“Do it again,” Sean demanded as he set the empty two-liter soda bottles back up on the half wall separating his living room from the kitchen.
Xander sat forward on the couch and breathed deeply, letting the sensation of weightlessness wash over him. The sensation always reminded him of what it must be like to fly freely through the air.
The air in the room swirled, fluttering the pair of napkins sitting on the coffee table. The breeze moved toward Xander, pulled like it was caught in an unseen gravitational pull. Between his open palms, it coalesced into a shimmering ball of pressurized air.
Looking up, Xander focused on the nearest empty bottle. With a flick of his wrist, the air bubble shot through the air and struck the bottle just below its narrow neck. The bottle tumbled off the half wall and clattered onto the kitchen floor.
Xander turned his hand skyward and the bubble froze a few feet beyond the wall. Curling his fingers, the ball shot back and struck both the remaining bottles.
With a sigh, Xander released the pressurized wind. Both his and Sean’s ears popped with the sudden change of pressure in the room.
“I stand corrected,” Sean said, still chuckling excitedly. “Bubbles are way cooler than I ever would have believed.”
He left the bottles on the floor and took a seat beside Xander on the couch. “You’re really starting to get the hang of your super power.”
Xander smiled wearily. “Will you stop calling them super powers?”
“Whatever. All I’m saying is that I’m rooming with a guy who can control the wind. That’s pretty cool.”
Xander scowled at his small bag of clothes dropped haphazardly beside the couch which, for the past couple days, had doubled as his bed. He was greatly appreciative of Sean letting him stay with him but he was still bitter toward his family for what he saw as a betrayal of his trust.
“Sorry,” Sean said, noting Xander’s expression. “Still too soon?”
“No, forget about it. Thanks for letting me crash here, though.”
“No problem. What are best friends for?”
Sean leaned back and pulled apart some of the blinds. Night had settled hours ago. It was a moonless night, leaving the neighborhood cast in gloomy darkness. Only a pair of street lamps cast a glow on the broad parking lot outside the apartment building.
Dropping the blind, he looked down at his watch. “You know, it’s still pretty early. You want to practice some more before we turn in for the night?”
Xander smiled, his sour disposition quickly forgotten. “Yeah, I do.”
Sean got back off the couch and walked over to the pair of fallen bottles on their side of the half wall.
“We have class tomorrow,” Sean remarked as he set the first bottle onto the wall.
“Uh huh,” Xander replied. He flexed his fingers in anticipation.
“You think Sammy’s going to be there?”
Xander looked away but couldn’t conceal his smile. Despite the distraction his newfound powers offered, he couldn’t stop thinking about Sammy. Every curve of her face, every sparkle in her blue eyes, and every playful toss of her long hair was seared into his memory.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Sean said as he set the second bottle onto the wall. “So, what are you going to do about Jessica?”
Xander’s coy smile quickly evaporated. “What do you mean?”
“Come on. It’s not exactly a big secret that you’re infatuated with the new girl. You may say that Jessica is just your ‘pseudo-girlfriend’, but I’m pretty sure she thinks it’s a little more important than that. You really think she’s the type that’s going to be okay with you jumping on the newest thing to roll into town?”
Xander opened his mouth but quickly shut it again. He didn’t know which part of Sean’s comments offended him more but he had trouble refuting the simple truth. Jessica wasn’t the type of girl to take that sort of rejection. He was suddenly far less excited about going to school the next day.
“Don’t worry, buddy,” Sean said as he retrieved the last bottle. “I’ll put my moves on Jessica and you’ll just be a distant memory by the end of the day tomorrow.”
Xander laughed and released the bubble he’d been creating while they spoke. It crashed into the first bottle and narrowly missed Sean’s nose as his friend set the last one on the ledge.
Long after Sean had gone to bed that night, Xander sat on the couch with his textbooks spread before him on the coffee table. He picked up a packet of paper, looked at the list of assignments he should have had completed by Monday, and frowned as he read through the expansive list. Despite the piles of homework he had already completed in the past couple hours, a daunting amount of work still remained to be done.
Between exploring his new powers, his fight with his family, and Sammy, he hadn’t spent a lot of time concentrating on his schoolwork. Xander sighed as he dropped the syllabus back onto the stack of other paperwork. In that respect, his father had been right. Xander wasn’t thinking about what really mattered and it was ruining his future.
He flipped open the nearest textbook and read through the first of many chapters he needed to read. The coffee cup steamed with the newest batch of freshly brewed coffee—one of many pots he expected to drink before the night was through. He might become a walking zombie by the time the next morning rolled around but he was determined to at least turn in the appropriate stack of homework when he got to class.
The chapter was predictably dry reading and he found himself re-reading the same paragraph two to three times before he fully absorbed the material. Glancing up at the clock, Xander saw the glaring green of the digital numbers reading just after midnight. Sighing, he turned the first textbook back to the first chapter and pulled out his homework questions.
“What is the longest railroad in the world, connecting Moscow to Pyongyang?”
He flipped forward a few pages to confirm his answer. As he ran his finger down the page, his eyes fell on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Grabbing his pencil, he copied down the answer. For a moment, Xander’s eyes fell back to the textbook before he looked back to his homework and prepared to answer the second question. He immediately noticed something wrong with the answer he had copied down.
Xander picked up the paper so that he could see it more clearly through his weary eyes. Despite his mind screaming that the answer should have read “Trans-Siberian”, his eyes told him the truth.
“Trans-Sammy Railway?” Xander read, dumbfounded.
He flipped his pencil around angrily—glad he chose to answer the questions in pencil rather than pen. He erased the answer and wrote down the correct one.
