​

We had been in the library for about an hour, sitting at an empty table where I typed away something on my laptop that should have been done a while ago while she struggled at what looked like rocket science. Hell, it probably was rocket science.

 

After a bit, she leaned over. “So… what are you writing?” Eve asked me.

​

“A story,” I said without looking away.

 

“Yeah, well no shit. I already know that. Like, what’s it about?” she said. I still hadn’t looked at her, but I knew what her face would look like. Her eyebrows would move up and down quicker with each passing word. Her cheeks would also be really spread apart. I smiled, probably the same way she was.

​

“You know I can’t tell.”

​

“Remind me why again?” she asked.

 

I heard her audible eye-roll, but I knew her face still hadn’t changed. “Because,” I said, finally turning to her, “it’s a first draft. I don’t tell people about first drafts until they’re done,” I said while smiling. It was fun explaining this to her at least once a week. She knew the answer but still asked.

 

“You don’t let me read anything you write,” she said in a tone that felt more serious than playful.

 

“Well,” I said, “I guess it’s just a bunch of first drafts then.”

​

I looked down at what she was working on. There was a big ass textbook in front of her that probably cost a few hundred dollars opened to a page where the person who owned it before had drawn penises in all four corners. Apart from that, there seemed to be an atom in the center that was actually printed rather than drawn. She also had her laptop opened to her notes. I pointed to her book.

 

“Looks complicated,” I said.

 

She nodded. “Tell me about it.”

 

I nodded while turning and going back to typing. I was trying to work a story out of my head that had been stuck inside for weeks but refused to come out of my fingers and onto my keyboard. On the other hand, Eve stayed in a constant cycle of flipping pages, typing, and sighing. Over and over again, like it was an effortless repetition. Something I really wished I could mimic.

 

The moment where things finally seemed to click for me, where the words actually flowed instead of being forced, was when I checked the charge of my laptop in the upper right corner. I only had 4% left. I silently cursed to myself. If only I brought my fucking charger. There was more I wanted to get done. It was all natural now. Regardless, it was going to have to wait. Eve watched me as I closed down my screen.

 

“Look,” I started, “I don’t got my charger on me, and my computer’s aboutta die. I’m gonna dip.”

 

She lightly closed her eyes before nodding, “That’s fine. I was gonna head out soon anyway.”

 

“Really?” I said, taken aback. Her eyebrows furrowed. She seemed a mix of amused and annoyed. My reaction was funny, but being questioned wasn’t.

 

“Yeah, you don’t believe me?” She said, resting her head on a balled fist. Behind her sentence, there was a faint smile. I instantly felt the relief.

 

“No, it’s just, well you know. You usually got all that science shit to do.”

 

“And?” she said. Her hidden smile was much more obvious now. I could almost see it creeping in the corners of her cheeks.

 

“I just sorta figured it would take you longer. You know, like usually I finish my shit way before you.”

 

“Well, luckily for me,” she said while closing her laptop, “my science shit is done.”

 

We then had our bags ready to go on our backs at the same time. I figured she’d want to do something else now. My mind raced as we headed to the exits, but all I could come up with was watching a movie. As we walked on, she stopped for a second.

 

“Gotta use the bathroom, I’ll meet you outside.” I nodded and walked forward alone.

 

The exit wasn’t too far from where we were sitting, maybe a hundred feet away. As I was about halfway there, I could’ve sworn my phone vibrated. I fished in my pocket to bring it out, only to quickly learn it was nothing. I looked around me without putting it away.

 

Everything surrounding were things one would expect to be in a college library. People sat at computers that were plugged into wall outlets; pencils scribbled away at papers. The typing and writing worked together to make an ambient noise that had become synonymous with what I associated a library with. The constant scratch and click that came from every audible direction. Something was comforting in that. Almost safe.

 

I continued forward, not looking up. My face was still glued to my phone for no good reason. I just had some weird feeling that in a few seconds, I was going to get a text or something, so putting it in my pocket just to take it out in a bit felt ridiculous. Again, it wasn’t a good reason, but it was still a reason. There was that, and I had been going to school here for three years and had been in this library atleast two hundred times mixed in. I knew exactly where I was. I didn’t need my eyes.

