Applied Mathematics isn’t an easy subject to concentrate on, especially now that I was going to start school after years of not going to one. The environment seemed new to me; being around so much students once again in a huge classroom where you had to keep your mouth shut for an hour, where you had to scribble notes as fast as you could before the teacher leapt off to another topic, and where understanding everything was necessary unless you wanted to fail.
My first class every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday was Math 1a (Introduction to Calculus)—a one hour half course that was required for all students who wanted to concentrate on Applied Mathematics. This would be my first subject for the first semester on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, but that day we were required to attend the first meeting at 8:30 a.m.
I woke up on that day, September first, at around six in the morning. It was surprisingly cool outside despite the lack of ventilation in the unit I lived in, but I wasn’t complaining. After taking a long, cold shower, I gathered up all the stuff that was maybe necessary to bring and headed outside.
Cool morning breeze greeted me. There were already bikers along the edge of the Charles River, cruising by leisurely in their sleep wear. Some were taking their morning walks with their pets, or by themselves, with a mug in hand. I walked alone down the streets and headed for Starbucks to get some breakfast.
There weren’t much people, and the ones who were there looked like upperclassmen; those who had early morning rituals and those who looked sleep deprived or were poring over books or newspapers. There was the occasional professor who sat at the corner, trying his best to look subtle and well-hidden.
After placing my order I settled down on one of the seats near the window, staring out into the foggy streets of early morning Massachusetts. In Arizona, every time of the day it was hot, whether it was early morning or noon there wouldn’t be much of a difference. This was a nice change to the Arizona humidity that I had grown used to.
As I mindlessly ate through my ham and cheese croissant while staring out the window, I heard a faint cough coming from the area beside me.
I looked up and saw a girl wearing a blue button-up polo and faded blue jeans holding a tray of coffee and what looked like a banoffee pie. Her straight brown hair fell well past her shoulders. She smiled at me, her brown eyes squinting ever so slightly.
“Uh, would you mind if I share a table with you?” she asked, biting her lip shyly. She gestured to the other tables which were already occupied, indicating that she had no other place to sit. I followed her hand and looked back at her.
“Yeah, sure,” I said, moving my stuff aside. Her smile grew bigger as she set her tray down and sat on the chair in front of me, casually pushing the hair away from her face. I watched her as she moved the contents of her tray onto the table, picking up a fork and eating her way through her banoffee pie. She raised her eyes to look at me and smirked—something I’d never seen a girl do.
“Is there a problem, sir?” she asked teasingly, setting her fork down and straightening up.
I nearly coughed my coffee out at her and shook my head, proceeding to just stare outside, trying to ignore the fact that she was staring at me. It made me uncomfortable in the good sort of way…if that even made any sense.
The two of us ate in silence; but it was comfortable silence. We were just strangers anyway, and neither found the need to communicate with the other. I wasn’t sure how long we were wrapped in silence, but was soon broken when I heard her sing softly to Lucky Now, a song by Ryan Adams, which was playing on the radio.
My eyes drifted to this girl. “And the lights will draw you in,” she sang, adding some more sugar to her coffee. “And the dark will bring you down,” she continued, her head tilting a little to the side; her eyes downcast, focused on her coffee cup, her long, dark eyelashes concealing my view of her brown eyes. “And the night will break your heart, but only if you’re lucky now,” she finished, shaking a pack of coffee creamer into her cup.
“And if the lights will draw you in,” I sang with her, and she looked up at me in surprise, her mouth forming a small o as she stopped whatever she was doing. “And the dark will take you down.” Her lips curved into a smile. I smiled back at her. “But love will mend your heart, only if you’re lucky now.”
As the song came to an end, she sat there, beaming at me. I laughed; partly because it was a little weird, but mostly because it seemed so cliché.
“So you like Ryan Adams, huh?” I asked, leaning back against the chair with an amused smile on my face. She was laughing, too, moving the crumbs of her long gone banoffee pie with her fork.
“Sure am,” she agreed. “I’m Falyn. Falyn Snyder.” Falyn stuck a hand out for me to shake; I took it and shook it; her skin soft and her hand a little big for a girl’s. Katie’s hand never seemed to be smooth and her hands were tiny; a complete opposite of Falyn’s. “You’re a freshman?”
“Yeah, and you?” I said, releasing her hand. “I’m Garrett Nickelsen.”
“I know,” she said with a small laugh. “And yeah. Nervous, really, since we’ll be having our first meeting today.”
