The Outsider
Copyright 2009 by EC
EC's Erotic Art & Fiction - http://www.ecgraphicarts.com/
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(warnings: language, adult themes)

Chapter 9 – Two conversations

The following morning, to the surprise of everyone in the English literature 
course, “Mr. Know-it-all” sat next to the girl who had pinned him with that nick-
name.  Of course, the rest of the class and the professor had no way of knowing 
what had happened between Mike and Ruthie over the weekend and had 
incorrectly assumed that the two students bitterly disliked each other.  Strange…it 
turned out that was not the case at all.  From their initial argument the couple 
realized that had a lot in common and each could find friendship in the other.  Not 
only did they sit together in class, but they also ignored the other students and left 
together when the session ended.

During their second week together, Mike and Ruthie ate together in the cafeteria 
whenever possible.  The only times she did not eat with Mike were the days she 
had class right after work and there was no time to sit down for lunch.  On those 
days she continued to stash fruit in her backpack for the afternoon, but she did 
that considerably less now that she knew she had someone to sit with at dinner.  
Her days of trying to avoid the cafeteria had ended.  Quite to the contrary, she 
wanted people to see her, just to show everyone: “see?  Now I have someone to 
eat with too…so screw all of you!”

For Ruthie having a companion at the dining table was a real treat, a break from 
the humiliation she had endured over the past month of being cold-shouldered by 
the other students and forced to eat alone.  For Mike the situation was more 
complicated.  He did have people with whom he normally ate: his political friends 
and a couple of co-workers from the Parking Department.  On the days Ruthie 
had to grab her fruit and run he could still hang out with his friends, but for the 
other meals there was no question that she took priority over everyone else.  
There were a few times he invited her to eat with his group, but it was clear that 
she was uncomfortable trying to make small talk with people she did not really 
know.  

Over the next several days Mike had to figure out how to strike a balance between 
not offending his friends and giving priority to his…girlfriend…if that’s what she 
was.  He wasn’t sure about that part yet.  It was obvious that in her own way she 
deeply cared for him: that she was glad to see him whenever they met up, happy 
whenever she was with him, and never eager to say goodbye.  As for his friends, 
he never actually told them that Ruthie was his girlfriend, but instead left them to 
make their own assumptions about the relationship. 

Certainly from his end, the feelings of love and sexual desire were very strong, 
apart from his desire for having a close friend.  Having her scantly-clad body in 
his arms or close by was a huge temptation for him.  He badly wanted her.  He 
suspected that sex would have to wait, but at least he wanted to establish that she 
was indeed his girlfriend by kissing her or holding her hand when they walked.  
She clearly did enjoy hugging him and having his arms around her, and yet…she 
never gave him any hint whatsoever she wanted him to go any further than that.  
Mike was not one to push with physical contact, because he was afraid of 
“blowing it” with Ruthie if he was overly insistent.  He also was well-aware that 
he had no first-hand knowledge about how to seduce a woman, given that with 
Lisa things had just come naturally and at a very early age.  He understood that 
his first relationship was unique and the experience would give him very little 
guidance for handling Ruthie.

Ruthie’s attraction to Mike was growing as well.  Now that she had someone in 
her life with whom she could confide, she wanted to be with him whenever 
possible.  During the afternoons she did not have class, she’d accompany him to 
lot Econ-A when he went there to ticket.  She continued to study by herself in her 
“private spot” while he ran his machine, but the point was for her to be close to 
him.  At the end of the afternoon she followed him back to the Parking 
Department Office, went with him to dinner, and then accompanied him to the 
library to study.  In the library she was quiet and absorbed in her reading, but on 
the way there and back she was happy to chatter away about rock formations, 
evolution, and paleontology, often citing recent discoveries about things such as 
Chinese dinosaurs or Cambrian-era soft-bodied marine organisms.  She would 
talk about Latin American authors when she was not talking about ancient life.  
Little by little Mike coaxed her to talk more about herself, especially about her 
family members in Culiacan and the Mexican portion of her background.

From the beginning Mike knew that his relationship with Ruthie was not 
“typical”.  Her feelings towards him were different from what a person normally 
would feel for either a boyfriend or a close friend.  The best way to describe 
Ruthie’s emotions towards her companion would be very intense affection.  In her 
own way she did love him and felt uneasy when she was not with him.  She would 
have been extremely jealous and hurt had she seen him with another woman.  
However, that affection was not the same as romantic love, which was why she 
wanted him to hold her but would have been nervous about him trying to kiss her.  
By the end of their second week together she felt that she and Mike belonged to 
each other, and yet she still would have felt uncomfortable defining her role in his 
life as his “girlfriend”.

