An Average Day in an Average Life

Ryan Almocadi lived for math. In fact he loved math so much he liked to capitalize it in his head - Math. Everything from the likelihood that the trees lining his campus would grow healthy and tall, to the chance that he would walk into his dorm room and find Alice still curled underneath the blankets could be defined by Math.

It wasn't that Ryan even consciously thought about it. At times he did, like when he was doing his Differential Equations homework or was watching his teacher explain an example on the chalkboard. He loved the elegance of it.Almost as much as he loved Alice. It wasn't her fault that even with her sleek thighs and full lips, that she couldn't compete with Math.

But she was his second love, and when he stepped through the steel and glass door of his dorm, he found himself primping in the reflection between the doors.All in all he wasn't a bad looking man. He was thin, but not anorexic thin. The long hours in his dorm had left him a bit pale, but not pasty. In fact the worst any one could say about him was that he was average.

Stepping through into the lobby proper, he smiled and waved at a few of his friends. They waved back, a few shouting a hi across the lobby. A group of them from his floor had clustered around the mail counter, he walked up to them. Alice could wait. She never liked it when he came into the room before she got up. Especially on the random nights when she decided to stick around.

Christy, his RA, smiled when he stopped at the counter. "Hi there Ryan, how are you doing?"

He shrugged, "I could be better, I could be worse. You know how it goes. School, life, homework, some more school again."

"Really?" Her eyes narrowed, and there was a hint to her voice that sent a small shiver through Ryan's stomach.

For a moment, he pictured the probabilities about why she could be giving him that look. Bell curves and F-tests floated through his head. His mouth picked out the next words carefully. "Yes... why?"

"Well... It's nothing really. Don't worry about it." She waved her hand.

But it was something. Something that brought color to her cheeks, making her lips tremble a bit like the words were stuck right on the edge of them, waiting to tumble out. "Come on. Something's bugging you. I'm not going to freak out or anything."

She smiled weakly. "Really, it's nothing. I'm just having a rough week."

"Okay. I'll see you later then. I hope it gets better." He walked away from the counter, barely registering the guy with the laptop in one of the uncomfortable lobby chairs. Instead his mind played with the possibilities of what he would find when he went into the elevator. No, it was probably nothing. In fact, there was only a four percent chance that it could be something.

But what kind of something would it be? Was there another guy up there in the room? Did Alice get another call from her mother and was now sobbing her heart out in the lobby? Were his parents in the hospital? Anxiety looped itself through his brain.

He was still playing back the questions in his head when the steel door of the elevator slid open.