I raised my eyebrow. “First meeting? For what?”
“Math 1a,” Falyn replied after emptying her cup. She sighed in content. “Why so?”
I chuckled. “These similarities are really creepy, you know.”
“Are you concentrating on any subject?” she asked excitedly, pushing aside her food and resting her chin on her hands, looking at me like a kindergarten kid who just learned the alphabet and was giddy to learn more; the excitement gleaming in her brown eyes.
“Applied Mathematics,” I said, pushing my things aside, too.
“What a coincidence!” she exclaimed, laughing. “I’m concentrating on that, too.”
I grinned. “I think you’re my stalker.”
She scoffed, gathering her things. “In your dreams, pretty boy. Now let’s get going, we’re going to be late.” I checked my wrist watch and indeed we were going to be late. I wasn’t aware that an hour had already passed and it was only half an hour before the first meeting. I helped Falyn clean up our place before picking up my things and following her through the door.
“So what’s a musician doing at Harvard, and why is he studying Applied Mathematics?” Falyn asked, slinging her bag over her shoulder. We were on our way to the Science building C…wherever that was. I grabbed the map from my pocket and opened it.
“Oh, you know, trying to get a college degree,” I said and shrugged, my eyes scanning over the map, looking for pine print words saying “Science Building C” or something of that nature.
“So your band’s gonna go on hiatus for four years?” she asked.
“No, they’ll figure something out. Besides, they were the ones who pushed me into this school,” I said and laughed, my fingers tracing the roads on the map.
“So you didn’t want to go here in the first place?” she asked, looking at me expectantly with her big brown eyes.
I glanced at her. “Well, I have my other reasons.” And they’re not really things that should be your business, lady, I thought. It unnerved me of how shamelessly she asked those questions but decided she only did so because she was curious—like any other person would be curious with a stranger.
She shrugged. “Okay.”
We walked in silence until the Science Building came into view. It was a huge, concrete building that looked like a staircase—like a real freaking staircase, with panels and panels of glass windows in the middle of the “steps”. It was like nothing I had ever seen before—the same went for Falyn, I suppose, as she gasped in surprise when the building came to view.
“Well this is…out of the ordinary,” Falyn whispered as we approached the building. People were scattered around the lawn of said building, talking to each other in groups—some just walking alone, some looking at maps and scratching their heads.
“Tell me about it,” I replied. Beside the main building was a smaller, more ordinary looking building. Stone benches lined the road the led to the Science Center—and at that time all of the benches were occupied. In front of the main building, off to one side, were big, rounded rocks buried in the soil.
Making our way inside, we decided to just follow some of the students who looked like freshmen; since there was no one there to ask, and asking a senior would mean being fooled or laughed at since Falyn said that it was common around any university. We pushed our luck and followed five students down endless hallways until we reached a big door that said “SCIENCE LECTURE HALL C.”
Falyn smirked. “Stroke of luck, Nickelsen.”
I chuckled. “You bet.”
The walls of the room (the left and right ones, to be exact) were made up of shiny wood and attached to these walls were a number of lights and air conditioning units. The red seats were soft and cushioned, all arranged in ascending order with a set of steps in the center aisle. The front of the classroom was made up of a white wall and two long blackboards with another sliding blackboard in front of it. In front of the blackboards was a big teacher’s desk that was made out of dark brown wood.
Since the girls and the boys need not be divided, I figured that staying beside Falyn would be alright. She didn’t have any other companions anyway and I didn’t want to leave her alone. So she chose a seat on the fifth row from the front, saying she had a little trouble seeing stuff if they were too far as she was near sighted. Sure, I said. It was fine.
Students started filling up the room. I scanned the unfamiliar faces of them all—until my eyes landed on two people sitting near the back row; the boy’s arm around the girl and the girl’s head on his shoulder.
Katie.
Her eyes drifted upon me, and she held her gaze. Her expression didn’t change—she just stared at me blankly. I raised an eyebrow at her, and she raised an eyebrow at me as well, her eyes falling on Falyn. She then looked back at me, held my gaze for another few seconds, and looked away.
“Who’s that?” Falyn asked me. I almost jumped in surprise. She cocked her head to the side with an inquisitive look in her eyes.
“Katie Lawrence,” I said, sighing. “Old friend of mine.”