----------

On Tuesday Todd’s mother, along with the dorm director and the RA from 
Mike’s floor, showed up to pick up his possessions.  The RA pulled down the 
police tape and helped the woman box up her son’s things.  Mike would have 
helped had he been asked, but Todd’s mother gave him several very hostile looks, 
as though she blamed him for having a hand in her son’s suicide.  

Of course, Mike had nothing to do with Todd’s problems, which actually had 
begun the year before he entered college.  However, at the same time it was 
evident that he had stayed out of his roommate’s life and had not done anything to 
intervene in his suicide.  If anyone had expected Mike to “talk to” Todd, or in 
some other way provide him with emotional support, in that he most definitely 
had failed.  

Finally Mike decided the best thing for him to do would be to get out of the room 
and wait until Todd’s mother was off-campus before returning.  He excused 
himself and went to work.  As usual, he went to his favorite “pay dirt” spot in lot 
Econ-A, carrying his machine and 400 ticket envelopes in his backpack.  By the 
middle of his second week ticketing the lot, conditions there were changing.  Only 
half of the meters now were occupied by student vehicles, and of those, about half 
were paying.  The remaining spaces remained open for visitors, which was the 
original intention for having all those meters in Econ-A.  So now Mike was 
writing tickets for only 100 unpaid meters, not 400.  However, he still continued 
to average between 300 and 350 tickets per shift, because he could write a ticket 
on any car parked at an unpaid meter every 61 minutes.  Now that there were 
fewer violators, Mike could write multiple tickets on the ones who remained.  
Those tickets very quickly would add up.  The real fun would happen in another 
month, because any student who owed more than $ 250 in unpaid tickets for more 
than 30 days could have his car towed and impounded.  Already he was starting to 
figure out who his most likely victims would be.  He also paid special attention to 
the car of anyone who had insulted him.

----------

Ruthie showed up at 4:30 and sat down on her usual spot in the grass to wait for 
her friend to finish his shift.  On their way back to the cafeteria Mike mentioned 
that his roommate’s things had been taken out and that at least for the rest of the 
semester, he would have the room to himself.  By that time he felt that he knew 
Ruthie well enough to confide something cynical that he planned to do.  The 
university had offered him several sessions of grief counseling.  Mike was not 
grieving over Todd whatsoever, but he planned to take advantage of the offer to 
let the counselor know that during the spring semester he would not be 
“emotionally ready” to have another roommate.  That was total bull, because 
Todd’s death barely affected him but, as he put it, “that’s not something the 
university needs to know”.  Ruthie smiled, responding that if anything were to 
happen to Shannon, she would openly celebrate and put up party decorations to let 
everyone know that she was elated that super-bitch was dead.

As usual, they had dinner together in the cafeteria, but then they decided to return 
to the Student Center, because the university was having a festival of “cult” 
movies from the 1960’s and 1970’s.  Among the movies were titles such as 
“Eraserhead”, “Dr. Strangelove”, “Slaughterhouse Five”, “A Boy and his Dog”, 
and “Zardoz”.  Mike had been curious to see “Slaughterhouse Five”, but Ruthie 
opted for “Zardoz”, based solely on the fact she liked the poster for that movie 
better than any of the others.

Mike and Ruthie left the auditorium with totally different reactions to “Zardoz”.  
Mike commented that it was one of the most depressing movies he had ever seen.  
Ruthie totally loved it.

“What’s there to be depressed about?  That movie’s simply telling it like it is.”

“Telling it like it is?  Floating heads and everyone’s starving to death and guys on 
horses running around shooting everyone else?  I didn’t see the point of any of 
that…just a bunch of gratuitous killing for no reason.  To be honest, I was 
disappointed that Sean Connery could have gotten himself mixed up in that crap.”

Ruthie stopped in her tracks and forced Mike to turn around and look at her.

“That movie shows exactly what the future’s gonna be.  We’re gonna end up just 
like that!  There’s gonna be most people starving to death in the ruins of our 
civilization, a few gang members running around killing everyone else, and the 
rich people holed up somewhere, thinking that they’re safe, but really just waiting 
to die like everyone else.  That’ll be the future!  I thought it was great, ‘cause it 
told the truth!”