 

As I stayed straight, I knew there would be these group study rooms to my right that people reserved like they were a hot topic. They were made of these four glass walls that were brought together with a sliding door. When fully closed, the inside would be cut from airflow and turned into a makeshift sauna. In short, it was impossible for anyone to study there. To my left was a lecture hall with at at least north of one hundred seats. Why it was in the library was beyond me, but it was.

 

The exit doors weren’t far from me. There were two of them that would lead to outside the southeast side of the building. I thought about slowing down. Eve wouldn’t be far behind me at this point. I looked away from my phone for a second and checked behind me. After looking in every direction my eyes could cover, I still didn’t see her. The view was complimented nicely with that ambient noise. I decided to wait for her outside. There I could get some fresh air. The air inside the library always felt like the kind you breathe on a plane, compressed and recycled. The difference was here, everything was contaminated with stress.

 

After walking forward some more steps, I grabbed the first door push handle I could see. For a second, things didn’t make sense. The door had an unfamiliar stick to it. A little annoyed, I gave it an umph, eventually pushing it open. For a second, the contaminated air was replaced by whatever was outside. For a second, everything felt good. Really good. The breeze on my face, the idea of being somewhere else, somewhere else with Eve, all worked together really well.

 

Right before I was about to take my first step outside, a sharp sound stopped me. I was caught off guard, not hearing the ambient library noise. There was that, and it wasn’t anything in hell one would usually hear outside. Instead, it was a really loud, wee woo, wee woo, wee woo, wee woo, wee woo, wee woo, wee woo, wee woo that was on a replay and had zero chance of stopping at any point in the near future. For a bit, I wondered if I was the only one hearing this. I looked around to check that I wasn’t crazy. Luckily, that was not the case. Everyone else in the library had stopped what they were doing and looked around. We were all united in finding out where the insistent fucking noise was coming from.

 

I turned back and watched as the door I had just opened slowly came to a close. That moment it shut is where my heart officially sank, lower than it had before. A message was written across the middle of the screen in big red block letters. Emergency Exit, Alarm Will Sound.

 

“Shit,” I said to myself, not intending for it to come out aloud. I was slowly putting together what I had just done. While not looking up, I opened the emergency exit door. The only emergency exit door in the entire goddamned library. Something I knew was true because of how well I knew the library’s layout. I then reconsidered. Maybe I didn’t know it as well as I thought.

 

“Whoope,” I said to myself. This time I knew it was going to come out out loud. I tried my best to make my voice as dry as possible. For a while, I stared at the door in front of me. It was frustrating that I could see the outside through the screen that had Emergency Exit, Alarm Will Sound written across it. I could see where I was supposed to go but couldn’t. Instead, I was stuck inside. I got so pissed to the point where I had to physically turn. I couldn’t look at the outside anymore. The wee woo, wee woo, wee woo, wee woo, wee woo, wee woo, wee woo followed no matter where I looked. It grew louder the more I shifted focus.

 

Finally, I could see Eve walking towards me. She was a welcomed change of scenery, even though she was clearly more confused than anything else.

 

“What the hell happened?” she asked. I turned back to the emergency exit door, trying to refer to it. The wee woo had now become an echo instead of something that was being played without stopping. People around us were starting to stand up. I think everyone figured it was an evacuation alarm of some kind, it’s just no one wanted to follow it. I, for one, wanted nothing more in the world than to stop the noise from going on and on, but there didn’t feel like there was anything I could do to make that happen. I thought back to Eve’s question before pointing to the door. She nodded.

 

“Yeah, I see it,” she said, “what’s going on here?”

 

“I sorta just opened it?”

 

“You sort of just opened it?”

 

“Yeah? I mean, by accident?”

 

“Why is everything you say sounding like a question?”

 

“I don’t know?”

 

“Shit,” she said.

 

She said something after, but I couldn’t make it out with all the other noise around me, “ So, what do we do now?”

 

I held my arms to each side, “I don’t know. This hasn’t really happened to me before?”

 

“Me neither,” she said.

 

We watched as someone walked out of the right door. Something I wished I would have done. Others were still standing but not moving. Eve and I were now something like celebrities. Literally, everyone in the library was looking at us. It was like we were metal objects, attracting everyone’s magnetic eyes. I bit my lower lip as time seemed to slow down around me. The wee woo, wee woo, wee woo, wee woo was now stretched.

