Smarty Pants, page 3
“No, please don’t. It was dumb.”
“Not that dumb. She’s just…a little tired.”
“I think we all are.”
Rae nodded slowly. She gestured to the tall apartment building behind Hailee, which now had its power flicked back on. “You like living there?”
“Here? Oh, yeah. It’s nice. Not a lot of students, though I am one. Grad student,” Hailee added, then clarified some more. “But I’m almost done.”
Rae nodded, seemingly impressed. “Kit’s gotta move. I need her closer to be my babysitter, among other things. I’m going to tell her to move here, if it’s a good place.”
“It is. This,” Hailee said, gesturing around to the now empty courtyard. “Hardly happens. I like it here.”
“Good. Well, maybe we’ll be more than neighbours soon enough.”
“Maybe,” Hailee said. Tootsie tugged on her leash, reminding her yet again that he’d been promised a walk. “That’s a nice thought. For now—”
“Yes, walk your dog. Have a good night!”
Hailee waved and said much the same.
She was around the block in under twenty minutes, making it back up to her apartment building by three in the morning. Her bones ached with weariness, but she still glimpsed out across her apartment building to the next one over. Only a handful of people still had their lights on.
Which one is Kit and her sister?
Hailee closed her blinds before her mind could wander too far.
She was half-asleep when she realized she’d still not checked the Blue and Pink book award semi-finals. She sprung out of bed, only to realize that it, like most other things she thought important, it could wait until tomorrow.
Chapter 3
“Hey Rae,” Kit said, greeting her sister as she came in the door to her apartment. “Can I borrow your car?”
Rae slipped off her nurses’ shoes with a big sigh. “Not even gonna make me breakfast first?”
Kit gestured to the kitchen table, which still had French toast set up on it. It was fresh, not the stuff she’d made for Anissa at nearly one in the afternoon when they’d both crawled out of bed after the super late fire alarm. Though Rae had gone to her shift that day as planned, she’d been just as zonked when she got back. Several more days had passed since then, and it was only now that Kit—and Rae too—were finally feeling as if they had recouped all that sleep.
“Of course,” Rae reminded her now as she ohhed and ahhed over the new French toast, complete with in-season strawberries. “We don’t actually recoup that sleep.”
“But I am feeling better,” Kit said. “And I think you were right. So I’m going to run some errands, hence why I need your car.”
Rae slipped a strawberry into her mouth before raising a brow. “I love hearing I’m right, but I don’t think I told you that you needed to be more responsible by running errands. Going to the bank or grocery store sounds like the least sexy thing you should be doing.”
Kit blushed. She didn’t want to think about sexy things—yet of course, that was all she could think about. She half-heartedly touched the tattoo on the back of her neck, the one that her sister told her she should either cover up or get used to curious gazes.
“So,” Rae went on, easing into her seat and becoming serious. “Just what am I right about? And what exactly do you want the car for?”
Kit sighed. She pulled out the chair across from her sister and slid the hotel station list she’d made, and remade, several times this morning already. Rae glimpsed it quickly before she nodded in apprehension.
“So it’s a bucket list?”
“Not quite. It’s not that corny, I was just—”
“A bucket list is not corny. Maybe cliché, but the sentiment is good. You’re going to die, so, make sure you don’t waste time. I see no fault in that.”
Kit had nodded slowly. Their mother, for all the pain she went through with her cancer, had never once forgotten that her time was running out. At first, Kit thought that was normal. Doesn’t everyone realize their mortality when diagnosed with something serious? But Rae had set her correct. She didn’t work in oncology—mostly an ER nurse with occasional shifts in other departments—but she saw enough people who, even in the middle of their own death, refused to acknowledge it. It’s a very human thing, she assured Kit, but it still baffles me. Their mother, in spite of not having a bucket list, was never too blinded by pain or too drugged by her medication to forget what actually mattered: her kids, with her as much as possible, before she died.
“So if it’s not a bucket list,” Rae asked. “What are you going to call it?”
“I’m…not too sure. It’s just some things that were put on hold, you know?” Kit recalled the first item on the list as enrol in school again. She’d only half-finished her degree when her mother was diagnosed, and though the profs she’d had had been understanding, she’d still failed that year. Then never enrolled again.
“I know I can get a job without a degree,” Kit went on, listing her numerous gigs already. “But I hate that this is hanging over me. I have like, maybe six courses to complete? Maybe more.”
