The Glade
…and melting ice is an…endothermic reaction. Exothermic? Crap. Lianna Kim stared at her paper as precious seconds ticked away on her Chem midterm. Nothing on the test was hard, exactly. Heck, they’d done a lot of this stuff in high school. But every question seemed to have some trick to it, that Lianna just couldn’t figure out despite studying pretty much all day yesterday.
The two hours of Scrabble probably didn’t help much either, she thought with a mental groan, which manifested itself as a grimace twisting her lips. Her pencil tip snapped and she furiously clicked out more lead.
“Fifteen more minutes,” called the GSI. Screw it, Lianna decided, and scribbled down answers for the last two questions. She was too tired to look her answers over even once.
For the first time that hour, Lianna looked up and saw that maybe half of the class was already gone. At least I’m not the only one still here. She stood up and stretched, then wearily picked up her backpack and slung it over one shoulder. She carried her paper down to the front of the class and let it slip out of her hand onto the pile of completed midterms. Lianna turned to go and nearly collided with her floormate Bernard. As if to add insult to injury, the paper in his hand was written in a tidy, neat hand and looked as if it could have been the exam key.
With a muttered apology Lianna started to climb the stairs to the door. The lecture hall was built so that most of it was underground—a handy way to save space and probably money, but it always made Lianna feel uncomfortable. Something about the lack of natural light. She reached the top of the stairs and pushed open the door, taking her first breath of fresh air in almost two hours. It was only 3:15.
Lianna had carefully planned her schedule so that her hard classes were packed together on Tuesday and Thursday, which allowed her to keep her Mondays light and her Fridays completely free, save for a single Japanese 1A class at 10:00. But her Chem midterm just had to be on Monday—no open time slot for a two-hour test on Tuesday.
And she couldn’t even relax tonight, with the CS midterm tomorrow. Lianna couldn’t remember why she had taken that class in the first place; it had brought nothing but pain and suffering since the first week. Really, forget breadth requirements. There had to be something easier.
Lianna sighed, then grinned. No matter what grade she got, the Chem midterm was done, and now she was off to meet up with her friend Liz. The two of them had agreed to go get a snack or something after their midterms were finished. Lianna suddenly had a craving for frozen yogurt, and she started walking towards the south side of campus.
The default Sprint ringtone floated through the air, and Lianna smiled at the whoever hadn’t changed their cell phone’s simplest settings yet. Then with a start she realized it was her phone, the brand new phone she had just gotten last week. She mentally chided herself for not having done anything with it yet and awkwardly pulled her phone out from its most inconvenient position in her pocket, beneath her wallet. Out of habit she glanced at the front to see who was calling before remembering that her contacts hadn’t been transferred either. The ten-digit number meant nothing to her.
“Hello?” she said awkwardly. It was really a rare occurence that she didn’t know who was calling.
“Hey, Lianna, it’s Liz,” came the reply, “You sound tired.”
“You sound happy,” countered Lianna, “Was your midterm that easy?”
“Easier than expected, and it’s all good anyway. Pass-no-pass, remember?”
“Oh yeah.” Lianna grimaced, then was glad they weren’t talking face-to-face. “Well, mine’s not. So where are we meeting?”
“Oh,” Liz sounded chagrined, “Right. My boyfriend called around 1; he’s going to be here in like ten minutes. Five minutes. Crap.”
“Oh, well, maybe we could—”
“Sorry, Lianna, you know what it’s like. Just a little time with him and me, you know?”
“Yeah, of course.” Lianna tried not to sound too crestfallen.
Liz seemed not to notice. “I’ll call you tonight, then.”
“Sure.” Lianna made her voice as cheery as she could, but it still sounded false to her.
There was a pause, then her phone beeped, right in her ear. Lianna gritted her teeth and looked at the screen. Her battery was low, and Liz had already hung up. This was not turning out to be a good day. Any positive feelings Lianna still had were evaporating, and the prospect of heading back to her dorm was not appealing. Interacting with anyone at all right now is not appealing. At a time like this, there was only one place on or near campus that Lianna felt like going. The Glade.