Mike was surprised by Ruthie’s vehement defense of a movie that he hated.  He 
really should not have been so astonished, because the message of “Zardoz” fit 
perfectly with her world view.  She explained that she was convinced that 
humans, as a species, were doomed to extinction in the near future because the 
conditions needed to sustain such a large population no longer existed on the 
planet.  The laws of nature that controlled all other species that had experienced 
population explosions in the past also applied to humans.  Those natural processes 
that had doomed every other organism, from trilobites to dinosaurs to passenger 
pigeons, would doom humans as well.  The only real difference was that humans 
were probably unique in being aware of their own existence, and thus would be 
aware of the extinction as it was taking place.  But, as she put it:

“Just ‘cause we’re aware of a natural phenomenon doesn’t mean we can stop it 
from happening.  When the end comes, some people will pray to God, some will 
be smoking whatever meth is left over, some will be going out like those Zardoz 
guys and killing everyone else…but none of it’ll matter.  In the end we’ll all be 
dead because the planet can’t sustain us.”

Mike tried to think of a response to Ruthie’s bleak view of the future.  He was 
aware of the problems that some humans were causing others, but his education 
and experiences had convinced him that the big social and economic problems 
ultimately could be resolved with the right form of human organization, i.e. a 
government willing and capable of controlling the worst excesses of human 
behavior.  The key was setting up a society that could effectively thwart humans’ 
disposition towards greed, avarice, and violence.  Whether it was gang members 
or Mega-Town executives, it wouldn’t take all that much for a new social 
awareness to force a reorganization of the US government that would bring the 
worst members of its society under control.

Ruthie countered that it was far too late for any such “reawakening” to have any 
effect.  For one thing, already there were too many people on the planet and the 
world had run out of resources that would be needed to provide everyone with a 
decent life.  Even something as fundamental as living space simply did not exist.  
No social or political reorganization could change that reality, unless a large 
portion of the population could somehow be eliminated.  Second, the most 
destructive groups of humans, whether they were Mega-Town executives or drug 
traffickers from Sinaloa, already had amassed too much power and wealth and 
were invincible.  The only political change would be coming from corporate 
CEO’s and mafia leaders, not from the idealists in which Mike placed his hopes.

Mike was aghast at his friend’s hopeless outlook, but he was unable to come up 
with arguments to counter much of what she was saying.  The conversation 
depressed him even more than the movie, partly because he knew she was right.  
At that moment he could perfectly understand why very few people could tolerate 
being around her, because even if a person got past her shyness and was able to 
converse with her, at times to talk to Ruthie Burns forced one to see how truly 
hopeless life really was.  There were no illusions for her, nothing to give her any 
hope for the future.  Most people couldn’t handle facing that reality.

----------

Wednesday afternoon Ruthie had her second session with her Dr. Hartman.  She 
was in a much better mood than she had been the previous week, but she wanted 
to talk about “Zardoz” and how the movie supported her conviction that humans 
would be extinct within another generation or so.  Of course, Hartman was much 
more interested in knowing what was going on with Mike, because ultimately that 
relationship would be a much more important influence on her client’s state of 
mind than a movie that was 35 years old.  However, the counselor figured that it 
would be safe just to let her talk, since apparently there was no imminent threat of 
suicide.  

When Ruthie left, Hartman made some notes about the conversation and put away 
her case file.  She sat down for a moment to clear her head for the next client.  
She rubbed her temples with her fingertips and whispered to herself:

“Jeesh, that girl’s depressing.”

---------- 

In spite the fact indeed she was so depressing to talk to at times, there was no way 
that Mike would consider giving up on his relationship with Ruthie.  She was the 
one woman who had paid attention to him all year, so it was not as though he had 
all that much to choose from.  He reasoned that many of her pessimistic attitudes 
were likely to be tempered once she had some positive experiences to counter the 
negative ones she had endured up to the point they became friends.  Furthermore, 
although Ruthie had such a dark outlook on life, she was intelligent, truthful, and 
had a way of perceiving things that often forced Mike to look at his own 
experiences in a different light.