“Okay. So this one has multiple stages. Go to the registrar’s office, get your old transcripts…it’s a lot, but it’s good.” Rae leaned forward so she could grab her keys out of her back pocket. She plunked them down on the table. “There you go.”
“Really? That simple?”
“That simple when you tell me the truth. And when you’re finally doing something.”
Kit nodded. She’d been wracking her brain so much the past little while, just trying to remember things that made her happy, she wasn’t sure if she was remembering her real life anymore or the numerous amounts of bad TV movies she’d watched in the interim. As Rae finished her French toast, though, and followed up with many of the other items on Kits’ list, parts of herself that she’d forgotten, or doubted, came back stronger than ever.
“I love this one,” Rae said, laughing at the last item. “Cover up the tattoo.”
Kit blushed again. “What?”
“I didn’t mean cover it up like that. I mean either show it off with a nice no back dress, so you can invite those hand touches, or you should just wear turtlenecks all the time. Since you know, the artist put the damn thing too high on your back.”
Kit touched her neck—because really, that was where her tattoo had gone. Her first and only tattoo, made in a rush, and clearly not thought out. It was a lingering part of her past that demonstrated how reckless she’d once been, but now it only felt like folly.
“I’ve always liked it.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes,” Rae said with a slight frown. “That’s the sister I knew.”
“Maybe I won’t get a total cover up, then,” Kit said. “Maybe I’ll just…fix it.”
“Or get a low-backed dress. Embrace it. Lean in. Now,” Rae said, standing and taking her plate still covered in sticky syrup to the counter. “I’m full of carbs and my bed awaits. Is Anissa…?”
“With Abigail next door. I got her.”
“Good. I trust Abigail’s mother, though, so you should get started on this whole university thing now. And maybe,” Rae added, quirking a brow, “you should apply for that apartment next door, too.”
Kit huffed. She knew that her sister had partly gotten the application for the building across the street to make her own life easier; with a babysitter close by, there was no need to fuss and worry. But she also saw her clear other motives. If Rae wasn’t so tired, she’d probably snatch up Kit’s list and add yet another item at the end, just to make it a perfect rom-com: Fall in love.
Rae blew a kiss to her sister in a dramatic fashion before she closed her bedroom door. Kit heard her snoring in a matter of minutes. She added the dishes to the sink, lingering on the clean-up, and running out the clock in her mind for the school. Most buildings closed at four now, right? If she showed up at 4:05, then it wasn’t really her fault she couldn’t register. And if she didn’t add the last corny item to her cliché list, then when it didn’t happen, she didn’t fail, either.
But, Kit remembered, that would be acting like she was never going to die. Even if she—thankfully—had passed the screening test they’d done less than a year ago now, the one that had caught Rae’s early-stage cancer—she couldn’t live her life the way she was now. Rae may have been overzealous in her efforts, but she was…boring. She didn’t want to be boring anymore.
So Kit left the dishes and wrote a note for Abigail’s mother on her phone, before she snatched up her list again and headed out the door.
* * * *
Kit parked her sister’s car on the north side of campus with ten minutes to spare before four. She didn’t need to Google directions for the campus because barely anything had changed. The University of Waterloo was known for its science and math crowd, and the buildings on that side of the campus had been clearly built up and made that much more high-tech over the past few years since Kit had attended full-time. The registration office was on the other side of campus, where she’d parked now, and mostly attached to the Arts department. Since Kit had been a double major, she’d seen both the space-aged and futuristic buildings of the sciences alongside the run-down and severe, 1970s architecture of the Arts department. Even if the arts buildings depressed her with their chronic underfunding, the moment she stepped inside she felt as if she was at home again.
Memories from her first-year flings, her second-year boy and girlfriends, and then her third year of heartbreak dotted the surface. She almost turned around several times, but her sister’s words, and the crumbled list in her pocket made her keep walking forward. She just had to finish her degree. She didn’t need to worry about the cash, or even employability that much because her mother’s life insurance, plus her retirement nest egg, had been transferred to herself and her sister. And she’d been getting enough design work to sustain her. There was nothing holding her back—only herself, and the life she’d thought she’d wanted to live.
So much of Kit’s past had come up the past ten minutes, she thought she was seeing a ghost when she stepped into the registrar’s office. A woman sat behind the desk, tall with broad shoulders, and dressed in rather butch, but still professional clothing. The dark hair that fell across her forehead in wispy bangs reminded her so much of her first-year roommate, Yessina Lopez, that Kit stopped and stared before she met her eyes.