 

“You should probably go,” I told her. She looked at me, confused.

 

“What?” she said.

 

“You should probably go,” I said again while looking at the people staring at us. Everyone had something they had to do in front of them, like a book that was supposed to keep them busy or a laptop, but instead, my girlfriend and I were more interesting. That wasn’t fair. “Listen, you had nothing to do with this,” I said while pointing back to the emergency exit door, “you didn’t touch that thing. I did.”

 

“Okay, and?” she said.

 

“And,” I said, a little annoyed but trying my best to hide it, “so this is me, like it’s on me. You shouldn’t have to deal with it,” I finished. People were still looking at the two of us.

 

“I’m not just going to leave you here, David.”

 

“Oh come on, you’re being dramatic. It’s not like I’m on the battlefield here getting blown up.”

 

“That’s not the point.”

 

“No, I know it isn’t. But seriously Eve, whoever comes here is gonna come, and I’m gonna tell them straight up it was me who opened the door. Like, seriously, what are you gonna do here?”

 

“I’ll tell them you did it on accident.”

 

“They’ll know it was an accident. I wouldn’t still be standing here if it wasn’t.”

 

Eve looked around. As she did, we finally started losing some of the eyes attached to us, along with our celebrity status. Losing those things felt good. I was grateful Eve could somehow make that happen. She then looked back at me.

 

“Let me know how everything goes,” she said.

 

“Course.”

 

She then looked at everything again. Me, the room, the people, everything. Her eyes passed me in an instant. She didn’t seem happy, and I wasn’t sure why. She then started fiddling around with the straps on her backpack, like she was uncomfortable. Finally, she looked back at me.

 

“See ya,” she said in a tone I wasn’t quite sure what to make of. I watched as she went past me.

 

“Hey,” I said, “make sure not to take that door,” I finished while pointing at the Emergency Exit I had opened a few minutes ago. She tried her best to hide a quick chuckle, but a smirk still found its way onto her lips. I smiled back at her. This brought out a full smile. Maybe the first one I had seen all day. She gave me the finger as she pushed open a door that wouldn’t set off an alarm. Somehow, she flipped me off in a way that didn’t feel malicious or anything. She was probably the only person on Earth who could do that.

 

The wee woo, wee woo, wee woo continued as I saw someone hurrying to me. Right away, I knew he worked at the library. Maybe it was the expression on his face? He was the first person to look annoyed rather than confused. Everyone else wasn’t sure why the quiet ambiance had been replaced and polluted, but he seemed to understand why.

 

“This you?” he asked.

 

“What?” I said.

 

"You set the alarm off, right?”

 

“Oh,” I said while looking back at the door, “yeah.”

 

“Alright, accident?”

 

“Yeah, I was on my phone, and well, just…” I said while looking back at the door. I struggled to finish what I started for reasons that didn’t make sense. “And you just opened it?” the guy said. “Yeah. On accident,” I said, trying to make the back half as clear as possible.

 

“Okay,” the guy said. He reached into his pocket and brought his phone to his ear, “it’s an accident, you can make an announcement now.” He said a few other things, but I couldn’t really make them out. The noise around me made it impossible for his voice to reach my ears, that already didn’t work the greatest. While this was happening, I finally got a good look at the guy. He seemed older than me, but probably only by a year. Maybe a senior or something? He had a round face; his face was so round it was like a cartoon character's round. It fit perfectly with his gut that folded over his belt that was way too tight around his waist. All in all, he looked really uncomfortable. In his demeanor, clothes, situation, everything. It was all uncomfortable, and it was starting to bother me.

 

After a few seconds, a voice came over the intercoms, saying that the alarm was an accident, nobody had to leave and would be cut off shortly. I watched as the entire library collectively sat back down. What they suspected was finally confirmed, and I was no longer a celebrity, just some guy who had fucked up. The most uncomfortable guy in the world then looked directly at me.

 

“We have maintenance coming now, it sucks, but they’re the only ones who can shut the alarm off,” he said.

 

“Damn,” I said while looking at anything but him, “do I gotta stay for that?”

