Chapter 6 — Her, Back Then
Six in the morning.
Marcus woke up without an alarm, which was new. Or rather, old — he remembered this about being eighteen. His body just came online at dawn whether he wanted it to or not, none of the groggy resistance he'd developed in his thirties.
He thought about going for a run, then remembered he hadn't packed any real workout clothes. He made a mental note to fix that. Then he sat up, reached for the textbook on his desk, and got to work.
Three days passed.
He'd settled into a rhythm — classes in the morning, reading through every spare minute in between, evenings at his desk until lights-out. He wasn't sleeping much, maybe five or six hours, running on the particular energy of early commitment before the grind sets in.
In three days he'd accumulated 1,600 experience points.
He checked the system display, requested a full withdrawal, and watched the number land in his account. $1,600, on top of the $220 from the first day.
He sat with that for a moment.
A week ago he'd had $43 in checking and a nearly maxed prepaid phone. Now he had just over eighteen hundred dollars and a plan with actual structure to it. It wasn't wealth. But it was movement, and movement in the right direction felt enormous when you'd spent years going nowhere.
He called home Thursday evening. His mom answered on the second ring.
"Hey, Ma. Don't send money this month."
A pause. "What do you mean? Marcus, your father already sent—"
"I know. Tell him to hold it. I picked up some part-time work here — tutoring, editing papers, that kind of thing. I'm covering myself. Keep it for the farm."
Another pause, longer this time. He could hear her working through it.
"You're sure?"
"I'm sure. And hey — can you make sure Emma gets her school fees paid? All of them. I'll send three hundred this week. Tell her it's from me."
His younger sister Emma was a junior in high school. He knew, from a conversation she'd had with him years later, that she'd been quietly stressed about the activity fees her school kept sending home. She'd cried about it in private and hadn't told anyone. He'd had no idea at the time.
He wasn't going to let that happen again.
His mom was quiet for a moment. When she spoke again her voice was slightly different. "You're doing okay up there?"
"Better than okay," he said. "I'll call Sunday."
Friday afternoon he had a gap between classes, and he used it.
He'd been wearing the same rotation of faded t-shirts and old jeans since move-in. That was fine for class. It was less fine for tomorrow, when he was seeing Claire for the first time since they'd arrived at their separate schools.
He walked to the strip mall about six blocks off campus and went into one of the mid-range clothing stores there. Nothing expensive — a clean gray hoodie, dark jeans that actually fit, a pair of simple white sneakers that didn't look like they'd been through a lawnmower. He got a haircut at the barbershop two doors down. Eight dollars, cash. The barber was fast and good.
He stopped at a jewelry counter on the way back and stood there for a few minutes, turning something over in his hands — a simple silver necklace with a small crystal pendant. Delicate. Not flashy. The kind of thing that said I was thinking about you without making a production of it.
It cost $140. He bought it.
In his first life, he'd shown up to almost everything empty-handed. Not because he hadn't wanted to do better — he'd wanted to very much — but because there'd never been anything left over after the basics. He'd watched Claire accept that reality without complaint, over and over, and he'd carried the guilt of it for years.
He had money now. Not a lot, but enough for this. He wasn't going to be precious about it.
Saturday morning.
He was up early, read for an hour before breakfast, ate quickly at the dining hall, and was back at his desk by nine with two hours to spare before their agreed meeting time. He stuffed a couple of books into his backpack. Claire liked to find a quiet spot and read when they were out together — she'd done it since high school, that particular comfort she took in having a book nearby even when she wasn't actively reading it. He wanted to be able to sit with her in that.
They'd agreed to meet at the south gate of his campus at ten. She'd insisted on coming to him rather than the other way around, which he knew was her way of making sure he didn't spend money on the bus fare. He'd tried to offer and she'd talked right over it.
Some things hadn't changed.
He was still reading at his desk when Kevin wandered in from the bathroom, toothbrush hanging out of his mouth, and stopped by the window.
"Yo," Kevin said around the toothbrush, peering down at the courtyard below. He took the toothbrush out. "There is a girl standing outside our building."
"Okay."
"Marcus. There is a very pretty girl standing outside our building."
Marcus looked up from his book, walked to the window, and looked down.
