Birthday Girl (The Student Union Series Book 1) (2 page)

There was a satisfied murmur from the class, which consisted of about thirty students. I was sitting about a third of the way back, and I noticed that while the class was about evenly split between men and women, the front row was all male. No surprise there: Professor Radford was a beautiful, leggy blonde in her thirties. I often helped teach first-year orientation at the Shark, and one of the things we emphasized over and over was:
don’t sleep with your professors.
It looked like everyone in the front row was hoping to violate that rule as flagrantly and often as possible. Including, at the end of the row, Zach Hutchison, who was sitting up straight, nodding at the professor, and taking notes. When he stroked his beard, he looked like a J. Crew model crossed with a wise man from a Bible story, like he could teach you valuable lessons about life while popping open your bra with one hand. Not my bra, however. So far I’d had no trouble sticking to my vow of senior year chastity and academic diligence, and no hot briefcase-toting transfer student was going to fuck that up.

“Well, not this semester, I’m afraid,” Professor Radford continued. She picked up a stack of syllabuses off the table and handed them to a student in the front row, who took one and passed them on. “Geology isn’t about rocks. It’s about the history of our planet and what it’s made of. If you’re going to live on Earth—and I recommend it, because the rest of the planets out there have an even less hospitable environment than Cutlip, Washington....” She paused for a laugh, probably the same laugh she’d gotten every semester. “If you’re going to live on this planet, it’s worth taking the time to learn a thing or two about it. Or in the case of this class, a lot of things about it. If you look on your syllabus, you’ll see we’re going to have three midterm exams and one comprehensive final, plus a research project.” I groaned along with everyone else in the class. “We’re going to study geological history, the structure of the earth, and mineral types and distribution. Flash cards are highly recommended.

“Now, let’s start with a few basic facts.” She drew a circle on the board and labeled it EARTH. “This little space rock we call home is about 4.54 billion years old. If anyone here believes it’s only a few thousand years old, you may have gotten lost on the way to the theology school. But stick around, because I’m going to explain how we determine the age of the earth. You might learn something.”

I filled a few pages of my notebook while listening to Professor Radford’s lecture. She was a really good lecturer, but she clearly wasn’t kidding about making us work. We covered enough facts on day one to fill a whole midterm, but it was three weeks until the first exam. Rocks for jocks? More like stones for scholars. I took a furtive peek at Zach Hutchison, still scribbling notes in the front row. He raised his hand.

“Mr. Hutchison?” said the professor. How had she learned his name already? I fiddled with the cap of my pen.

“Will attendance count toward our grade?” he asked.

“If you turn to the last page of the syllabus, you’ll see that class participation is worth ten percent of your grade. I don’t require you to attend every lecture, but I’ll be calling on you to answer questions in class, and I expect you to be ready. Understood? Now, next time I’m going to talk to you about the final project. I know, finals are several geologic eras away, but it would be worth your while to start thinking about who you’re going to partner with and what topic you want to investigate. You might also consider forming study groups. Now, I’ve kept you two minutes over, which I know is a serious crime, so please, get out of here.”

I slipped my notebook back into my backpack and looked around. Jillian, the talkative woman from my workshop at the Shark, was in the class. Maybe I could partner with her.

When I went out into the hall, however, Zach Hutchison was waiting, briefcase in hand. “Brooke, right?”

“Zach,” I said, trying to seem nonchalant. “That was a lot to take in, huh?”

He stroked his chin. “Yeah. I’m putting together a study group. You want to join?”

Even though it was January, and about twenty degrees outside in the Cascade foothills, I felt myself breaking out in a sweat. I couldn’t decide what to say.

“Anyway,” Zach went on, “we’re meeting tomorrow at four at one of the main library study rooms. Come by if you want.”

I looked around, hoping to magically see three other students I could corral.
Sorry, Zach, this is my study group right here.
But the hall was empty. I looked at Zach, at his smooth neck and broad shoulders. “I’ll see if I have time.”

