The days grow short with winter; Jess knows this as intimately as waking in the half-dark and reaching for the lamp. The days grow short with winter, and yet she’s surprised when she steps out of the Patricia O’Shane building and the sky is already darkening at four pm. In the gloom, the trees cast wavering shadows across the courtyard. A gust of wind blows through the branches, rattling them and sending a wave of visceral cold sweeping through her body. 

 

“Did you get the last question right? I swear it’s high school Math but I forgot to…”  

 

“...Yeah, but I have DesEng on Tuesdays so maybe next time?” 

 

The glass door opens again, and the other students come spilling out of the building. Light chases the chattering students into the dark: its warm glow slipping around the crack in the door, falling like spears through the huddled bodies, breaking up as the shadows shift. The students stream around Jess; a river parting around a stone. A second later, she’s jostled to the side. 

 

She jerks into motion, swept along by the inexorable tide of bodies flowing away from the building. Backpacks bob forward in her peripheral vision, puffer jackets float gently downwards as converse shoes pitter and patter across the courtyard, then down the stairs. 

 

“Wait, are you sure they’re dating?”  

 

“But I don’t want –” 

 

“– you know, uni assignments aren’t going to do themselves, really!” 

 

The din is cacophonous: everyone talking over everyone else. Jess puts her head down and pretends to text on her phone. Hello imaginary friend, yes, let’s meet tomorrow for lunch at Guzman Y Gomez, that sounds good. 

 

“Hey, hey Jess!”  

 

Her head jerks up and she looks backwards.  

 

Oh. It’s Jack.  

 

He’s scrambling down the stairs, buffeted by the endless stream of bodies. His typically pale, white face is red from exertion and acne. His eyes are bright when they meet her’s, and he waves at Jess hopefully. He’s handsome, almost. 

 

Jess stumbles to the left, nearly knocked over by an impatient student shouldering her to the side. Her phone almost slips out of her hand. Quickly, she moves to the side, where a fountain splutters in the gloom. She looks down at her shoes.  

 

Finally, Jack arrives in front of her. “Hi,” he says, breathless.  

 

“Hi,” she echoes, looking up. 

 

“Sooo, how was last week’s assignment?”  

 

“It was ok.” 

 

“Haha, really? I mean the trigonometry section was kinda difficult.”  

 

“I guess so.” 

 

Jack stands there awkwardly. “I kinda want to go out and celebrate, you know grab some hot boba or something…” He trails off, looking at her significantly.  

 

She remembers talking to Jack extensively earlier in the term. It was the first time in uni that she’d met someone who listened so attentively to her. Mostly, it’s the other way around. Over a few classes, he listened to her talk about rowing for her girl’s high school, about the guerilla politics of the sport and the sport itself: the relentless beat and burn of the sun, the rhythmic whip of lukewarm water on her face as the oars churned the lake into butter. He hadn’t been the athletic type at all, it rendered his intense attention endearing.  

 

And then he opened his phone to check the time and she caught sight of his wallpaper. A black haired, brown eyed anime girl with obscenely large tits spilling out of a tiny t-shirt and a short, swishy skirt stared soulfully at her from his screen. 11:24am. Great, class was ending soon. 

 

Jess twirls her black hair around her finger: an unconscious, nervous tick. Jack smiles. She stops abruptly, and her hair falls down in a spiral. She looks past him, towards the stairs. “Have fun! I've got some errands to run, so I’ll see you when I see you!” 

 

Jack stops smiling. “Wait –” he says.  

 

Jess hurries down the stairs. She fights her way through the crowd but there are more and more of them by the minute. They swarm in from the staircase, the sidewalks and the squares, their beige, blobby faces blending into an indistinct mass, their conversations bloating and buzzing and babbling, a radio station turned on low but getting louder and louder as the minutes pass and the river fattens with new bodies bursting out of Electrical Engineering. She wonders what they’re talking about. Then again, she doesn’t really care. An emotion, white-hot and foreign, pricks her eyes and she wants to clench them shut, and wish, wish that — but no, that would be childish; childish and fruitless. 

 

The walkway widens. Suddenly, pockets of space appear, and she cuts through the crowd’s crush like a knife, making for Main Walkway. Away from the shelter of the buildings, the wind blasts mercilessly into her face, stinging her eyes. She breaks into a run. She pounds forward, legs pumping and carrying her further and further away from the rest of the crowd. The stinging worsens.  

 

She imagines herself on the outskirts of her family home in Perth where the fields stretch into the horizon and running through them feels like flying and falling at the same time. In her mind’s eye, there she is: the cool night air kissing her face, each strike of her foot sending a shudder of earth tolling through her like a low, sweet bell. She sees the sun set low over the fields, sees it smudge away into a red blur on the horizon as she accelerates her speed. Faster and faster she runs until the fields are washing away like dark tides, until she’s flying through the night sky itself: stars falling like rain, light blurring into lines, endless and infinite.  

 

Here, however, Main Walkway ends where the light rail begins. She imagines herself reaching the end of the walkway, tapping her Opal card, and hopping onto the light rail. She imagines the long walk home from Central, the dark apartments towering before her like a maze, the scratchy trees lining the path like ghostly sentinels, leaves shed over Autumn crunching beneath her feet.  

 

She reaches up to dash the trickle of liquid away.  

 

Suddenly, she feels the cold acutely. The long walk to the end of Main Walkway and the longer walk home stretch out before her like a dark, empty highway — unbearable.  

 

She slows to a stop and casts her eyes around. They alight on a circular building, a cafe with an inviting glow of light emanating from within. 

 

During winter, her family would pile sticks into the fireplace and set them ablaze. In the glowing light, her dad would put on the turntable. Together, Mum and Dad would waltz slowly, round and round the living room, hopelessly flat-footed as they swerved past the side table and bumped into the sofa. When she was younger, Jess giggled endlessly at this scene and sipped her hot chocolate, the foam forming a little white moustache on her tiny face. 

 

On a whim, Jess turns into the cafe. A warm blast of air washes over her and she relaxes into it. She joins the queue. The line is long, and the cafe is packed but Jess waits patiently, humming to the music playing from the speakers and basking in the indoor heating. When her drink is ready, she grabs the corrugated cardboard cup to go.  

 

She pauses. One last, free table squished near the counter catches her eye. Perhaps she’ll go home later. Perhaps she’ll get a little work done on her next assignment. She settles at the table and flips open her laptop. Yes, she’ll go home a bit later when she’s feeling a bit warmer and – 

 

“Sorry.” 

 

Jess looks up. A tall, lanky guy, with a mop of brown hair running riot on his head, is standing awkwardly before her as he balances his laptop, phone, and coffee. “Would you mind me sitting here?” He asks. “Everywhere’s full.” 

 

“Oh, please.” 

 

He sits and opens his laptop. Catching sight of her screen, he smiles, “You’re in Eng too!” 

 

“Yeah,” she smiles, hot chocolate warm in her stomach. “I’m in Eng too.”