Dedication (The Medicean Stars Saga Book 1) (10 page)

Foothills of the Western Mountains

A University Campus

Emerging from his office for the first time in over a month and for his first break since his last such outing with Ryan, Jon stretches. As his hands meet over his head, both shoulders crack with a satisfying pop. Shaking both arms, he returns them to normal height and pulls the door shut behind him. His key slides into the lock, the handle turned partway and the door shoved in with the practiced ease of someone used to this door’s specific quirks. Ignoring the weight of a class-worth of midterms to grade, a draft of a paper ready for review, and his own homework, he shoulders his bag and allows himself to think of the next couple of hours of freedom that he is planning on enjoying.

Pulling on his hat and gloves, he steps through the first in a series of doors designed to separate the building into different air circulation zones. This particular one separates his hall, which is lined with cell-like offices that are identical to his, from a slightly wider hall, with a series of labs down one side and a large lecture hall on the other. Jon steals down the hall as quickly as he can. The lecture hall doors are open, and his advisor stands before the class, most likely confusing the entire room with a detour into her own research that isn’t relevant to the upcoming final. He knows that if he were to be noticed, he’d be cornered and harassed into explaining the weekend’s homework. He slips around the corner and almost runs into Sara where she is standing in the shadow of a display case.

She is reading a message. The illumination from her palm casts her face with a bluish tint and is the only reason Jon does not walk right into her, as his eyes had been blinded by the fading light coming through the doors not ten steps ahead. Jon sidesteps and tries to keep moving, knowing that the fate of his night hangs in the balance; desperation overcomes him as freedom comes slowly closer. He is halfway to the door when she hails him, sending his hope crashing into the jagged rocks of never-ending questions. He was so close to freedom. As if to tease him, he feels a slight breeze from the doors as he turns to face her.

“Hey, Jon! Wait up a second, I have a quick question for you.” Knowing how close he had come to freedom, Jon sighs and begins to suggest they head back to his office, when she asks a question he is not expecting.

“You’re not heading to meet Ryan, are you? He asked me to meet him at this one bar, and I have no clue where it is.”

Confused, Jon looks at her. This is not a question he was prepared for. While he may have just been thinking of the answer to her question, his mind had already shifted preemptively into its academic track as soon as he heard his name. It takes him a second or two to mentally shift his focus back to foreign thoughts of socialization.

“Uh, yeah. I’m headed to meet him right now if you want to come with me? The place is on the other side of campus, but it’s a nice enough walk.”

“Sure, I’d love to come with you.”

They push through the doors and into the waning light of a chilly day, both of them savoring the refreshingly cold air for a second before hunkering down into their coats for the trudge before them. As the doors close behind them, the rustling commotion of class dismissal echoes out of the lecture hall. Jon is glad for the anonymity granted by his coat and hat, since a large percentage of that noise is people wondering if they’ll be able to find the teaching assistant in his office.

*

They wander along the concrete paths that run between the buildings, both with their eyes down and their collars turned up. Each allowing the other to set the pace, they walk slowly, letting the freshness of the breeze to soak into them. Both are lost in their own thoughts, united by a shared destination but separated by their different roles. After a particularly long and biting gust of the north wind, Jon’s mind turns to his current companion.

“Aren’t you in the four o’clock lecture?”

“Yeah, I am,” she responds somewhat quizzically through her scarf.

“I don’t want this to sound rude, but shouldn’t you have been in lecture? I mean the stuff she was going over today is the building blocks for the rest of the semester and most of the final.”

“Meh, not really. I sat through the first half, like I normally do, but, I mean, she has to spend so much of the class explaining basic concepts that it’s not really worth staying for the whole thing. Anyway, I’m only really taking it for fun.”

The last part takes Jon by surprise; nobody takes the class that his advisor teaches for fun. It’s one of the hardest classes the department offers and can often drive people away and into a completely different major. In fact, the only reason it is still being offered is that the dean likes to use it to weed out those students that aren’t really dedicated to the degree. Jon remembers struggling through it himself, and now he’s struggling through helping to teach it. No one takes that class for fun.

“Yet you still had to come into office hours for help with the homework, didn’t you?” There is a little more harshness in his tone than he intended, but he feels belittled by how she is treating what he took the past three years to begin to master.

“You didn’t really help me with the homework, I’d pretty much gotten it done on my own. But you did help me with another theory I had.”

Her eyes crinkle at the edges above her scarf as she smiles, then she gives him a wink. Still feeling peeved by her treatment of the class, he doesn’t really process her comment and the wink until she has already changed the subject. What kind of theory? He wonders, and what is she doing hanging out with Ryan and him on the only night off he is likely to get all month. He decides to play it cool and watch as the night progresses.

“Hurry up, I want to get to the bar and out of this infernal wind.” The irony is not lost on Jon as they increase their speed along the paths. Certain mythical places may, in fact, be freezing over with all the unusual things he’s heard so far, and little does he know that the trend might just be continuing into the evening.

*

Ryan is sitting in same booth as he was the last time that Jon joined him in the old and dark bar. The only difference on this occasion is a third glass for beer and the fact that the pitcher, instead of being empty, is only missing a single glass. Weaving through the tightly packed tables, Jon and Sara manage to duck through a game of darts without incident.

“I see you two ran into each other,” Ryan says, observing their joint entrance. Then, to Jon, he adds: “Sit your scrawny butt down and pour some beers for the lady and yourself.”

While Jon is following his friend’s directive, Ryan stands up and proceeds to give Sara an awkward hug and a murmured: “It’s good to see you again.”

