Be Who God Meant You To Be

Her trip home from campus Tuesday night is almost surprisingly uneventful.

(When you're half-braced for something to happen, even when it's a relief that nothing does, there's an odd feeling of incompletion, energy that will spend itself in cleaning the kitchen, in restoring order, not because the kitchen needs it but because Meg does.)

She declines Carrie's invitation to run out for a quick dinner, saying she has work to finish. Calls her parents, calls Alain, to talk about nothing of any importance, to find a way back to something like normal.

And then she sits at her desk, and she makes lists and she makes plans and she deals with Roe-bear McCrory, without making it any less, or any more, than it is. And by the time she goes to bed that night, she knows exactly what she's going to do.

On Wednesday morning she gets up, makes coffee and muffins, and summons her roommates to a breakfast meeting. And while they stir milk and sugar into mugs, Meg moves her glass of orange juice two inches from the edge of her plate, and then says, "Roe-bear has been following me."

"What?" Olivia says.

"Roe-bear. Your leaves-a-lot-to-be-desired ex? Has been following me. Since Halloween."

"Oh my God," Carrie says. "Meg, are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," she says, and this morning, it's true. "But this is a problem, and it needs to be addressed, so I'm addressing it."

"Wait," Olivia says. "My Roe-bear has been stalking you for almost three months? And you're only telling us now?"

"I told you he was bad news," Carrie says.

"Whatever," Olivia says, with a literal wave of her hand. "What are we going to do about it?"

"I'm going to go talk to campus security, and see what they say. And if he calls, don't tell him I'm here, don't tell him I'm not here, just . . . hang up. If you see him hanging around, let me know."

"If I see him hanging around, I'll--" Olivia starts, and Meg shakes her head.

"Just ignore him, Olivia. I suspect any reaction is just going to encourage him."

"Don't give him any satisfaction," Carrie says. "You know, pretend you're still dating him."

Olivia throws a piece of her muffin across the table at Carrie. "Are you sure, Meg?"

"Yeah. I just want to avoid him."

"Does Alain know about all this?" Carrie asks.

"Not yet. I'll see him Thursday, and I'll tell him then. I think it's better in person, and when I can say that I've got things in hand."

"So Roe-bear doesn't wind up in the hospital?" Carrie asks.

"And so Alain doesn't wind up in prison," Meg says.

"Okay," Carrie says. "When are you going to talk to security?"

Meg looks down at her watch. "I don't have a class till one, so maybe in about a couple hours."

"I'm really sorry, Meg," Olivia says.

"It's not your fault."

"Yeah, but, still."

"All right," Carrie says, getting up to get the coffee pot and refill her cup. "Tell us everything that's happened."

It takes about an hour to go over everything, to answer all her roommates' questions, to make sure everything is covered. Olivia, remarkably, is the one with the early class on Wednesdays, and breakfast breaks up when she has to get ready to leave for campus.

Meg spends more time than she wants to admit trying to figure out what one wears to ask for security's help in dealing with a stalker. She's just finished braiding her hair when the doorbell rings. "Can you get that?" Carrie yells from the bathroom.

"Are we expecting anyone?" Meg asks.

"Yes," Carrie calls.

Meg looks through the peephole in the door and then amends, "Are we expecting Ed Marriner?"

"Yes."

Meg opens the door.

"Meg. Hi."

"Hi."

"Carrie called," he said.

"Carrie called?" she repeats.

"Yeah. She said you needed someone to walk with you to campus."

"Did she?" Meg says. "Ed, would you excuse me for a moment?"

"Ah, sure," he says.

"Make yourself comfortable," Meg says, with a wave at the sofa, and heads back to the bathroom. "Carrie, what have you done?"

"Look, Olivia's in class, I have to get to work, and you cannot go traipsing around Montreal by yourself right now."

"Traipsing?"

"You didn't want Alain to know until you could tell him, which I totally respect, but you need someone to go with you, in case Olivia's Biggest Mistake is out there, lurking. So I called Ed, and told him what was going on, and asked him to come over."

"Carrie!"

"Humor me, okay? And let him walk you to campus?"

It's a little awkward, conversation is stilted, but Meg would be lying if she said she wasn't a little relieved to have him there.

"Thanks," she says, when they reach the security office.

"I'll wait," he says.

She talks to a security officer who is very nice, who takes her seriously, who makes notes about what she tells him. He tells her to keep her eyes open, stay in groups, avoid shortcuts, not engage with Roe-bear if he turns up, and to let them know if anything else happens, no matter how minor or innoculous it seems. It's about what Meg expects, but again, it's helpful just to have someone treat it all like it's not in her head.

Ed Marriner is waiting when she leaves.

"How did it go?" he asks.

"Fine. I really appreciate your coming with me."

"Any time," he says.

"So, can I buy you lunch or something?" Meg asks.

"How about a cup of coffee?"

"Sure."

She quite literally collides with Roe-bear McCrory outside the cafe Ed recommends, and the only reason she doesn't fall is that Ed catches her elbow.

