A bag of opened chips dropped on my desk in front of the computer with a couple of the chips falling out on the keyboard. That crispy noise was so fascinating. Relaxed, I smoothed into my chair from my bed and grabbed some of these chips to my mouth. Every wonderful weekend should begin with a round of video gaming, even more so in the winter. Reaching out to my friend Zac, I put on my headphone began to chat with him and saw he started to play twenty minutes earlier. Just as the game was loading up and my fellow was telling me about how he broke up with that girl, mom came straight through the door behind me. Oh, she never knocks.
“Hi, sorry to interrupt,”said mom.
Eh, really? I looked at her, showing no interest, and hope she would finish before my game get ready.
Everyone even a nerdy weirdo could feel her disgust bursting through her eyes and other openings of her skin.
She proclaimed, as usual, “I want you to be ready in half an hour. We will have lunch together with Mrs. Reine and her two sons.”
Trust me, at that time, a real storm was starting in my throat and its lighting stuck into my head.
“Why do we eat lunch that early?” At the very least, I wanted to finish this game.
“It is already 11:30.”
Fine, that was a “great” explanation. She ruined my weekend again.
With a bit of disappointment, I sat down at this college dining hall to rest my exhausted legs and more importantly to charge my phone. My mom and my brother sat the table a couple of rows away, tired as well. I dizzily looked at outside through the window, since I usually would have a nap in the late afternoon. The season here started to change much earlier: only in late September, brown leaves brewed by the chilling wind had covered the vast grass field surrounded by college buildings. Surprisingly, I noticed a bunny wandering around a bench which had two people sitting on it. They looked like a student and her professor. They were smiling and looking at the bunny as well. Unconsciously, my mind started to relate this scene to some sexual abuse scandals. I did not have a clear mind about this college visit, although my mom insisted that it fits me very well with its “excellent” engineering department. With my phone charged to 15%, I turned it on and started to check my snap chat. A friend of mine just sent me a picture showing that he got a new girlfriend.
“Hi dear, come and meet with this lady,” my mom called me.
I turned to where my mom was in confusion, and I had a bad feeling for what was going to happen. We supposed to set off to our hotel room, because I had a big football game to watch. Well, things like this usually happen, when I traveled with my mom.
Why did dad take brother to the zoo today? If not, this ridiculous appointment would not happen. Sat on the backside of mom’s car, I decided to put up my greatest resistance crossing my arms over the chest.
Mom kept ignoring my feeling and kissed up the “dream children” of someone else: “They both have high GPA and many AP courses. One of them recently got 1580 on the SAT exam. You should meet them and get along with each other.”
I nodded my head to prevent further conversation.
“So, you will behave well and treat them nicely as friends right?” Mum said and seemed did not understand that GPA has nothing to do with friendship. What has to do with friendship? Who knows.
We then stopped at the parking lot of a fancy Italian restaurant. I mean the kind with doormen and reservations. I took a look at my hoodie and the sweatpants from last night. Well, she never told me where exactly we were going to eat, because she knew I would have more to complain. The weather outside was freezing that about to snow. At the entrance of the restaurant, the family was waiting for us. I saw the two my “diligent” peers with their decent outfits and nerdy looking, glasses hanging on their noses, entirely within my expectation.
Sitting beside a traditional Indian woman, usually, I would like to learn about some foreign culture, but this time was not the proper occasion. I said to her a couple Hindu greeting words that I learn from a YouTube video. She smiled and said that she could speak English very well.
Then what my mom said surprised me: “She has a son studying in here and can help your brother for math.”
It did not make sense to me that the parent of an Indian student would show up in the college cafeteria at this time of the year. I looked at my brother who was playing his Ipad. I did not think he needed any help with math at the first place. Moreover, isn’t the conversation should be about me with something like “You can learn more about this college and the application from her.”?
While I could not find the word, my mom asked, “Would you like to recommend any websites for studying math?”
The woman nodded her head and said the name of a website. At once, my mom took away the Ipad from my brother. Fortunately, my brother only gave a mad expression. If this happened in last year, he would cry out immediately as loud as possible. My mom typed the address and began to survey the website. The bunny, professor and the student had gone a while ago, as it was already dark outside. I had to accept the fact that I was going to miss the game tonight.
I carefully observed the spaghetti which rolled around the fork in a flawless way getting into the mouth of my “friends.” Suddenly, he looked at me and realized what I was doing. How embarrassing! I looked away to the burritos on my plate.
To educate me again, mom asked one of them, “So what did you do this morning?”
Sleeping, of course. But he answered, “I got up a bit late in the weekend at 7:30. First spend half an hour working out, then learning my vocabulary.”
I noticed that the other guy looked at me at just the right time to see my surprised expression with a smile, as he expected I would do that like watching a reality show.
Mom then turned back to me: “Isn’t that impressive? You should learn something from that.”
I immediately bitted a big chunk of my burritos to let cheese got all over my mouth. I swear that if this kind of insult happens one more time, I would flip and smash the whole table and walked out of this darn place!
I was first bewildered by the person who ordered burritos in an Italian restaurant sitting across the table. As I knew, we should meet a son of my mom’s friend today. However, he showed no intention to talk at all. We not even had any direct conversation from the beginning. I did not understand. Had we done anything wrong? So, I tried my best to analyze the situation from his perspective. Suddenly, as a bridge connecting places over rivers, what happened in Boston inspired me to see through his mind. Sadly, this time I was that woman who wasted his time.
This lunch was about to finish. With some hesitation, at the moment when we parted, I took his hand and whispered to him, “I am sorry.” I could see both confusion and understanding on his expression.
In the car, My mom asked, “That was sweet, what did you say to him?”
I smiled and responded, “Just saying goodbye.”
After all, I could left all of these behinds and just enjoyed it as a free meal and convinced myself that we are different kinds of people; I was a nerd to him, and he was a loser to me. But in reality, our minds were so close that we could hear the heartbeats of the other; we could touch if we just stretch our fingers. Yet, it never happened. All these thoughts were too late when the snow blurred our last vision of each other. The sunlight was so dim that it could not even make our shadows.
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