“I just thought college would be… I don’t know. Different?”
“It’s community college Jon, how different did you really expect it to be? We’re only a town over. We still live at home. Basically all the same people we went to high school with are still here. There’s still a god-awful football team, and even though they play in a division that makes use of all the Roman numerals available to it, the same idiots who thought they were big shots in high school still think they’re on the cusp of making it big here. It’s all the same.” Karyn punctuated her rant with a long sip from her Americano, apparently needing all the juice to get through this morning. “Just be thankful we at least have a coffee shop to sit at between classes instead of that miserable old cafeteria.”
“Well that, and it is nice being able to not have classes that start at 7:30. But even academics feel all the same, everything just feels like re-hash of what we learned in high-school. This is still a place of higher learning, shouldn’t we at least be doing some, I don’t know, Like Econ for example, we were still doing stupid supply and demand curves this morning like that wasn’t already beaten into us a thousand times over.”
“Actually Jon, it sounds like you should be grateful to your old teachers who so adequately prepared you for the next step,” Karyn chided. “And it’s Econ 101, what did you seriously expect?”
“To not spend an entire lecture section not being able to move on past the basics of ‘high prices, low prices’ because some stay-at-home-mom has to raise her hand and make it about herself on every single topic. At least in highschool, we could get through a lesson.”
“Hey, that’s something different! At least there’s some new faces around here. Being at this loser school means we have a whole new host of losers to make fun of. Plenty of opportunities to sharpen our snark. Old and young too, these new losers come from all walks of life.”
“Do not gaze too deeply into the loser lest the loser gaze into you. It all seems less fun considering we’re here too. Voluntarily I might add, which probably makes it worse. And sheesh, speaking of losers-”
“Jon. Karyn. Fancy seeing you here.”
“Don’t you have somewhere else to be Zoe,” Jon seethed. “Like, I don’t know, your own school?”
Zoe took an extra second to stir in the lavender syrup sitting at the bottom of her drink, relishing how easy it still was to set Jon off. “Oh my precious brother, did you forget how I was approved to start earning college credits instead of going to PE? Or are you still beating yourself up for not applying yourself and turning in a wet fart of a college application that couldn’t even get you into a Florida four-year university. No offense Karyn.”
“None taken. I’m just broke.
Jon’s eyes rolled at this topic being brought up, and getting ganged up on, yet again.“Shut up. You know I was picky about what schools I applied to.”
“And they were picky when it came to you. Cheer up big brother. If it makes you feel any better, you’ve been an excellent role model to me. You’ve provided me an absolute master class on what not to do.”
“Don’t you have anywhere else to be? I know your little shadow=ghoul friend Athena’s sitting under a tree somewhere around here-”
“Actually, I’m mostly here on business. I’ve got Karyn’s notes from Music Appreciation-”
“Thank you Zoe, you’re a lifesaver. I’ve been falling asleep to Schubert my whole life, it’s just Pavlovian at this point.”
“And I got some tea- Did you hear Leonard’s back in town? Rumor is he lost his scholarship after they found him doing drugs in his dorm room.”
“No way!” Karyn gasped. “He was always such a straight edge.”
“And it’s CTI. It’s not like that school isn’t famous for basically inventing microdosing. So it wasn’t just pot or something basic. It had to either be a whole lot of something or something especially weird.”
“My money’s on tree frogs.” Karyn got the shocked expression from Jon and Zoe she was hoping for. “What? If you were in my anatomy class with him on dissection day, you wouldn’t be looking at me so crazy eyed.”
“Enough,” Jon grumbled. “Is this seriously what we do now? Just gossip about people we went to high-school with? Could we be any lamer?”
“Lame is what happened to Lakepoint after you guys graduated.”
“Aw, that’s so sweet Zoe,” Karyn gushed.
“I mean, not because of you guys. Sorry, I love you two, but Batman isn’t interesting on his own, he just has the best villains. And you guys had them in droves with Biff and Sarah and their whole coterie of henchman. So tell me, are they on or off again?”
“Off,” fired Karyn.
“On,” shot Jon, just as quick. Jon’s cheeks burned as he realized he’d hooked by the same superficial conversation he was just railing against. “Look, fine, I’m a hypocrite, but Sarah can be so cryptic, how can you not find it fascinating? They’re back on and I can prove it. If you just look at this post-” Jon pulled out his to show his friends the smoking gun from Sarah’s profile when he abruptly stopped.
“Wow, Jon-boy, what’s with the sparkly case?”
“Yeah, seriously, you’re my brother and I support you, but you know I have a moral obligation to denounce glitter in all it’s forms.”
“I agree with Zoe. That is not a good look. Unless you’re anticipating being stranded at sea and needing to flag down passing ships-”
“Can you two just stop it for a second. I cracked my stupid case in the bathroom this morning and this is the only backup mom had laying around. I’ve already ordered another one that’ll be here tomorrow. And before you say anything, no, my phone needs a case. Even for a day. It just feels wrong for it to be so unprotected. And I drop everything.”
Zoe and Karyn’s heads bobbed and nodded to that statement, less in enthusiastic agreement and more of a recognition of a universal truth.
“So, back to business. As you can see from Sarah’s song choice-wait, damn, where’d that post go?” Jon flicked his thumb helplessly, trying to find the post he was referencing, but all his likes and posts were seemingly scrambled with someone else’s stuff. Jon physically recoiled at some of the content, ads for makeup, pads, pregnancy guides, and products that were definitely not intended for a young man.
“Oh, so it isn’t just me? I even updated the app but all my old posts and likes are all different now.” Karyn pulled out her phone and brushed through a couple pages to punctuate her point. “My feed has been nothing but this lame goth and emo stuff, but I figured it may have just been from spending more time with Zoe. No offense.”
“Slight offense. But yeah, same. Just replace that with bible verses, cute animals, and pastry making for me. Which sucks because I had just gotten my algorithm to the perfect mix of music and art to mindlessly scroll to,” Zoe added.
“Big tech fucking sucks.” Jon said it, but all three could wholeheartedly agree. “Oh crap, I actually have to get going. Forgot I switched my lab. Can I show you my big breakthrough on the Sara-diac code tomorrow morning?” Jon frantically loaded up his worn-out, half decade old book bag to begin his mad dash across the quad.
“You’re just doing this so you don’t have to include me,” Zoe fumed.
“Yeah, c’mon Jon, let’s do it at afternoon coffee so Zoe can come. She’s basically part of the gang now.”
“It was just you and I Karyn, how, in any definition, is that a gang?”
“Well I still owe her so-”
“Fine, whatever. Tomorrow afternoon. After highschool lets out. I don’t have time for this. Later!”
“Peace!”
“Salut!”
Jon sped off, cursing himself for being so lame that his ‘gang’ now included his little sister. He wanted an interesting life, but after making that stupid wish on the stone years ago, nothing had happened. Actually, worse than nothing as the stone hadn’t worked since then! As if doing nothing was interesting. Who knows, maybe to a rock, that’s as interesting as it gets.
Maybe he should be grateful, ‘may you live in interesting times’ and all that being a curse. But would it hurt to have his life start going in a more meaningful direction than taking general requirement classes at Junior college? Was that too much to ask?
Or even more humbly, for his stupid algorithm to stop showing body positive affirmations and go back to movie clips, gaming, and decent memes to distract him from the extremely banal two-hour titration he was about to sit through? What was he supposed to look at with his phone being all weird?
