When Kyla called and asked me to go for a walk, I said yes and ran to her. I left my sociology textbook open on my dorm-room desk. The final was two days away; it was my last exam and we had all the questions in advance. So it didn’t matter. It was well-below freezing outside and the wind had a sharp edge, but that didn’t matter either. I sped up as she came into view, wind blistering my face.
Hugging herself in front of the the Arts Pavilion, Kyla was easy to spot. She wore a puffy, pristine-white nitrous-down jacket and her accustomed cuff-knit hat with the varsity logo, her blond hair spilling out onto her shoulders. Her hat was not unlike the one I wore, but she was Canadian, so she called it a toque.
We exchanged greetings and then walked around campus and beyond, weaving through the snowy paths in the woods surrounding. The sun was lemony, but the air was getting even colder. We pushed aside birch branches and pulled each other up hillocks banked with snow. When we came running down them, our laughter echoed. Everyone left on campus was indoors studying. We hardly said a word, save for when Kyla would point out some species of bird, some genus of tree. She was a bio major, pre-med.
“Two weeks ago,” she said as campus came back into view. “I don’t know what that was.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “If it was something I did or said—”
“It wasn’t so much you,” she said. “I was thinking about other things, doing math in my head. It was so dark with the lights off.”
Two weeks before, we had made our way back to her dorm after an end-of-semester mixer and fumbled around in the pale light of her desk lamp. It was frantic and tacit at first. Then it became lethargic, abortive. I’d offered to stay, but Kyla said it would be better if I just went. She hadn’t called since, at least not until that afternoon.
“Things are working themselves out now,” Kyla said. “One way or another, the math is done. It’s getting cold. Super-cold. My phone said its going to be minus forty.”
“Is that Celsius or Fahrenheit?”
“They’re the same, John. Minus forty is the one time they connect up.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously. It’s almost there. Let’s go inside.”
I collapsed beside her, pulled her close, pushed the toque up on her forehead. I kissed her brow, my lips tracing the fine film of perspiration there. This was how things had worked out. For a long time, we didn’t say anything.
“When’s your next final?” I asked, inanely.
“I’m done.”
“Then why are you still here?” I said, an upwelling in my stomach. I could tell her that I like her.
“Yeah,” Kyla whispered. “I failed chem. There’s no way I can pass based on everything I left blank. There’s no way I can keep my GPA over 2.6.”
“I—I thought the cut-off was like 2.4.”
“It’s higher for internationals,” Kyla said. “After the break, I’m probably not coming back.”
I stared up at the stucco ceiling for a long time. Long enough to perceive the sunlight waning pinkly, to feel Kyla roll gently out of her bed. Long enough to listen to her shower and then resume packing. Her remote car-starter chirruped and then she sat me up and dressed me wordlessly.
I carried her suitcase out to the car, the Honda with the Ontario license plate. Moving through the rising plumes of exhaust, I went to hug her, but she stuck out her mitten, seizing my bare hand. She shook my hand vigorously.
“Did we ever get to minus forty?” I said, not knowing what to say. “I know it’s cold, but it doesn’t feel that cold.”
“We didn’t,” Kyla said, relinquishing my hand, heading around to the driver’s side. “We came pretty close, though.”
She got in the car, flashed a smile, and then pulled out of the parking lot and out of my life.
