, I noticed again how the colour of my glow matched the blue of
the sky exactly. Reliving the whole incident with Duncan again in
my mind, I suddenly noticed the time and my courage dropped to my
knees.

The dorm would
be busy, as it always was in the afternoons. It was customary for
juniors to look down and bow to every senior as they entered, and I
usually did it as fast as possible. I definitely did not want to
draw any type of attention, especially not after the incident with
Betty.

The worst thing
happened to her, almost a week before. Betty was an overweight
first-year from the fourth floor. It had been a hot day like today
and she was tired after the walk to and from campus. Trying to
spare her legs a little as she still had to climb the stairs to her
room, and thinking she’d had enough exercise for one day, she
didn’t bow to Carla, a second-year.

Carla simply
walked to the intercom and announced that Betty had a problem with
bowing. Two minutes later the entire dorm was downstairs, crowding
around Betty. It was clearly standard procedure; all the seniors
knew what was coming.

They marched
poor Betty to the communal garden between all the girls’ dorms and
under a roar of cheers and laughter and whistles which only
attracted more and more curious students, made her make out with
the statue of the first dean of the university.

At first, Betty
turned all the shades of pink and red imaginable, but soon she
started crying. Luckily the crowd was humane enough to disperse at
this point, and they left the broken Betty alone to reflect on her
crime.

My legs were
weak from all the bowing by the time I reached my room. I dropped
my bag just inside the door and fell face-down onto on my bed,
relieved at making it safely to my den.

I almost fell
off the bed when someone cleared their throat right next to me.

Lisa sighed.
“Sorry Val, I didn’t know you were really sleeping. You came in
only a second ago!” She was bent down over my bed.

“Oh, hi Lisa,”
I yawned. “No it’s fine.” I slowly sat up.

“You don’t look
so good, you know - you have really dark circles around your eyes.
Are you ill?” she asked.

I thought about
it for a while. “I guess I’m more tired than I’d like to admit.
I’ve had so much on my mind recently since the... the virus and
I’ve been struggling to sleep. Not to mention the heat and the
lectures and the exercise from climbing stairs and bowing all
day.”

Lisa got up off
her haunches and stood next to my bed.

“Well, if
that’s the case, why don’t you go visit your parents this weekend?
I’m sure they’d love a visit from you, and you’ll recharge properly
there.”

It was a
tempting idea. One that grew on me the more I thought about it. It
had been more than two months already.

“Maybe I
should. I only have two scheduled classes on Friday morning and if
I pack tonight, I’ll still have a small part of Friday with them.
Great plan. Thanks.”

“Sure.”

“Hey, I took
notes for you in philosophy. It was a boring lecture on evolution.
You didn’t miss a thing.” I took my notes from my bag and handed
them to Lisa. “Did you want to talk to me about something?” I
asked, remembering for the first time why she hadn’t been in
philosophy.

She sank down
slowly on the edge of my bed before she answered. “It’s Alex.”

“Oh, don’t you
worry one bit about Alex. He’s such a loser for leaving you. You’ll
find someone better.” I tried to cheer her in an attempt to prevent
any waterworks.

She frowned.
“No, Valerie. He didn’t dump me. I’m... worried... about him.”

Hello World!
Meet Valerie, a complete and downright idiot. My face went hot.

“Oh.” I barely
managed to get the one little vowel out.

“There’s
something the matter with him, physically. I don’t know how to tell
you this, it might sound ridiculous. Valerie, I think he has the
same...
virus
that you had.”

Her words
shocked the marrow from my bone. Lisa had no idea what she had just
said. I considered the thought for a brief second only. I didn’t
doubt that Alex was ill, but there was simply no way at all that I
could believe Duncan had been able to do to Alex what he had done
to me - whatever it was.

“Impossible, I
wasn’t even diagnosed!”

I realised I
was almost screaming, so I tried to calm down a little. “Why... why
do you think that?”

But before Lisa
could answer me, Jennifer flew in through the door and draped
herself next to Lisa on my bed.

“Think what?”
she asked inquisitively.

I was irritated
with Jennifer on the spot.

“You really
need to learn how to knock, you know!” I growled at her.

She stared at
me for a moment, then lifted her hand and knocked on the wall,
twice.

“Think what?”
she insisted.

