Throwing Smoke

By Kit Sergeant

One oblivious science major + one lovestruck fraternity brother = one sweet story!

It is the early 2000s. The baseball players at Western U are listening to Aerosmith, making bets, and just generally being their obnoxious selves. Addy Enders is a devoted marine biology student too preoccupied with breeding fruit flies and avoiding said baseball players to have time for a boyfriend. Until she meets Jed, a handsome economics major. But there is something that Jed doesn’t want Addy to know… 

Ryan spends his time studying with his indifferent girlfriend and cleaning up after his fraternity brothers. The moment he sees The Girl, he knows she is unlike every other person in his life. Waiting outside the lecture hall for her to arrive adds a bright spot to his day, but is it worth risking his anonymity to introduce himself? 

Throwing Smoke is an insightful and honest coming-of-age short story that explores the differences between male and female college angst and experiences. This 7,000-word prequel to the novelThrown for a Curve will appeal to anyone who has ever admired someone from afar or had their heart broken. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kit Sergeant
• Release date: Aug 7, 2015
• ISBN: 9781516391066

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Throwing Smoke

The Girl was late. Again. Ryan Parsons looked down at his watch. She came from the path behind the building and appeared without warning, usually between ten and twenty minutes past the start time for their class. Today she was 15 minutes late, Ryan noted as he watched her approach the glass doors, walking as quickly as her booted legs would allow her. The door finally opened, letting in a gust of October wind as The Girl entered, looking hurried and flushed. She glanced up at the clock in the entryway with a frown as she tucked a piece of long strawberry blonde hair behind her ear. Ryan bent over to get a sip from the drinking fountain while The Girl rushed into the lecture hall.

He stood up from the fountain bowl, counting to twenty as was his custom before he sauntered in through one of the double doors and took his usual seat three rows behind The Girl. The professor had started his lecture as evidenced by the depiction of a flower on the board. He was remarking on floral anatomy as he drew a quick series of horizontal lines coming off of the drawing. A cursory glance around the room from Ryan’s high vantage point demonstrated that most of his classmates had copied a clone flower into their respective notebooks and were now in the process of labeling them.

Ryan pulled his own notebook out of his backpack and quickly drew the same flower and then mimicked the professor’s lines indicating the stamen, pistil, and other various parts of flowers. After finishing, he glanced again at The Girl. She was hunched over her notebook, sketching the flower with more detail than necessary, continuing to add petal after petal—making it look more like a chrysanthemum than the generic daisy from the blackboard. As far as Ryan could see, she hadn’t drawn any labels on her artwork.

Someone entered his line of sight, cutting off his view of The Girl. The Teaching Assistant was standing in front of him. Ryan looked up impatiently as the T.A. laid something on his desk facedown and then walked away. Ryan flipped over the sheet; it was their last quiz. A C+ was written boldly in red ink at the top of the paper. He skimmed quickly at the numbers covered over by bold slashes in the same red pen. Fragaria ananassa—the scientific name of a strawberry. Ryan had forgotten it and just wrote F. ana. Or maybe he never learned it. In fact, most of the stuff he missed on the quiz was likely what had been covered in the first twenty minutes of class. He would probably be getting a slightly higher grade in his 8 am Botany course if he didn’t spend a quarter of it outside the lecture hall, waiting for The Girl to arrive.But it was worth it.

The T.A. was now negotiating past the seats in The Girl’s row. As he handed the quiz to The Girl, he winked at her and Ryan immediately felt a welt of jealousy bubble in his gut. The Girl turned over the paper, barely glancing at it. She left it face up on her desk as she went back to adding petals to her flower. Ryan craned his neck to see her grade. An A. Ana, he thought suddenly. I’ll call her Ana, because of that strawberry hair.

Ryan sat back in his seat, but then thought better of it and leaned forward again. He could just make out her first name and a few letters of her surname printed across the top of her quiz.

Pleiade End—; he copied into his notebook above the flower.

The Girl—Ana—had never been