Shenanigans: Quarantine Edition

“Luisa!  Luisa!”

Two voices call her name – sometimes one of them switches to “Professor Alver!” as though there’s any real question which Luisa she is calling – and Luisa stops just outside her Monday morning classroom, brushing one hand through her wavy brown hair and taking a deep breath.  She knows the girls when they arrive, out of breath, from around the corridor, where they must have sprinted up the stairs – one of them is so white Luisa was concerned, when they first met, that she was an albino, and although her concerns were laid to rest, the girl in question, named Anne, had bleached her hair a startling white to try and capitalize on her confusion; the other is as dark as the other is not, with a deep purple undertone and bright brown eyes, and it was she, named Queenie, who had first decided that between the two of them they should have chess nicknames that were never quite decided on – in her mind, Luisa sometimes refers to them as the Dominoes, but she’ll never tell them that.

“Hey, girls.  What’s up?”

Queenie speaks first, after a big huff of breath.  “We just finished Jane Gloriana Villanueva’s latest book and we realized—”

“—you’re Luana, aren’t you?” Anne finishes the sentence in what is almost a whisper, her grey eyes wild.

Luisa flinches at the name.  She’d already decided to be completely honest if any of her students asked her about it, and she’s not going to change her mind about that now.  “Yes,” she says, her voice hushed, and her gaze glances around to see if anyone else has overheard them.  No one seems to be listening.  Phew.  She doesn’t want a gang of Jane’s readers following her around everywhere, trying to get more information on Jane’s latest book or on Jane herself when all of that information is easily searchable online.

She is easily searchable online.  She’s not surprised that these two figured it out.

“Would you walk with me?” Luisa asks, not wanting to force them to follow her, not wanting to ignore them outright either, but not feeling comfortable continuing the conversation in this small, albeit mostly public, space.  They both nod eagerly, and she gestures with one hand, starting down the stairs – which, admittedly, is not fair for the girls who had just come pounding up them but, considering, Luisa doesn’t much care.  She’s never really wanted to talk about her life before she became a college professor, and she’s not particularly comfortable with the way Jane has taken creative liberties with their lives – with her life.

…their lives.

“I’m sure you two have a lot of questions—”

“We do!” Anne interrupts, which doesn’t surprise Luisa in the slightest.  Anne has always been the one so overeager that she hasn’t been able to keep from speaking out and interrupting others, even in class, where she’s a little more conscientious than she is outside of it.  Luisa doesn’t mind this at all; she’s always been much the same way.  It makes her feel a little bit like she’s teaching a younger version of herself.

“But I want you to promise me that you won’t tell anyone else.”  Luisa turns to Anne and Queenie.  The latter gives one firm nod, her jaw tough and firm, but Anne seems to quaver.  “It’s okay if it’s an accident, Anne,” she continues, “but I don’t want to spill my personal life to everyone on campus.  I came here to get away from all of that – reporters, the hotel, the police – all of it.”

“So she was a crime lord!”

“Your girlfriend.  Before you came here,” Queenie elaborates, as though they could be talking about anyone else.

Luisa takes a deep breath.  She keeps the truth of Rose close to her chest.  In part, this is because Jane has made the greatest deviations in their story because there’s only so much Luisa could tell and only so much Jane knew when she started writing – and changing things so abruptly in later books would have felt weird to their readers; the only way she could have gotten by with it would be to write an entire book just for them, and Jane doesn’t want to do that no matter how much fans want one (and, to be honest, Luisa doesn’t want her to write it either) – but, even more importantly, Luisa doesn’t feel like it’s entirely her story to tell.  It’s just as much Rose’s story, and she doesn’t think—

Theirs may be the greatest story ever told, but—

Rose wouldn’t stand to be made fun of.  She couldn’t stand to see Rose made fun of.

She’s so tired, sometimes.

Besides, Luisa coming out publicly and pointing out every single place where Jane had changed things doesn’t help anyone.  She hasn’t signed anything yet in terms of nondisclosure, but while Jane capitalizes off of their family trauma, there’s not anything Luisa can say to set the story straight without driving a nail in the coffin of her tentative relationship with their family.  There’d be lawsuits.  She doesn’t want that.

She’s quiet a bit too long, and Queenie asks, her voice soft, “Sorry.  We know she’s dead.  We just read that bit, where Luana pushes Rowena off the roof and she dies and burns and everything.”

Anne takes one of Luisa’s hands and gives it a gentle squeeze.  “We’re sorry for your loss,” she says, and then just as suddenly drops Luisa’s hand because that’s a little too forward to be with their professor, even if she thinks it’s necessary.

“We understand if you don’t want to talk about her.”

Luisa smiles and nods.  “Thank you, girls.”  She wants to ask if they found Rose’s name in all of their research, but she doesn’t.  If they don’t mention it, she won’t elaborate.  “So how did you figure it out?” she asks as they leave the building and walk out onto the edge of campus.  It’s spring, and the dogwood trees are blooming, and the air reeks of it.  She wiggles her nose, but that doesn’t make the stench go away.  Once, she might have thought that no amount of beauty was worth that smell, but now....

No, she still thinks that.  Rose notwithstanding.

“We did some research,” Queenie answers.  “We were curious.”

“We thought, with Rowena dead, we’d send some message or something.  To let Luana – to let you know – that we were sorry.”

