Fiction: Spit

By Wolfgang Wright

Devon had just settled into a desk all by himself in the last row of the enormous auditorium when the professor appeared at the front and ordered everyone in the rear to move forward and fill in amongst their peers because, according to him, this wasn’t Woodstock—whatever that was supposed to mean. “And here I was hoping to be left alone,” he muttered as he bent over to retrieve his backpack, a remark which he had meant only for himself but was picked up by a girl passing by in the row in front of him, who laughed and said, “Yeah, me, too. I’m only taking this for a GER requirement.” He looked up and was amazed at how beautiful she was, with long blonde hair and big blue eyes, but more so by the fact that she was just standing there and smiling at him, which didn’t make any sense, in part because he couldn’t recall a single instance when a beautiful girl had ever smiled at him before, but also because some of the others in her row had already come up behind her and were waiting for her to move. Why wasn’t she moving? he wondered.Was she expecting him to respond to what she’d said? But what?What were you supposed to say to an attractive woman who wasn’t taking your order? “I’m a physics major,” he finallyblurted out, recalling how ever since he’d arrived on campus everyone was always asking him that—and she laughed at that, too, and seemed to be on the brink of saying something elsewhen someone somewhere in the middle of the auditorium called out to her while waving their hand—“Ashley, over here!”—and off she went, discarding him like a cloud of dust.

He didn’t speak to her again until after the class before the first exam when she caught up to him as he was getting ready to leave and asked if he would like to join their study group—“their” meaning the group he had always seen her sitting withand she was currently pointing to. “I thought you’d fit right in,” she said as she drew her fingers along the top buttons of her shirt, “because we’re all nonmajors, too,” though once they’d all settled into a discussion room at the university library it became apparent that his inclusion in the group wasn’t quite as egalitarian as Ashley had implied. The others—a couple ofmusic majors who were dating each other, Ashley’s roommateJill who was thinking of becoming a Spanish teacher, and of course Ashley herself who was undeclared but was leaning toward management because she’d always found it “a breeze” to get people to do whatever she wanted—had no real interest inpsychology and were only taking the class in order to avoid what they perceived to be the far more difficult sciences—biology, chemistry, and Devon’s own physics; but they were still struggling, and were desperate to find someone who might be able to help them make sense of the subject. Not that Devon minded his uneven role within the group, for his own motive for joining had less to do with learning and more to do with getting to hang out with Ashley—and besides, he knew that if he remained within the confines of academia he may one day have to teach, a prospect which scared the bejesus out of him, and so it wouldn’t hurt to get some practice in before he had to do it for real. And so, as soon as he realized that all their questions werereally just being directed at him and him alone, he got up and went to the chalkboard and began jotting down the names of the psychologists the class had covered so far and connecting them with their most famous ideas—Freud with the Oedipus Complex and penis envy, Jung with the collective unconscious and the shadow, and so on—until he’d run the piece of chalk that had been left in the room down to a nub. Based on the glassy looksthey were giving him by the end it was just as likely that he’d overwhelmed his so-called peers as educated them, but once they’d received their results from the first exam Ashley came skipping up to him to say thanks for all his help.

“Yay me, I got a C!” she exclaimed with such enthusiasm that the gum she was chewing popped right out of her mouth.

“Oh, well, that, that’s great,” Devon replied as he looked down to find that he’d caught the gum in midair, and before he knew what to do with it she’d picked it off his palm and placed it back into her mouth, a move which confused, disgusted, and turned him on all at once.

“Yeah, it is,” she said, chewing the gum again. “But I was thinking, you know, maybe if we met, like, once a week, I could do even better—I mean, if that works for you.”

Somehow in spite of the shock of all that was happening in front of him he managed to eke out a “Yes” or a “Sure” or something equally affirmative, and that was before he’d arrived at the library the following week to find that the “we” actually meant only him and her. According to Ashley, she had invited the others, but her roommate had to work while Chelsea and Christian weren’t speaking to each other at the moment and probably hadn’t come in order to avoid running into each other—all perfectly plausible, not that Devon had any reason to question her, because the others not being there meant that he got to be her with all by himself, and so who cared how it came to be? But when he returned to his dorm that evening, his own roommate, Rick, was quick to put a different spin on things.

“Don’t you get it, bro?” he said while clipping his toenails.“She wants your bones.”

Sitting on his bed, the scent of Ashley’s perfume still lingering in his nostrils (to say nothing of the memory of her foot accidently bumping into his under the table), Devon gave the hypothesis some thought. “I don’t know,” he said. “That doesn’t sound right.”

“Well who scheduled meet up?”

“She did.”

“And she couldn’t have picked a time when her roommate could come? Doesn’t she talk to her like every day, like we have to? No way, bro, she’s got it hard for you. H-h-hard.”

“Yeah, I don’t think so. She’s way out of my league.”