Lianna had discovered the Glade in the third week of school, when her ID card had unexpectedly lost the ability to open the CS lab door. Rather than go back to her room, she had stubbornly plunked herself down in the grass under the spindly trees and started her homework outside. Within ten minutes, though, she found that her annoyance had completely slipped away, to be replaced with a sense of peace. She put away her laptop and lay back on her backpack with her hands behind her head. The sun was warm and the breeze was light. Lianna closed her eyes.
Now, Lianna was in desperate need of peace, and she hurried through the maze of buildings to reach her private spot, sheltered by buildings and with only a few people wandering through. She walked briskly down the hall and scanned the courtyard.
Lianna wanted to scream. Someone else was already there.
He was a tall, wiry looking white man with darkish hair who looked like he was only a few months out of high school. Lianna was a first-year herself, but this man was one of those who actually looked that young. He was wearing a college sweater and beige khaki pants and seemed unworried about grass stains. There was a white MacBook on his lap.
Lianna turned and took a few steps away. But there was nowhere to go.
With a deep and unsatisfied sigh she turned back and stalked across the grass, dropping her backpack in the shade of the trees. She looked at the man to see him staring at her with raised eyebrows. For a moment their eye contact held, then he gave a small smirk (or was that just a projection of her bad mood) and turned back to his computer.
Lianna ground her teeth. The worst part was, she was sure she had seen his face somewhere before. Furiously she opened her backpack and pulled out her character worksheets—the character worksheets that had been due today and that she had skipped to study for her agonizing Chem midterm.
She hadn’t even finished her second set of kanji before she found her mind and her gaze wandering. Her eyes fell back onto the man. From this angle she couldn’t see his computer screen, but it couldn’t be very interesting; he didn’t seem to be paying attention to it very much. She looked away, then glanced back. He was wearing headphones with the cord running down through his sweater and out to plug into his computer.
Lianna frowned and furiously scratched out another character, almost puncturing the paper with her pen. What’s wrong with me today! she mentally screamed at herself. This was worse than normal lack-of-sleep; nothing seemed to be going right. She toyed with the idea of just going back to the dorm and taking a nap, but it was already 3:30—no, 3:40—and she just couldn’t afford to waste that much time. Frustrated, she stuffed her unfinished kanji packet back into her backpack and pulled out her CS book, flipping through pages until she found last week’s session.
An ant crawled across her leg and she idly flicked it off. Liz would have freaked out, she thought, grinning, until she remembered the way Liz ditched her today. The grin vanished like a fourth grader’s pudding, and she looked back down at her book.
“We can also extract from the…” she began reading aloud, then stopped and put down the book. Her mind just wouldn’t stay focused. She found herself trying once more to see what was on the man’s computer screen. Her gaze flicked upward to see the man looking back at her. He jerked upward guiltily, then slowly began to smile.
Lianna quickly stared back down at her book. What’s going on here? Was he staring at me? Her wandering mind caught the irony in feeling indignant when she herself had been staring at him. She turned the page before realizing that she had no idea what she had just read.
Forget it, she thought savagely, and stuffed the book back into her backpack on top of her character homework. She picked up the backpack and walked over to the man, still nursing bits of anger and resentment. “Hi,” she said, more forcefully and less amicably than she had intended.
“Hi, Lianna,” he said, looking up at her with a hint of mischief. She blinked, partially because he knew her name, partially because he was pronouncing it “lee-ann-nuh”. He went on, enjoying her surprise. “Lianna Kim, right?”
“Uh, yeah,” Lianna answered, still off-guard, “But it’s pronounced lee-ah-nuh. How do you…” She tried to figure out where she knew him from, why he knew her name. Had they met at orientation? Were they in the same discussion section?
“Facebook,” the man grinned, “You’re a friend-of-friend.”
She should have known she was overthinking things. “Ah, and you are?”
“Justin,” he answered, “Justin Hill.”
Lianna snapped her fingers. “Aha, and you’re taking Intro CS, too.” She knew she had recognized him from somewhere.
