1: The Misinformed Women, Part One

It's pretty common to have two first names – that is, to have a first name, and a middle name that could also be a first name, like “James.” Some people even have three first names, if their last name fits the bill as well. Andrew Jonathan Warren-Wilson had four first names. He was reflecting on this strange, meaningless fact while waiting to hear those four names called by Professor Wells, his Group Communications professor. Professor Wells always called students by their full name.

“It helps establish a more personal connection,” he told his students in his smooth, enthusiastic voice on the first day of class. This was also his excuse for telling countless stories about his “slutty” ex-wife Tracy and her “sociopathic” cat Edward Fluffles XIV, about whose poor communication skills the students were expected to write their final paper. Tenure was a dark and powerful thing.

Andrew suppressed a yawn as he watched his alphabetically precedent classmates - most of whom had real last names like “Brown” or “Turner” - approach the professor’s desk to collect their most recent exams. Some students pocketed the exams without giving them a thought, while others took a look at their grades immediately. Those in the second category tended to have a stronger reaction, with some practically skipping out of class and others destroying and/or disposing of the paper to cope with their anger or shame. Andrew hardly understood why he was taking Group Communications, so students in the latter category fascinated him. He got tired of watching after about twenty students and tried to make out the nearly-erased ink on the otherwise vacant whiteboard to pass the time. He made a game of trying to guess what class had used the board before his and yes, he knew how sad that was. From the faded equations about profit and interest rates, Andrew guessed it was some type of economics class.

 “Warren-Wilson” placed Andrew at the bottom of most every alphabetically arranged list, so when he got up to collect his paper, all of the sporadically placed desks that lay between him and Professor Wells’s desk at the front of the room were vacant. He made his way through the sea of desks, stumbling around metal legs that protruded from chairs at awkward angles. As he neared the front of the classroom, Andrew realized that he had forgotten his backpack at his desk and sluggishly doubled back for it. The shoulder strap of the backpack had somehow found itself caught underneath the leg of the chair Andrew was sitting in, so he had to kind of tilt the desk a bit so that he could liberate his backpack using his foot.

After what felt like at least a full minute, Andrew made it to the front of the class. Professor Wells was still waiting patiently, wearing his soft smile that so perfectly complimented his gentle, bald head. You would never know from looking at him that the smile was more than likely fueled by the thoughts of tormenting the fourteenth Edward Fluffles.

Andrew picked up the lone paper remaining atop his desk, folded it in half once, and then again, and shoved it in his pocket. “You have a nice day, too, Professor Wells,” Andrew said half-heartedly as he gestured at the message scrawled impersonally across the whiteboard in green ink: “Have a nice day, everybody!”

“Yes, thank you, Andrew, you t-” Professor Wells replied with muted but sincere enthusiasm before stuttering and turning to look curiously at the board behind him. Andrew had already left.

***

Andrew’s communications class was located in the school’s “Classroom Building,” a name he found particularly redundant given that even CSU Cierto’s greenhouse had a classroom built into it. The Classroom Building was a perfect rectangle, the center of which opened up into a little courtyard with a few benches and vending machines. Andrew nearly jumped as he rounded the corner and was immediately confronted by a young woman who appeared to be waiting for him. “Appeared to be”, because while she was standing where she stood when she waited for him, she was presently engaged in whatever was happening on the screen of her cellphone. Her dark hair was tied in a ponytail, revealing an ever-so-slightly pudgy face of rounded edges, and the plain grey sweatshirt she was wearing fit irregularly, exposing the bottom of the graphic tee she was wearing beneath it.

“Hey Katelyn,” Andrew said routinely, glancing down towards her phone curiously, but it was at such an angle that he failed to make anything out.

“Hi, Andrew,” she said, her eyes flickering up towards him and then back down to her phone in a failed attempt at a genuine greeting. For several more seconds, the only sound between them was the faint tapping of her fingers against the phone’s touch screen. Tap tap tap. “How’d you do on the test?” Andrew pulled the paper out of his pocket and began fumbling to get it open. Tap tap. Tap tap tap. Taptaptaptaptaptaptap. Tap. She looked up from her phone. “I got an ‘A,’” she declared, though she didn’t have to; they both had already assumed that.

“A ‘C.’” Katelyn was already back to looking at her phone. She gave an empty nod, her eyes scanning horizontally across the screen. Taptaptaptaptaptaptaptap. Andrew folded and pocketed the paper once more as Katelyn did the same with her phone, though her hand remained in her pocket as well.

Tap.

