“You’re freezing!” she cried. In a flurry of motion, she’d ripped off her own coat and scarf. “Here, put these on. No, don’t worry! I’m from New Hampshire, I’ll be fine.”
My teeth were still chattering so much, I could barely muster a polite refusal before she’d wrapped me up in her clothes. “Thank you,” I finally managed, sinking into the comfort. “My name’s Ramona, but everyone calls me Romi.”
The girl’s eyes lit up. “Romi, I love it!” She reached over to her coat on me and pulled a paper out of the pocket—her dormitory check-in form. “Is your last name Wu, by any chance?” she asked. Her grin grew even larger when I nodded, and she put her hand out again, as if to redo the greeting. “I’m Tamara Jasper. I think I’m your roommate.” She turned and gestured to the boy behind her. “And this is Wally.”
He seemed to cower as I turned to him, as if not wanting to meet me, as if not returning my gaze or the greeting would mean it didn’t have to happen.
“Wally can be shy, but I guess all geniuses are,” Tam continued, and elbowed him playfully. “You’ll never meet a better geometer. He’s saved our group projects a million times.”
At that, Wally finally came out of his shell enough to shake my hand. “Hi,” he said quietly.
And just like that, we were three.
Tam’s coat was heavenly, warmer than anything I’d ever owned, and the thrill of having come under her wing so suddenly gave me a burst of friendly courage. We moved through the party as a unit, Tam’s arm looped through mine, and Wally clinging to her so as not to be swept away by the crowd. She smiled and introduced herself and Wally to everyone, and me too, as if she’d known me as long as she’d known him. We each had our strengths, and if Wally was our cautious one, our rule follower and detail checker for every research article and grant proposal we tackled thereafter, Tam was our engine. If she was ever in the room, no one could avoid her. She was like the sun. Students, professors, even strangers would gravitate to her, powerless to resist her excitement, her passion.
The three of us already made a strong team—Tam and I were both artists, my realistic style complementing her experimental, interpretive one, and Wally able to analyze both our works from his much more scientific perspective—but it was not enough for Tam. She was always hungry for more minds, more ideas.
Over the next two weeks, as we settled into our classes, we also found studious, solemn Francis, Tam luring him away from a dry conversation about the history of geography as an academic subject and instantly into an intense discussion with her about accuracy versus beauty in classical maps—and also your father.
Every one of us worked incredibly hard for every one of those years in Wisconsin, all through our undergrad, graduate, and doctoral programs. The dean used to say that he’d never seen even one such dedicated student, let alone a whole group of them. But if our circle did have a goof, it was your father.
Daniel was just so happy, all the time. So open and joyful, and utterly unguarded. So different from now.
And the sparks flew almost the instant they saw each other.
That second week, it was a Thursday near the end of our morning class, and we were all milling around near the front of the room as we waited for our instructor, Professor Johansson, to finish passing back our first assignments. Tam and I had fidgeted with boredom through the whole lecture—Wally and Francis had been rapt with attention, because it was all numbers and science and math—and we were so impatient to escape that Tam didn’t notice Professor Johansson had accidentally handed her the wrong essay until another student near us called out, “Well, if Tamara Jasper gets grades this good, I guess I’m happy to be Tamara Jasper!”
“What?” I asked, at the same moment that Tam looked down at the paper in her hands, and said, “You’re . . . Daniel Young?”
“No, that’s you,” Daniel said, grinning broadly.