Page 25 of The Other Side
“It’s still Miss Price,” I scolded him, more to stop myself from giving him a chance to speak to me like the civilized human being I should have been, or worse, admitting to myself that I not only wanted his help, but was pleased that he had even offered.
I was extraordinarily good at holding grudges. But it was a talent I didn’t wish to harbor.
I didn’t want to snap at Chance at every opportunity.
I wanted to be friends with him.
Hell, I wanted to be much more than friends.
Thatwas the problem.
Andthatwas why it was easier to be cold and distant with him.
It was the only thing I could do to keep from acknowledging how my heart still fluttered around him, and that I thought of the kiss we’d shared so much more than I ever reminisced over any other kiss I’d ever received.
I sighed in relief when I heard the click of his door latching.
Per my usual routine, I threw some pasta on the stove to cook while I unpacked my bag. Pasta and PB&J sandwiches had been a dietary staple for my entire life. While it would have been nice not to live like a broke college student, I was, unfortunately, a broke adult. So when I didn’t want to eat what they were serving in the dining hall (which was eggplant parmesan that night,yuck!), or didn’t want to make the trek back over to the main building, I resorted to old habits.
While I changed out of my work clothes into the only pair of pajama pants I owned and a hoodie from my collegiate alma mater, idly I wondered if my small stature had been a product of potential malnourishment when I was very young. My mother had done her best, but ends hadn’t always met.
Slipping on a pair of fuzzy slippers that had been a Christmas present from my mom a few years prior, my heart tugged a little thinking of her, as it always did, and I made a mental note to give her a call over the upcoming weekend. The slippers were almost worn through, but I didn’t have the heart or the budget to get new ones.
Next I gathered the stack of essays from my bag, along with a green felt-tipped pen, my grading weapon of choice, and set them on the small table between the kitchenette and bathroom door.
I made two trips up to the lounge: the first with half the wood, and the second with the papers and my simple dinner.
I had found my lounge quite by accident during my first winter break at Montgomery. I didn’t normally take it upon myself to go exploring where trapdoors in bathroom ceilings led to, but I’d had nothing better to do in the few weeks I had been practically stranded on campus by myself.
I had initially hoped it wouldn’t be filled with bugs or animals, then absently thought it might be nice to have even a little bit of room to store some extra wood, so it wouldn’t be strewn about my apartment. But what I discovered was so much better than I could have ever hoped for.
It seemed to have just been used for storage, based on what I’d found up there. Although I still wasn’t exactly sure how they’d managed to get the large furniture up to the fourth floor.However, I only had access to the half of the room above my room and Chance’s.
The opposite side was inaccessible, from what I could determine, completely separated by an entire wall lined with bookshelves. I thought perhaps there was a stairway, long forgotten, like everything else up there, that led to the other half of the floor, and that the partition had been erected after everything had been brought up. But that was all just a guess.
Either way, the attic at one point had been completely refinished: hardwood floors, fireplaces on either end of the room that aligned with where the fireplaces were located in my room and likely in Chance’s.
I found pool, Ping-Pong, and air hockey tables amongst a few other similar indoor activities. All were brand new, half assembled, and wrapped in moving blankets that kept them in pristine condition. Accessories like pool cues and table tennis paddles were neatly stacked in factory packaging nearby.
I had spent the whole break cleaning, arranging furniture (which was not easy to do solo), and alphabetizing textbooks. The latter had taken me the longest. The entire length of the interior wall was floor-to-ceiling shelves, full of well outdated materials, but what a phenomenal time capsule they were.
On the side of the room directly above my apartment, I situated a sofa and armchairs in front of the fireplace, with a study table and chairs just behind it.
The table was excellent for spreading my work out, and was much more preferable to the floor of my apartment.
In the middle of the room, I spaced out the game tables, and at the far end, above Chance’s apartment, was a terribly out of tune baby grand piano. Luckily I hadn’t had to move that anywhere; I just removed the blankets covering it.
But my absolute favorite find in the room was a neat little console table that I situated between the fireplace and windowseat on my side of the room. Atop the table sat a very old phonograph, with a big trumpet-like speaker. And on the shelves below was a fantastic old record collection, full of jazz, classical, and big band instrumental records, as well as some music artists from the forties and fifties. My favorite was a Motown album that I often played while I read on the couch.
Judging from the labels on the recreation tables and the most recent books, I figured nobody had been up there in a good thirty years, which would have aligned with the last renovation of the carriage house in the early nineties, when it had been turned into the faculty apartments.
How someone had forgotten the treasures in my lounge was beyond me, but I was glad for it. Having my own space, and a secret space at that, made a piece of Montgomery feel like mine. The lounge was the one place on campus where I felt like I belonged.
It was as if the room existed solely for me. Like it had been waiting its whole existence just to bring me joy.
I selected a jazz album that evening and took to lighting my first fire of the season in the large hearth. The sound of crackling wood and the flickering firelight put me at complete ease. I exhaled in contentment, settling at the study table to eat first, then started to work.
It began to rain halfway through grading my essays. The gentle pitter-patter on the paned windows made me drowsy…the soft jazz didn’t help either. My eyelids drooped, heavy with exhaustion. I gave in, closing them for just a moment, only to be startled out of a dead sleep moments, or maybe hours, later when something came crashing through the window at the far end of the lounge.