And then everything clicked for both of them.
“Kit?”
“Yessina?”
“Yes!” She rose from her desk and drew her long arms towards her torso in a triumphant gesture. She stepped out from behind the closed off registration area and ran into Kit’s open arms in a hug. She lifted her off the ground, startling Kit with her surprising strength.
“Jesus,” Kit said once Yessina had placed her back on the carpeted office floors. “Did you become a stunt person? Like for real? You’re so strong!”
“You’re also thinner,” Yessina said. She surveyed Kit’s oversized T-shirt and baggy jeans. She seemed to want to reach out and pinch her but held back. “You doing okay?”
“I am. Actually. Yes. I just…” Kit ran a hand through her hair. This was too much. She reached into her pocket, pushed passed her list, and withdrew her wallet. She still had her old student card tucked behind a gym membership she never used. She pulled it out, noticed how much fuller her face had been then, and sighed. Maybe things had been a lot harder than she first realized. Maybe Rae, in all her joking concern, had been deadly serious.
“Oh wow,” Yessina said, snatching the student card from her. Kit tried to grab it back, but Yessina’s six-foot height had nothing on Kit’s five six. To think, she used to feel like the tallest person in her family. She’d been sure that had been why the housing department put her and Yessina together. Just to humble her with height, and to live the life that her five-foot mother lived, always on step stools.
It just helped that Yessina was amazing in other ways, too. She’d been a business major, something she insisted that she’d need as a stunt double once she made it big in Hollywood. Everyone was a contractor there, so you had to take care of your own business. Kit realized, in no uncertain terms now, that she’d internalized Yessina’s many business lectures in order to take over her mother’s estate.
“Wow,” Yessina passed back the student card, and then waved Kit over to her desk. The office was closed now—Kit had barely made it before the four o’clock close time—but she as no longer concerned now that her old roomie was behind the desk. “It’s been a long time. You really want to come back here, of all places?”
“Yes,” Kit said, surprised at how much she meant it. “I never felt like I finished.”
“You had good reasons.”
“And those reasons have stopped making sense.”
When Yessina gestured to a chair, and then insisted that Kit pull it over to her desk so they could chat as if this was a cafe, she relented. Yessina even passed her a k-cup of coffee s she told her about her mother. Yessina knew some of the details; in their second year, they’d been in the same business accounting class, and she’d witnessed Kit’s astronomical grades slide. She didn’t fail that year, but mostly thanks to Yessina’s penchant for late night studying at the library, with a group of other people she’d cobbled together to form a haphazard social friend group.
“You still talk to them now?” Kit wondered aloud after she’d caught Yessina up on what happened after their last full study session together. “They were nice.”
“They still are nice. And you know, I’m just about to see them now.” Yessina leaned back and grabbed her phone. She pursed her lips when she noticed the time. “I may have missed our dinner, actually.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“Don’t worry. I should really say they’re eating lunch now because they’re all damn night hawks. I’m the only one with a real job.” Yessina rolled her eyes, which made Kit laugh. Out of all the people from that study group, she would not have figured Yessina for the nine-to-fiver now. She wondered if, like her own change in plans, something tragic had happened.
“Do not worry,” Yessina said again, already one the same wavelength as kit. “Nothing bad happened. At least, not any more than usual. I just needed a job to hold down student debt. But I’m gonna be a stunt double. One day soon…”
“That’s great. I can’t wait until you’re set on fire.”
Yessina beamed. It had been a joke between them in their residence anytime she left the hot plate on. “I didn’t forget, just practicing for my fire walk.” Yessina sent a quick message on her phone before she gathered up their mugs of coffee. “You know,” she said as she returned. “You should come with me.”
“To lunch? I’m good. Pretty sure I’ve eaten my weight in French toast this week.”
“First of all, that sounds amazing. Second of all, you need it. But no, not to lunch. Our study group is now our improv group.”
“Really?”
“Yep. And we were holding auditions tonight for more people to join. We just have one requirement.”
Kit braced herself. She was not a funny person. Not in the improv way. She was about to say all of this, when Yessina cut her off. “You’re funny, don’t worry.”
“How are you doing that? You’re reading my mind like my sister.”
“Your face is very expression,” Yessina said, her tone sweet. “You give everything away. It’s perfect for improv, really.”
