Strange and Lovely (Part 1) (3 page)

I slid off my bed and grabbed my sweater. “Let’s go.”

“You don’t want to change?” he asked, looking at my jeans and t-shirt.
No, I don’t want to change.
I looked into my closet. I’ve never had the two hundred shoes and twenty dresses like other women. Everything was a variation of what I was already wearing.

“I have something,” Kaylee said. She walked over to her overflowing closet and pulled out a blouse that was—amazingly—not pink. It was crimson with a plunging neckline. Sam raised his eyebrow.

“My favorite color,” he said. I took it from Kaylee. It was beautiful.

“Thanks,” I said to Kaylee. She smiled. I looked over to Sam. “You have to leave, so I can change.”

He groaned, but walked out of the room. I closed the door.

“He’s totally being fresh. You’re a doe-eyed freshman. He’s a sophomore looking for an easy gullible screw,” Kaylee said as I stripped off my shirt.

“This isn’t a date,” I said. I pulled on her shirt. The material felt cool against my skin, and it looked nice with my dark hair. Kaylee smirked.

“Well, even if it isn’t, I’ll make myself scarce for when you two come back.”

I shook my head, and opened the door. Sam was leaning against the wall. His eyes lingered on the middle of my chest where the blouse plunged down.

“I’m ready,” I said. He clicked his tongue against his teeth.

“Yes, you are.”

***

S
am wasn’t lying when he said The Legend was a dump. The sign was lopsided, and when we walked inside, it looked like the bar was made by nailing four pieces of plywood together. Despite its appearances, there were quite a few students inside. Sam led me over to the same group of friends he was eating with before.

“Are you guys ever apart from each other?” I asked.

“We’re frat brothers,” Sam said. “Which I believe means James should be buying our shots first.”

James stood up. He whacked Sam in the head as he walked by.

“Next round you’re paying for,” he said. Sam laughed. We sat down at a rickety table. James returned to the group, sitting next to Sam.

“They’re going to bring it over,” he said.

“Because your hands are too small?” Sam teased. “You know what they say about small hands...”

“They can still punch you in the face?” James finished. Orchid shook her head, causing her hoop earrings to sway.

“They’re being all macho for you,” she said to me. “Men and their testosterone...”

“I don’t know what Orchid is talking about,” Sam said. He pretended to flex. “We are not trying to be macho.”

“Eight shots of Grey Goose,” a man came over with a tray full of shot glasses. He set it on the table, and slid a shot in front of each of us.

“Gabe?” I asked. The man looked up. I stood up and hugged him. He hugged me back.

“Hey, Rory, I didn’t know you moved to the city,” he said.

“School. Valhalla University,” I explained. “What are you doing here?”

“We moved up here,” he said. “Our uncle owns this bar, and our Uncle’s kinda sick, so we took over.”

“We?” I asked. I looked around the bar. “Is Declan here?”

Gabe nodded. He turned toward the back of the bar. “Hey! Declan! Get out here!”

A few seconds later, a door in the back swung open, and Declan walked through. I’m used to seeing him in clothes that are ripped and dirty from working on a construction site. He emerged clean-cut. Now he was wearing a black shirt, black pants and a white apron. He stopped walking when he saw me. His eyes moved over to the table with Sam’s friends. His eyes narrowed, he turned around, and walked back through the door.

“Isn’t my little brother sweet?” Gabe said, scowling.

“I’ll go talk to him,” I said. I walked past Gabe and to the back of the bar. I swung open the door. It led to a small area with a large dishwasher. Declan was leaning against a counter with drinking glasses on it. He grimaced when he saw me.

“What are you doing in a bar?” he asked.

“Declan, you know I drink,” I said. “I started drinking beers with you when I was sixteen.”

He shook his head. “And now you hang out with the rich kids, and drink from shot glasses.”

“You’re the one who said I would have to change,” I said.

“I didn’t mean change this much!” he shouted. I shook my head.

“Why are you being like this?” I asked. “We’re supposed to be friends.”

“No,” he said. “No, we’re not. You’re supposed to hang out with other smart people who go to Ivy League schools and go to shit bars just to be
ironic
. I’m supposed to hang out with other kids from the bum fuck nowhere that don’t have a future. We’re supposed to hang out with our own kind.”