Falyn shrugged. “Doesn’t look like she likes me, though. She didn’t even smile or anything. But she’s so lucky that she gets to be with Jacob!” she said and sighed, looking upwards, clasping her hands with a dreamy expression on her face. “The perfect man. Football, soccer, basketball player. Always the top of his class. He’s envied by almost every boy.” I shot her a weird look. “What?”
“You sound creepy,” I said, pulling out a notebook and a pen. It was 8:26 on the digital clock that was hanging next to the blackboard, and the teacher would be arriving soon.
“Well, it’s no wonder she fell for him,” Falyn continued, sighing deeply as she pulled out a yellow notebook from her brown messenger bag.
I felt a twinge of jealousy. Yeah, no wonder Katie fell for him. I bit my lip and looked back. Jacob was saying something and Katie was laughing daintily into her hand—something I’d never seen Katie do, since she was one hell of a kid with boisterous and uncontrolled laughter. But now she was acting so…dainty.
A loud female voice startled me. “Good morning, students,” the voice said. I saw a lady walk in, dressed in a long sleeved white blouse and a black pencil skirt. She was fair skinned and had curly black hair that was tied up into a knot. She looked about 35-40 years old. A pair of rectangular glasses sat primly on her nose bridge, and she walked in with such an air of superiority that the whole room fell silent. With her she carried a black suitcase that was humongous, yet she carried it like it was the lightest thing in the world.
She casually set her things down on the desk, straightening out her skirt. Her eyes scanned the room, taking us all in one by one.
“I am Professor Juliana Belding, and I will be handling Section 1 for the Fall Term for the subject of Math 1a, also known as Introduction to Calculus.”
Professor Belding then launched into a long talk about the history of Calculus, the founders, the importance of Calculus ad its relevance to real life, and all the other things that were Calculus-related. Ten minutes into the talk and I had already spent three back to back pages just taking down the stuff she said. I heaved a sigh of relief as she paused, putting the pen down. My hand was red and shaking, and though the room was air conditioned I could feel the sweat trickling down my neck. My writing looked like chicken scratch, and I grimaced at the sight of it.
With a press of a button Professor Belding made some part of the wall on top of the blackboard elevate and slide to the right, revealing a large flatscreen TV. She started to play some boring old black and white film about Newton and Leibniz; and I was more than happy when it ended and she dismissed us.
I kept my eyes trained on Katie as she and Jacob stood up. She slung on her shoulder a backpack that looked so full; while Jacob on the other hand carried nothing with him but a small notebook and pen which he stuffed into his varsity jacket. I scowled at Jacob though he couldn’t see me. I couldn’t believe that he didn’t even offer to carry Katie’s bag. What a douche.
I bit the inside of my cheek as the two passed by us. Katie didn’t even spare me a glance; while Jacob on the other hand was too busy with his phone. I heard Falyn sigh beside me as the two of them were out of earshot.
“Wanna grab something to eat?” I blurted out as we made our way outside the Science Building and onto the streets of the university’s campus. It was already noon and I was starving. She grinned at me.
“Sure. McDonalds would be a nice place. I’m craving for some fast food,” she said, slamming her fists down on an invisible desk as if she was holding a pair of utensils. I laughed.
“I’ll race you there!” I exclaimed and made a dash for it. I barely heard her gasp as I whizzed past her, laughing like an idiot. I looked behind me—she was catching up pretty quickly for someone who had so much stuff in her bag.
Falyn finished ahead of me, and when I reached the entrance of the fast food restaurant she had her tongue sticking out to mock me. “Ha! Thought you could outrun me, eh?”
I scowled but then I smiled. Her brown hair was now wet with her sweat and was sticking to her neck and face. She was panting slightly but besides that she didn’t look tired at all. Falyn punched me in the arm and pushed me inside, the cold air instantly chilling me because of the sweat.
“You know,” Falyn said as she opened the box of her BigMac—something I’d never seen a girl like her attempt, because usually girls in our generation were too scared to eat anything for the fear of getting fat. Falyn, however, unlike most, had such a big appetite and such a small and skinny frame. “I like Star Wars a lot,” she said, eyeing my Star Wars t-shirt.
“You’re kidding,” I said and scoffed.
“I’m not!” she protested, setting her burger down and frowning. “Does this face look like I could lie to you?” she said, sticking her lower lip out in a puppy pout. I laughed, listening intently as she raved on about the things she liked—and coincidentally, those things were also the things I liked. For those minutes all depressing thoughts of Katie left my mind, and all I could think about was Falyn. I couldn’t help but smile at this girl—and slowly I found myself liking her a little too much than I had intended to.