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The reading she emailed about last week. Which I imagine is sitting in the school email inbox I haven’t checked yet because there was a mix-up with another B. Bloom, and UW only assigned me a new username yesterday: babloom, which I believe is the sound one makes upon realizing they haven’t done the assigned reading.
The guy next to me flings his arm into the air like he’s a kindergartner desperate to use the bathroom. If I can’t get into another class right away, I am definitely picking a different seat next time. “She’s been taking really meticulous notes,” he says. “I’d be curious to hear what she has to say.”
And he’s pointing at me.
What the fresh hell?
The professor throws him an odd look and then says, “All right. You—name, please?”
Shit. I consider giving a fake name, but the only thing that comes to mind is Namey McNameface. I’d kill at improv. “Uh. Barrett. Barrett Bloom.”
“Hello, Barrett Bloom.” She strides across the stage, leaving the mic on the podium. Her voice is strong enough to carry without it. “What is physics the study of? Assuming, of course, that you did the reading.”
“Well…” That two in AP Physics is doing nothing for me. I adjust my glasses, as though seeing better will somehow illuminate the answer. “The study of physical objects?” Even as I say it, I know it’s not right. We studied plenty of things last year that were intangible. “And also… nonphysical objects?”
Someone behind me muffles a laugh, but Dr. Okamoto holds up a hand. “Could you get more specific?”
“Truthfully, I’m not sure I can.”
“That’s why we’re starting here. Miles, did you want to expand on that?”
The guy next to me scoots to the edge of his seat. Of course the professor already knows his name. I bet he got here early, brought her coffee and a muffin, told her how much he loved the assigned reading. “Physics is the study of matter and energy,” he says smoothly, words slicked with confidence, “and how they relate to each other. It’s used to understand how the universe behaves and predict how it might behave in the future.”
“Perfect,” Dr. Okamoto says, and I can practically feel the heat of how pleased Miles is with himself.
By the end of class, which Dr. Okamoto ends at 9:20 exactly, my neck aches from forcing myself to look straight ahead the whole time, never to my right.
Miles takes his time putting everything into his backpack. PHYSICS MATTERS, says one of the stickers on his laptop. There really is no shortage of puns about this branch of science.
“You didn’t go to Island High School, did you?” I ask. It’s possible I just don’t remember him and he’s carrying around the same grudge most of my classmates did.
“No. West Seattle.” Ah. A city kid.
“I don’t know what I did to offend you, aside from gently insinuating that I am not in love with physics, but there’s a seventy percent chance my roommate is going to slip Nair into my shampoo later, so it’s been a bit of a rough day. And what you did kind of made it worse.”
His face scrunches in this strange way, dark eyes unblinking. “Yeah. Me too,” he says quietly, folding a hand through a wave of dark hair. “The rough day, I mean. Not the Nair.”
“I’m sure it was a real challenge,” I say, “deciding which seat would best position you as the likeliest candidate for suck-up of the year.”
“And yet you’re the one who sat next to me.”
“A mistake I won’t make again.” I grab my backpack and narrow my eyes at him, waiting for his façade to crack. I should be relieved—I’ve found the one other person who probably has more trouble making friends than I do. I’m no stranger to hostile, but this much, this early, and from someone I don’t know? That’s new. “Well. I want to say see you in class on Friday, but I’m on my way to see an advisor, so odds are this is the last time our paths will cross.” I flutter my hand toward the classroom. “Have a great time understanding the universe.”
Another thing college has an excess of: lines. In the dining hall, in the bathroom, in the freshman counseling center as all of us who messed up during registration wait to hear our fates. When I finally get to the front, I have to fill out a form and check my babloom email to see whether it’s been approved.
My two-hour afternoon class is a freshman English requirement taught by a bored-looking but casually hot TA who spends half the time diagramming sentences. I get the feeling most professors aren’t as lively as Dr. Okamoto, which makes me feel a little guilty about switching out but not guilty enough to stay.
What I’ve really been waiting for is my Washingtonian interview, since journalism classes filled up fast with upperclassmen and I may not have the chance to take any until later this year. The journalism building is just off the quad, near Olmsted Hall, which seems like a promising sign. On my way there, I watch a skateboarder ignoring the NO SKATEBOARDING signs in Red Square crash into the group of swing dancers, and in true conflict-averse Pacific Northwest fashion, all of them end up apologizing to one another.
I climb three flights of steep stairs and accumulate three times more sweat than I’d like before reaching the newsroom on the top floor. My phone tells me it’s seventy-five degrees outside, unseasonably warm for late September in Seattle. I have to stop in the bathroom to make sure my makeup hasn’t melted off my face.
The newsroom door is open and the place is already boiling, despite a few fans going. Inside are several pods of computers divided by newspaper section, with the fancier equipment in one corner for the videographers and the larger monitors for designers in the middle of the room. And then there are the walls, painted orange and scribbled over with Sharpie graffiti I learned the history of during the info session I went to yesterday. If I hadn’t already committed myself to working for this paper, the walls would have done it. Every piece of writing is a quote attributed, without context, to someone who used to work for the Washingtonian, and at least a third of them are sexual. The newsroom rule is that if you say something someone else thinks is worthy, they yell out, “Put it on the wall!” It immediately became a dream of mine: to say something so witty that it got immortalized in Sharpie.
“Hi,” I say awkwardly to no one in particular. “I’m here for an interview with Annabel Costa? The editor in chief?”
A girl with a blond pixie cut hovering over a designer’s computer swivels her head toward me. “Barrett? I remember you from the info sesh! You were the one who asked all the questions.”
I fight a grimace. “Sorry about that.”