“Okay, plate tectonics,” said Jillian, tapping her pencil eraser on the table. “Who wants to summarize?”

We’d reserved one of the study rooms in the main library. At four stories, the library was the tallest building on campus, with a clock tower that played the Big Ben music (
DING-dong-DING-dong
) every fifteen minutes. There was an actual bell up there somewhere, but it had been broken for years, and now the tune was played by computer. A couple years back, some computer science majors had earned themselves a place in Cascade prank history by hacking into the clock and substituting some filthy Eazy-E songs for the usual chimes.

Our study room overlooked the quad. A thin layer of powdery snow dusted the grass, and the leafless trees looked like dancers frozen mid-step. “I’ll take it,” I said. “The surface of the earth is divided into a bunch of giant plates of rock sailing around on a layer of molten magma, and when they bump up against each other, interesting shit happens.”

“That’s a poetic way of putting it,” said Zach. He was wearing a blazer with some kind of crest on it. He put his pen to the paper. “Interesting shit happens. I’ll be sure to write that on the exam.”

“Shut up,” I said. “I wasn’t finished. Volcanoes. Earthquakes. Undersea steam vents. Like, when this building gets pulverized by The Big One, that’s plate tectonics.”

“Thanks a lot,” said Jillian. She chewed on the end of one of her blonde locks. “I thought this stuff was boring, but it turns out it’s more scary than boring.”

The fourth member of our group was Brian, a first-year with glasses who looked too young to be in college. “Well, the good news is,” he began, “when Mount Rainier blows, we’ll probably only get a little ash up here. My parents live in Olympia, and they’ll probably be toast.”

“Then you’d better hope it doesn’t happen during summer break,” I said.

“Oh my god,” said Jillian. “We’re all going to die.”

“Eventually,” said Zach. “But probably not before the first midterm, so we’d better focus.” He hoisted his briefcase up onto the table. I couldn’t get over that briefcase. This wasn’t like some hipster briefcase that a catalog model would carry in a photo shoot; the thing was covered with maroon leather and the handle was getting worn. It looked like it came right out of the fifties. In fact, Zach’s look was hard to pigeonhole, too. Today he was wearing a pink dress shirt and striped tie, knotted perfectly, and gray slacks. When he stood up for a bathroom break, I tried not to make it obvious that I was staring at his ass, which pressed against the wool seat of the pants like they were custom-tailored, which they probably were. I’ve never had anything tailored, and I used to have trouble finding clothes to highlight my shape, but ever since big butts came back into fashion (thank
God
), jeans have been my friend.

Was Zach into shapely women, or was his taste as old-fashioned as his clothes? Maybe he was looking for a stick figure. Or maybe he was gay. I couldn’t read the guy. He didn’t seem to be checking me or Jillian out, but maybe he was just polite. Or had a thing for Asian chicks. In any case, I wasn’t going to break my contract with myself this year. No romance. No complications. I even put it in writing. At the bottom of my desk drawer, I kept the goal sheet I’d written out at the beginning of the year:

BROOKE
’S
SENIOR YEAR

• Maintain a 3.8 average (so far so good)
  
• Finish Harvard application
  
• No dating
  

So far, concentrating on the first two goals had made the third one easy. Sierra thought I was crazy, but instead of sexual fantasies, I’d imagine myself at Harvard. Call it positive visualization. I thought about it every day: reading a classic sociology book in the Yard, doing field research,
interviewing
students about their sex lives. Never mind that I’d never been to the East Coast. I just
knew.

“Hey, Brooke!” It was Jillian. I looked at the clock and it was nine already. I’d been spacing out. “If we’re finished, I need to pack it in for tonight.”

“Can I walk you back to the dorm?” said Brian.

She looked him over, like she was deciding whether he was worthy of the assignment. “Sure,” she decided. Zach raised his eyebrows imperceptibly.