“Wouldn’t that make it bad? I’d give away the jokes.”
“The jokes are in the moment for improv. So you’d be perfect. As long as you can say yes, you’re a stellar improv actor.”
“I don’t know.”
“You pronounced yes in a strange way.” Yessina winked. “Come on. I will get you registered now, so don’t worry about that. But we will have just enough time to make it to the theatre on campus so my friends can judge you.”
“That sounds great,’ Kit said, deadpanned. It wasn’t long before she and Yessina were smiling wide.
“See? Beautiful, expressive face. You’re set.” Yessina went back to her computer, clicking in the information from Kit’s student card at lightning speed.
“Is that the only requirement, then?” Kit asked. “An expressive face?”
“We’re a queer improve group. So we all gotta be ladies and like ladies in some way. From what I can recall…”
“Yeah,” Kit said, nodding quietly. Yessina had listened to more than one heartbreak story about a straight girl that first year. “I fall under that.”
“Fantastic. So what sort of classes do you want to take?”
Kit baulked. It took her a moment to remember that, initially, she’d come here for her degree. She already felt like she was back in school, and that nothing bad had ever happened. It was a fresh start, truly, and so—she thought of the first classes she’d failed. “Enrol me in Business, Math, and Computer Science, if there are summer sessions. Maybe throw in an elective, too. If there is room, of course.”
“Well, it’ll be tight. The deadline is close,” Yessina said. After a blink, she smiled and winked. “But you’re in.”
Chapter 4
“So did you see the results?” Hailee asked as she twisted her face in mock-horror. “I can’t believe it, right?”
“Hmm.” Olive Forrester barely looked up from behind her computer. She’d arrived at Hailee’s supervisory meeting nearly fifteen minutes late. In that time span, Hailee had paced the hallways, checked her calendar three times to be sure she wasn’t wrong in penciling Olive in, and then emailed Olive once. After that was done, the remaining ten minutes were spent agonizing over the choices that the judges for the Pink and Blue Book Awards had made for their semi-finals.
“I mean, one of the books in the fiction category is just there for politics. A bi trans man with a persecution complex. Of course, I’m all for diversity, but this character was so poorly written and constructed with every last stereotype in mind.”
“Not that dumb. She’s just…a little tired.”
“I think we all are.”
Rae nodded slowly. She gestured to the tall apartment building behind Hailee, which now had its power flicked back on. “You like living there?”
“Here? Oh, yeah. It’s nice. Not a lot of students, though I am one. Grad student,” Hailee added, then clarified some more. “But I’m almost done.”
Rae nodded, seemingly impressed. “Kit’s gotta move. I need her closer to be my babysitter, among other things. I’m going to tell her to move here, if it’s a good place.”
“It is. This,” Hailee said, gesturing around to the now empty courtyard. “Hardly happens. I like it here.”
“Good. Well, maybe we’ll be more than neighbours soon enough.”
“Maybe,” Hailee said. Tootsie tugged on her leash, reminding her yet again that he’d been promised a walk. “That’s a nice thought. For now—”
“Yes, walk your dog. Have a good night!”
Hailee waved and said much the same.
She was around the block in under twenty minutes, making it back up to her apartment building by three in the morning. Her bones ached with weariness, but she still glimpsed out across her apartment building to the next one over. Only a handful of people still had their lights on.
Which one is Kit and her sister?
Hailee closed her blinds before her mind could wander too far.
She was half-asleep when she realized she’d still not checked the Blue and Pink book award semi-finals. She sprung out of bed, only to realize that it, like most other things she thought important, it could wait until tomorrow.
Chapter 3
“Hey Rae,” Kit said, greeting her sister as she came in the door to her apartment. “Can I borrow your car?”
Rae slipped off her nurses’ shoes with a big sigh. “Not even gonna make me breakfast first?”
Kit gestured to the kitchen table, which still had French toast set up on it. It was fresh, not the stuff she’d made for Anissa at nearly one in the afternoon when they’d both crawled out of bed after the super late fire alarm. Though Rae had gone to her shift that day as planned, she’d been just as zonked when she got back. Several more days had passed since then, and it was only now that Kit—and Rae too—were finally feeling as if they had recouped all that sleep.
“Of course,” Rae reminded her now as she ohhed and ahhed over the new French toast, complete with in-season strawberries. “We don’t actually recoup that sleep.”