 

“Yeah, they just need to hear from you that it was an accident.”

 

“So, this isn’t going to screw me or anything?” Even though I thought I knew the answer, I asked him and wasn’t looking forward to hearing it. He looked at me as the siren continued to fill the first floor. The wee woo, wee woo, wee woo, wee woo, stayed filling the first floor, bouncing off the walls and into ears as everyone grew collectively annoyed. For a moment, it seemed like he was trying to trace the sound with his eyes. Eventually, those eyes finally found their way to me.

 

“Nah, you shouldn be alright,” he said. After that, he quickly checked his phone. “This happens more than you think.”

 

“Setting off the emergency exit?” I asked while feeling the relief come off what was somehow sitting on my shoulders.

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Seriously?” I asked, still believing it was too good to be true.

 

He looked up at me again. Immediately, I knew I screwed up. The annoyance that had been building up in the guy who was already so uncomfortable had complied, and my questioning hadn’t helped either.

 

“Yes. It happens more than you think,” he said one more time before returning to his phone. I gave him a small nod that he didn’t see before looking away. Everything felt awkward the way things were. I wished the feeling would go away, but I knew it wouldn’t. All I could do was stay wishing. I breathed in and out while slipping my hands into my pockets, trying my best to find a way to relax.

 

After a bit, the maintenance crew showed up. They turned the alarm off in about two minutes, cutting off the wee woo, wee woo, wee woo. I told them I had opened the door by accident. Before they sent me on my merry way, one of the guys told me that they’d have to file an Incident Report with the school because when an alarm gets set off, the fire department gets instantly notified. He said that since it was an accident and the camera footage should prove it, I would have nothing to worry about. I nodded and said it over and over again in my head as I finally left the library.

 

Nothing to worry about.

 

The sun set as I took my first few steps outside. It starkly contrasted how bright it was when Eve and I had first gone in. I wanted to do something, but I wasn’t sure what that something was. My first instinct was to go to some bar and drink the biggest glass of beer they had. Yeah, I thought to myself, a good Coor Banquet sounded great. Then I realized I still had my backpack on, and no bar would let anyone bring a backpack inside. I wondered to myself how stupid I could be. They really could think I had anything inside there.

 

Instead, I just went for a walk to nowhere in particular. During my walk, I kept thinking that there was something I needed to worry about. Like there was something I needed to do, but I just couldn’t figure out what that thing was. Because of that, my mind sort of just went mindless. After everything that had happened today, mindless felt good.

 

Will was sitting in the living room when I finally made it home. It was late, like really late. The fan we had in the corner was blaring. When we moved into the house more than a month ago, we quickly learned that the place didn’t have central air conditioning. Rather than trying to get out of the lease and find somewhere to live entirely, we figured fans would treat us right. The fan in the living room was the biggest one we bought. It was rotating back and forth across the space it covered, spraying every direction with an artificial breeze and sounds that didn’t quite fit the machine.

 

I was surprised Will was still up. I was pretty sure he had work in the morning, and any time he did, he’d be in bed before 10:30, and it was already a lot later than that. The way he sat sort of slumped made him seem pissed off. His stomach was on the same level as his waist, and his arms folded across his chest. His legs also sat at rigid ninety-degree angles. The scowl on his face didn’t help him much, either.

 

As I sat next to him, a meow caught my attention. I looked to my right; our other roommate had a cat named Sky. Sky sat by the door. Her green eyes seemed to pierce through me like people at the library did earlier. It still wasn’t fun. Will noticed the cat, too. His eyes drew to her in the same way mine had. He shook his head ever so slightly.

 

For a while, we didn’t say anything to each other. Instead, we just looked straight ahead. The only noise clouding the room was the fan, even though the air it was making was only catching the top of our heads. The sound it made was a nice trade-off from what had been in the library earlier. Finally, Will decided to break the quiet.

 

“How’s it going?” he asked without moving his head. The two of us were staring directly ahead.

 

“It’s going,” I replied. As I said this, I realized I still had my backpack on. I then sat forward and pulled it off, finally allowing myself to relax.

 

We still hadn’t looked at each other. It had gotten to the point where we both probably realized it but weren’t doing anything to change. I shifted slightly, trying to angle myself toward him. “Long day?” I asked.

