Member-only story
The Taste of Her Cherry Chapstick
Fiction
Just wanna try you on
I’m curious for you
— Katy Perry, “I Kissed a Girl”
The first time I meet her, I nearly barrel into her as I squint at my phone to read my class schedule and figure out what room English 101 is in.
Her startled brown eyes make me forget for a moment that I’m lost.
“Oh!” She staggers back a step, and so do I. “You okay there?”
By this time, I’m almost in tears. I have five minutes till the class starts, and I didn’t expect my first day at a community college to be so frenetic. “I’m sorry,” my voice blubbers. “I’m just trying to find my class, and I keep getting turned around.”
“What class is it?” she asks, concern flitting across her features, and I know right then that she’s one of the nice ones, a keeper, far from the vultures of high school.
“English 101 with Camilla Braun,” I say.
She turns and points down an adjacent hallway. “All the English classes are in that block, I think.”
I blow up the class schedule on my phone now that I’m standing still. Breathe. Just take a breath. “Oh, it’s room 2404.”