“But I am feeling better,” Kit said. “And I think you were right. So I’m going to run some errands, hence why I need your car.”
Rae slipped a strawberry into her mouth before raising a brow. “I love hearing I’m right, but I don’t think I told you that you needed to be more responsible by running errands. Going to the bank or grocery store sounds like the least sexy thing you should be doing.”
Kit blushed. She didn’t want to think about sexy things—yet of course, that was all she could think about. She half-heartedly touched the tattoo on the back of her neck, the one that her sister told her she should either cover up or get used to curious gazes.
“So,” Rae went on, easing into her seat and becoming serious. “Just what am I right about? And what exactly do you want the car for?”
Kit sighed. She pulled out the chair across from her sister and slid the hotel station list she’d made, and remade, several times this morning already. Rae glimpsed it quickly before she nodded in apprehension.
“So it’s a bucket list?”
“Not quite. It’s not that corny, I was just—”
“A bucket list is not corny. Maybe cliché, but the sentiment is good. You’re going to die, so, make sure you don’t waste time. I see no fault in that.”
Kit had nodded slowly. Their mother, for all the pain she went through with her cancer, had never once forgotten that her time was running out. At first, Kit thought that was normal. Doesn’t everyone realize their mortality when diagnosed with something serious? But Rae had set her correct. She didn’t work in oncology—mostly an ER nurse with occasional shifts in other departments—but she saw enough people who, even in the middle of their own death, refused to acknowledge it. It’s a very human thing, she assured Kit, but it still baffles me. Their mother, in spite of not having a bucket list, was never too blinded by pain or too drugged by her medication to forget what actually mattered: her kids, with her as much as possible, before she died.
“So if it’s not a bucket list,” Rae asked. “What are you going to call it?”
“I’m…not too sure. It’s just some things that were put on hold, you know?” Kit recalled the first item on the list as enrol in school again. She’d only half-finished her degree when her mother was diagnosed, and though the profs she’d had had been understanding, she’d still failed that year. Then never enrolled again.
“I know I can get a job without a degree,” Kit went on, listing her numerous gigs already. “But I hate that this is hanging over me. I have like, maybe six courses to complete? Maybe more.”
“Okay. So this one has multiple stages. Go to the registrar’s office, get your old transcripts…it’s a lot, but it’s good.” Rae leaned forward so she could grab her keys out of her back pocket. She plunked them down on the table. “There you go.”
“Really? That simple?”
“That simple when you tell me the truth. And when you’re finally doing something.”
Kit nodded. She’d been wracking her brain so much the past little while, just trying to remember things that made her happy, she wasn’t sure if she was remembering her real life anymore or the numerous amounts of bad TV movies she’d watched in the interim. As Rae finished her French toast, though, and followed up with many of the other items on Kits’ list, parts of herself that she’d forgotten, or doubted, came back stronger than ever.
“I love this one,” Rae said, laughing at the last item. “Cover up the tattoo.”
Kit blushed again. “What?”
“I didn’t mean cover it up like that. I mean either show it off with a nice no back dress, so you can invite those hand touches, or you should just wear turtlenecks all the time. Since you know, the artist put the damn thing too high on your back.”
Kit touched her neck—because really, that was where her tattoo had gone. Her first and only tattoo, made in a rush, and clearly not thought out. It was a lingering part of her past that demonstrated how reckless she’d once been, but now it only felt like folly.
“I’ve always liked it.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes,” Rae said with a slight frown. “That’s the sister I knew.”
“Maybe I won’t get a total cover up, then,” Kit said. “Maybe I’ll just…fix it.”
“Or get a low-backed dress. Embrace it. Lean in. Now,” Rae said, standing and taking her plate still covered in sticky syrup to the counter. “I’m full of carbs and my bed awaits. Is Anissa…?”
“With Abigail next door. I got her.”
“Good. I trust Abigail’s mother, though, so you should get started on this whole university thing now. And maybe,” Rae added, quirking a brow, “you should apply for that apartment next door, too.”
Kit huffed. She knew that her sister had partly gotten the application for the building across the street to make her own life easier; with a babysitter close by, there was no need to fuss and worry. But she also saw her clear other motives. If Rae wasn’t so tired, she’d probably snatch up Kit’s list and add yet another item at the end, just to make it a perfect rom-com: Fall in love.