 

“Yep,” he said without a moment’s hesitation. I nodded and looked down at my bag. Finally, he looked over at me.

 

“How was yours?” he asked.

 

“Hmmm?”

 

“Your day, how was it?”

 

This time, it was my turn to look away. First, I went down to look at my backpack again. Then, I looked straight ahead of me, just like we were doing before. I realized then that the entire time Will had been staring at a blank TV screen. It was interesting because it sort of acted like a mirror. We could see our reflections looking back at us. Maybe that’s why he hadn’t turned to face me before. In his mind, he was already doing that, just from a different angle. I wondered how I hadn’t noticed that earlier.

 

I thought about my day. At least about everything that had happened in the last few hours. I thought about it for a long time while chewing the inside of my inner cheek. I took a deep breath in and let it out. I didn’t realize until it was over how long I had held that breath in. I then looked over at my roommate, someone who I considered to be one of my best friends, and said:

 

“It was fine. Nothing really happened.”

 

After sitting with Will for a while longer in silence, I went upstairs to my room. As I fell on my bed with nothing but underwear on and the lights off, I realized I hadn’t texted Eve about what happened after she left. That was probably what was on my mind earlier when walking. It had to have been. I then reached over and pulled my phone off the nightstand.

 

Tapping the touch screen brought a piercing light that threw spears at my eyes. Doing this while in a dark room was not the move. Once things settled down and my eyes adjusted, I saw I had gotten a text from her a few minutes earlier.

 

Everything good? she asked. My fingers flew across the screen’s keyboard as I typed: yes. A few seconds later, I got another text from her asking: what happened?

 

Some maintenance guys came by and shut the alarm off.

 

I was about to put my phone to the side and go to sleep when another text from her came through.

 

That’s it? Like nothing’s gonna happen to u now?

 

I dropped my phone to my bare chest and stared at the pitch-black ceiling. I couldn’t see anything, yet I still looked. The phone’s screen was cold. The way too many chest hairs I had growing out did nothing to protect me from it seeping through. I was thinking. Finally thinking. Once I was done, I picked up my phone and lied.

​

Nah, I’m good nothing more’s gonna happen.

 

I closed my eyes without telling her about the Incident Report coming my way.

 

Two days later, I went to the Office of Student Accountability to meet with a lady named Angelica about what happened at the library. I had met with Student Accountability before, not over things as bad as some people I knew had, but still, it wasn’t my first rodeo. Over and over, I kept telling myself what the guy at the library had told me. Nothing to worry about. Nothing to worry about. Nothing to worry about. Still, as I walked into the basement of the College Memorial Union, where the Accountability Office was located, it felt like I had something to worry about.

 

Finding Angelica’s cubicle wasn’t hard. It was one of the first ones inside the office space. I knocked on the outside of its wall before making my way in. With each knock, a butterfly grew in my stomach and ran into some small or large intestine. When I was younger I would get these all the time. The last time I remembered having them was one of the first times I had talked to Eve sober. But here I was, when I had nothing to worry about, they were coming back in full force. A voice answered my knocks with a “yes?” I walked in. A lady whom I assume to be Angelica sat behind a desk. There was a chair on the other side that I went towards.

 

“So you’re David?” she asked me as I sat down. The two things I noticed about her right away were that she wore her hair up and tight (probably shorter than mine), and she had a big gap between her two front teeth. The gap was big enough that you could’ve probably fit another tooth entirely in between the two.

 

“Yep,” I said while bringing the chair underneath me, “Angelica, right?”

 

“You got it,” she said with a smile. I got the feeling that she was one of those people who smiled a lot, which meant I’d see that missing middle tooth quite a bit.

 

“How are you doing today, David?” she asked me.

 

“Uh, well, I don’t know,” I stuttered, “pretty alright,” I finally finished. My cheek was now resting on my palm. I really wished I could take the stupid stutter I just did back. “How ‘bout yourself?”

 

“I’m doing good, thanks for asking. So, what year are you?”

 

Immediately, I knew we were in one of those phases where whoever has the power tries to break the ice, so it seems like they know you, so when they ask those hard questions answering them won’t be too bad. We went through them all, the: what’s your major? How do you like it here? Where are you from? What are you going to do after undergrad? Any single bullshit question you could think of. Finally, we got down to what we were both there for. “So, do you want to walk me through what happened the other day?” she asked.

