Emma

Her blonde hair fell in waves around a face flushed from something more than the cold. A facsimile of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer’s titular red nose was affixed to her nose though the antlers that completed the ensemble had fallen off several paces down the road behind her. Sam could muster neither the time nor the patience to deal with whatever this was about, though stopping served the more pragmatic benefit of giving Esme even more time to arrive before him.

“You should come to the party! It was for the hall but people from all over campus showed up so we just said fuck it.” The girl beseeched. He held out a hand as gently as he could so that she would stay a few paces back before giving her a reply.

“I’m good. Thanks for the offer though.” He said, eliciting a less than enthusiastic response from the girl.

“That’s not the Christmas spirit!” She said, furling her arms in a feigned gesture of displeasure and puffing out her already pouty lips into a fake frown. Sam stared past her for a moment, drinking in the uncomfortably loud music booming from one of the balconies of the hall.

“Plug Walk isn’t a Christmas song.” Sam replied. Rudolph-girls laugh caught him off guard. It was a throaty cackle that belied the soft, almost chime-like trill of her speaking voice.

“And you aren’t in the seasonal mood, so that makes two things that some eggnog can fix.” She said in a slurred tone that mixed adorably with her heart of Dixie accent. The ensuing silence as the two simply stared at one another was the real cherry on top, for Sam at least, as he tried his best not to meet the doe-eyed stare shining through the night at him. Usually at college parties, let alone the ones at this school, the facades people put on were the equivalent of hiding a thousand dollars under some saran wrap with a sign that said ‘There is no money here’ and those intentions were either fucking or buying narcotics to continue their nights festivities until they could achieve the former. Though with this one, it genuinely seemed like the only thing the party-goer wanted to inject was some peppermint flavored cheer.

“T-This is awkward now, isn’t it?” Sam asked more so to alleviate the silence for himself than out of any concern about the social temperature of this interaction. This was just one of the many nightly interactions that one experiences when walking around campus with one more person to add to the catalog of people he’d never cross paths with again.

“It’s only awkward if you make it awkward.” The girl quipped. Sam did nothing but roll his eyes.

“Well consider the awkwardness unmade.” Sam joked, watching as a coil of steam left his mouth into the night.

“Seriously though! You should come in! Its fucking gross out here right now and there’s probably a few handles left.” The girl begged. Sam simply shrugged, shaking his head in response.

“Look, I just walked in on my girl and another dude in Arcadia of all fucking places. I should really go.” He turned on his heel, but the Rudolph cosplayer was insistent.

“That… sucks, I guess. But isn’t that more reason to come and get drunk? Here, I’ll tell you my name if that helps. Emma, pleased to meet you.” The girl’s bubbly southern drawl fought through the **** as she ran around to face you again, hand outstretched. It was cruel, but Sam knew this was his chance to put a hard stop to this admittedly pleasant albeit inconvenient nighttime conversation.

“Doyle. Sam Doyle.” He said with an air of finality. For such a big campus, it was surprising how often that tidbit of information did its job. Was it always a savory experience? No, it almost never was, but Sam appreciated having the ability to duck out of social encounters with two simple words. Emma’s hand was still raised between the two, an unrequited gesture of friendship. Her eyes, however, now told a different story. There was a traceable apprehension in her smile now, as though she was keeping it up more so to keep up appearances than any real desire to be here anymore.

“You’re the one? The guy who was part of th—” Emma began, before Sam abruptly cut her off.

“The lost year? Yeah.” He said through a triumphant smile. Perhaps now she would not be so keen to drag him to a freshman party. Emma lowered her hand and began rummaging around in her pocket before producing a phone enclosed in a cyan case emblazoned with a stylized, polygon-art cat batting at a hexagonal ball of yarn. Sam didn’t have time to react before the flash of her camera went off, catching him in an awkward half-grimace as the full realization of the social faux pas he had just become a victim of dawned on him.

“Well it’s been fun Sam! I guess I’ll be seeing you!” The girl chimed as she dashed back towards the dorm, scooping up the antlers Sam previously thought she was too **** to notice she had lost on her way back. He didn’t even have time to process the rhyme let alone the reason why she had taken his picture. Perhaps it was the ‘rat in a cage’ principle that Smashing Pumpkins so eloquently proposed. After all, you can throw all the peanuts you want at the monkeys so long as there are bars on the enclosure. A mixture of shame and frustration bubbled to the surface, manifesting as a primal growl that tensed your shoulders to the point of cramping and returned some warmth to your numbed extremities. The undertow of the outburst brought a sense of child-like surprise at the fact that nobody else had done the same to him. Just… left the situation. Today was hell. This semester has been hell. This year has been hell. All he could hope for was at least some reprieve later as he continued winding his way through the night until he reached the shuttle stop.