Page 9 of Talk to Me

“You’re the best!” Collin squealed, wrapped his arms around me briefly for a hug, then practically skipped away. “See you Sunday night!”

Giving him a half-hearted salute, I watched him disappear into the crowd of students around the quad. Once again on my own, I realized that I had an uneaten breakfast sandwich in my backpack and nothing on my agenda. Going back to the dorm, getting started on my weekend studying, and finishing my breakfast was the most appealing course of action I could imagine.

A few minutes later, I was standing outside the room of our Resident Advisor, Dusty. After a few knocks that were loud enough to shake the whiteboard hung on the door went unanswered, I gave up. Obviously, it was still too early in the morning to expect our RA to be accepting visits. I made a mental note to check in with him about any packages later in the day, and headed to my room.

True to form, and to not let Collin lose his perception of me, I immediately settled in at my desk and got to work. I added American Lit’s syllabus information to my calendar, organized my binder better according to the semester notes I’d taken, and generally acted like a geek. I finished my second breakfast sandwich within the first thirty minutes of my work, and finally remembered to fill up my water bottle.

As I worked through the morning, I hydrated and got ahead on my weekend reading. There wasn’t much to do in the way of homework, as I’d only been to the first day of each class so far, but there was plenty of reading. Where there’s reading, there’s highlighting and notes to take. So, that kept me fairly busy until lunchtime. By noon, my stomach was rumbling at me again, so I set my work aside, grabbed my wallet and lanyard, and headed to the dining hall.

Collin was nowhere to be found, which was typical, so I grabbed a tray at the beginning of the lunch line. I piled it with a ham sandwich, a bag of chips, a side salad that I drizzled with a sherry shallot dressing, a cinnamon roll as a special little treat, and a bottle of soda. Luckily, I was able to find a table of casual acquaintances to eat with so I wouldn’t be a bigger geek than Collin claimed.

After an hour of socializing and stuffing my face, I realized it was time to get back to my dorm to continue my reading and notes. I made my way back to the dorms, stopping at Dusty’s room once more. Fortunately, his door was open, indicating that he was available to be bothered. When I peeked inside, he was at his desk, leaning in to his laptop screen, and clicking his mouse frantically. A quick glance let me know he was gaming, so I wasn’t interrupting anything I’d consider important.

“Hey, Dusty.” I announced my presence.

Startled, as though he never expected to have to interact with other students as a resident advisor, he lurched in his seat. As he spun in his chair to see who was at the door, I forced myself to hold back the smile forming on my lips. Dusty, scrawny and wiry, nearly a foot taller than me, reached up to push his black-frame glasses up his nose, then ran a hand through the bushy dark mane on his head. He stood immediately and headed over to greet me.

Clothed in all black—black jeans, black t-shirt, black socks—he had foregone any shoes for the day. When he got to the door, he lit up and smiled at me. Apparently, even though my presence had been startling, I wasn’t the worst person he could have run into that day.

“Josh!” he exclaimed. “My least problematic student!”

I chuckled.

“Hey,” I said again as he crossed his arms over his thin chest and waited. “Just stopping by to see if you have a package for Collin. Four-twenty-eight.”

I gave Dusty our room number as though we weren’t literally a few doors down the hall from him.

“Oh,” he said, his arms sliding to his side, “yeah. I stopped by the office. Got a few things. I think I have something for you, too.”

“Oh?”

Dusty went over to the table in the corner of his room where he kept everything pertaining to his duties as our RA, and sorted through boxes and envelopes for a brief moment. Finally, he grabbed a rather large box from the table, and a few envelopes. Coming back to the door, he put the envelopes atop the box and handed everything over to me.

I grunted as he passed our mail to us. The envelopes looked like spam that simply needed to be torn up and tossed, but the package felt like there was at least two cinderblocks inside of it. How a guy so skinny had carried it without so much as a change in his facial expression was beyond me. I wasn’t struggling to carry it, but it was definitely heavy enough to warrant an “oof” or the grunt I’d let sneak out.

“Uh, thanks,” I said, frowning at the box.

“Anytime, my man.” Dusty smiled and crossed his arms over his chest again. “Anytime.”

Unsure how to handle such a response, I gave him another smile, turned, and headed back down the hall to my room.

Once inside the privacy of our room, I tipped the box over my desk to allow the envelopes to slide off onto my workspace. I dropped the box on Collin’s bed and stared down at the monstrosity. It was large enough to hold a dismembered human torso—and I desperately hoped that was not the kind of care Collin’s mom thought he needed. Using the scissors from my desk drawer, I cut through the tape sealing the box.

With the tape removed and the flaps pulled back, I found that Collin’s mother had shipped him every possible snack a guy in college could ever want. Pringles, boxed cookies, snack crackers, canned pasta that I hadn’t eaten since I was a kid, ramen, anything typical for a dorm room dining experience. She’d even tucked in a 6-pack of a regional soda that I wasn’t familiar with, but looked like a typical soda you’d find anywhere else in the country.

As I’d been instructed, I pulled my phone from my pocket and snapped a picture of the open box and its contents for Collin. I shot off a text to Collin with the picture attached and a message proclaiming everything was “self-explanatory.” My phone made a “swooshing” sound, letting me know that my message had been sent. I closed the flaps of the box and was about to slide my phone back into my pocket when it dinged at me.

Message from Collin.

I hadn’t expected him to acknowledge my existence until Sunday, so I was surprised to see the banner on my phone. Opening the message, I smiled down at what Collin had to say.

She knows I don’t need any of that shit! A puking emoji followed the text.

“Ingrate,” I said aloud, shaking my head with a bemused grin.

I don’t know. My reply message said. It seems like a nice gesture.

You can have it. Give it all away. I don’t care. Another pukey emoji followed by the red-faced cursing emoji.