They both wave. “See you tomorrow.”
There’s a beep as Xavier hits one of the buttons on the phone. I’m not sure which. Then there’s a brief moment of seeing his kitchen sideways as he sets the phone down without ending the call. It slips onto its back and I’m looking at the ceiling. Then it’s a flash of a nostril and the screen goes black.
Shaking my head, I set the phone aside and look at the card again. I can’t think of anyone else who would have sent the card. Xavier is the only one I can see managing to make a Christmas song that foreboding and implementing the idea of thematic handwriting in the same card.
But I’m not unfamiliar with his holiday and special occasion restrictions, and in retrospect they make more sense than his being responsible for the card.
As I’m staring out the front window sipping the last of my coffee to fuel me up for the day, I suddenly realize I never checked the email inbox to see if I got the message from Nancy Fulbright. That inbox is not one I have linked to my phone. That’s a purposeful choice, after the chaos and confusion of my phone being hacked and manipulated in a campaign of psychological torment against me a few years ago.
Since then, I’ve been extremely careful about what I do on my phone and what I relegate only to my computer. Making my way into my office, I wake my computer up and go through the process of checking that inbox.
The emails cluttering up the first page of results don’t follow any sort of theme or logical progression, but I’m not worried about any but the one on top. Sent just shortly after I finished the call with the administration office at the University, the email appears to have several attachments.
Opening it up, I read the short message from Nancy. It’s essentially the same as she said to me over the phone, with another promise to find any other information I might need. It has me feeling that she just wants me to get in contact with them again.
Which, by my experience, means they are considering that there are seminars or events and are going to try to get me to come speak. With the exception of the year of classes I promised to teach at the Sherwood Community Center, I’ve done my best to avoid any type of teaching situation throughout my career.
It’s not that I don’t think I’m an authority on what I do. I got exemplary grades in the academy and obviously have a proven track record. I’m just not the teaching type. It’s hard to be the one to stand in front of people aspiring to careers in the FBI and tell them how to be good agents when I’ve been just shy of rogue at so many points in my own.
And I would probably end up saying something ridiculous or offensive and ruin the whole learning experience.
Confident the email is really from the University and safe, I open up the first attachment. It’s my class schedule from my freshman year. Nostalgia settles over me as I look through the classes and remember the professors. The art classes stand out to me. That was the last year my schedule was heavily filled with the classes I thought were going to shape my future in art.
Sam likes to joke that I got ready for college by packing paintbrushes and I left packing a gun. The quip misses a couple of steps, but the general sentiment is there. Art school was always my dream. I envisioned a career spent traveling the world from gallery to gallery, immersed in different mediums, and crafting statements on society with my creations.
Then my father disappeared. One day he was there and the next he wasn’t. Overnight, the deeds to two houses, along with various bank accounts, shifted over into my name, and his will was left at his place. That was when my focus started to shift. Art classes gave way to psychology and criminal justice. Graduate school for a Master of Fine Arts degree became the FBI Academy.
Now I travel from crime scene to crime scene, prison to prison, immersed in different murders, and crafting statements to society with the cases I fight and solve.
Scanning through the classes, I catch sight of the English class where I met Julia. She was older than me by a couple of years, but only one level ahead. We quickly bonded over our shared hatred of arbitrarily interpreting literature, and in those still-early days of the rise of social media, amused ourselves by pretending to run platforms for the authors or characters we were dissecting.
A memory of her slipping a note to me in the middle of class that offered Herman Melville’s Yelp review of a local whale watching cruise brings a smile to my lips.
At the time, it made me laugh so hard I had to fake a coughing fit and Julia told our professor she would escort me to the Student Health Center. We burst out of the classroom and made it about ten steps before we were both doubled over with laughter. It was the kind of laughter that perpetuates itself. Even if the initial funny thing stops being funny, just the fact that you’re laughing so hard keeps you laughing.
We got to know each other well during that class, but the next semester we didn’t share any classes, and by summer our conflicting schedules made us lose touch. Then, my sophomore year came and there she was again. We didn’t share a class, but our schedules meshed so that we crossed paths a couple of times during the week and sometimes ended up studying in the library at the same time. We set up regular lunches, and our friendship was starting to get really close. And then one day, she didn’t show up at the library
