Free Principles of Love by Emily Franklin

the back of my head, tangle his fingers in my hair and pull into him so that we could —
    “Oh, hi, Chris,” I say to Hickey MLUT.
    An ambulance whizzes by, sirens breaking the quiet campus night. Chris points to the blaring and says, “AP — bad scene.”
    “Excuse me?”
    “Alcohol poisoning — some freshman. Pretty lucky for her someone found her passed out in the master bedroom and called 911.”
    Chris shuffles along next to me. Life is so weird sometimes. I know useless trying to plan out conversations (even though I’ll probably do it forever) or predict what will be. I sure as hell never pictured walking along in the brisk night, my feet scraping the sidewalk, heading home from a lame party with a MLUT for company. Chris talks and talks, his English accent alluring and distracting. He talks about English sweets (candy = sweets) that he misses form home and whips out — no, not that — a Curly Whirly, a sort-pf braided caramel rope covered in chocolate. He walks me back up to my house and we sit in the circle of the field hockey playing grounds.
    “You’d look good in one of those little skirts,” Chris says, chewing and miming a field hockey face off.
    “I don’t think so,” I say, not in the way that says bad body image , but in the that’s not gonna happen way.
    Just as I’m thinking Chris isn’t such a slut after all, and our conversation is good, he tries to feed me the remaining bit of Curly Whirly, sliding it into my mouth in a decidedly un-Wonkalike fashion.
    “Whoa, there,” I say as if I’ve somehow stumbled into a Western flick.
    “What?” Chris has that guy dopey look on his face, and is leaning in to kiss me when I stand up. He follows my lead like what I’m really saying is I prefer to be tongue-kissed standing up .
    “I have to go,” I say.
    “Suit yourself,” Chris says Englishly and then adds, “You’ll be back.” Unlike a regular dissed guy, he insists on walking me to my front door (proper? Or just very clever?). He stands waiting for me to get my keys out.
    “Thanks for the candy,” I say.
    “Sweets,” he corrects.
    “Sweets,” I say, and something makes me want to cry. I wish I wanted someone like Chris, who is nice enough and cute enough, but who doesn’t register on a gut level (or below, I might add). Life would be simpler if I could just accept what was put forth in front of me. I touch the heart-shaped knocker and go inside.
    I walk into the kitchen and Dad hangs up the phone quickly.
    “Who was that?” I ask.
    Dad pauses. “Just faculty stuff,” he says. It could be that he’s already been alerted to the blood alcohol incident, or something else entirely. “How was your evening?” Evening always connotes to me a dinner dance with gloves and hair tendrils that intentionally fall from their clasp, but I don’t say this.
    “Okay, I guess,” I poke my head into the fridge in case, magically, a pastry has decided to move in.
    “I got you coffee syrup,” Dad says. He stands next to me, bumping me out of the way and moving the broccoli and bag of apples (he likes them cold) to the side so he can get at the bottle that’s been lying down at the back.
    I smile, “Thanks.” Since I was little, I’ve always loved coffee milk — you can get the syrup only in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, where it’s made. I’ve even been to the factory (is there any wonder I am single when I freely admit this shit?) and, as with my Swedish fish fanaticism, I’m quite the coffee syrup advocate. No caffeine, just a sugary coffee-like flavor, like ice cream in liquid form.
    I take my milk and watch Buffy in rerun. Sipping as Sarah Michelle Gellar (note to self: should I have three names? Is that really secret to success?) ass and groin kicks her way to safety, I suddenly know what I’m going to write my English paper on. I’ll write about how when women have power they have been seen as scary, like witches in Salem or Henry Miller’s plays, or Buffy, or even