Rae blew a kiss to her sister in a dramatic fashion before she closed her bedroom door. Kit heard her snoring in a matter of minutes. She added the dishes to the sink, lingering on the clean-up, and running out the clock in her mind for the school. Most buildings closed at four now, right? If she showed up at 4:05, then it wasn’t really her fault she couldn’t register. And if she didn’t add the last corny item to her cliché list, then when it didn’t happen, she didn’t fail, either.
But, Kit remembered, that would be acting like she was never going to die. Even if she—thankfully—had passed the screening test they’d done less than a year ago now, the one that had caught Rae’s early-stage cancer—she couldn’t live her life the way she was now. Rae may have been overzealous in her efforts, but she was…boring. She didn’t want to be boring anymore.
So Kit left the dishes and wrote a note for Abigail’s mother on her phone, before she snatched up her list again and headed out the door.
* * * *
Kit parked her sister’s car on the north side of campus with ten minutes to spare before four. She didn’t need to Google directions for the campus because barely anything had changed. The University of Waterloo was known for its science and math crowd, and the buildings on that side of the campus had been clearly built up and made that much more high-tech over the past few years since Kit had attended full-time. The registration office was on the other side of campus, where she’d parked now, and mostly attached to the Arts department. Since Kit had been a double major, she’d seen both the space-aged and futuristic buildings of the sciences alongside the run-down and severe, 1970s architecture of the Arts department. Even if the arts buildings depressed her with their chronic underfunding, the moment she stepped inside she felt as if she was at home again.
Memories from her first-year flings, her second-year boy and girlfriends, and then her third year of heartbreak dotted the surface. She almost turned around several times, but her sister’s words, and the crumbled list in her pocket made her keep walking forward. She just had to finish her degree. She didn’t need to worry about the cash, or even employability that much because her mother’s life insurance, plus her retirement nest egg, had been transferred to herself and her sister. And she’d been getting enough design work to sustain her. There was nothing holding her back—only herself, and the life she’d thought she’d wanted to live.
So much of Kit’s past had come up the past ten minutes, she thought she was seeing a ghost when she stepped into the registrar’s office. A woman sat behind the desk, tall with broad shoulders, and dressed in rather butch, but still professional clothing. The dark hair that fell across her forehead in wispy bangs reminded her so much of her first-year roommate, Yessina Lopez, that Kit stopped and stared before she met her eyes.
And then everything clicked for both of them.
“Kit?”
“Yessina?”
“Yes!” She rose from her desk and drew her long arms towards her torso in a triumphant gesture. She stepped out from behind the closed off registration area and ran into Kit’s open arms in a hug. She lifted her off the ground, startling Kit with her surprising strength.
“Jesus,” Kit said once Yessina had placed her back on the carpeted office floors. “Did you become a stunt person? Like for real? You’re so strong!”
“You’re also thinner,” Yessina said. She surveyed Kit’s oversized T-shirt and baggy jeans. She seemed to want to reach out and pinch her but held back. “You doing okay?”
“I am. Actually. Yes. I just…” Kit ran a hand through her hair. This was too much. She reached into her pocket, pushed passed her list, and withdrew her wallet. She still had her old student card tucked behind a gym membership she never used. She pulled it out, noticed how much fuller her face had been then, and sighed. Maybe things had been a lot harder than she first realized. Maybe Rae, in all her joking concern, had been deadly serious.
“Oh wow,” Yessina said, snatching the student card from her. Kit tried to grab it back, but Yessina’s six-foot height had nothing on Kit’s five six. To think, she used to feel like the tallest person in her family. She’d been sure that had been why the housing department put her and Yessina together. Just to humble her with height, and to live the life that her five-foot mother lived, always on step stools.
It just helped that Yessina was amazing in other ways, too. She’d been a business major, something she insisted that she’d need as a stunt double once she made it big in Hollywood. Everyone was a contractor there, so you had to take care of your own business. Kit realized, in no uncertain terms now, that she’d internalized Yessina’s many business lectures in order to take over her mother’s estate.
“Wow,” Yessina passed back the student card, and then waved Kit over to her desk. The office was closed now—Kit had barely made it before the four o’clock close time—but she as no longer concerned now that her old roomie was behind the desk. “It’s been a long time. You really want to come back here, of all places?”
“Yes,” Kit said, surprised at how much she meant it. “I never felt like I finished.”
“You had good reasons.”
“And those reasons have stopped making sense.”
