Studying

Chloe looked up from her notes just in time to see a tall blonde girl dash across the room with a delighted squeal, lift her lanky arms and throw them around the back of her beau’s neck, her perfectly manicured fingers twisting themselves into his sandy hair. A kiss quickly followed the greeting and the boy pulled back after a moment with lips one shade darker than usual due to the girl’s poor choice of lipstick. Chloe followed their movements across the crowded study hall, entranced for no real reason. They settled onto a dull red sofa, spotted with years of stains, and sat as close together as possible without actually having sat atop one another. Of course, sitting opened up a whole new realm of options, and the couple proceeded to run through them all, moving past kissing and into a full blown make-out session.

Chloe did tear her blue eyes away from the scene then, but it was already too late. The image of the sandy haired boy groping his girl in all the wrong places had burned itself into her mind. She looked down at her open spiral notebook that she was supposed to by studying from and started to read where she’d left off moments earlier, hoping to get that image out of her head. “The filibuster started in 1830 in the Senate when…” Unfortunately, the words didn’t manage to keep her interested for long; her eyes soon wandered off the page and resumed their restless searching of the room for more suitable fare. Chloe’s idly twisted a few strands of her brown hair for a second and let them drop back to her shoulder when she realized what she was doing. She rested her head against the back of the dark gray chair and let her eyes roam. They swept past the mass of red and gray chairs and couches scattered aimlessly around the windowless room before settling on a stocky student standing just outside the open door to the computer lab. Her fingers plucked another lock of hair off her shoulder and twisted it around as she watched.

The sign before the chunky spectacled boy clearly stated in big bold black letters that the lab was reserved for the upcoming class, and the boy stood there long enough to have read and processed what was written before him, yet he went in any way. Chloe ground her teeth in an attempt to suppress her frustration. People really could be dense sometimes. She repositioned herself in the clunky gray chair she currently occupied and hid a full-fledged grin behind her hand when the stocky student was shooed from the computer room with a surprised look plastered on his face like he hadn’t seen that one coming.

Chloe forced her blue eyes back to the spiral crammed full of lined paper on her lap and began the task of deciphering the scribbles that represented her fast and slightly panicked handwriting from class. She really did need to focus—her test was only a little more than an hour away and she’d already put off reviewing far too many times in the past couple of days. “The Rules Committee is the most important cmt. in the House. Its main purpose is to set the agenda…” But there her mind and eyes wandered again. Chloe let the notebook slide onto the chair alongside her let and stretched as she searched the room for something more interesting than her notes.

She skipped past the couple who were still happily making out to an audience of three hormonal college boys and watched with amusement as a girl sitting at a small table in the far corner tried to fight off the impulse to sleep. Her black-haired head dropped down then jerked back up and her slightly upturned eyes would then open briefly before closing again in tandem with the falling of her head. After a few minutes, her head settled into the crook of her arm, coming to a full rest. Her nap was further advertised by the snores that soon began issuing from her; snores that Chloe could hear from clear across the room. A glob of saliva slipped past the right corner of her mouth and onto the sleeve of her shirt, darkening it with its gooey moisture. Chloe winced, embarrassed for the sleeping girl because she surely wasn’t the only one watching. But that wasn’t to say that she didn’t understand the lure of sleep—anything was better than studying at this point.

Speaking of studying…Chloe dropped her eyes and pulled the notebook back onto her lap, fixing her eyes to the page she’d recently abandoned. She scanned the crammed rows of meaningless words and sighed; she didn’t remember a single word she’d read since sitting down. Maybe it’d be better if she just didn’t study. Chloe rubbed her face and picked a piece of sleep out of the corner of her left eye before glancing down at her watch and then at the clock on the wall. Both told her the same thing; there was still thirty minutes before her test. Rather than reading through her notes, her blue eyes once again darted around the room. A lady from the custodial staff walked past in her drab khaki uniform, touting two trash cans and began to collect the garbage from the can standing by the column in the middle of the room. She replaced the bag and moved on to the next trash can.

The repeated rustling of the bags quickly got annoying and Chloe wondered for a brief moment why everything was getting on her nerves. One look down at the notebook sprawled across her lap answered that question. “The 90 rule is the formal way of measuring party cohesion…” This was clearly not going to work.