After Jillian and Brian left, I turned to Zach. “You think something’s going on between those two?”

“None of my business,” said Zach.

“Oh, come on. You never gossip?” He shrugged. “What’s your deal, anyway?” I said. “Did you just transfer in this semester? Where are you from?”

Zach smiled, a broad grin that animated his whole face. I suddenly wanted to run my fingers down his sideburns and around his chin, to see if the bones of his face were as strong under that beard as they looked. Was his beard hard and stubbly, or soft and shaggy? Like he said, none of my business. “I used to go here a couple years ago, but didn’t finish.”

“And they just let you come back?”

“Yeah. Returning student.”

“So are you, like, really old or something?”

“Is twenty-three old? My dad lives in Cutlip, so I commute.”

“What’s with the clothes?” I asked. “Nobody here dresses like that.”

“You’re very judgmental,” said Zach. He looked out the window into the quad, now illuminated by security lamps. Each corner of the quad had a lamp with an emergency call box attached to it, and the fixtures looked cheap and functional, but the overall effect, gleaming off the snow, was still beautiful. “Can I walk you back to your dorm, or will that make you assume that something’s going on between us?”

“Don’t worry, I won’t get the wrong idea,” I said. I got up, threw my notebook into my backpack, and pushed my chair in. It banged against the table. “Let’s go.”

I nodded at the library security guard on the way out, and we started down the staircase into the quad. As we descended, I slipped on a patch of snow, and Zach grabbed my arm before I could fall. “I’m fine,” I said. He held onto my arm a little longer than necessary, and his grip was powerful. I’m not a little girl, but it felt like he could easily lift me up and carry me home if he wanted to. And I kind of wanted him to.

Instead, I pulled away and stomped into the quad, a few paces ahead of him. “Wait up,” he said, appearing beside me.

“It’s a small campus,” I said, and pointed toward Lisle Hall. “I live right there, like a hundred feet away. I don’t think I’ll be abducted in the next two minutes, and we’ve already determined that in an earthquake or volcanic eruption, we’re both fucked, so thanks for your help.”

Zach exhaled sharply through his nose, producing two curls of steam in the freezing air, like a dragon’s breath. “Brooke, I get that you don’t like me, and since we don’t know each other at all, I assume it’s because I made a bad first impression. Which is fine. Whatever it is you think about me, you’re probably right. If you want to change study groups, I won’t be offended.”

I looked at him, standing in the middle of the quad in his trench coat, with a couple of snowflakes nestled in his beard, the streetlights highlighting half his face (his good side? did he have a bad side?) and I had to stifle the urge to pull out my phone and snap a picture. “I don
’t want to change study groups.
Good night, Zach,” I said, and started walking toward the dorm. I shivered, and my nipples were hard against the cups of my bra. Fuck know-it-all guys like Zach Hutchison.

When I climbed into bed, I thought again about the way his fingers had curled around my arm. His grip had been firm enough to keep me upright, but still somehow gentle. And then him standing in the quad, seemingly immune to the cold, smiling at the corners of his mouth even while he was annoyed with me. I slipped my fingers into my underwear and tried not to think about him too much more after that.

The next day, Sierra was waiting for me at lunch, and I set my tray down next to hers. Before I even sat down, she lowered her eyes at me conspiratorially and said, “How was study group last night?”

“It was boring. Study group. What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about Zach. Staying up late, talking about hot lava and whatever. You have to admit the guy’s hot.”

“I don’t have to do anything,” I said, and took a bite of my chicken sandwich. “Besides, he’s a jerk. He’s a townie
and
a business major.”

Sierra sighed. “Both first-degree felonies under Brooke’s laws of sociology.”

“I’m not
offended
if someone comes from Fucknuts, Washington, or wants to be a corporate dick when they grow up. I just don’t want to hang out with that person, no matter what they look like.”

“So, to sum up, you’re a snob and you admit he’s hot?” said Sierra.