Interactive Story #1, 1st Segment

Sarah looked over her shoulder at yet another heart-stopping sound, but it was only the wind, ripping through the night with the shrill call of winter. It caught the tips of her scarf and whipped them around her face, the flutter of cloth scattering the warm plumes of her breath and momentarily blocking her vision. She tucked them into her coat and looked around again. The lawn was deserted, the few bare trees branching up into the starlight so that they stood out in stark relief. Someone had hung ornaments on some of the lower branches, a decoration which might have seemed festive on any other night but tonight only seemed to clank ominously.

Tonight, everything was suspect.

Catching herself, she forced her gaze forward. She was probably crazy. She knew she was crazy, because what she’d seen simply didn’t make sense. Coincidence could always be made to look like a pattern if one simply held the pieces right. What was it Dr. Graden always said? Paranoia was the same as hope for the fantastic – they both stemmed from dissatisfaction with the facts. Still, crazy or not, it wouldn’t do to look paranoid.

Especially if she was right.

After the frigid wind of the commons, the library seemed to blast her with warmth and quiet and light. Nearly as deserted as the rest of the campus, the place boasted only three occupied tables: a cluster of students likely studying for the same test, a dedicated and slightly mad looking law student buried under an ocean of horrendous looking books, and Benny.

Just the sight of him had her sighing with relief. She hadn’t doubted that he’d come – he was always there when she needed him – but she had feared…. She shook her head and cut off the thought. It didn’t matter what she’d feared. Paranoia again, she told herself. And there was no cause to be dissatisfied with the facts. She just needed to understand them in a way that wasn’t absolutely insane.

“Hey.”

Benny stood and smiled, offering his softly spoken greeting well before she was close enough to hear. His hands fidgeted nervously as they always seemed to do – though she didn’t know it – around Sarah. They tugged at his sweater, pushed his unruly hair off his forehead – where it just flopped right back, pushed up his glasses, adjusted his bag on the table. And then he just absorbed the sight of her. The lovely blond of her hair was something of a mess from the wind, and her cheeks and nose were pink from the cold. But it was her eyes he loved the most – especially when they were here. The dark green always seemed to catch the golden lights of the library, so that the rust colored flecks around her pupils flashed like a secret only he could see.

When she reached his table, he realized she hadn’t heard him. So he said again, “Hey.” And then his customary greeting, “How’s history?”

“Nothing new,” she replied, but her usual response almost stuck in her throat. She managed, “How’s the psyche?”

“Just the right amount of damaged.” He grinned, loving the exchange, loving her scent, loving everything about her face. When she barely managed a smile in return, his faltered. “You okay, Sare?”

“Yeah,” she replied absently. She was looking around the library as if searching for someone, and his heart sank.

“How’s Jason?”

“Jason? Why…oh.” She was stunned to realize that, in the strangeness of everything else that had happened, she hadn’t told him about Jason. The surprise was enough to pull her attention back to him for the moment, and she sat, relieved to set the weight of her bag on the table. But instead of unpacking it or moving it to the floor, she pulled it close and wrapped her arms around it. “We broke up.”

“You…oh.” He wondered if his face reflected his internal war between delight and sympathy, and he glanced at the table. “I’m sorry. What happened?”

“Well, let’s see. Thirty minutes after we were supposed to meet at La’Fontaine for dinner, he called me to ask to borrow money. No mention of our dinner reservations at all. When I asked him if he was planning to show up, he said he was too drunk to drive.”

“Oh. Huh.”

She snorted, reassured by the normalcy of the moment. “I believe the word you’re looking for is douche.” When he laughed, she continued. “The thrills didn’t end there. An hour after I got home from my solitary meal, he showed up with two sorority girls in tow and asked if we could share dessert.”

“Oh…huh.”

She laughed outright. “I’m going to pretend that’s disgust in your eyes. Let’s say that this time the word you’re looking for is gross.”

He grinned and rubbed her back in commiseration. “Sure it is. Nothing intriguing at all about the thought of you sharing anything with sorority girls.”

She laughed and hit his shoulder. And oh, it really was good to feel normal. She could always count on Benny, she thought again, and the warmth she felt lit her eyes. Then she looked down at the bag she still held protectively close, and the light in her gaze dimmed.

What if she was putting him in danger?

When she quieted, he pulled his hand away, not quite confident with the gesture of affection. He waited for her to speak, but she said nothing. For no reason that he could name, a kernel of worry wormed its way into his heart.

“Sarah, why are we here? We had a no dissertation pact for the holidays. You took your last class over the summer, so you have nothing to study for. What’s up?”

She looked through the room again. The group of students let out a startling round of laughter and then glanced around guiltily. The law student was gone, his plethora of books abandoned. No one else was near.

She looked at Benny again and took a deep breath. “It’s probably nothing. I’m sure it’s nothing. I just…I need your help with something. I found something. Or, at least, it looks like something, and I need…I need you to look at it and see if you…see what I saw.”

One black brow lifted over his incredibly blue eyes, and his lips seemed on the verge of a smile. On any other day, she would have been tempted to smile back.

“With that perfectly clear explanation,” he said, “I’ll do my best.”

She tossed another furtive glance around, and then she pulled the paper out of her bag.

It was thin, the disposable paper from a large sketch pad folded to fit in her pack. She spread it out across the table, careful not to smudge the ink as she smoothed the creases. And then she waited.

It didn’t take him long. She knew the moment he saw what she had seen, and her heart dropped and then began to thud. He looked at her, his usually cheerful eyes narrowed with concern, and she felt her hands tremble.

“Sarah, this can’t be right. Are you sure this is right?”

“Of course. I checked the facts a dozen times before I even called you. It’s all accurate.”

“Then it has to be a coincidence.” He looked at the sheet again, his frown deepening as he ran his fingers over the words. “It has to be-”

What interrupts Benny? You decide. Vote on the poll below this post, and feel free to add comments!