Free Final Exam by Maggie Barbieri

impending pizza delivery, his on getting a grade higher than a D.
    I took my pizza back to my room and opened the door. I spied Trixie sitting on the bed, dutifully awaiting my arrival. She jumped off and ran circles around me, nearly knocking me over. I knew what we had to do before we got to eat our pizza, so I put her on the leash, stuffed a New York Times delivery bag into the waistband of my skirt, and took her out the side door into the parking lot.
    I was still wearing my heels, but the only place I could see to take her was the cemetery, directly across the parking lot from the dorm. It wasn’t a straight shot, but up a little hill, which I reasoned I could scale in my black suede pumps. I started across the lot and up the hill, using my heels to dig into the soil. Going back to change my shoes wasn’t an option; Trixie had to go and any time I wasted going back to my room to change my shoes was going to be time taken away from eating my pizza before the house meeting. Trixie scampered up the little incline, dragging me behind her.
    I realized that walking my dog in a cemetery probably wasn’t the most reverent or polite thing I could do, but the dog had been cooped up in my dorm room since lunchtime and needed to go out. I didn’t have time to do a leisurely riverside walk like we had in the morning and at noon, so this was going to have to do.
    After everything I’d done and the decisions I had made, I was going to hell anyway, so if my dog took a dump on a long-gone nun’s grave, what was the harm? I led Trixie down one of the paths between the graves and as far away from a final resting place as I could and looked around as she paused, sniffed, ran in circles, and then got down to business. I said a silent apology to Sister Margaret Dolores Russell, born 1845, died 1941.
    “Look, Trix,” I said, wiping off Sister Margaret’s grave marker, “she died on Pearl Harbor day.”
    Trixie was not impressed.
    I got up and continued walking. Off in the distance, I could see the Science Building, where my ex-husband had spent many a day teaching, hitting on colleagues and students alike, and being a general shithead. Next to that was the library, a building that was virtually unknown to most of my students. And beyond that was the dorm where I had lived for most of my time here, right next to the new dorm that was going up. From what I had read in the latest campus newspaper, the building was going to be state-of-the-art, with Wi-Fi, flat-screen televisions in every lounge, satellite cable service, popcorn machines, and rooms decorated by some fancy designer who got to put his name on every piece of furniture. I looked at my old dorm and sighed. I guess things had to change, but was the change for the better? My dorm had had Murphy beds that folded into the walls to make more room for the two girls per, laminate-topped desks bolted to the floors, and televisions with rabbit ears. And we had been very happy. At least I had. Max had always complained that living at St. Thomas wasn’t any better than living at a women’s reformatory.
    Trixie was taking an inordinately long time, peeing on every gravestone she encountered. We wended our way through the cemetery, where I read some of the grave markings; others were worn away from years of exposure. Most of the sisters buried there had lived long, long lives, and many had survived well into old age without Wi-Fi.
    Trixie sniffed at the grass and squatted to pee again. “Oh, for God’s sake, Trix. We’ll be back. You can mark your territory later.” I knelt down and petted her, accepting her kiss. To my right, I heard rustling and my back straightened. “Who’s there?” The hair on Trixie’s neck went up and she let out a low growl, straining at the leash. “Down, Trix,” I whispered. I stayed in the crouch, listening for more rustling.
    The next sound was far more menacing as a beer bottle sailed past my head and hit the gravestone next to me, that of one