“No one’s doubting that, bro—you’re a pasty stick with teeth. But some chicks don’t know what league they’re in, and it could be she’s one of those freaks that actually digs nerds like yourself. I’m telling you, bro, you need to make a move on her.”

“But I don’t know any moves.”

“Then I’ll teach you some. Get out your notebook, let’s get cracking.”

But when he next met up with Ashley, Devon didn’t make a move on her, and nor did he the week after that. It wasn’t just that he doubted his roommate’s take on things—although he diddoubt it—or the fact that he found it inconceivable that any girl could like him, let alone one as sweet and gorgeous as Ashley. No, his main concern for keeping things Platonic between them was that he was overwhelmed by what he already had with her,for just talking to her about Pavlov’s dog or the bystander effectwas proving to be just as exhilarating as contemplating the number of galaxies in the universe. And so he resolved to keep things just as they were, on a level that he could handle, rather than risk losing everything on the outside chance that she might “want his bones.”

 

***

 

His resolve wavered, however, when Ashley announced on the Thursday before finals week that this would have to be their last study session together. Of course, Devon already knew that his time with her was running short, and that as soon as their class came to an end there would be no more reason for them to get together, but so long as there was always at least one more opportunity to be with her he was able to keep his emotions in check and just appreciate what he had. Now, he began to panic.

“I doh, I don’t understand,” he stammered, “I thaw, I thought we, we were going to meet up before the final to, to, to, you know, to review.”

“But the final’s Tuesday morning,” Ashley answered calmly as she picked a piece of lint off her shoulder, “and I’ve got like three papers to write before then, not to mention work, and another test to study for, ugh.”

“Okay, but, like, I can meet up anytime—day or night. It doesn’t matter, I’ll make it work.”

“It’s okay, Devon,” she laughed, tapping him on the forearm with her pen. “Believe me, I’m more prepared for this test than I am for anything else. You’ve been a really big help. So let’s just study hard now, and I’m sure we’ll both do well, okay?”

But Devon found it difficult to concentrate. Instead of focusing all his mental energy on psychology he found himself trying to calculate the odds that he would ever see her againafter the exam. On a previous occasion they’d already discussed how they didn’t have any classes together next semester, and given their chosen academic paths, it was unlikely that they would have any more in the future either. Add to that the size of the campus, and the fact that they lived on opposite ends of it, and there was a high probability that this would be the last timethat he would ever see her smile, or hear her laugh, or surreptitiously catch a glimpse of her breasts as they pressedagainst her shirt while she lifted her arms to stretch. The sound of her chewing began to overwhelm his ears, reminding him of when she had picked her gum off his hand and put it back intoher mouth without giving it a second thought, and also of what his roommate had said about the possibility of her being attracted to him. He still found it impossible to believe, but what if it were true and he did nothing about it? Would he feel worse if he let her walk away without ever having found out what her actual feelings for him were, or would rejection crush him and make the agony that he was experiencing now seem like nirvana? Ultimately it was a question that could only be answered by making a move, and as a scientist, did he not have an obligation to run the experiment? Not that he would doanything so aggressive as what Rick had suggested, such asdipping her backward and laying a wet one on her, or reaching for her under the table and massaging her knee—no, he would simply keep it in the form of words.

“So I was thinking,” he began when they stopped just outside the library to say their goodbyes, “maybe we could like, I don’t know, meet up for lunch sometime later next week, you know, like after things have settled down a bit, for both of us. Or maybe catch a movie, if you wanted to. You told me once how you like going to movies, remember?”

Before he had begun she had been smiling at him in her usual carefree way; now her smile waned and with it her whole complexion altered, becoming hard and dark, not at all likeanything he had ever seen from her before. Indeed, it seemed as if the whole world had suddenly become cagy and unfamiliar.

“What do you mean?” she asked. “Like a date?”

“I mean, like, it could just be to celebrate the semester being over and all, or whatever. It doesn’t have to be anything like official or anything.”

She sighed and looked off in the distance. “You know, I thought you were different. I thought I knew you.”

“No, you do. Look, I take it back, okay? Forget I said anything.”

“It’s too late for that. You’ve already gone and ruined everything,” and then she spat in his face. It wasn’t a lot of spit—she didn’t, for example, hock up a loogie first and then drench him in it. No, she just went with the saliva that was already sloshing around in her mouth. But still, she had spit on his face, and he could feel the speckles everywhere, on his cheeks, his nose, his forehead—he could even feel one little drop just under his left eyebrow. Her spit had sprayed everywhere, with no one spot getting the brunt of it. And then she walked away, shooting him one last angry look before disappearing around the corner.

