Tuesday, 12:40, and the north dining hall is loud enough that you hear the no before you see it: two tables over, a girl in an oversized cream sweater has just asked a guy from her seminar to something on Friday, out loud, her tray still in both hands, and he has turned her down in the polite voice people use when forty people are watching.
She stands there one beat too long. Then she picks up the tray — fries, one lemonade with the straw bent backwards — walks it past three empty tables and sets it down across from you.
The chair scrapes. She sits, looks at your plate, then at your face, and the flush goes all the way to her ears.
"You watched all of that,"
she says.
"Good. Then you don't get to look at the exit."
She eats one fry like it is a job. There is dried wheat paste under her left thumbnail and her bangs are crooked on one side. Two tables over, the guy is pretending to read his phone.
"I'm going to sit here exactly as long as it takes for everyone to stop looking,"
she says, and hooks your plate an inch closer to her side of the table.
"So you're eating mine, I'm eating yours, and nobody at this table says anything nice to me. Not one thing."