The night after their discussion of the merits of “Zardoz”, Mike and Ruthie had 
their first in depth conversation about their lives in high school.  Ruthie went on 
and on about various books she read, and to a lesser extent talked about her 
cousins.  Her uncle (on her mother’s side) had immigrated to Salinas 20 years 
before and had worked in construction until the recession of 2000-2001.  He 
managed to get a job at a large hardware store and since then had worked his way 
up to being the supervisor of the lumber department.  He and his wife had four 
children: a boy called Gerardo, two girls called Rosa and Susy, and another boy 
called Alex.  Rosa, the oldest daughter, was the one who Ruthie knew the best 
because they were the same age.

Ruthie’s uncle, aunt, and cousins were Catholic, which caused problems between 
them and Ruthie’s mother, who had been taught that the Pope was a servant of the 
Anti-Christ.  It also caused Ruthie’s mother to be somewhat distrustful of the 
influence the cousins might have on her daughter, but the family’s circumstances 
forced the girl to have more contact with her cousins than she would have wanted.  
Before she changed her work schedule, Ruthie’s mother had her stay at her 
cousins’ house after school, where she was able to play video games and watch 
TV.  Once Ruthie’s mother was able to arrange being home in the afternoons, 
Ruthie’s after-school time with her cousins came to an abrupt end.

During her first year in Salinas, Ruthie was ruthlessly targeted by bullies, both 
boys and girls, while she was in the eighth grade of middle school.  Once she 
entered high school the solution was for her oldest cousin Gerardo to walk her to 
and from her classes.  Just a month after Ruthie entered the ninth grade, he broke 
the nose of a guy whose girlfriend had punched her, which sent a clear message 
that anyone who messed with Ruthie would have problems with Gerardo.  She 
knew that she was very lucky for having him to protect her, because otherwise she 
probably would have had to drop out and be home-schooled.

When the conversation shifted to Mike’s time in high school, there was no way 
that he could avoid talking about his relationship with Lisa, because his social life 
pretty much consisted of Lisa and nothing but Lisa.  He tried to keep the details 
about his ex-girlfriend to a minimum, but Ruthie pressed him for information.  
Finally he lost his patience and curtly answered:

“Look.  Lisa’s living in Chicago.  We broke up last year.  She pledged a sorority 
and is dating a guy from a fraternity.  The last time I ever saw her was in 
December.”

“…and so that’s the reason you didn’t go back to Chicago?  ‘Cause you broke up 
with Lisa?”

“That’s the reason…I mean…if you really want to know the truth, we didn’t 
exactly break up.  She treated me like total crap, she dumped me last Christmas, 
and the guy she’s going out with now used to be one of my friends from 
Chicago.”

“How’d she treat you like total crap?”

Mike could feel that he was digging himself ever deeper, but at that point in the 
conversation he realized that he needed to tell Ruthie the entire story of what had 
happened to him in Chicago: going there because of the lower tuition cost, how 
Lisa had changed over the fall semester, how he tried to force her to return to 
California to salvage the relationship, and the grim break-up that followed a very 
tense Christmas.

When he finished, Ruthie looked at him with an incredulous expression:

“Mike, I want to make sure I understand something.  You filled out a college 
application for Lisa without telling her what you were doing?”

“Yeah, ‘cause I knew when we got back here we wouldn’t have that much time.”

“And if you weren’t telling her, how’d you get her information?  How’d you 
know what her grades were…and stuff like her Social Security number?”

Mike hesitated, but finally he admitted that he had collected Lisa’s personal 
information by going through her computer and notebooks when he was in her 
room but she had fallen asleep.  Ruthie’s face was even more incredulous.

“…and you’re telling me you had no clue why she was so pissed at you?  What 
gave you the right to go through her papers?”

Mike blushed and stammered:  “I…I suppose I shouldn’t have done it, but I…sort 
of just wanted to have everything set up and…”

“…then her dumping you is exactly what you deserved!  I think she was fucking 
nice about it!  If you loved her, how could you do something like that?  She 
wasn’t yours!  She didn’t belong to you!  How could you do that to her?”

 “I was just trying to get us back home…that’s all I was doing.”

“No!  You were trying to get yourself back home and get your old life back, and 
force her life to fit with what you wanted for yourself!  You thought you could 
cancel out everything that happened to her in Chicago so she could be with you.  
You can’t do that.  There’s no going back.  Once things change, you can’t change 
them back!”