Luisa stops, and her eyes widen.  She hopes Jane has thought this through.  She doesn’t want a million fans sending apologies and sad messages to her about Rose’s – about Rowena’s death.  It’s been a long time since then.  She’s moved on.  She’s had to move on.  She doesn’t want all of that bringing up old feelings and old pain and driving her from the little life she’d carved out here for herself.

Of course, she’s been kept out of whatever’s happened with Jane so far, and that’s been nice.  It was worse, once.  That was part of why she’d left.  She couldn’t deal with it.

“We actually thought,” and here Anne brightened, her cheeks growing a bright rosy color, “that we could find you a girlfriend.  If it was you, and it is, and we know someone who’s interested.”

Queenie sighs.  “I told her not to get involved, but she doesn’t listen to me.”

“I listen!” Anne says, giving Queenie a little shove.  “But it’s not my fault that Professor Ruvelle is an avid reader of Jane’s books and it’s not my fault that we’ve dissected them in her classes and it’s certainly not my fault that she has a hard-on for Luana that is so evident it’s literally painful to watch its—”

Queenie holds up her hands, and it takes a second before its warning gets through to Anne, who immediately blanches.  “I’m sorry, Luisa.  That’s not proper wording.  I’m—”

“No, this Professor Ruvelle has a hard-on for Luana.  Got it.”  Luisa grins at them.  “And you want me to meet her.”

“Yes!”  Anne is bright and excited, and Queenie…is neither, but Luisa knows that excitement is just bubbling beneath the surface, too.  “I can’t believe you haven’t.  It was so easy to find out who you were!  She probably knows but didn’t want to be intrusive.”

“We shouldn’t have been intrusive,” Queenie says, finally shoving Anne back.

“Well, I guess,” Luisa says, smiling a fond little smile, “I should go meet her, then.”  She looks over to Anne and Queenie.  “But you two can’t come with me.  And you can’t say anything at all.  But if anyone asks,” she continues, tapping the side of her nose, “I’ll tell them you two got tired of hearing Professor Ruvelle wax poetic about a fictional character she’ll never meet and decided to set her up with the only other eligible lesbian professor on campus.”

Anne grins and nods rapidly, but Queenie looks ashamed.  “You don’t have to say that.  We don’t want to be known for that.”  She turns to Anne and shakes her head.  “We really don’t want to be known for that.”

“Then I won’t mention your names.  Sound good?”

“Sounds wonderful!”

Queenie takes Anne’s hand and pulls her away.  “Look, we, uh, we have to go, but, uh, we’ll come talk to you after class tomorrow.”  She gives Anne a look, and Anne just looks confused.  “We’ve got some, uh, homework we have to do.  Yeah.  For class!  We haven’t done your homework yet.  We were just so enthralled with Jane’s book that we haven’t gotten to it yet and we have to do it now so we’re going to go.  Now.”

“Of course.”

Luisa watches as Queenie drags Anne away from her.  There’s that disconnect – she appreciates what the girls think they’re doing but also there are lines that maybe shouldn’t be crossed where your professor is concerned, and while Anne doesn’t really always understand those lines (the same way Luisa herself likely wouldn’t have, when she was her age), Queenie’s starting to understand that maybe, just maybe, they were in over their head.

It doesn’t matter.  They’d already been extremely helpful.

Luisa drops her briefcase just inside the door and pulls her mother’s forest green sweater off the coat rack and wraps it around herself.  She looks out the kitchen window to the rose bush just outside, near enough to the ivy that grows up the outside of their house.  Then she takes a deep breath and makes her way into the living room.

“Professor Ruvelle,” she says, and there she is, the love of her life, just the way Jane has never described her, all frizzy unkempt hair and bright blue eyes and those glasses perched on the edge of her nose as she reads one of her books, one long finger holding the next page ready so that she can turn it as soon as she finishes it, “you’ll never believe what happened today.”

“And what would that be, Professor Alver?” Rose asks, not even looking up from her book.

Luisa sits on the couch next to her and rests her head on her cheek.  “Two more of my students figured out I’m Luana, and you’ll never guess what they suggested.”

Rose pauses and finally looks from her book to meet Luisa’s eyes.  “Tell me.”

Luisa wants to drag it out, but she doesn’t.  Instead, she presses a kiss to Rose’s cheek.  “They told me that Professor Ruvelle apparently has a hard-on for Luana and that I should shack up with her.”  She grinned.  “In so many words.”

“Finally.”  Rose let out a long breath and placed the book over to one side.  “I could only drop so many hints around so many avid readers of Jane’s horrid books before one of them picked up on it and tried to set us up.”  She brushes a hand through Luisa’s dark hair.  “It finally paid off.”

“I’m surprised none of them have figured out that we live together yet,” Luisa says.  She snuggles a little closer to Rose.  “They told me how sad they were at Rowena’s death.  They just read it.”

“Took Jane long enough to write it,” Rose murmurs.

“I didn’t mean to push you.”

“You didn’t push me.  And I didn’t die.”  Rose kisses Luisa’s forehead.  “And now we’re here, and we’re safe, and thanks to your intrusive students, we can be the happily married couple on campus.”

Luisa grins.  “We can be the professors that are too romantic and too sweet and too—”

Rose stops her with a kiss.  “We can be a lot of things, Lu.  I’m just sorry it took so long.”