"You okay?" he asks, and she nods, but she can already feel herself tensing.

So she's startled when a slightly wild-eyed Roe-bear says, "This is an accident. You know that, right? I didn't know you were going to be here."

Meg doesn't answer.

"You tell your friends this was an accident."

"My friends?"

"Your friends," Roe-bear says. "The creepy one with the dark hair, and the psychotic blonde. Tell them this was an accident. And just . . . stay away from me," he says, and takes off down the street.

"That was him, wasn't it?" Ed asks. "The drunk guy from the party who's been harassing you?"

"Yeah."

"And . . . is he drunk right now? Because that made very little sense. Who was he talking about?"

Meg shrugs. Because she has a very good idea who he might have been talking about, but not one she can share with Ed Marriner.

If she's right, though, she's pretty sure that was the last she's going to see of M. Roe-bear.

And as final images go . . . she'll take it.

It’s the point in the term when things aren’t quite still new, but they’re also not yet routine. In another week or so, Meg’s days will proceed down well worn paths, but for now, she’s still finding the best way to get from point A to class B, what the breaks and rushes and rhythms are.

It makes her both more and less aware of her surroundings, in different ways. More because she has not yet seen them all. Less because, with no ordinary established, there’s no out-of-the-ordinary to catch her attention.

And yet.

And yet today she has an odd little feeling, like a prickling at the back of her neck, an awareness of something, though she can’t find anything to be aware of. She can neither bring it into focus nor completely ignore it.

Something is just . . . off. Not necessarily wrong, but not right. Out-of-the-not-yet-existing-ordinary.

And she hates it. It’s distracting her from her professor’s lecture, it makes her feel on edge and paranoid. There’s no evidence, no reason for it, nothing she can see or name or quantify that should be picking at her attention like this.

And yet.

In simplest terms, Meg Ford feels like she’s being watched.

And no matter how many times, or how sternly, she tells herself to focus on her class, stop being ridiculous, she can’t quite shake it.

So, in some ways, it’s not a surprise to step out into the hallway after Professor Tousignant’s class and see Roe-bear McCrory standing opposite the door.

And in others, many many others, it’s the most startled Meg’s been in ages. It’s stop-breathing-and-stare, train-of-thoughts-just-utterly-derailed, Holy-God-in-Heaven levels of startled.

Followed by rationalization. He could have a class in this building. He could be waiting for someone else. He could . . . he could . . . he could . . .

“Meg.”

He could be waving and calling her name.

He is waving and calling her name.

Meg decides to pretend she hasn’t heard him and just walk away. There should be plenty of people between here and the library right now, she can hole up there as long as she needs—wants to, as long as she wants to, because she doesn’t need to because it’s not like he’s going to actually follow her.

And then there’s a hand on her shoulder, and she stops automatically because that’s the way Alain tends to greet her, because even if it weren’t, you stop when someone puts a hand on your shoulder.

Even if, a split second later, you’ve shrugged that hand off your shoulder.

Even if stopping was almost the very last thing you meant to do.

She knows who she’s going to find when she turns around, and it’s not going to be Alain.

“Meg, hey. Didn’t you hear me call you?” Roe-bear asks.

“No, sorry,” Meg says, and a voice in her head says, Dammit, Meghan, do not apologize to this guy.

It sounds oddly like Parker.

“Oh,” Roe-bear says. “Well, I’m glad I caught you.”

Caught you. Not caught up with you or caught your attention. Just caught you and she might be over-analyzing, and she might be over-reacting, but the phrasing makes her tense even more.

“How have you been? Did you have a good Christmas break?”

“Fine, thank you,” Meg says.

“I was really hoping I was going to run into you again,” Roe-bear says. “You know, our last meeting had a real negative vibe, and that’s not cool.”

Their last meeting, which had been more than a month ago, and at which she told him in no uncertain terms to leave her alone.

Trust your instincts, Parker said, and what Meg’s instincts tell her right now is that she does not want to be anywhere near this guy. She’ll worry about the rest of it later.

“Excuse me,” she says, cutting off whatever it is he’s going on about, “but I’m meeting someone, and I need to go.”

(It’s a lie, this time, she’s not meeting anyone. Not Alain, not anyone.)

“Oh?” Roe-bear says, looking around the now emptying hallway. “Where?”

“The library,” she says. It’s the first place that comes into her mind.

“I’ll walk with you, then. We can talk on the way.”

“That’s really not necessary.”

“I don’t mind,” he says, and puts his hand on her bag, like he expects to carry her books or something.

Meg tightens her grip on the bag, and looks around.

And there is one place, and only one place, she can see that she thinks there’s even a chance he won’t follow her.

“Excuse me,” Meg says, tugs her bag free, and steps through the ladies’ room door.

It has been a fairly odd couple of weeks -- a crazy time when everyone has too much to think about and plan and just plain get done. The end of the semester, exams, Christmas and all the assorted rigmarole that accompanies each of them. And while Meg is good at being on top of all that stuff, she does not live in a vacuum. All around her, people are stressed out, tempers and moods are fraying and snapping, and even someone who has finished her holiday shopping and been studying for her exams since basically the first day of classes is starting to feel the strain.

