There i sat in the dark. Far above me, like a sign of something, floated the perfect half moon of light given shape by the hole in the ceiling. And yet none of the light from up there managed to find its way to me. As time passed, my cursed eyes grew more accustomed to the darkness. Before long, I could make out the shape of my tied up hands if I bought it close to my face. Other things around me began slowy to take on their own dim shapes, like timid little animals letting down their guard in the most gradual stages imaginable. As much as my eyes became use to it, though, the darkness never ceased to be darkness. Anything I tried to focus on would lose its shape and burrow its way soundlessy into the surrounding obscurity.Here in this darkness, with its strange sence of significance, my body began to take on a power it had never had before. The fragmentary images it called up inside me were vivid in every detail, to the point where I felt I could grasp them in my hands. I closed my eyes and thought about the reason Aeron bought me here.

At 11:30 one monday, after a lecture on Euripides in History of drama, I took a ten minute walk to a little restaurant and had a burger and some fries for lunch. The place was a quiet back street and it had somewhat higher prices then mcdonald’s or burger king, but you could relax there, and they knew how to make a good burger. They were a married couple who rarely spoke to each other, and they had one waitress. As I sat there eating by the window, a group of four students came in, two men and two women, all rather neatly dressed. They took the table near the door, spent some time looking over the menu and dicussing their options, until one of them reported their choices to the waitress.Before long I noticed that one of the girls kept glancing in my direction. She had extremely short hair and wore dark sunglasses and a white cotton minidress. I had no idea who was, I couldn’t see a mark on her back, so I went on with my lunch, but soon she slipped out of her seat and came over to where I was sitting. With one hand on the edge of the table she said,
“You’re Jaden, aren’t you?”I rasied my head and looked at her more closely. Still I could not recall ever having seen her. She was the kind of girl you would notice, so if I had met her before I should have have been able to recognize her immediatly, and there weren’t many people in my university who knew my name.
“Mind if I sit down?”she asked. “Or are you expecting somebody?”
Still uncertain, I shook my head.
“No, nobody’s coming.”With a wooden clunk, she dragged a chair out and sat down across from me, staring straight at me through her sunglasses, then glancing down at my plate.
“Looks good,”she said.
“It is good. Mushroom cheese burger and fries.”
“Damn,”she said.“Oh well, I’ll get it next time. I already ordered something else.”

“What’d you order?”

“ chicken strips and, macaroni and cheese.”
“Their macaroni and cheese is not bad, either,” I said. “By the way, do I know you? I can’t seem to remember.”

“Euripides,”she said “Electra. No god hearkens to my helpless cry. You know the class just ended.”

I stared at her hard. She took off her sunglasses. At last I remembered her, a senior I had seen in history of drama. A striking change in hairstyle kept me from recognizing her.“Oh,” I said, touching a spot a few inches below my shoulder,“your hair was down to here last week.”

“You’re right,” she said. “I had a perm last week, and it was just awful. I was ready to kill myself. I looked like medusa without the snakes. So I figured as long as I was ready to die, I might as well cut it all off. At least it’s cool in this abnormal heat.”She ran her hands through her Rihanna cut and smiled.

“It looks good on you. Nicely shaped head. Pretty ears, too, uncovered like that.”

“So i’m not crazy after all! They all tell me I look like some punk rocker. What’s this thing that guys have for girls with long hair? Fascist, the whole bunch of them! Why do guys all think girls with long hair are the classiest, the sweetest, the most feminine?”

“I myself know at least thirteen unclassy girls with long hair.”
“ I think you look better now then you did before,”I said. And I meant it. As far as I could recall, with long hair she had been just another cute face I could have slept with. From the girl who sat before me now, though, surged a fresh and physical life force. She was like a small animal that has popped into the world with the coming of spring. Her eyes moved like an independent organism with joy, laughter, anger, amazement, and despair. I hadn’t seen a face so vivd and epressive in ages, and I enjoyed watching it live and moved.

“Do you mean it?”she asked.
I nodded, still nibbling on my fries.She put her dark glasses on and looked at me from behind them.“You’re not lying, are you?”

“Trust me you could tell if I was lying to you.”
“Cute, I’ll believe you this time.”

“So tell me, why do you were suck dark glasses?” I asked

“I felt defenseless when my hair got short all of a sudden. Like everyone could read my mind.”

“Makes sense,”I said, eating the last of my burger. She watch me with intense interest.
“You don’t have to go back to them?” I asked, motioning towards her conpanions.
“Nah. I’ll go back when they serve the food. Am I interrupting your meal?” 
“There’s nothing left to interrupt,” I said, ordering coffee when she showed no sign of leaving. The wife took my dishes and bought back my receipt.
“Now you tell me,”she said. “Why didn’t you answer today when the professor called the roll? You are Jaden, aren’t you? Jaden Fields?”
“That’s me.”
“So why didn’t you answer?”

“I just didn’t feel like it today.”

She took her sun glasses off again, set them on the table, and looked at me as is she were staring into a cage of some animal at the zoo.

“`I just didn’t feel like it today.’ You talk like Raelynn Givens from justified.