Claire was standing on the path below in a white floral dress and a cream cardigan, a small bag over one shoulder, her dark hair down. She was looking at her phone with a slight frown — probably wondering where he was.
She'd gotten there early and hadn't texted him yet. That was Claire. She'd rather wait than feel like she was rushing someone.
He was already moving toward the door when Kevin said, behind him, "Hold on — do you know her?"
"That's my girlfriend."
A beat of silence.
"Get out," Kevin said.
By the time Marcus got downstairs, half the floor had apparently materialized on the balcony. He could hear them up there — the low buzz of guys noticing something worth noticing, a couple of whistles from further down the building that made his jaw tighten slightly.
Claire heard him coming and turned around.
There she was. Eighteen years old, bright-eyed, a little embarrassed by the attention she'd accidentally collected, her expression shifting into relief when she saw him.
He covered the last twenty feet quickly and wrapped his arms around her before she could say anything. She made a small surprised sound and then settled into it, her hands coming up to his back.
He held on for a moment longer than was strictly casual. She smelled like the same shampoo she'd used in high school. His throat did something complicated.
"There are like thirty people watching," she said into his shoulder, voice slightly muffled.
"I know."
"That's not bothering you at all, is it."
"Not even slightly."
She laughed — a real one, surprised out of her — and pushed back enough to look at him. Her face was flushed. She looked happy.
"You look different," she said, taking in the haircut and the new clothes.
"Good different or bad different?"
"Good different." She narrowed her eyes slightly. "Did you get a haircut for today?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
She smiled and shook her head, and he took her hand and they walked toward the campus lake, leaving the balcony audience behind.
Upstairs, Kevin had not moved from the window. Ryan and Jake had drifted over at some point during the proceedings. Derek was pretending to read but had clearly been watching.
"That," Kevin said, with great solemnity, "is Marcus's girlfriend."
"He said that already," Ryan said.
"I know, but I didn't believe him until right now."
They watched the two of them disappear around the corner toward the lake path, hands linked, Claire leaning slightly into Marcus as she said something that made him tilt his head toward her to listen.
"We need to find out how he did that," Jake said.
"Agreed," said Kevin. "Full debrief when he gets back. He doesn't get to just walk in here and drop that on us without an explanation."
"Completely unacceptable," Ryan said.
Derek turned a page of his book. He was smiling.
The campus lake was quiet on Saturday mornings. A few joggers on the path, a couple of students sitting on the grass with laptops, a pair of geese that had claimed the east bank and regarded anyone who came close with an attitude of supreme indifference.
They found a bench near the water and sat with their shoulders touching, catching up. She told him about her roommates — one she liked immediately, one who was fine, one who played music at volume until midnight and seemed genuinely confused when asked to turn it down. He told her about Kevin and the gaming situation and the advisor meeting, leaving out the parts that would require explaining the system.
There were going to be things he couldn't fully explain. He'd have to get used to that.
After a while she pulled a textbook out of her bag and settled into it, one leg tucked under her, occasionally pointing something out to him that she found interesting. He pulled out his English reading and they sat in comfortable quiet, the lake moving slowly in the October light.
He reached into his jacket pocket and set the small jewelry box on the bench between them.
She looked at it. Looked at him.
"What's this?"
"Open it."
She did, carefully, the way she always did things — no tearing, no rushing. When she saw the necklace she was quiet for a moment. She picked it up and held it in the light.
"Marcus."
"I wanted to."
"You didn't have to."
"I know I didn't have to."
She looked at him for a long moment with an expression he couldn't entirely read. Then she held the necklace out to him and turned around, lifting her hair off the back of her neck.
He fastened the clasp. She turned back and looked down at it against the white of her cardigan.
"It's really pretty," she said quietly.
"Yeah," he agreed, but he wasn't looking at the necklace.
She caught him at it and rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. She leaned her head against his shoulder and went back to her book.
He went back to his.
The geese on the east bank honked at something. The light moved across the water. The morning stretched out ahead of them, unhurried, and Marcus sat in it and thought that this — exactly this, the two of them on a bench in the sun with their books — was something he'd taken for granted the first time around.
He was not going to take it for granted again.