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ride as I jumped out of the car and made my way up the driveway, white cane flying from side to side. I ran through the door shouting for my parents, who upon hearing my cries immediately thought something was wrong and crashed upon me in a panic. When I convinced them there wasn’t anything wrong, which took quite some time, I gave them the good news. Being academics themselves, I thought they would gush over such an accomplishment, especially for someone at my age and level of scholastic achievement.
    What I never would have expected was the silence I was met with. Neither said a word for a good minute or two. When I figured that they were in quiet shock, I reached over to feel my mother’s face to read her expression. What I felt was something smacking of indifference and irritation. Did they not hear me? I opened my mouth to ask if they had, but my father quickly asked which journal it was to be published in. When I told him, all he said was “Oh. Not the British Journal of Medicine? That’s disappointing.” My mother quickly added that “there was no reason to come storming into this house causing that kind of a scene over that”. In that moment I was the embodiment of dejection in ways that neither would ever live to understand. It was also at that precise moment I realized that their imperfection of a child might never accomplish enough to make them proud.
    When I snapped out of my not-so-fond-memory, I found Sean looking at me with a careful, patient expression on his face. He was slighted by neither my lack of manners nor by my flightiness.
    “You sure that head is feeling OK?” he asked politely.
    “Sorry, I just thought of something. It’s not important.” I feigned a smile to try to sell my response.
    “Well then, Ruby, I’m off to grade some desperately boring papers. It was great to…meet you. Finally.” And with that he turned on his heels and headed out the door with the same abruptness that he had come and gone with before. So that was it? What I’ve been obsessing over for months? All that lead up for, gotta go grade some papers, peace out bitch? Oh hell no!
    “Why are you here?” I blurted out as quickly as I could before he completely escaped through the door.
    “Ah…isn’t that the million dollar question?” he said, turning gracefully to face me. “Why am I here? Why are you here? Why are any of us here? Didn’t take you for a philosopher, Ruby.” He flashed me the toothiest grin before letting go of the door. Unfortunately, it shut off my response to his rhetoric. I bet he wasn’t sorry that he didn’t get a chance to hear it.

5
    I spent the rest of my evening trying to figure out how I was ever going to get some answers out of Sean, if that even was his real name. I couldn’t think clearly enough when he was around to actually formulate a well-thought out and coherent, not to mention pertinent, question. Just the sight of him got me so frazzled that all higher brain functions shut down, making it nearly impossible to do anything above breathing and staying upright. I may as well have just grunted and banged on things to communicate with him; it probably would have been more effective. I had sworn off men a long time ago, so it wasn’t that I wanted him, it was simply his face. It was mesmerizing, like staring at the most beautiful piece of art.
    His uncanny ability to disappear as quickly as he showed up made my predicament even harder still. I worried that I was going to have to resort to criminal activity to keep him in one place long enough to get what I wanted from him. I wasn’t necessarily opposed to physical violence, but I heavily questioned my ability to knock him out with a solid blow to his head and then immobilize him with rope or one of those crafty zip-tie things. He had at least a hundred pounds on me. My semi-kidnapping fantasy hardly seemed that morally reprehensible given the circumstances. At least then I could have gotten some concrete information from