I gritted my teeth. “You don’t mean that.”

“This area is employees only,” he said. “You should go back to your new friends.”

“You’ve always been an asshole, but this is something new entirely,” I said. Declan turned his back on me, picking up one of the glasses and a dish towel. I turned to the door, and pushed it open. It hit against something, and I heard a grunt. Sam stepped back from the door, rubbing his nose. I touched his arm. “I’m sorry, Sam, I didn’t know you were there.”

Sam cupped his hand under my elbow. “I was just checking to make sure everything is okay.”

I heard something shatter. I turned to see the glass was broken in Declan’s hand, and the fragments of it were on the floor. His hand was bleeding. I took a step toward him, but he stomped out of the room through an exit door. I watched the door slam shut.

“What’s his problem?” Sam asked. I looked back at him.

“I have no idea,” I said. I looked into Sam’s eyes. His eyes reminded me of the sea again.

“Well, don’t worry about it,” he said. “It’s not your problem.”

I nodded, and he led me back to his friends. I sat down with them. I faked smiles and forced laughs, but I couldn’t forget Declan’s biting words.

W
hen I walked into my Physics of Stars and Stellar Systems lecture, everyone was buzzing about the news of a triple homicide. It had been attributed to gang violence, which wasn’t surprising, but it caught everyone’s attention because all three murder victims were beheaded.

I sat down in one of the chairs in the back. I listened to a girl whispering in front of me to her friend.

“My father is a policeman. He works in robbery, but he knows some of the homicide cops. He says they only found evidence of only one other person in the house. One person managed to kill and behead those three people...”

I looked at my phone. I had called Declan twice, but he hadn’t picked up either time. I left a voicemail and text telling him we had to talk. I hated that he had reduced me into a clingy friend, but I hated the thought that I had hurt him more.

Sam swaggered into the chair next to me.

“I’m surprised to see you here,” he said. “I thought you hated Dr. Federov for calling you an underachiever.”

“He may be on my shit list,” I said. “But I still intend to prove him wrong.”

Sam laughed. “You’ve never had to prove someone wrong, have you? People hate to be proven wrong, so they will make it as hard as possible for you.”

“I’ll still do it,” I said. Sam shook his head.

“You are quite a woman,” he said. Dr. Federov walked into the room. He turned around at the front of the classroom to face his students. When he caught me sitting right in the front row, he exhaled a breathy laugh. The
cajones
of it; I knew he was thinking.

“Miss Villanova,” he said. “What are you doing here? I thought I made it clear that I didn’t want your kind in my class.”

“I want to study astrophysics because I believe that the world is bigger than we could ever imagine,” I told him. “I want to study the universe, and make new discoveries that will make everyone question what they know. I know I’m ignorant, but I don’t want to be.”

Dr. Federov crossed his arms.

“They say ignorance is bliss,” he said.

“It’s a lazy bliss,” I said. “It’s a kind of bliss that’s caused by not knowing that there could be something better.”

“There could also be something worse,” he countered.

“I’d rather dangle on the edge to reach up toward the cosmos and risk falling, then stay safe in the center,” I said. He nodded.

“Good,” he said. “I don’t want anyone who stays in the center.”

He looked over at Sam.

“How the hell did you find a girl like this?” he asked.

“I thank my lucky stars. And moons. And red dwarfs,” he said. Dr. Federov smirked.

“And what are red dwarfs?” he asked him.

“They are stars with a very low mass,” Sam said. “Or really short assholes that hang out in people’s lawns.”

“You know I don’t approve of mythic folklore, Mr. Larousse,” Dr. Federov said. “Speaking of red dwarfs, let’s talk about stellar structure. Stars have different internal structures, depending on their mass and age...”

Sam passed a folded piece of paper to me. I opened it.

Omega Zeta party tonight. 11 pm.  261 W 112
^th
street.

***

D
r. Federov had us read about galaxy NGC 1316. NGC 1316 hd swallowed many other galaxies, which is shown by dust lanes and tidal tails. This was caused by a supermassive black hole in the center of the galaxy, and I wanted to ask Dr. Federov if he thought that galaxy would continue to swallow other galaxies.

