Class ends at eight. She walks slowly, carefully towards the elevator, her knees and ankles stiff from the cold. Nodding goodbye to her classmates, she waits for the lift doors to open. They all take the stairs, anxious to get home to loved ones and the comforts of sleep. She isn’t surprised that the elevator is empty when the doors open, or that she is the only one inside when the doors close. Part of her wishes one of her peers had stayed, had gotten on the elevator with her, but the other part is glad she’s alone. Glad she doesn’t have to ride on the elevator with someone else, both silent, staring into space like shut-down robots, waiting for the doors to open and the switch to be turned back on. She’s too tired to deal with the stress of being in another person’s presence right now. She steps outside, continuing her slow turtle-like trudging as she waddles across the campus towards her car.

She keeps her head down and ignores the few other lost souls wandering around the cold, dark campus. A breeze filters though her loose hair, churning the strands as they fly around her face. The chilly air feels nice, helps her numb the churning thoughts in her head and lets her concentrate. She loves winter. The frigid weather calms her down better than any pharmacy depressant, and the fresh snow covers every surface, making everything seem clean and pure. She sucks in a mouthful of air, delighted as a child devouring chocolates. She thinks that winter air is like cotton candy: light, sweet, dissolving instantly on her tongue. She sucks in a few more mouthfuls of air, reveling in the innocent pleasure as she ponders.

She doesn’t want to go home. Home is two cats, one black female and one white male, who follow her around, eat dry food out of her hand, and sleep curled up on top of her whenever she sits down. Her “sweet girl” and “pretty boy” are the loves of her life. But home is also Mother, a good person with a bad habit of talking like she’s lecturing, and reminding like she’s nagging. Home is a basement full of dirty laundry, and a bedroom with barely two square feet of visible floor, the rest of it covered with junk and clothes and books and more junk.

Hanging a left just before the parking garage, she comes to another campus building and walks into the near-empty computer lab. There’s one other person in the lab, she can hear mouse clicks at the far corner computer. They’re probably viewing porn or something, she thinks. She told Mother class didn’t end until nine, so she has an hour before she’s expected home. She needs this hour like air and food. It is hers; nobody knows where she is, and she can do anything she wants. No expectations, no chores waiting to be done. She sits in front of a monitor and just lets her fingers dance across the keyboard. She can never write when it’s demanded of her, or when there is a given topic or deadline, but on nights like these, when it’s quiet and she’s near alone, the words just pour out of her fingertips and onto the screen in front of her.

There is no real rhyme or reason to what she writes. Usually it’s feelings she has over the day, an event that’d stuck with her, or a joke she’d heard. Sometimes it’s just random facts plucked out of the corners of her mind: not really having anything to do with anything else. Sometimes these immense, eloquent tales of romance and fantastical places appeared on screen, and later when she rereads her writings, she can never really believe that she’d written it. Often she chews the inside of her cheek as she writes, the tarty flavor of saliva and the slight metallic tang of blood helps her concentrate, forget about the real world and exist only for the computer and the musical clicking of the keyboard. She loves the sound of a clicking keyboard; it’s a little bit muter than the sound of a typewriter, but easier to put words down with. After what feels like only a few minutes writing she glances at the clock. 9:21. She swears under her breath, chiding herself for losing track of time. Turning on her cell phone and stepping outside the computer lab, she calls Mother.

“Hello?” The voice sounds slightly worried, but Mother always sounds like that.

“It’s me.” She never says her name unless it’s asked for. Names hold meaning, power. Inside her head, she is nameless.

“Oh, good.” She wonders if Mother thought she was in a car accident. She got in one, once. The first day she got car insurance, it was Valentine’s Day Eve, and she was going to the store to pick up those little heart-shaped cakes with too-sweet icing, and she forgot to yield. Too young to have her own car, she totaled Mother’s car. She doesn’t think Mother will ever forget it. “Are you on your way home?”

“Soon.” She shuffles outside the lab. Her feet itch to go back to the computer, but she has to finish the call first. “I’m warming the car up.”

“Good.” Mother likes that. Small lies are okay if they make people feel good. “Be careful on the way home, it’s really slippery out there.”

“I’ll be very careful. I’ll go slow.” She’ll be careful, like she always is, but the slow part is another white lie, to buy a few more free minutes on the computer.

“All right. See you soon.”

“Bye.” She hangs up the cell with a soft sigh of relief and returns to her computer to continue writing. She hates phones: bloody infernal contraptions, if you ask her. She could never get the hang of verbal communication.

It’s nine forty-five before she finds a stopping point. Quickly, she posts the new entry onto her internet journal, like always. She wonders if anyone reads it, doubts if anyone does, but it’s accessible from any computer with internet access, and nobody she’s met in real life knows about it. As soon as the post appears, she heads home. She’ll blame the weather for her lateness.

~end~