down to the bone-HOMEWORKKKK story

[Alok]

The Neanderthal was searching for a book, which Karma, flipping through her own text, found amusing. He looked as if he'd never ventured into the college library, let alone up into the ratified, fourth-floor towers that housed the reserved volumes. His confusion was explained, in part, by his white and maroon football jersey.

Holding her textbook in the palm of one hand, Karma removed her glasses with the other and finessed a lock of dark brown hair behind her ear before taking another glance at the jock. It was unfair to call him a Neanderthal, actually. He didn't look that far up the evolutionary ladder.

Not that he wasn't a fine specimen. All broad shoulders and muscled limbs along with a good bone structure made him appear strong and masculine as his slanted - almost feminine like eyes, hidden behind long curled lashes gave him an angelic guise. He had hair the deep brown of a murky bayou, ripples of waves and all, along with a charming dimple in his cheek that appeared as he nonchalantly pressed his lips together in confusion while browsing the shelves. So again, he was not a Neanderthal. Homo habilis, the handyman of genus homo, a crude tool maker, one step above Australopithecus, perhaps ...

"Triiist-iaannnn!" The exasperated voice belonged to a tanned female, long hair dyed honey bronze. She appeared out of the stacks like Eve from the garden and leaned herself on the edge of Karma's table. She took no notice of the occupant.

How sweet, Karma snorted to herself. The caveman has his own one-million-year B.C. babe.

"You left me," the girl pouted, leaning forward until her skirted was high, like a puppy asking to play. Her pert breasts nearly popped out of her cropped top.

"I have to find this book," her still evolving boyfriend said.

"Why can't you get the information you need from off the internet?" The girl whined.

"Because it's not on the internet. The shit ain’t even in print no more."


Was that exasperation? Karma wondered. Trouble in paradise? Poor Homo Habilis.


"Gosh, there's nothing to do up here." The girl complained, stretching back her legs to show off their incredible length.

That’s not true, Karma thought. With all of these books, a girl can surely find some occupation. Build a house maybe, or make paper dolls.…

"Well, you can go on and bounce if you want to." The jock told her.

B.C. babe didn't like that, kissing her teeth to show her disapproval audibly and changing the subject abruptly. "There's a dance at The Center tonight, a pizza-and-movie party at the Sigma House, oh, and the basketball team is having a bonfire at the lake. Which one you wanna go to?"

Karma barely stopped herself from shaking her head. On a school night?

"I don’t know. You decide." Her guy said paying her no mind.

"Ugh, well - I guess I’ll just head all-the-way back downstairs, make a few phone calls, and see who's going to be where since you 'don‘t know'." B.C. babe stated aloud. Without waiting for his response, she pulled out her cell from a cute little suede purse and made for the stairs.

"Aight ..." The jock didn't even glance back.

Karma covertly watched him search both sides of the stacks again. He checked the heel of his hand for some inked notation, undoubtedly the book's number, and sighed with frustration. Karma went back to her biological anthropology texts.

Time to study the real Homo habilis.

Tristian couldn't stop glancing at the geeky girl.

He didn't usually visit the libraries on campus, this one least of all. It was a brick monstrosity filled with narrow staircases and tall stacks that were barely wide enough for his broad shoulders. The situation was especially bad up there, in the "ivory towers" as they were not so imaginatively called. "The Geek Retreat" was their other name. The hanging lamps were harsh and tended to flicker and the air smelled of must and moldy leather. What few tables there were seemed to be hidden away in shadow so that patrons bumped into them, especially the sharp corners - which was why he hadn't noticed the girl at first. She'd been as shadowed as the table. It was only when Monique had leaned provocatively across that Tristian had caught sight of her.

She had dark, wavy hair and a plain, almost elfin face made a little more interesting by square, Clark Kent specs. She never looked up once, even though Monique was practically sprawled across her books, even though Tristian was right there, not a foot away. He thought at first that she might be averting her eyes like an embarrassed nerd, but it soon became apparent that she was ignoring them.

That didn't happen to Tristian, not since he was thirteen years old. Feminine eyes followed him wherever he went, flickered side-wise, glanced longingly before demurely falling. Especially the desperate eyes of girls like this one.

Monique left to call her girlfriends and Tristian stepped around to get a better look at the geek. She was seated, so it was hard to tell her figure, but the v-neck of her inky, camisole top revealed adequate breasts. Her upper arms looked plump and soft, not unattractively so, but Tristian was used to the toned limbs of cheerleaders. Marking her left shoulder was a strangely compelling tattoo of a skull with a heavy brow ridge. No jawbone, just the jutting upper half the face. It wasn't done up to be scary or iconic, rather it looked like some textbook sketch of a piecemeal relic.

Not the sort of tat to turn no man on, that's for sure, Tristian thought. A butterfly or flower, that was sexy. Even something delicate and pretty around the ankle or accenting the nape of the neck - something to kiss and lick seductively.

But a fucked-up skull?

And why wasn't she looking at him?

He was willing to bet that back in high school this girl had suffered from acne, that instead of the fairly cool glasses she had on now, there'd been a pair of broken, wire-rims. She'd eaten alone, her nose in a book, and she had gawked in awe at guys like him.

So why wasn't she interested now?

Screw it, he didn't have time to dwell on someone like her. He checked the catalog number he'd jotted down on his hand. The professor had assigned a particular book to each student and put all the texts on reserve. The one he needed had to be there.

Tristian frowned. Hold up, he thought to himself. He stepped around the stack, edging closer to the girl's table. Books were spread and piled all over. One of them was the one he needed.

"Yo," He said petulantly. Damn geeks.

She was flipping through photos of skulls. Old skulls. So, not just a geek, but a weird geek.

"Aye, Yo!" He said louder, and leaned his weight on the desk. It shifted a little and his shadow cut off her light.

She finally looked up. The magnified eyes behind the glasses were as dark as flint and totally disinterested. They blinked at him as if they couldn't be bothered to see him.

"I need that book right there, ma." Tristian said. "It's on reserve."

Unlike the nerdy girls he'd known in high school, she did not shrink or wince or apologize or grab the book to offer it to him meekly, as a supplicant to a great warrior. "Oh…" She said mildly, and glanced over at the text. "Oh, that one. You must be in Sorenson’s Dinotopia course. Figures …"

Tristian felt his cheeks go hot. The class title was actually Prehistoric Biology but her amused disdain made it clear that she knew the truth: that it was a biology-made-easy class to help jocks meet their requirements and maintain their GPA's.

She pushed the book his way. "Enjoy." she wished him, and went back to flipping through pictures of skeletons and skulls.

Karma listened to the jock's heavy footsteps as he stomped away. Had she hurt the poor caveman's feelings?