I knocked on his office door. I didn’t hear anything inside the room, but I knocked again.

The door opened up an inch. Then it opened a little wider, and Dr. Federov looked out at me.

“Come in,” he said. I walked into his office, and he closed the door.

Dr. Federov’s office had stacks of books in it, and an array of papers pinned all over the walls. The interesting part was that he had small styrofoam balls dangling from the ceiling with labels on them. The closest one said
Epsilon Eridani
.

“Stars, of course,” Dr. Federov said. I realized he had a pipe in his mouth, and an unmistakable sweet smell of pot floated in the room.

“Are you
smoking pot
?” I asked. He took the pipe out of his mouth. He looked at me for a few seconds, and then blew the smoke out of his mouth in a thin stream. He smirked at my expression.

“Don’t be so close-minded,” he said. “I thought you were open to all of the things you didn’t know and didn’t understand.”

“It’s a drug,” I said. “And you’re a professor.”

“Actually, it’s just a dried up plant,” he said. “And being a professor is only a profession. You shouldn’t compartmentalize everything. I also happen to have a meth lab.”

“Really?” I asked.

“No,” he said. He sucked on the pipe again, and then breathed out the smoke. “Have you ever had a hit?

I shook my head.

“Do you want to?” he asked.

I’m pretty certain “Just say no to your professor” was never in the DARE program. He handed the pipe to me. I held it between my fingers.

“Suck in, and hold the smoke in your lungs,” he said. “After you feel it in your lungs, breathe it out.”

I put the pipe between my lips and I sucked it in. I felt the smoke prickle inside my lungs. Dr. Federov took the pipe back from me. I breathed out, and the smoke came out in a puff.

“I don’t feel anything,” I said, waiting for the calm apathy and munchies that everyone always talked about.

“That’s what everyone says. Take a few more hits, and you’ll feel it,” he said. He sucked in on the pipe, and set it down on his desk. He sat down, and breathed out the smoke.

“You tell me that, and then you don’t give me another hit?” I asked.

“Do you know how hard it is to get cannabis as a professor?” he asked. “Buy your own. Why are you here?”

“I wanted to ask about NGC 1316,” I said. He looked wistfully at his pipe.

“Didn’t you tell me that you didn’t want to be ignorant anymore?” he asked.

“...That’s why I’m here. To ask questions,” I said.

“I could tell you all about NGC 1316. So could a web search,” he said. “Nothing you learn in a book will make you less ignorant. You don’t learn things on a page, and suddenly become aware about the world. If you read about smoking cannabis, would it be the same thing as actually smoking it?”

I crossed my arms.

“Are you going to tear down every single thing I do?” I asked.

“Most likely. If you don’t question everything you do, you assume that everything you do is the answer,” he said. “So many of you students come here, and you all were top of your class. You were all student council presidents, captain of some sports team, and won every science fair you ever entered. You know what happens to all of that? It goes on a piece of paper, and the admission’s office shreds it.”

He shrugged, and picked up a newspaper.

“Two prostitutes murdered on Fulton Street,” he muttered. “Beheaded again.”

“Gang violence,” I said. He raised his eyebrow at me.

“In Lower Manhattan?” he asked. “No, whoever is killing these people are professionals at what they do. Gang members might be sufficient at killing, but they don’t manage to stay under the radar for long.”

“Who do you think it is, then?” I asked. He shrugged.

“If the media can call it whatever it likes, then we can call it whatever we like. Upper class violence. Old school killing. Murder. ” He shook his head. “Do you know why you would cut someone’s head off?”

“To make sure that they’re dead?” I asked. He smirked.

“You cut off someone’s head to send a very clear message,” he said. “You can drop a body into a lake or the ocean. You can leave it in the trash. But a beheading will get a lot of attention, especially when there’s more than one person beheaded at a time. Someone wants these murders to attract attention. They want someone to know that they are willing to go to these lengths just to send a message.”

I bit my lip. “Seems like a gang-related thing to do.”

“Well, it might be a gang, but not the kind you’re thinking of. A company of stockbrokers, a group of students, a group of prostitutes...they’re all gangs. The group just needs to have a common purpose, and work toward fulfilling that purpose,” he said. He leaned toward me. His gaze ran up from my toes to my eyes.