I meandered home and prayed for solitude, a rarity in the eight by eight box the college had deemed a dorm room. Ruby was always there, doing homework or sleeping, making peanut butter covered chocolate bars when she was at her desk. If it was chocolate bar time for Ruby, it was also talking time.

I went to the study room and leaned against the bay window. They were sterile, panels of glass but at least they allowed me to see the outside world. Ruby insisted on keeping our blinds closed and I didn’t want to rock the boat. Who wants to be that roommate who fights everything the person they are living with suggests? I watched the small ant groups of students scurry around the sidewalk. They all jockeyed for a spot next to each other, even though the sidewalk could only fit two comfortably across. The third came up in the middle, forcing the other two to walk with one foot on the sidewalk and the other on the grass. I felt bad for the one in the middle. I was always the one trying to be in the middle, although I didn’t usually have the guts to push the other people off the sidewalk.

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On the window, someone had written “Help. Will pay for someone to do homework. See Johnny, Second Floor.” I followed the trail of whiteboard marker to the whiteboard beside me. Someone had been trying to solve a complex mathematics question for a physics class. There were four different colored markers and an increasingly difficult to read handwriting, complete with arrows and cross outs. I thought the point of white boards was that you could erase things instead of crossing them out.

I picked up a marker and played with it, rolling it between my fingers. I contemplated the problem on the board. I removed a variable the “Johnny” had forgotten to cancel and played with the numbers, shifting them back and forth and applying a theorem or two to test them. Then, something clicked. It’s a euphoria I get from solving problems. I dashed down the answer, gathered my backpack and walked out of the room so no one would know that I had solved it.