I grip the phone tighter, pushing it against my ear. “How much do you miss me?”
He sounds baffled by the question. “What do you mean?”
“Like, on a scale of one to ten.”
“Oh.” He considers this for a moment. “Maybe… seven?”
“Seven!” I burst out.
“Is that too high or too low?”
I let out a huff. “I miss you aten.”
“Well, it’s only been a week, Heather. Can you give me a little time to work up to a ten?”
“I guess so,” I say grudgingly. I suppose he’s right—ithasonly been a week.
We spend the next half hour or so chatting about our respective days. I fill him in on all the weirdo students I met today. He clucks sympathetically when I tell him about how that bearlike student stepped on my foot and almost broke it. And I laugh when he tells me about how a ripe pear that he packed in his backpack exploded and got over all his new books and papers.
“I wish I’d been there to see that,” I say.
“Yeah,” Landon says. “I wish you’d been there too. You would’ve pissed your pants laughing.”
I close my eyes and imagine that Landon is sitting beside me. My left hand squeezes my knee.
“I miss you so much,” I say.
“I miss you too, Heather,” Landon says. “I miss you a ten.”
“I miss you a ten too,” I say. It’s all I can do to keep from covering the phone with kisses.
When I hang up, I have a good feeling in my stomach. It helps to know Landon is here for me. Landon is my first… well, no, he’s more like my second… well, anyway, he’s my firstlove. I lovehim. And he loves me. This is going to work out. I’ve got nothing to worry about.
3
DeWitt Med doesn’t havea locker room per se. What we’ve got is a long hallway of lockers, not segregated in any way by gender. Meaning that I’ve got two choices:
Be a prude and run to the ladies’ room to change into scrubs for lab
Change my clothes in front ofboys
I stand in front of my locker, clutching my scrubs for far too long, trying to make a decision. The ladies’ room is all the way at the other end of the floor, so I’ll save some serious time if I change my clothes right here. And it’s not very crowded, at least not yet. However, I’m still retaining a modicum of modesty, and I’m not sure if I can make myself do it. My body isn’t quite as bikini-ready as I’d like it to be.
In any case, I need to decide soon. Because I look like an idiot just standing here.
I’m just about ready to start pulling my shirt over my head when a door swings open and about a dozen students filter into the hallway, most of them male.
No,allof them male.
And loud.