 

I took a deep breath in. I thought that sucking a little air into my gut would kill some butterflies. It did for a few, but not nearly enough. I had been through what I wanted to say probably close to two hundred and fifty-six times, but still, it felt unrehearsed. I wasn’t sure why I was nervous. I shouldn’t be. I told myself that a few times, but it didn’t work.

 

“Well, I was at the library, not really paying attention. Like, well, I was on my phone and shit,” immediately I stopped myself and thought, why the fuck did I just curse? Angelica must have seen what I was thinking on my face. She gave me a little laugh that killed a few more butterflies that were inside. It was at that moment that I decided I liked her.

 

“And well,” I said while bringing both hands out to the sides and shaking my head, “I just accidentally opened the emergency door."

 

She nodded as she scrolled with her mouse. She was reading something, and I wondered what it was.

 

“I also see on your student record that you were on university probation for a while,” she said. She then looked away from her computer and directly at me, “do you want to talk about that?”

 

It took everything in my power for me not to roll my eyes. What I had been on probation for was definitely on the screen in front of her. It was starting to seem like my decision to like her may have been premature.

 

“Uh, yeah, when I was a freshman I got picked up for underage drinking in a park with some guys. But that was like, two years ago, so like, I’m pretty positive I’m off probation.”

 

“You are, it actually ended over a year ago now.”

 

It took everything in my power not to ask her why I had to explain something already over. Doing so really pissed me off. Nevertheless, I persisted and managed to keep my mouth shut.

 

“So this is what will happen, David. I’ve seen the video from the cameras. It looks like a mistake. You didn’t run away. If you did, we wouldn’t treat this as an accident, but you didn’t. I’m going to let you go and just ask you to please keep your head up and not accidentally trip any more alarms in the future…”

 

“So I’m basically on probation again?” I asked her. I knew I had cut her off and that it was a mistake. The butterflies started again in my stomach. This time was worse than the ones before.

 

“No, you’re not.” A smile came across my face, kicking all the butterflies out that had just found their way in. “Thank you.” “You’re welcome,” she said, returning my smile with hers that had a gapped tooth. “One more thing,” she said as I started to stand up, “this is just a courtesy warning. Whenever someone gets sent here for an IR, we notify their parents. Just letting you know.”

 

I was already up at this point, holding my backpack in my hand by a single strap and letting it swing beside me. My knees were locked, and my throat was dry. Angelica looked at me, confused. I guessed whatever I was feeling inside was visible.

 

“Please don’t do that,” I asked.

 

Leaving Angelica’s office was weird. Afterward, I ended up inside a McDonald’s about a block away. As I sipped my strawberry banana smoothie at one of those high white tables and stools, I tried to figure out why I felt so weird. It wasn’t like I said much to Angelica, but at the same time, it felt like I did. I told her things the way they were. What had happened with the door, all of that. She knew things Will and Eve didn’t. Things I had kept from them. Things I had kept from them for reasons I don’t even know why. Nothing here was a big deal; there was no reason to keep them secret. But I still did.

 

Did that mean Angelica knew me better? Better than others? No, that wasn’t the case, I told myself. It couldn’t have been the case. That wouldn’t be fair. It wouldn’t be fair to Eve, Will, myself. No one. I had just told Angelica what had happened. Things about the accident. Things I didn’t tell others, things I couldn’t tell others. I thought about everything that had happened the past few days as I walked out of the McDonald’s exit. This exit didn’t set off any alarms. Everything felt like it should mean something, but I just didn’t know what that something was. It was almost like I couldn’t know it.

 

I couldn’t shake this feeling. The feeling of a wall that was up in my brain and I could do nothing about it. I couldn’t tell Will and Eve everything, even if I really wanted to. To put myself at ease, I forced myself to a conclusion. I wasn’t allowing myself to do things. I wasn’t allowing myself to do things with honesty, with people, with anything, I just wasn’t. But that brought up a whole other question, why was I even doing that in the first place?

 

I thought about that question for a lot longer. I told myself the moment I could answer it was when things would be a lot better.