I took a breath
and counted to ten. “Oh, we’ve a... we’ve been talking about the
astronomy class - Lisa was curious about astronomy. I was trying to
convince her to take it with me by telling her about the amazing
lecture that we’ve had on the sun... did you know that the sun’s
light takes only a few minutes to reach earth? If I remember
correctly it’s eight minutes,” I gabbled. I knew Jennifer wouldn’t
listen if she heard something academic in a sentence. I was kind-of
proud of myself for thinking so quickly – I had just grabbed the
first fact from my mind.

Lisa mouthed a
‘thank you’ in my direction from behind Jennifer’s back.

“Gross, you
guys! You’ve had classes all day and now you’re still on about it.
I have the biggest nerds ever for neighbours!” Jennifer teased with
a dash of seriousness.

I rolled my
eyes. “We’re not
that
bad,” I half-heartedly objected and
plunked down on my desk chair. Lisa didn’t respond at all.

The three of us
sat in silence for a short while.

“Oh. Now I
remember why I came in here. Guess what, guess what!” Jennifer was
like a shaken bottle of Coca Cola with the cap half open.

“I’ve organised
us a group date for tonight!” she exploded, beaming with pride.
“Lisa, you bring Alex along. And Val, you can thank me when you see
him!”

“See who? Oh.
Oh no! Oh no. You haven’t!” Although a very small part of me did
like the idea, I wondered what Jennifer had told the poor oke to
convince him into a blind date with me. I felt embarrassed already
and here she thought she was doing me an astronomical favour.

“Like I said,
you can thank me when you see him. I have a looker too!” she
exclaimed, flashing her eyelids.

Lisa jumped up.
“See you later. I need to go to Alex.”

“Be ready at
eight!” Jennifer called after Lisa.

I was irritated
with Jennifer all over again; I still needed to talk to Lisa and
now I had a blind date instead.

I was about to
lose it when Jennifer grabbed my arm.

“Oh, come on
Val, you’ll enjoy it. Just relax and be young for once. You’re
always so serious. Be a student a little, come and have fun! You
don’t need to see Ronald again if you don’t want to.”

It felt
strange, Jennifer urging me to have fun in such a serious note. But
she had a point.

“Arrgh! Fine!
I’ll go. But then you need to leave right now. I still have to pack
and do an assignment for tomorrow.”

“Great! I’ll
bring your dinner in a while or so, you go ahead and do your
thing,” she said closing the door behind her on her way out.

The thought of
Alex being ill had me really upset. I wanted to find Lisa again but
there were too many things to do and it was five o’clock already;
I‘d talk to her tomorrow morning before class. I quickly
prioritised my mind and sent my mom a text message before I started
packing.

Mom, Im
coming home 4 t weekend. C u tom @ 4
.

The thought of
home made me happy: free of seniors and classes and strange things,
just home. It didn’t take too long to pack what looked like my
entire room, even my text books fitted nicely inside my suitcase.
But Jennifer’s ‘be-young-be-free’ exhortation haunted me and I took
my text books out again.

Jennifer walked
in with my dinner just as I was about to close my suitcase. She
looked at the heap of text books next to my suitcase but didn’t say
one word. She placed my dinner on my desk and mumbled something
about knocking next time before she walked out again.

Honour bound to
eat after such a gesture, I quickly gulped two bites down before
feeling satiated. I pushed the plate aside and started with my
astronomy assignment from today’s lecture.

Paging my way
to the chapter about measurements, I passed the chapter on the sun
and recalled the quick sun fact that I had told Jennifer and Lisa
earlier.

I found the bit
that I was looking for below a small calculation:”
Light takes
500 seconds to travel from the sun to the earth, a little more than
8 minutes.
”

Something
triggered in my mind. At first, I couldn’t quite remember where I
had heard it and why it was so important to me. Then, suddenly, I
realised the connection: Duncan. Even though I had been in a mist
of surprise and shock and pain, I specifically remembered him
asking if it had been eight minutes already.

My intuition
told me that Duncan’s eight minutes were the same eight minutes as
the sun’s, although it didn’t seem possible and I definitely didn’t
understand it. I sat there arguing this way and that, but couldn’t
logically see the link.

I was still
pondering the idea of the sun having a larger influence on things
than I thought when I heard a knock on my door. Jennifer walked in
normally, all dressed up and ready to go in a yellow and white
striped summer dress.

She gave me one
look and freaked.

“What on earth
are you doing? We have to go! The guys are waiting outside
already!” She looked around and her tantrum escalated. “Where are
your clothes? What are you going to wear? Come on Val, I even
brought you dinner!”