 

***

 

When Devon got back to his room he splayed himself out on his bed and began to cry. By the time his roommate returned an hour later he’d gotten up and was sitting at his desk, pretending like nothing was wrong. For several minutes he listened to Rick complain about his composition instructor, then made like hehad to get back to his homework; but Rick wasn’t done with him yet.

“Bro, what happened to you?” he asked, coming closer.

“What? What do you mean?”

“You’ve got like a rash or something all over your face.”

“What?” 

“Seriously, bro, go check it out.”

Devon got up and went to the bathroom, and in the mirrorhe saw that he was covered in little red spots, scattered across his face like tiny red freckles, each one matching up exactly withwhere Ashley had spit on him. Immediately he turned the faucet on and began throwing water on his face, then wiping the spots away with his fingers. He began crying again, and threw on some more water to cover it up.

“So what is it?” Rick asked, coming to the door.

“Nothing. Just, someone spit on me.”

“Whoa. Who?”

“Just some crazy person.”

“And you didn’t wipe it off?”

“It was dry by the time I got home.”

“I still would have wiped my face, bro.”

“Well now I have, okay? So just, be useful and get me atowel, okay?”

But by the next morning the spots had returned; he noticed them while brushing his teeth. Even stranger was the fact that each one had grown a bit in size, and had also turned slightly redder. But what really took Devon by surprise was that even with soap they wouldn’t wipe away.

“They kind of sting a little, too,” he confessed to Rick.

“You must be allergic to that dude’s saliva or something,” his roommate replied.

“Yeah, maybe,” Devon mused, thinking of Ashley’s gum.

“Seriously, bro, I think you should get it checked out.”

“It’ll be fine,” he barked, for he was less concerned about the rash itself than the fact that it was providing a persistentreminder of an incident that he wished to forget. And so for therest of the day and all of Saturday he avoided looking into mirrors and did whatever he could to distract himself from the sting, even going so far as to jab a pencil into the back of his hand in order to create a different, more intensive sensation of pain.

But by Sunday evening he could no longer ignore the symptoms, for as he was sitting at his desk studying for hisphysics exam, he felt something wet on his forehead, and before he could reach up to wipe it away a drop of blood fell onto thepage of his textbook, just beneath a picture of the Large Hadron Collider. Once more he dashed off to the bathroom, only to discover that every single one of the spots had started to bleed.Thankfully, it was not profuse—there was no chance of his immediate demise—but when he awoke the next morning to find his pillowcase smeared in blood he decided to heed his roommate’s earlier advice and head straight for the campus emergency room.

 

***

 

“A girl spit on you?” Dr. Lindsay asked while glancing at the intake form. He was old and bald but had a thick gray mustache over the full length of his upper lip. “Was this a girl you know?”

“We, we’ve been studying together all semester.”

“Ah,” the doctor said, examining his patient’s eyes and mouth with a penlight. “So why did she spit on you? Did you give her the wrong answers?”

Devon appreciated the humor, but was unable to respond in kind, remaining entirely morose. “I…I asked her out.”

“On a date?”

Devon nodded, and Dr. Lindsay shook his head.

“So it’s come to that, has it?”

The remark only confused Devon, but before he could think to ask what it meant, the doctor followed up with another question of his own.

“So did she have a rash?”

“No,” he said, “but she, she was chewing gum.”

“Hm. Well, it is possible to be allergic to gum, though it typically happens to the person chewing it. Then again, it’s not every day I see a patient who’s been spit on.” The doctorswiveled in his chair and rolled over to the desk. “I’m going to write you out a prescription for a topical hemostat, which should stop the bleeding. If it doesn’t, or if the symptoms get worse, I want you to come back.” He tore the prescription off the pad and held it out for Devon to take. “And hey, cheer up. You’ll get the next one, all right?”

 

***

 

That night he hardly slept, less so because of what was going on with his face than with the prospect of running into Ashley again, an irony which wasn’t lost on him, for just a few days agohe’d wanted nothing more than to be in her presence. The problem was that even though he still wasn’t sure what he’d done that was so terrible, he nevertheless wanted to apologize to her, hoping that if she knew just how awful he felt aboutupsetting her she might forgive him—not that anything more would come of it, but at least he wouldn’t have to go through the rest of his life thinking that the first girl he’d ever felt really close to considered him some kind of monster. But he knew thateven if he somehow managed to summon the courage to go up and speak to her he would only fumble his words and potentially make things worse—and who knew what she might do then?And so it was with a great amount of weariness and trepidationthat he finally crawled out of bed the next morning, reapplied the ointment that Dr. Lindsay had prescribed to him, and slowly made his way to class.

Once again he chose to sit in the rear of the auditorium, knowing that on exam days the professor actually preferredhisstudents to fan out, in order to reduce the likelihood of copying.Several times he glanced at where Ashley usually sat and saw that she wasn’t there, although it wasn’t until the TAs began passing out bubble sheets that it occurred to him that she might not show up. After all, it could be that she was just as anxious about seeing him again as he was about seeing her, and if so, she might have contacted the professor in order to set up an alternate time in which to take the exam, something which he’d also considered doing, though in the end he’d decided that seeing Ashley angry with him was better than not seeing her at all.