“How do you know that?” he asked carefully.
“Because we’ve,” she answered, pointing at his screen, “got a midterm tomorrow.” He followed her finger to look at the lines of Scheme code—and error messages—currently gracing his laptop.
“You caught me,” Justin said with a grin. He seemed impossible to put off-balance, and his cheeriness was reminding Lianna that she was supposed to be in a bad mood.
“What else are you taking?” Justin asked, unaware of her state.
“Intro Japanese,” Lianna said brusquely, not offering any other classes. She pulled her character worksheets out of her backpack again and groaned.
“Japanese, huh? Should be easy for you, then?” he shot back, but with a smile.
“What?”
“Or do you not know Chinese?” he said, blinking.
Oh, he was one of those people. “I’m Korean,” she said, half-indignantly, half-disdainfully.
“Oh,” he answered, turning slightly red. He paused, then added, “Dangyunhaji.”
“What?” she said with a sense of déjà vu.
“Dangyunhaji?” Justin faltered a little. “‘Of course?’”
“Oh.” Lianna flopped down to sit on the grass and grinned. “Your pronunciation is awful.”
“Thanks,” he answered with a hint of sarcasm. “I only know it from watching X-man anyway.”
“You watch X-man?” she asked, surprised.
“Well…on Youtube. With subtitles.” His grin returned, but it bothered her less now.
“Good enough,” she anwered decisively. At this Justin actually laughed, and closed his laptop.
“So, how are you, Li-ah-nuh Kim?” he asked, in an exaggerated caring voice.
“Fine,” she answered reflexively, and interrupted herself. “Why do people always say fine?”
“Yeah, I was gonna say…” Justin trailed off, then went on, “You didn’t look very happy over there.”
“So you were watching me?” said Lianna, more uncomfortable about his question than the actual thought of being watched.
“Fair’s fair, and you were certainly watching me.” He pointed to his closed laptop. “Camera.”
“OK, now that really is creepy.” Lianna actually gave a shiver, partly from the breeze, partly for dramatic effect.
“Hey, no fair dodging the question. What’s wrong?” said Justin. He was being serious, or at least more serious than he had been during the entire conversation so far.
“Oh…midterms, friend…” Lianna tried to sound flippant and failed, at least to her own ears.
“Uh huh.” Justin nodded knowingly.
“Hey,” she said, remembering to be defensive, “I hardly know you.”
“Too late for that, you started the conversation.” She winced, but couldn’t really write him off as purely annoying. “And I was here first,” he added.
“Yeah, I know.” She sighed. “So did your card stop working, too?”
“That’s what happened to you?” Justin started laughing quietly, then abruptly stopped and said, “Yeah, me too.” Lianna was confused until he grinned, and she realized the whole thing had been a little act.
“Yeah, I just come here to think, now,” she said, surprising herself.
“Me too,” he said, serious again.
There were a silence, just long enough to become awkward. Then Justin made the “awkward turtle” sign and they both burst out laughing. When they recovered Justin looked at his watch.
“4:10 already?” he said, “Crap!”
“Huh?” said Lianna, still smiling.
“I was supposed to meet my friend, um, right now.” Justin slid his MacBook into a sleeve and zipped up his backpack. “I’ll see you later, then. Lianna.”
She stood first. “Good luck on the midterm tomorrow,” she offered.
“You too,” he answered, smiling, “Later.”
“Bye, Justin,” she said, feeling a strange flutter. A phrase from an old fantasy book came to mind: Names have power. She reflected for a moment that that was true in real life as well. When she looked up again Justin was gone.
That was awkward, she thought wryly, feeling her mind return to its usual patterns. She looked up at the squat grey buildings surrounding the grassy courtyard, no longer a sacred glade but something else. A field of grass and two spindly trees, surrounded by computer terminals in grey buildings. No longer sacred, but still a sanctuary, a place of peace.
It’s been a really crappy day, thought Lianna as she picked up her backpack and started walking back to her dorm. But, she noted, her bad mood had vanished.
all watched over
by machines of loving grace