When Yessina gestured to a chair, and then insisted that Kit pull it over to her desk so they could chat as if this was a cafe, she relented. Yessina even passed her a k-cup of coffee s she told her about her mother. Yessina knew some of the details; in their second year, they’d been in the same business accounting class, and she’d witnessed Kit’s astronomical grades slide. She didn’t fail that year, but mostly thanks to Yessina’s penchant for late night studying at the library, with a group of other people she’d cobbled together to form a haphazard social friend group.
“You still talk to them now?” Kit wondered aloud after she’d caught Yessina up on what happened after their last full study session together. “They were nice.”
“They still are nice. And you know, I’m just about to see them now.” Yessina leaned back and grabbed her phone. She pursed her lips when she noticed the time. “I may have missed our dinner, actually.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“Don’t worry. I should really say they’re eating lunch now because they’re all damn night hawks. I’m the only one with a real job.” Yessina rolled her eyes, which made Kit laugh. Out of all the people from that study group, she would not have figured Yessina for the nine-to-fiver now. She wondered if, like her own change in plans, something tragic had happened.
“Do not worry,” Yessina said again, already one the same wavelength as kit. “Nothing bad happened. At least, not any more than usual. I just needed a job to hold down student debt. But I’m gonna be a stunt double. One day soon…”
“That’s great. I can’t wait until you’re set on fire.”
Yessina beamed. It had been a joke between them in their residence anytime she left the hot plate on. “I didn’t forget, just practicing for my fire walk.” Yessina sent a quick message on her phone before she gathered up their mugs of coffee. “You know,” she said as she returned. “You should come with me.”
“To lunch? I’m good. Pretty sure I’ve eaten my weight in French toast this week.”
“First of all, that sounds amazing. Second of all, you need it. But no, not to lunch. Our study group is now our improv group.”
“Really?”
“Yep. And we were holding auditions tonight for more people to join. We just have one requirement.”
Kit braced herself. She was not a funny person. Not in the improv way. She was about to say all of this, when Yessina cut her off. “You’re funny, don’t worry.”
“How are you doing that? You’re reading my mind like my sister.”
“Your face is very expression,” Yessina said, her tone sweet. “You give everything away. It’s perfect for improv, really.”
“Wouldn’t that make it bad? I’d give away the jokes.”
“The jokes are in the moment for improv. So you’d be perfect. As long as you can say yes, you’re a stellar improv actor.”
“I don’t know.”
“You pronounced yes in a strange way.” Yessina winked. “Come on. I will get you registered now, so don’t worry about that. But we will have just enough time to make it to the theatre on campus so my friends can judge you.”
“That sounds great,’ Kit said, deadpanned. It wasn’t long before she and Yessina were smiling wide.
“See? Beautiful, expressive face. You’re set.” Yessina went back to her computer, clicking in the information from Kit’s student card at lightning speed.
“Is that the only requirement, then?” Kit asked. “An expressive face?”
“We’re a queer improve group. So we all gotta be ladies and like ladies in some way. From what I can recall…”
“Yeah,” Kit said, nodding quietly. Yessina had listened to more than one heartbreak story about a straight girl that first year. “I fall under that.”
“Fantastic. So what sort of classes do you want to take?”
Kit baulked. It took her a moment to remember that, initially, she’d come here for her degree. She already felt like she was back in school, and that nothing bad had ever happened. It was a fresh start, truly, and so—she thought of the first classes she’d failed. “Enrol me in Business, Math, and Computer Science, if there are summer sessions. Maybe throw in an elective, too. If there is room, of course.”
“Well, it’ll be tight. The deadline is close,” Yessina said. After a blink, she smiled and winked. “But you’re in.”
Chapter 4
“So did you see the results?” Hailee asked as she twisted her face in mock-horror. “I can’t believe it, right?”
“Hmm.” Olive Forrester barely looked up from behind her computer. She’d arrived at Hailee’s supervisory meeting nearly fifteen minutes late. In that time span, Hailee had paced the hallways, checked her calendar three times to be sure she wasn’t wrong in penciling Olive in, and then emailed Olive once. After that was done, the remaining ten minutes were spent agonizing over the choices that the judges for the Pink and Blue Book Awards had made for their semi-finals.
“I mean, one of the books in the fiction category is just there for politics. A bi trans man with a persecution complex. Of course, I’m all for diversity, but this character was so poorly written and constructed with every last stereotype in mind.”
