Quieter Moments
Just in Time
Elizabeth called her Uber and drove back to International Village. Exhaustion swept over her as she sat in the car thinking about dinner. Mr. O’Donnell reminded her a lot of her grandfather on her dad’s side, who had died some years earlier. They used the same mannerisms, the same old adages and archaic phrases. It was oddly comforting and nostalgic, even if it was just familiarity to a personality. Her first outing in a week had been taxing, so when she returned to her dorm, she planned to go straight to bed.
To her dismay, Jules beat her home. Elizabeth walked into the room and heard her, as usual, singing to herself in the shower. She had a pretty voice; Elizabeth would listen to her all day if she’d let her. It filled the small dorm they shared.
Eventually the water shut off, but the singing did not. Jules walked out of the Jack-and-Jill in pajamas, now belting out Party in the USA. She stopped when she saw Elizabeth, quieting her voice.
“I didn’t know you were back. Where did you go?” she asked.
“I just went on a quick walk. The stir craziness was getting to me.”
Elizabeth didn’t like lying to Jules, but she didn’t want to argue about O’Donnell at the moment.
“That’s for sure against doctor’s orders,” she said.
“What are you a cop?”
Jules sighed as she sat at her desk. She began staring at her textbook with her hands laced through her hair. Her nose was nearly touching the pages of the book.
“I think you might understand it more if your eyes actually touched the pages,” Elizabeth said.
“I don’t think downloading the information directly into my head could get me to get it,” Jules said.
She let her head fall forward and dramatically hit the book with a thump. The remnants of the sub she had been eating for dinner sat in front of and all around the book. Jules groaned before lifting her head so that only her chin rested on the book, and her eyes looked up at Elizabeth.
“You wanna run away and just go raise sheep or something?” she asked.
Elizabeth laughed.
“You may laugh, but in this exact moment, I am one hundred percent serious,” Jules said with as straight a face as she was able to hold.
“Oh, come on. You’d be so bored being a rancher, it wouldn’t even be funny,” Elizabeth said. “You were born to be a city girl.”
“We could be sheep ranchers in the city,” Jules said. “We’d just let them graze in the park.”
“I’m confident that’s illegal.”
“Only if we get caught.”
They both giggled. Not a loud, raucous laugh, but a soft, tired one.
“Why did I choose bio?” Jules asked. “I could have chosen any other major and not had to take organic chemistry.”
“I mean, it’s not too late to switch. Do what I did and become undecided.”
“If you think your parents gave you shit for doing that, my mom would be relentless. It’d be bad.”
Elizabeth had come to Northeastern from California as an accounting major. She realized within the first semester that accounting would lead her to take a long walk off the top of a skyscraper if she continued pursuing it. So she’d swapped to undecided. She remembered her mom’s voice when she’d called to tell her. Disappointment has such a distinct sound; pregnant pauses into unsure and timid affirmations. All and all, an expected but reasonable response. Jules’ parents would be much more vocal about a change like that. Elizabeth could hear Mrs. Ortega’s voice through Jules’ phone when it wasn’t on speaker most of the time during normal conversations.
Still, she remained undecided with what she wished to do with her future. There were plenty of things that interested her; she excelled at math and science. She always leaned towards STEM rather than the humanities. But none of the classes she’d taken had given her any clarity in figuring out what she wanted.
Jules groaned again and put her head down between the pages of the book.
Elizabeth walked over to her and placed her hand on Jules’s back. Jules grunted in acknowledgement.
“I’m gonna be working on this for a while, you want me to go out to the common room instead?” Jules asked.
“Nah, I’m not that tired; I’d rather talk.”
Elizabeth was lying; her eyelids drooped even as she sat there, but she was being honest about preferring to talk. They talked about their day, though she left out dinner with Mr. O’Donnell. The two of them debated the odds of Chloe, Kaylee, and the rest of the team making it to the basketball playoffs this year, and not regretting quitting the team after their first year. They talked about family and home, even though Jules wasn’t so far away. For much longer than they should have, they talked; until Elizabeth eventually succumbed to her slumber.
Editor: Lucy Cafiero