Chloe closed the spiral and sat it precariously on the coffee stained arm of her chair. Giving up probably wasn’t the best route, but it really was her only option at this point. With the notebook aside, her attention was once again drawn to the couple making out in the middle of the room; they should have at least tried to find a private study room before making a scene that could rival those found in any Spanish novella on TV. The sandy-haired athletic giant of a boy wormed his hand up under his girl’s tight white shirt and began to fiddle with her bra strap. Chloe could have told him it was doing it wrong, but knew it would have been wrong to interrupt.

She slammed her eyelids closed and choked back laughter. How could people be so oblivious to their surroundings? Did those two not know that they were giving everyone in sight a free show? A loud snore directed Chloe’s eyes to the corner where the slight girl had snored loud enough to startle herself awake. The red flush that had seeped into her cheeks showed that she was at least perfectly aware of what had happened; there’d be no reason to be embarrassed otherwise.

Chloe shifted her eyes away as the girl began to look around to see if anyone else had noticed. She lifted the cursed notebook off the arm of the chair and slipped it into her backpack. The zipper made a pleasant noise as she locked her notes and all hope of studying away within the confines of her bag. So much for that. She dropped her gaze to her watch and watched as the seconds ticked by, unsure of what to do with the time she had left before her test. There was still twenty minutes left until zero-hour. Chloe slid forward on her chair and looked around the study hall again. She really needed to get out of here unless she planned on spending that time staring at people. Chloe slipped her backpack onto her shoulders and let her long strides take her across the dirty, once beige carpet to the elevators. The silver button with the down arrow lit up upon her touch and Chloe looked up, watching the numbers above the elevator illuminate at every floor it passed. A ding signaled the arrival of the elevator and Chloe stepped past the dangerous steel doors into the empty box.

The doors closed behind her and the elevator descended without pause. She reached the main floor mere seconds later and hurried past those intimidating doors onto the terra cotta tiled floors. The swarm of people in the lobby of the library was nearly oppressive. Chloe scooted past a particularly large cluster of students and made a break for the door and the sunshine beyond. She went around the rotating door and smiled as the first rays of light struck her overly pale face. Now, this was the life; unfortunately, it wasn’t one she could enjoy for long. That dreadful test was calling. Chloe quickened her pace and started off towards her classroom, her eyes everywhere except on the path before her. There was just so much to see and not nearly enough time to take it all in. The rich blue sky acted as the perfect backdrop for the magnolia trees and their fragrant blooming flowers, the beautifully styled buildings of the university with their white marbled sides that reflected the brilliance of the sunlight, and even the annoying, squawking birds that had made the campus their home. Everything always looked so much more glorious on such a perfect day. Even the temperature had evened out and settled at a comfortable 78 degrees.

Chloe’s fast walk made the journey across campus to her class quick, and because of that, she was forced to abandon the splendor of the outside for the dimly lit interior that characterized many of the beautiful buildings. She trod up the worn front steps of her building and pushed open the front doors with a heave. They clanged shut behind her and Chloe jumped. She laughed at her own stupidity and hurried up two flights of stairs to the waiting classroom.

The hall outside the room which was normally empty fifteen minutes before class was jam packed with students desperately perusing their notes in hopes of absorbing every last detail from them in preparation for the test. Chloe shook her head and leaned against a small open patch of wall, watching as her classmates read through their notes. The panicked look on many of their faces made Chloe a bit concerned about her own failed attempt at studying, but there wasn’t anything she could do about that now. She’d missed her chance and cramming minutes before the exam wasn’t going to do her or anyone else any good no matter what all those students in the hall currently hoped. The sound of frenzied whispers raised the sound level in the hall considerably and prompted an angry shout for silence from the professor teaching the class before theirs.

Silence fell for a whole two seconds before the students’ desire for every bit of information overwhelmed any respect they had for the professor or his class. Chloe’s eyes latched on one girl about halfway down the hall. Her blonde hair immediately brought back unwanted memories of the make-out session in the study hall even though it was a completely different girl, but that wasn’t what caught her attention. Blondie’s notes were scattered on her lap and on the green linoleum floor all around her. Her lips were moving at an amazing speed and though the words themselves were lost amidst the general noise of the hall, the slow rocking back and forth of her upper body was impossible to overlook. An actual laugh slipped past Chloe’s lips without her consent. She quickly clapped a hand over her mouth so as not to sound as crazy as that girl looked and dropped her eyes to her shoes. If studying drove a person nuts, maybe it really was best not to bother with it. Laughter bubbled up within Chloe, but she fought it down, and stuck to studying the silver buckles that crossed the toe of her brown flats rather than the people around her.