Katelyn’s green eyes suddenly came to life with a quiet sound of realization. “Oh right, so Saturday night-”

“Andrew!” a higher and more comfortable voice called from down the hallway Andrew had come from. The voice belonged to another young woman, this one with shoulder-length black hair that framed her narrow face. She was wearing a Metallica shirt and purple polka-dot skirt. Andrew spun on his heels away from Katelyn to face the newcomer, running his hands through the mess of hair that adorned his head in an attempt to flatten it. “Hey, Linda!”

Linda’s movement was energetic, as if she was trying to leave the ground with every step, and all heads turned to her with an ingrained interest as she made her way toward Andrew. “You’ll never guess what happened!” she exclaimed, bouncing slightly on her heels when she stopped walking. Andrew stared at her unblinkingly, waiting for her answer and listening to Katelyn’s now incessant tapping. “Well, aren’t you gonna guess?” she asked with an exasperated gesture. Andrew just stammered and then, words failing him, shrugged and allowed her to continue. “Mondays with Garfield has a new drummer! Guess who it is! Guess!” Andrew opened his mouth to respond just in time for Linda to interject with “It’s me, of course!”

“Well congratulations!”

“So anyways our first show is at Cafè de la Cafè this Saturday at seven and they said I could bring a friend backstage. Interested?”

Andrew’s mouth twitched as he fought a grin and tried to remain composed. “Yeah sounds great!” he said. “Seven, right?”

“Six-thirty,” Linda said. “I’ve got to get to class now; can’t wait to see you there!” In a fluid, energetic motion Linda maneuvered around Andrew and Katelyn and bounded down the hall past them.

Andrew watched Linda leave for as long as he could without it becoming weird and then returned his attention to Katelyn, whose hand and phone had returned to her pocket once more. “Sorry about that,” Andrew said. Katelyn shrugged. “So what was it you were saying before? Something about tomorrow?”

“Oh, um, nothing. I meant Saturday morning, not night, sorry. Are we still on for our December Mega Marvel Movie Marathon?”

“We seriously need to move this thing to an ‘M’ month,” Andrew said with a laugh. Katelyn just continued to stare at him, the corners of her mouth turned up almost imperceptibly. “Of course we’re still on!”

Katelyn’s shoulders slumped slightly and she exhaled. “Okay, great,” she said. She looked over her shoulder briefly. “I’ve gotta get going to Calc,” she said hurriedly, taking a few steps backwards.”Text me your movie recommendations!” She turned around mid-sentence and scurried to her class. Andrew called goodbye after her and she completed the exchange.

Andrew watched her leave and, when she was gone, checked the time on his phone. He was glad to see that he still had plenty of time to get to the bus, but was less glad to see that his phone only had 5% of its battery life remaining, meaning he would have nothing to do on the bus. He cursed his luck, and lazily made his way across campus.

***

The bus dropped Andrew off in front of a fast-food restaurant about twenty minutes from where he lived, if he were walking, which he nearly always was. The walk was pleasant enough, or at least as pleasant as a walk could be in the suburban cesspool of utter banality that was Cierto, California. It wasn’t an ugly town, really; just a plain one. There wasn’t a hint of originality - the shopping centers were grey and filled with chain establishments, and the houses looked as if they were the same ten designs repeated with slightly different palettes throughout town, as if the city was planned by a really unimaginative six year-old playing with LEGOs.

Without anything to listen to, the walk was in close competition with the bus ride as Andrew’s least favorite part of the day, so he was pleasantly surprised to see a dull silver truck waiting for him across from the stop, standing out as the beacon of boring light in a sea of darkly colored minivans. Sitting in the driver’s seat, moving erratically to the beat of some metal track that Andrew couldn’t hear, was Steven, a nicely-dressed young man with neatly-spiked black hair. He was singing along passionately, and his eyes were shut tightly, as if engaged in a fantasy - one which Andrew knew would likely involve a stage, a crowd, and the most generic scantily clad women you could imagine.

Andrew opened the door only to be confronted with indecently loud music, which Steven quieted wistfully. “And on the fourth day, the roommate did arriveth in his chariot to save the pauper from damnation, and the heavens opened up, and the Lord did smile, and it was good,” Andrew said as he climbed into the passenger seat.

Steven did not look amused. “Why the hell didn’t you answer your phone?” he asked as he started the car. Andrew told him. He took a deep breath, paused for a moment, and then exhaled; he looked calmer. Steven was kind of a hippie like that. “This is what happens when I try to do a nice thing for my favorite roommate,” he mumbled. “First I get ignored, then I get blasphemed at.” Andrew apologized half-heartedly. “Anyways, have you heard from Connie yet?” Connie was their boss, and the owner of “Connie’s Convenient Convenience Store.” Andrew said that he hadn’t. “I guess the security system is under repairs or something, and that includes the camera, so until that’s fixed she wants one person on each shift to kind of act as a replacement and make sure nobody takes anything.”