Xander’s eyes fell on one of the homework assignments he had already completed and he let out a loud groan. The top answer started with “Sammy-economic evolution during the early 20th century…”
Panicked, he pulled up another random sampling of his homework. Her name appeared in nearly every answer he had completed.
“General Sammy Jackson led the Confederate…”
“…which was later renamed Thailand from the previous Sammy…”
“…the article was clearly written with a Conservative Sammy…”
Xander dropped the stack of papers back onto the coffee table and rubbed his cheeks. The sensation against his growing beard was the only thing that confirmed he wasn’t experiencing some horrible nightmare.
“I just met her two days ago,” he moaned. “Now I can’t stop thinking about her. What is going on?”
Xander dreaded every step he climbed toward the lecture hall. He wasn’t necessarily passive-aggressive but he didn’t like confrontation if it was avoidable. Unfortunately, he knew he couldn’t avoid it when it came to Jessica. It was one of her personality flaws that had always kept her in the “pseudo-girlfriend” category, rather than him committing fully to their relationship.
He opened the back door to the room and saw Jessica’s sorority sisters seated close together near the front of the room but he didn’
t see Jessica. Turning at the back row, his heart dropped quickly in his chest. There sat Jessica directly beside Sammy. Though they looked deep in conversation, Xander could easily read Sammy’s pained expression.
“Hi ladies,” he said disarmingly. He managed to keep a calmer exterior despite his jittery nerves.
“Hi sweetheart,” Jessica said. Xander immediately felt like he was walking into a trap. “Pull up a seat and join us. I was just getting to know the new girl.”
With Jessica’s attention firmly on Xander and her back to Sammy, Sammy held up a piece of paper with the words SAVE ME printed in big letters across the page. Xander stifled a smile at the pleading sight.
His mirth disappeared when he looked at Jessica. He didn’t see the flirtatious girl he’d known since freshman year. All he saw in her eyes was the overbearing sorority girl who was used to getting her way. The sight of that blatant arrogance made Xander irritated.
“What are you doing, Jessica?”
“I’m not doing anything. The new girl and I were just discussing what you and she talked about all during class on Friday.”
Xander felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck. “First of all, her name is Sammy. You can at least fake civility and actually call her by her name. And second of all, it’s none of your business what we talked about.”
“I’m sorry,” Jessica said as she stood from her chair. “I didn’t mean to offend your girlfriend.”
“She’s not my girlfriend. She’s a friend who happens to be a girl. But you know what? Right now, you are sure not acting like my friend and I’m not entirely sure I want you as a girlfriend.”
Jessica’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “Are you breaking up with me?”
“I can’t break up with you, Jessica. We’ve never officially went out. You sit in the back of the room with me and flirt all day and then ask for my notes because you can’t be bothered to take any. As for the other part, about you being a friend who’s a girl, yeah, I guess I’m ending that too.”
“What’s gotten into you?” Jessica asked, genuine hurt reflected in her surprised expression. “This isn’t you.”
“Maybe it’s just time someone told you the truth.”
Xander mentally recoiled as Jessica flinched from his verbal barrage. While he couldn’t condone the way she was talking to Sammy, she was right about his attitude. He normally avoided confrontation like this but the sight of Sammy being harassed by Jessica made him want to be the knight in shining armor that rode to Sammy’s defense.
“Fine,” Jessica sneered, her eyes glistening with tears. “Then maybe you can take her to the spring formal instead!”
Jessica shoved her way past him. Instead of turning toward her sorority sisters in the front of the room—all of whom were turned around and watching the scene unfold—she slammed open the back door and left the lecture hall.
Xander sighed in frustration and collapsed into the seat Jessica vacated, directly beside Sammy.
“She seems nice,” Sammy said softly.
Despite his mood, Xander found himself smiling. “Yeah, she’s swell.”
They sat in silence while the room fell back into its normal rhythm. Slowly, all the other students turned around and returned to normal conversations before the professor arrived.
“Thanks,” Sammy said finally.
“For what?”
“For standing up for me. Don’t get me wrong—I can handle myself just fine. It’s just… it’s just nice to have someone stand up for you. You really are a nice guy.”
“It’s all a façade,” Xander joked, his humor hiding the concern he felt for the way he talked to Jessica. She may be self-centered but she didn’t deserve his condescension. “I’m just a normal college guy who’s trying to get into your pants.”
Sammy elbowed him playfully.
“I’m sorry,” Xander said. “You didn’t deserve to be pulled into the middle of our problems.”
“Is there still an ‘our’ with you two?”
Xander looked over his shoulder to the closed door. “No, I guess there really isn’t. I’m not entirely sure there ever was.”
“You shouldn’t have broken up with her for me.”
“What makes you think that was all for you?”
Sammy arched a perfectly sculpted eyebrow. “Of course it was. All I’m saying is that you just met me. You don’t even know me yet, not really.”
“Are you an axe murderer?”
Sammy stared intently into his eyes. He could see the mischievous sparkle glistening. “I don’t use an axe.”
“Then so far so good. I guess the only solution left is to get to know you better.” He had to steel himself before asking the question he’d wanted to ask since meeting her last week. “Maybe you’d like to go to dinner sometime?”
“I was thinking of something a little different. I was thinking that Jessica was right and you should ask me to the spring formal,” she offered.
She quickly looked away, slightly embarrassed. Xander found the mix of brash confidence and coy modesty even more intoxicating.
“I’d love to take you to the formal.”
Her smiled broadened in relief. “Then it’s a date.”
Xander returned her smile as his mind began to race. He didn’t pay attention to a single thing the professor said during the lecture that day.