Saturday's Storyteller: "Not even the professor could tell where the smell was coming from."

by Belinda Roddie

Not even the professor could tell where the smell was coming from. Still, the miasma was thick in the room - a complex odor of sweat and cheese and smoke and just the slightest hint of weed. Not good weed, either. My friend Ariana described the cheap stuff as "skunk weed." Either way, it was nauseating.

"Dude, it smells like someone's dorm room in here," one of the students quipped, as Professor Turnbull tried futilely once again to seek out the source of the fumes.

"Your dorm room," his pal beside him added, snorting as he leaned forward in his chair. "Maybe you're the one stinking up the space."

"Take a good sniff of my shirt and say that to me again."

"No way, dude. I'm not gay."

I was beginning to become dizzy from the smell, which did not make good friends with the sweltering heat of the classroom, considering that the air conditioner was busted. I quietly excused myself and headed down the corridor, until all that tickled my nostrils were the sterile aroma of mopped linoleum floors and starched rugs and bleached steel tables. I sat down against the wall by the bathroom when I saw Vanessa stumble out.

"What's up? Why aren't you in class?"

"Someone decided to make it impossible to breathe in there."

"Ohhh," Vanessa sighed. "Probably the freshmen sneaking in and toking. Did it smell like weed?"

"And Swiss left out in the sun."

"Probably brought food in with them, too. The munchies hit the little ones hard." She sat down beside me and offered me a stick of winter mint gum. I let it slide into the left corner of my mouth and gnawed on it.

Professor Turnbull didn't come look for me, and I decided to ditch the rest of class and follow Vanessa to the library, where we found a private room to work on our essays and catch up. Vanessa was a communications major with an emphasis in broadcasting, and I was about to graduate with a double degree in both Literature and Religious Studies. However, we always wound up in the same leveled history classes, and we always liked to study and work together. Vanessa was stout and brown-skinned and curly-haired, and she wore a leather jacket better than the guys I occasionally had a beer with. It was a stark contrast to me, with my olive complexion and red-rimmed glasses framing my watery eyes.

"I feel bad for anyone who stayed in that room," I said to Vanessa as I converted my essay to a .pdf and sent it along to Doctor Mosley. 

"I don't," replied Vanessa, cracking her knuckles one at a time - a sound I secretly hated, but never stopped her from making. "They made the choice to stay with Professor Turnbull and listen to her drone. I remember her introductory Buddhism course. I used to be interested in Buddhism."

"I didn't even know you had her as a professor."

"She was fun to hang out with afterward. Share a cigarette with." Vanessa paused, as if she hadn't wanted to tell me that information. Then she continued. "Apart from that, though? She's not much of a teacher."

"Think I could do any better?"

"Maybe. But I'm still just going to call you Anna."

"Not on your life. It's Professor Kasabian or bust."

"Can I at least call you Professor Butcher, then? I mean, that's the translation."

"I should have never told you I was Armenian."

"Deal with me, little lady."

We walked back to my apartment after we finished our essays, and I opened up a bottle of rum for us to mix with soda and pretend that we were classy drinking it. By the time I started Netflix, Vanessa was falling asleep against me, her head precariously close to my bosom. I stuck my nose instinctively into her bushy hair and breathed in. I caught the slightest whiff of cheese.

This week's prompt was provided by Daniel Bulone.