Andrew nodded absentmindedly, and the drive continued in silence, save for the Slayer or Megadeath or whoever it was Steven was listening to. It was only a few minutes to their house - well, more like Steven’s house. Well, more like Steven’s dad’s house - during which Andrew watched the platitudinous streets sweep by meaninglessly. He tried to people watch, something he liked to do when he wasn’t on the bus because the bus was too damn depressing, but Steven was driving too quickly or too slowly and the people passed him by, or he passed them by. Eventually he gave up and just started thinking about his homework for that evening and about Tracy’s sociopathic cat and about Captain America and about Linda. “Oh, I have a thing with this girl I like this-” he started to say, but then he realized that they were home and that Steven was already of the truck.

The house that Steven was renting from his father wasn’t any more interesting than the rest of Cierto. Less so, if that was possible. It was almost a perfect box in design, with a rectangular door on the left and a garage on the right, and windows placed neatly around all four sides. The roof was slanted at such an angle as to appear almost flat. The first time Katelyn was visiting, and was asking where to park, Andrew actually had to walk outside and look at the house in order to find a defining feature to describe to her. He ended up just waiting outside instead.

If the house had any redeeming qualities it was the interior. It certainly didn’t look like it was occupied by three college students, thanks to the fact that Steven’s dad was like the emperor of some ancient paper company or something. The living room had a massive wall-mounted TV, two couches, a coffee table covered with sports and music magazines, and an expensive-looking computer that Andrew wasn’t allowed to use. Sitting on one of the two couches, wearing a pair of shorts and a solid-orange t-shirt and watching some romantic comedy about a band or something, was Curtis, their other roommate and Andrew’s cousin.

Curtis immediately paused his movie when he noticed Andrew and Steven walking into the house. He had a look about him that was difficult to read. “Did you tell him?” He was looking at Steven.

“Not yet,” Steven said. “I figured it’d be best if we were all here together.”

Andrew looked between them, confused. “Tell me what?”

“You mean you didn’t want to look like the only bad guy,” Curtis corrected.

“The only bad guy in what?” Andrew asked.

During this, Steven had shuffled across the living room to the computer chair, where he was now sitting. “Sit down,” Steven said.

“I like to stand,” Andrew replied.

“You’re being kicked out,” Curtis said flatly.

The room got quiet as Andrew looked from Curtis, to Steven, and then to Curtis again to see if they were serious or not. They certainly seemed to be. He looked at Steven once more just in case. Still serious. “What.”

Steven shrugged. “Sorry, man. We wanted to tell you sooner, but, you know. I didn’t know what to say.”

“Just know that this isn’t about anything personal, Andrew. It’s not about you.”

“Then what is this about?” Andrew demanded. “I’ve been paying my rent! I do my share of the chores!”

Curtis shot Steven a look, and he sighed. “It’s not about any of that, either,” Steven explained. “My girlfriend is moving in and…you know how it is. She moves in on Monday, but you can have a bit more time than that if you need it. I’d really like it if you were out by the end of the week, though.”

“I didn’t even know you had a girlfriend! How long can you two have possibly even been together?” Steven opened his mouth, but Andrew didn’t wait for him to finish. “You’ve been best friends with Curtis for years and - and you’re kicking us out? Over this?” Curtis stood up.

Steven gave Andrew a puzzled look. “What? When did I say I was kicking Curtis out? Of course I’m not!”

Now it was Andrew’s turn to be confused. “What do you mean ‘what?’ Why would you be kicking me out and not him?”

“Andrew, I don’t have to worry about him. Curtis is gay.”

“You-I-” Andrew was speechless for a moment. “You don’t even want privacy? What?! Are you afraid I might steal your girlfriend? That’s insane!”

Again, Steven just shrugged. “Sorry, man. It’s nothing personal. She just really seems your type and, well, I’m in love with her. It’s not that I don’t trust you or her, it’s just…I don’t wanna take that risk, you know?”

“This is such bullshit,” Andrew said in disbelief. He turned to Curtis. “Are you really just gonna let him do this?”

Curtis’s shoulders slumped in resignation. “Look, dude. I don’t want this, I really don’t. You’re my second-favorite family member. But this is Steven’s dad’s house, and if Steven says you’ve gotta go, then there’s nothing I can do about that. But if you need any help at all finding a new place…”

      For an uncomfortably long time, tension and anger filled the gaps left by silence. “I’m going to my room to do homework,” Andrew eventually declared. “You can watch Parks and Rec without me tonight.” Nobody stopped him as he stormed through the house.