ᴀᴅ ᴍᴇʟɪᴏʀᴀ ~ ᴅᴘꜱ (ꜱᴛᴇᴠᴇɴ ᴍᴇᴇᴋꜱ)

19 - study group

"Amy?"

A frustrated grunt muffles from beneath her sleeve.

"Pick your head up off the table and finish the practice problems. We don't have all day."

She flips me off without looking up.

"Why would you even ask me to help if you're not going to do the work?"

"Because I can't afford to fail this class," she grumbles.

I groan. "Ok, so, do the worksheet."

"No."

I throw my hands up in exasperation. She still doesn't pick her head up from the table.

"You have the work ethic of a toddler! How on earth have you made it this far in life?"

"Your guess is as good as mine."

I roll my eyes. "Look, if you're not going to help yourself, then I can't help you. I have to go meet Meeks for dinner tonight. Thanks for giving me a few extra hours to get ready. I'll see you later, Amy." I gather my things and begin to head towards the door and into the main library. Finally, my roommate's head perks up.

"You can't leave!" she indignantly complains.

I turn back to her with both hands on my hips. "And why is that?"

She stares at me blankly, unable to come up with an excuse. I can almost see the gears turning in her head, working with much more fervor than they have this past hour we've been "studying".  Finally, she crosses her arms and sinks back into her chair, defeated. "Ok, fine. I'll do the work."

My backpack is already off my shoulder and back on the table before she finishes her sentence. "That's what I thought."

She bites back a remark, the irritability clearly visible on her face. "Can we at least take a break from math?"

I push a few science assignments towards her and start writing up more practice problems for later. Every few minutes, I glance up to see how far she's gotten. I've noticed a few things about my roommate today: for one, she only ever writes in pen. Each page she hands back to me is littered with black strokes, most of which cross out a spiraling thought she couldn't salvage. A glance at the right edge of her left-hand reveals a dark smudge from where it's been dragged across the paper and, subsequently, her writing. God, her writing. It's practically illegible, yet the lazily looping letters still demand to be understood. She pauses to think very frequently, often in the middle of a sentence, quickly picking up her pen to gnaw on the top before reconnecting it with the paper and scrawling out another phrase. She huddles over the page as she writes, totally engulfed in her transcribed world. The long black hair she pointlessly tucks behind her ear falls in her face again and she pushes it back with her right hand, not breaking her attention away from the paper for a second.

Who knew that threatening to leave was such a good motivator?

There's also a more definite flush to her face than there was at the beginning of the year. A rosy hue pinches at her cheeks, and not just when she's out in the cold Vermont weather. The red-tinted lipstick she frequently donned has slowly become obsolete in her routine as her lips have started to supply the color themselves. I don't want to entirely attribute this improvement to her cut-back on smoking, but it's clearly a factor. Her mood and energy have steadily increased the past few weeks, and she's spent more time in the dorm or walking to classes with me. Don't get me wrong, it's still a frequent sight to see her pull out a box of cigarettes and emptily offer me one; the change hasn't gone unnoticed, though.

(Don't tell her this, but I've been marking the cartons with a pen when she's not around as a way of gauging how long she keeps each one. She's been on her current pack of Marlboro Reds for over a week. A week! Amy Chain-Smoker Brevitt, taking a whole week to smoke a pack? Unheard of.)

After half an hour, she breaks out of her haze and hands me the two worksheets. I quickly glance over her answers, tracing my path with a capped red pen. I end up not having to use it; she got all the answers correct.

I hand them back to her. "See, that wasn't so hard, was it?"

She spins the pen between her fingers, propping her head up with her unoccupied arm. "Yeah, I guess not."

"We're done with Chemistry, and I think you've gone over Trigonometry enough, so that just leaves English, Public Speaking, Home Ec., Business Management, and..."

"Puppeteering," she adds.

"Right," I say, "puppeteering. I didn't even know they offered that here. Your schedule is awfully random."

The girl shrugs. "What can I say? I'm a jack of all trades."

But a master of none... I finish the quote in my head. "You're not on any specific class course. What do you even plan on doing after graduating?"

She leans back in her chair, tucking the pen behind her ear and interlacing her hands behind her head. "I dunno. Not college."

I furrow my brow. "You really don't know?"

"Nope. I worry about the present, not the future." She uses her leg to teeter in her chair, rocking back and forth. "I always thought I'd be a killer receptionist, though."

"You don't want to aim a little higher?"

Her expression is unreadable. "What's that supposed to mean?"

I start to gather the papers around us, piling them up. "I don't know. You're smart, Amy. You could do something really cool. You don't have to settle-"

"No-" she cuts me off, letting her chair reconnect with the ground and crossing her arms in front of her. "Look, I was mostly joking, but I'm not appreciating the subtle superiority complex you've got going on here. To some people, mundane careers like being a receptionist are cool. Or better yet, they did settle, but they're happy with that. Settling isn't inherently bad. I'm sorry you always feel the need to overachieve to remind people that you have worth, or some shit, but don't project that onto me. Maybe I'll be a receptionist. Maybe I'll be a physicist. Maybe I'll be a fucking ventriloquist. Who knows, and who cares?"

I ignore the snide part of her monologue. "I'm sorry. You know didn't mean it that way. It's good that you're dabbling now so you can find something you enjoy."

"Mhm." She rises from her chair and starts gathering the studying materials as well, piling them into her backpack. I hand her the stack of papers and she puts them away into a folder. Her face remains stoic but her tone returns to its original light intensity. "Well, what about you? What's Miss Albrecht's after-high-school plan?"

I pick up my bag as Amy circles around the table, meeting me at the door. We exit the room and walk into the main part of the library, dampening our voices into a murmur. I try to push past the confrontation, but something about her immediate switch back to normalcy doesn't sit right with me. I know it's not a battle to fight now, though. "Hm. I think something with publishing would be fun. Maybe journalism."

"I could see that," she whispers. "All up in people's faces in the middle of chaos, trying to get your big break. You're getting some early practice from nagging me so much."

I roll my eyes. "Of course. I'll be sure to credit you in my memoir."

"Damn right. I better get a free copy, too. My receptionist salary can't support reckless book-buying, especially ones I'm not gonna read."

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is this chapter mainly filler? yes. is that a bad thing? not necessarily. i love a little light filler sometimes. do i have a definite bridge between now and the next major plot point? no. one thing leads to the other. i haven't had much amy in the past few chapters tho so i wanted to give everyone a lil update on her.

sorry this chapter is very late. ive had quite a week.