She returns the gesture equally awkwardly before they both sit down across from Jon. By this time, the beers are poured, and it is time to start an actual conversation about important concerns.

“So, about that football team,” Jon says with a smile, “I hear they have a real chance this year with the new coach and all.”

“Aw, shut up about them; it’s all the school seems capable of talking about,” Ryan replies, still somewhat bitter about the circumstances he left the team under a few years before. “The only other thing everyone else on campus is talking about is how much they are going to drink this weekend. I’d much rather talk about that.”

“Have it your way you spoil-sport, I was just trying to poke some fun at you. Can’t have the lady here thinking you are too great a catch,” Jon says, indicating Sara and fishing for some context as to her presence.

Sensing the tone of the conversation, she jumps right in: “Don’t worry, I was probably going to chop him up as bait for something bigger. See I’m running out of worms, and I know the ‘Big One’ is out there. I just need the right bait.”

She punctuates her statement with a jab to Ryan’s ribs and a casual wink. Ryan ignores the entire exchange as if it is happening at a different table, on the other side of the bar.

“As for how much I’m thinking we should be drinking,” Ryan continues with a wave at the glass before him that despite Jon having just filled it is for from full. “I notice neither of you have finished even one beer yet. On the other hand, I am nearly halfway through my second. If you guys expect me not to feel guilty about allowing the tab to be split evenly, you’d better drink up.”

They cede to his logic, quickly empty their glasses, and pour themselves another round of the rich, frothy brew. This particular pitcher has a soothing malty flavor with a cleansing bite overall. The beer has a freshness that is characteristic of beer brewed under the same roof in which it is consumed. The pitcher disappears and is replaced with another, as the conversation slips under the influence of the relaxant. By the time the third pitcher is drained, all thoughts of serious matters have excused themselves to wait outside until “everyone grows up a little bit.”

They are laughing, arguing, and slapping at each other’s hands as they play a simple card game, with a deck of cards thoughtfully supplied by the proprietor. Sara makes a particularly impish play, forcing Ryan to concede defeat in this particular round. In a fit of mock rage, he throws down his cards and gives her a playful shove. Taken quite by surprise, she slides off the end of the wooden bench to land in an indecorous sprawl on the floor, nearly tripping the waitress who is bringing their fourth pitcher of beer.

The waitress, surprised by the sudden appearance of a pile of human on the floor in front of her, slops some beer over the edge of the pitcher and onto Sara’s shirt. The brown liquid lands on her shoulder before running down her front, but stops before it can reach the cusp of her breast. The waitress, as all in that particular line of work are trained to do, instantly begins to apologize for something that was not her fault.

“I’m terribly sorry. Can I get you a towel or something?”

“Don’t worry about it.” Sara brushes off her shoulder, doing absolutely nothing to change its beer-stained condition before standing and continuing with mock rage. “I’ll make me a new one out of the hide of this idiot who so rudely put me on the floor to begin with.”

“My most humble apologies madam,” Ryan says, looking appropriately chastised by her apparent rage. The threesome laugh, and the waitress joins in, glad that they appear to be decent enough to avoid making a scene. As the laughter fades and Jon tops up the glasses around the table, the conversation ebbs into silence, and they find themselves watching the screens mounted above the bar. A noticeably nondescript news announcer is reading from a script, while an inset shows footage of what appears to be rioting on a university campus. The headline running along the bottom of the screen proclaims: “University lecture series suspected front for terrorist attacks.”

The story must be high priority for the network, because shortly after they all start watching, the announcer is replaced with a reporter on location, who stands before a police barricade, outside of a university’s flagship building. The reporter waves his arms around, indicating the barricades and police vehicles that are blocking the entrances to the building. The scene then switches to an aerial view of the entire campus, showing blockades and search checkpoints throughout the campus, each one corresponding to a long line of students. The scene switches back to the field reporter once more. He is now walking away from the barricade. As the camera pans to follow him, he raises his right arm again and sweeps it across the gathered crowd of students. They’re sitting in small knots on the grass. Some are playing cards, others guitars, most are smiling and laughing with their friends, in spite of the mass of heavily armed police standing watch over them.

The camera zooms in on the field reporter as he prepares to sign off with a deadly serious expression on his face. As the volume is not turned up loudly enough in the bar for his words to be heard over the background noise, a new viewer might take the news story to be about some tragedy instead of a peaceful protest against increasing student fees and loan rates. Once the field reporter is done delivering his dire news, the screen cuts back to the studio reporter, who now shares the real estate with a list of tips titled: Stay safe around protests.

1. Avoid all protestors, do not socialize with or contact anyone participating in a protest

2. Do not enter the police controlled area, they are there for your protection

3. Remember that all protests can turn violent with no warning

4. Police will treat anyone in the area as an instigator should an incident occur

The citation at the bottom of the screen lists the branch of the government responsible for defense and controlling the military as issuing these guidelines for responsible and law abiding citizens.

Once the studio anchor completes her reading of the bullet points, she makes a brief comment, and the feed cuts to commercials. The country has been slowly slipping into the darker and colder days of winter, meaning the first commercial focuses on the bright, sunny, and family-oriented joys of a tropical cruise. The ad seems to remind everyone who is watching that their entire family could be so much happier if they’d only book right now, before the deal runs out. Lacking in both family and funds, due in no small part to rising student fees, the university students turn from the screen and back to their beer and camaraderie.

“Did you guys see how they tried to sensationalize that protest?” asks Jon. “I mean, a bunch of students sitting on a grassy field, and all of the sudden: Hide the kids, lock the doors, and batten down the hatches. They’re going to be rioting in the streets.”