And that's before she adds in dealing with things like the faint anxiety that spending a week with Kim and their parents in England is going to wind up being too much, too soon, or quiet worrying over recent odd encounters at the End of the Universe.

She gets home from class wanting nothing more than twenty minutes of peace and quiet. Instead she gets Carrie and Olivia in the middle of an epic fight about who did or didn't erase a message that may or may not have been left on the answering machine. Meg doesn't even take her coat off, just dumps her bag in her room, grabs a book of her desk, and heads back out.

The cafe is off the usual paths beaten by either tourists or university students, Meg found it during the fall of her first year, on one of her Parker-suggested explorations of the city. It's run by Marie-Laure and her daughter Sylvie. Marie-Laure is a short, rather round woman who Meg has never seen without an apron. Sylvie could have stepped off the pages of Vogue. They both know all the regulars by name, and Sylvie makes the best hot chocolate Meg has ever had.

Their cafe is small, and people often stay for hours, so it's not at all uncommon to wait for a table. Meg waits fifteen minutes, today, standing at the counter and chatting with Marie-Laure in between other customers' orders before the table in the corner opens up. She just wants an hour to sit and read her book and not have to be anyone for anyone -- not a student or a roommate or a girlfriend or a daughter or a sister or --

"Hey. This place is pretty packed. You mind if I join you?"

Meg looks up from the ball at Netherfield to find Roe-bear holding a cup of coffee and indicating the empty chair across from her.

"Um," she says.

"Thanks," Roe-bear says, and sits down. "So, how've you been?"

The thing is, she does mind. She would mind right now even if it were Alain, because she doesn't want company.

And she cannot imagine what he's is doing here. This isn't a place students congregate, and certainly not English-speaking ones. There are closer, and cheaper, places to get coffee. That's why Meg goes out of her way to come here, where she never runs into anyone she knows.

So what the heck is Roe-bear McCrory doing at Marie-Laure and Sylvie's?

It's just one of those things, surely. Random happenstance or something. It has to be.

(What's the alternative? That he followed her here or something? That seems a little bit paranoid, not to mention ridiculously self-absorbed, doesn't it?)

"Meg?" he says, "How've you been?"

"Fine," she says.

"Me, too," he says. "Professors have been keeping me pretty busy, though. Getting ready for exams and all that. You know, trying to make up all that work I didn't do all fall. You, too?"

Meg takes a moment to be grateful she brought Austen and not Montgomery, as it's a lot harder to pass The Blue Castle off as an assignment. "I've got a lot of reading to do," she says, with a gesture to her book.

"Oh," he says. "Well, if I'm interrupting . . ."

She knows he's waiting for her to say, Oh, no, it's okay, I have a few minutes or words to that effect. And instead she says, "You kind of are, yes."

"Oh," Roe-bear says again.

"There's a table free over by the door now," she adds.

"Oh," he says. "Well, um, maybe another time?"

"Maybe," Meg says, vaguely. "Bye, Robert."

Roe-bear relocates to the table by the door, and Meg goes back to her book. But she can't quite shake the feeling that she's being watched, even though every time she looks up, he's looking somewhere else -- the window, the counter, into his coffee cup.

She tells herself she's being ridiculous.

She hopes she's right about that.

But she sits and reads for almost two hours, anyway, waiting for Roe-bear to leave first.

When Meg leaves her apartment building on Thursday morning, she finds Roe-bear waiting on the sidewalk.

"Hi," he says.

"Hi," she answers. "Are you waiting for Olivia?"

Olivia hadn't mentioned anything about reuniting with Roe-bear, but Meg knows Olivia well enough to know that that doesn't mean it hasn't happened.

"No, I was actually waiting for you."

"For me?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I wanted to say thank you for the other night. It was a pretty rough time and you were really nice about everything."

"Oh, well, you're welcome," Meg says. "I'm happy I could help. And you're okay?"

"Yes, I'm good," he says. "Really good."

"Great. Well, I'm glad you're okay. Take care."

And, thinking the conversation is over, Meg heads towards campus. Roe-bear follows her.

"So, look I was thinking," he says, "about that, and you, and me. And I really feel like you and I connected on some kind of whole other plane, you know what I mean?"

Meg, who actually frequently visits a whole other plane, has no idea what he means.

"Oh?" she asks, in a way that she hopes in non-committal.

"So I was also thinking," Roe-bear continues, "that that kind of connection shouldn't be ignored and we should go out some time, right?"

Meg stops walking. "Oh."

Oh.

"Um, Roe--Robert, that's really . . ." unexpected . . . "um, thank you for the offer, it's very nice of you to ask, but I have a boyfriend. I'm sorry."

"Oh, okay. It's cool," he says.

"Okay," Meg says. "Well, I need to go, but maybe I'll see you around or something."

"Yeah, around," Roe-bear says. "Or something."

"Bye."

Meg sets off again, and this time Roe-bear does not follow her.

Can Olivia pick them or what?