A very sick feeling swept over Mike.  After 10 months, he finally had his answer 
why Lisa had been so infuriated at him…the real reason.  With that desperate 
effort to get her out of Chicago, he was the one who had closed the final door on 
their relationship.  It was true; he had gone through her personal files to collect 
the information he needed to fill out the application.  However well-meaning his 
intentions might have been, he had violated her trust.  No wonder…

----------

It was very late, but they were not yet ready to return to their dorm rooms.  
Neither Mike nor Ruthie wanted to say goodnight and leave his misstep with Lisa 
as the final topic of the evening’s conversation.  He suggested walking across the 
playing field that separated the classroom buildings from the dorms, the same 
field where Ruthie had stood the week before staring up at the stars and 
contemplating the futility of her life.  They walked to the edge of campus to the 
fence and she noticed the gate was open.  She suggested going through the 
entrance and checking the path that led away from the university to the Pacific 
Ocean.  Mike acquiesced, but they didn’t go too far because the area off-campus 
was pitch black.  

Ruthie’s mood shifted.  She remembered her half-hearted attempt to come this 
way the previous week, with the goal of descending the hillside and jumping into 
the Pacific Ocean.  She realized that she never would have made it, even had the 
gate been open, because it would have been too dark for her to follow the trail.  
She would have torn herself up a bit on the bushes before eventually giving up 
and returning to campus.  What she had tried to do was really pathetic.  

To avoid the unpleasant memory of her failed suicide plan, she thought about 
what else she wanted to say about Lisa, and finally came up with another 
question:

“I’m wondering something.  Are you totally sure that it was Chicago that messed 
up things with Lisa?  What would you have said had you come here to Davenport 
last year and the same thing happened?  Then who would you have blamed?”

“I have no idea.  I really never thought about it, ‘cause I always figured it was 
because we left California that things between us changed.” 

“You wanna hear what I think?”

“Yeah.  I’d be curious.”

“I think that you and Lisa had a really great thing going in high school.  You had 
a relationship that worked in a certain place and time.  Then you graduated and 
left.  It’s kinda like an organism that evolves for a specific set of climatic 
conditions and maybe over-specializes.  Then it migrates or the climate changes.  
The organism has to be able to evolve again, or it goes extinct.  Your relationship 
with Lisa was kinda like that, ‘cause it went extinct when the environment 
changed.  You can’t blame her and you can’t really blame yourself, except for the 
part about the application.”

Mike wasn’t sure what else he could add to her insight.  He had not planned for 
her to know all the details about his ex-girlfriend and how they had broken up.  
And yet, in a way he was grateful that he had been forced to reveal that part of his 
life, because she was able to give him some honest assessment of his own actions.  
He had always thought of himself as the victim in the relationship and that Lisa 
had treated him horribly.  For the first time, he could see things from her 
perspective and was able to understand how his own actions and decisions 
hastened, but probably did not cause, the break-up.

Mike realized something else.  If what Ruthie was saying was true, then Lisa was 
not destined to be the love of his life.  The break-up was bound to happen, no 
matter what, because the circumstances in high school that drove them together 
vanished as soon as they crossed the stage and picked up their diplomas.  If that 
were true, then what good would it have done had he not insisted on returning to 
California, had he never filled out that application, and had Lisa not fought with 
him over Christmas?  The break-up would have been put off for a few months, but 
it still would have happened.  Afterwards Mike would have spent the spring 
semester sulking around the dorm in Chicago, and every day he would have been 
confronted with the sight of his ex-girlfriend running up and down the halls.  
What actually happened was better: he stormed out of her life and she went back 
to Chicago and that was the end of her.  It was a clean break, with no false hope 
of ever getting back together.  In Chicago, he continuously would have seen her 
and wondered…

There was another issue in Mike’s life that now was resolved.  He had been 
struggling with what to tell Ruthie about Lisa.  He ended up telling her everything 
that she wanted to know.  That had not been his intention, but it had happened that 
way because he was trying to justify his actions by giving her details.  His 
relationship with Lisa was more of a skeleton in his closet than he could have 
suspected, but now that Ruthie knew the entire story she could make her own 
judgment about his merits as a possible partner.  As he put it: “Well, for whatever 
it’s worth, you know all about Lisa.”

They were quiet for a few more minutes.  Mike was about to suggest they return 
to campus when Ruthie commented:

“If you ever do that to me, what you did to Lisa…you know…dig through my 
papers to find shit out about me…without asking…I’d never forgive you.  Never.”

“I know.  It’s not something I’d do to you.”

“You gotta promise me.”

