Free Parallel by Lauren Miller

palm is warm, dry, and slightly scratchy. A boy’s hand. For a split second, I wonder what it would feel like running down my back.
    “I’m Abby,” I tell him, and quickly drop his hand before my thoughts go R-rated.
    Michael scoots over, making room for me, so I sit.
    “So, you’re a freshman?” he asks.
    “Is it that obvious?”
    He grins. “Kind of. You have this sort of bewildered look on your face. It’s cute.” Bewildered and unshowered and, now, sweating. Cute is probably not the most appropriate word. I dig around in my bag for some gum but can’t find any.
    “What college are you in?” Michael asks. When I just stare at him blankly, he laughs. “Don’t worry, I’m not gonna stalk you. I was just wondering. I’m in Pierson, but I live off campus at the ADPhi house.”
    Oh. Right. Yale has the whole residential college thing. Caitlin explained it to me when she got in. Freshmen get assigned to one of twelve residential colleges, where they live the entire time they’re at Yale unless they move off campus. Each is its own little community, and the colleges compete against one another in intramurals and sit together at football games. But which one am I in?
    Michael is still waiting for me to respond. “I must look especially menacing today,” he jokes when I don’t.
    “Oh—no,” I say quickly, “it’s just . . .” It’s just that I had no idea what you were talking about because I wasn’t here yesterday, have no idea how I got here, and know virtually nothing about this school. “I live in Vanderbilt Hall?” It sounds more like a question than an answer, but Michael doesn’t seem to notice.
    “So you’re in Berkeley,” he says with a nod. “Cool.” Now I’m even more confused, but since Michael is the only one of the two of us who knows what the hell he’s talking about, I defer to him.
    From inside the lecture hall, the professor gets louder. Michael and I both lean into the wall, listening. “Today we continue our discussion of prehistoric art,” comes the voice through the wall. Michael and I both reach for our notebooks and pens, and we spend the next forty minutes scribbling furiously.
    As soon as the lecture ends, Michael has to hurry to his next class. “Another professor with a punctuality mandate,” he explains, slinging his backpack over his shoulder. “But I’ll see you Monday, right?” When I nod, he smiles. “Good.”
    Caitlin emerges from the auditorium a few seconds later. “I didn’t see you inside,” she says. She retrieves a bottle of Aleve from her bag and pops two pills into her mouth. “Man, I can’t seem to kick this headache.”
    “I took notes from out here. Hey, listen, are you busy right now?”
    “Nope. Wanna get some lunch?”
    “I need you to come with me to the library,” I say.
    “Why?”
    “I’ll explain when we get there.”
    When I unlock the door to my carrel, Caitlin looks surprised. “You already rented a weenie bin?” I slide open the door and motion for her to go inside, then close the door behind us and relock it. Caitlin drops her bag on the desk and crosses her arms. “Now will you please tell me what’s going on?”
    “Remember eighth grade, when Jeff Butler dumped me the week before the spring dance?”
    “Of course. You didn’t come to school for three days.”
    “Do you remember what you said to me?”
    “He spits when he talks?”
    I shake my head impatiently. “You said I shouldn’t let it bother me, because in some parallel world, I was the one who broke up with him.”
    “Look how wise I was, even back then.” Caitlin smiles, then immediately frowns. “Wait, is that why we’re here? Because you’re pining for Jeff Butler? Ab, the guy gives new meaning to the phrase ‘say it, don’t spray it.’ Plus, didn’t he chop off part of his pinkie in shop cla—”
    I cut her off. “This isn’t about Jeff.”
    “Then what is it about? Seriously, Abby, you’re starting to freak me out a little