Mrs. Fletcher(14)

Mostly those days were about me and Zack. We did everything together, from the moment we woke up to the moment we crashed. One afternoon we hit the gym and did some lifting. We could both bench one eighty, but Zack could do five reps, and I could only make it to four. The day after that we checked out the climbing wall in the Student Center, but we’d gotten good and baked beforehand, so neither of us could manage a route higher than a 5.6.

It was pretty scary once you made it halfway up the wall, clinging to those knobby bolted-on handholds like your life depended on it, stuck in place until your forearms started to quiver and you had no choice but to reach for something higher. One time I lost my grip about thirty feet up. I fell like Humpty Dumpty, my arms swimming through the air, until the auto belay kicked in, the harness crushing my ballsack as it yanked against gravity. I was suspended up there for a few painful seconds, dangling like a limp dick until I floated slowly back to earth. Zack thought it was hilarious.

“You shrieked like a little bitch! I bet the whole school heard you!”

“Fuck you,” I said. My chest felt hollow and my legs were shaky, and I guess he could hear it in my voice.

“I’m only kidding, bro.” He clapped me on the shoulder, more gently than I would have expected. “Let’s get some lunch.”

*

Everybody had to meet their academic advisor at some point during Orientation Week to finalize their schedule and get one last pep talk about college. My guy was Devin Torborg from the Anthropology Department. I made the mistake of calling him “Professor,” which was apparently a sore subject.

“Technically I’m an instructor,” he explained, running his hand through his stringy hair, which looked like it hadn’t been washed in a while. He had these little round eyeglasses like John Lennon, and his eyes were baggy and tired behind the smudged lenses. “Not currently on the tenure track. But I prefer ‘Devin’ anyway.” He gave this sad little shrug and glanced at the folder on his desk. “So. Brendan Fletcher. This must be an exciting time for you. The beginning of a great . . .”

His voice trailed off, and he scowled like he couldn’t remember the next word.

“Adventure,” I said, helping him out.

“Ah,” he said. “You’re an optimist.”

He opened the folder and examined the single sheet of paper lying inside. It must have listed my high school GPA and test scores and whatnot. He slid two fingers in between his face and his glasses and gave his left eyelid a thorough massage, clockwise first, then reverse.

“So tell me, Brendan.” He paused to make a run at the other eye, working pretty hard on the loose skin, tugging it up and down and sideways. “What do you want from college?”

I knew I couldn’t tell him the truth, which was that I wanted to party as much as possible and do the bare minimum of studying, but I didn’t have a lie handy, so I just kind of stammered for a while.

“I . . . I . . . well, that’s . . . you know. Good question. Just a degree, I guess.”

“A degree in what?”

“Econ. Possibly. If I can survive the math requirements.”

“Why Econ?”

“You know. So I can get a job when I graduate.”

“What kind of job?”

“Any kind. Long as it pays six figures. I mean, maybe not right away, but pretty soon. That’s my main goal.”

He looked impressed, but only in a sarcastic way. “Good luck with that.”

Then we went over my schedule, which wasn’t very complicated. I had to take Econ 101, and also get the required freshman Writing and Math classes out of the way. That left room for just one elective, which I had narrowed down to either Basic Concepts in Accounting or Intro to Statistics, neither of which sounded all that exciting.

“That’s one strategy,” he said. “You could sign up for a practical class like that and learn something useful and so forth. But my advice would be to stretch a little, try something new and impractical, maybe even a little off-the-wall. Learn a language. Take a poetry class. Study African History or Linguistics or Drawing. There’s a lecture class on Polytheism that you might want to check out. Taught by yours truly.” He smiled, kind of hopelessly. “You never know. It might change your life, or at least open up some new avenues for exploration.”

I didn’t know what Polytheism was, and I honestly didn’t give a shit. But I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, so I pretended to think it over.

“Maybe next semester,” I said. “I’ll probably just stick to Stats this time around.”

“All right. Your call.” He checked the time on his phone. “What about extracurriculars? Any ideas about that? Any clubs or teams or community service organizations?”

“I’m hoping to go Greek next year,” I told him. “I’m not sure which fraternity, though.”

“I wouldn’t know about that,” he said. “Where I did my undergrad work they didn’t allow frats.”

I had the feeling he wanted me to ask where that was, but I didn’t take the bait. Especially since he didn’t seem all that impressive to me anyway, a grungy non-professor in a shithole of a basement office, wearing a Journey T-shirt under his tweed jacket, which I guess I was supposed to find amusing.

“That must’ve sucked,” I said.