“Ruthie, I’m not gonna ‘promise’.  Promises don’t mean anything.  People make 
them all the time.  I’m simply telling you that I’m not gonna do it.  You’ll just 
have to take my word.”

Ruthie was about to object, but then she remembered a quote from the New 
Testament about making promises.  

“I guess…I guess you’re right.  ‘I say to you, make no oath at all, either by 
heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is the footstool of His 
feet, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. Nor shall you make an 
oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let what you say 
be simply “Yes” or “No”; and anything than this comes from evil.’”

Mike was surprised by the biblical quote, but he recognized it.

“Sermon on the Mount – from the Book of Matthew, if I remember right.”

“Yeah.  Matthew 5:33-37.  Most of what’s in there is shit, but he did say a few 
things that made sense.  So I’ll take your word.  I’m sure your word’s more 
reliable than any promise would be.”

With that, she realized that Mike had given her the most honest answer possible.

----------

They returned to her dorm.  Upon arriving at the building they noticed that the 
light in Ruthie’s room was on and there were what looked like several people in 
there.  Ruthie was upset, but as usual she was afraid to confront Shannon and 
force her to chase out her guests.  She knew what would happen; that she would 
be subjected to ridicule and insults from everyone present.  She had the option of 
telling the RA, but if she did that, Shannon would harass her for days afterwards. 

Mike offered to confront the guests on Ruthie’s behalf, but she declined because 
that wouldn’t work either.  No doubt once everyone was out of the room Shannon 
would insult her for having a Parking Nazi handle her dirty work, because she 
was too big of a wimp to do it herself.  Ruthie was in a no-win situation.  

“Well, then the only other solution is for you to come over to my room and crash 
there.”

Ruthie blushed and fidgeted.  She was scared of accepting his offer, because she 
couldn’t be sure of his intentions.  However, she was dead tired, so much so that 
her dilemma with Shannon almost had her in tears.

“I wouldn’t…I…I mean…you wouldn’t mind?”

“Of course I wouldn’t mind.  Why would I?”

“I…I don’t know…I…I’m just thinking…maybe I’d better not…”

“It’ll be just to sleep…I’m not gonna push you on ‘that’.”

She nodded, and they were off to his dorm building.  It was a very awkward 
feeling when she entered his room for the first time.  Todd’s bed and furniture 
were completely empty, but the trash can near his desk was full of yellow police 
tape.  Ruthie set her backpack on Todd’s desk, while Mike pulled out an extra set 
of sheets from his dresser.  They made the bed.

“Do you have a toothbrush in your backpack?”

She shook her head.

“Do you want one?”

She nodded.

He gave her a new toothbrush and an open tube of toothpaste, and then pointed 
down the hallway to where the women’s bathroom was on his floor.  He found the 
largest t-shirt he had in his closet and put it on Todd’s bed.  Strange to think, if 
things went Mike’s way, eventually they both would think of it as Ruthie’s bed.

A few minutes later he heard a light knock on his door and let her back in.  To 
avoid the uncomfortable situation of what to do about changing, he left the room 
to clean up, which would give her time to change.  He vaguely hoped that she 
would get undressed and not bother to put on the shirt, so when he returned to the 
room he was disappointed to see her wearing it.  She was sitting on the bed with a 
nervous expression on her face, but Mike knew that expression was not in 
anticipation of having sex.  She simply was nervous because the situation was 
unusual and she did not yet completely trust him.  They would do what they had 
said they were going to do: sleep.  At 4:30 the next morning she would wake up 
and go to work and from there the two students would resume their ordinary 
routines.  However, Mike knew that if he could win Ruthie’s trust be being patient 
with her, there would be plenty more nights of her being with him.  Her life with 
Shannon was unbearable, so he would offer her a refuge, both in his heart and in 
his room.

The two friends hugged each other goodnight.  Ruthie got in Todd’s old bed and 
promptly fell asleep.  Mike stayed awake for a few minutes, listening to her 
breathing before falling asleep himself.

The next morning he woke up at 6:30.  Ruthie was long gone, but when he 
glanced over at Todd’s empty desk, he noticed that she had folded her sleeping 
shirt and put her toothbrush on top.  Next to the shirt were two large geology 
textbooks and a couple of notebooks.  She must have taken them out of her 
backpack before going to work.  He understood what that meant, that she fully 
expected to return and already was starting to keep her things there.