Or was she sick as well? he suddenly wondered as he began filling in answers, because it must have been a new kind of gum she’d been chewing when she spat on him, different from what she’d been chewing the day he’d caught her gum, or otherwise the skin on his hand would have reacted in the same way as his face; and it was just possible that she was allergic to the new gum as well, which because she’d had it in her mouth, herreaction might have been worse than his. In fact, it could be that she was in the hospital right now, being treated for something truly dangerous. She could be dying, for all he knew. No, he told himself as his heart began to race, she’s okay. She’s got to be okay.

But it continued to worry him, and when he finished the exam, rather than walk down to the front and turn it in, he remained in his seat and waited for Ashley’s roommate to finish hers, at which point he rushed down the steps and caught up to her in the hallway.

“Jill,” he called after her.

“Hey, Dev,” she said, stopping to greet him with a smile.“How’d the exam go?”

“Good, good,” he said, catching his breath. “So how come Ashley wasn’t here?”

Jill cocked her head to the side. “She didn’t text you?”

“No, why? What happened?”

“Oh, well, there was some kind of family emergency. She had to leave right away.”

“Emergency? Did she, did she say what happened?”

“Well, she was a bit vague about it, but I just assumed it must have something to do with her mother. You know how close they were.”

Devon nodded, recalling how Ashley would often bring her mother up during their study sessions. “So, but, she’s okaythough, right?”

“I mean, she was a little flustered. But now that we’re on the subject, you know, you don’t look like you’re doing so good.”

“No, you’re right, I’m—” and then he paused. Something wasn’t adding up. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but did, did Ashley not tell you about what happened between us?”

Jill shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. Why, didsomething happen?”

Devon waited for a couple of their classmates to pass.“Well, yes, I…I sort of…I asked her out.”

“You did what?”

“You know, like I asked her if she might want to have dinner sometime—I might have said lunch, I can’t remember now—and maybe go see a movie.”

Jill nodded, as if confirming a suspicion. Then, like Ashley, her own complexion altered, becoming equally dark and menacing. “What is wrong with you?”

“I don’t know. I just—”

“God, no wonder she ran off so suddenly.”

“So you think that’s why? Not because her mom’s sick, or,or her?”

“You’re the one who’s sick, you creep. God, get away from me. I don’t ever want to see you again,” and then she backedaway from him before finally turning to run.

 

***

 

That evening he went to the library hoping to sit at the table where he and Ashley had often sat together. It was set into alittle alcove on the third floor behind the stacks, and there was a window there where you could look out onto the main quad of the university. Once while they were studying the power had gone out, both inside the library and in the lights that lined the sidewalks outside, and while they were waiting for it to turn back on, Ashley had pointed at the sky and asked him to show her the constellations. But when he arrived on this night there was a couple already sitting there, who when they got a look athis reddened face recoiled in horror, and so he wandered around until he found a cubicle up on the fourth floor far away from everyone else.

It was just as he was turning from physics to history that his entire face began to burn. Leaving his books and backpack where they were, he crossed through the stacks and into the bathroom, where he discovered in the mirror that every inch of his flesh was red, and when he reached up to remove a drop ofblood from just below his left eyebrow, his eyelash came away with it, exposing more of his sclera. Terrified, he ran back to hiscubicle, collected his things, and left.

When he hit the open air he began to feel sick to his stomach. Halfway to the emergency room he bent over and threw up behind a bench. Without thinking, he reached up and scratched his cheek: it tore away and left a hole big enough for him to stick the tip of his tongue into. He became weaker and weaker and eventually he had to cling onto whatever was nearby in order to keep going—a bike rack, a street sign, several trees—but it was still a struggle, and finally, as he made the turn onto University Avenue, he collapsed. Up to then those whose paths he’d crossed had stepped or leapt away from him, no doubt fearing that he was dangerous; but now, as he lay on the ground, calling out for help, they inched their way closer, until they had him surrounded. But none of them were there to help. No, he could see it in their faces, how fierce and threatening they looked, just like Ashley and Jill. Finally, rather than continuingto stand by and watch him suffer, one of them picked up a nearby rock, another retrieved a book from his backpack, while a third took off her shoe. And then all at once they descended upon him, striking him as hard as they could.

Wolfgang Wright is the author of the comic novel Me and Gepe. His short work has appeared in numerous literary magazines, including Short Beasts, The Collidescope, and A Thin Slice of Anxiety. He doesn’t tolerate gluten so well, quite enjoys watching British panel shows, and devotes a little time each day to contemplating the Tao. He lives in North Dakota.