It’s not that Suu Pikko hates people; it’s just that she doesn’t particularly find most of them to be interesting. Oh, the way they move is interesting. She loves the way the lanky boy moves and looks. Everything about him is lanky—his hair, his arms, his legs. Everything straight down to his lanky eyelashes and fingernails. She wishes she would capture his movements. She would draw him as a rubber band swimming in a creek, since that’s exactly what he looks like when he dances.
She loves people in an aesthetic sense, but when they talk, she has no interest.
But it’s ok, it works both ways. Suu isn’t the most interesting person in the world either. With her large sweaters that she tried drowning in, and boring hair, she doesn’t stand out in the crowd in the most typical way. In fact, she only stands out in the crowd when you her. And then you find yourself looking at her, waiting for her to be interesting, but she isn’t. A couple of boys have already done that tonight, here at this party. But then they saw that she did nothing. She neither smiled in amusement or frowned with sadness. She just sits there and watches people.
Suu is in fact not interesting at all, even when you get to know her. She graduated 10 places down from being top of her class, moved into the dorms of the University closest to her house where she was studying art. She spends most of her time studying. She pretty much only eats cheap prepackaged tuna sandwiches from the cafeteria and she always eats them alone.
The only thing interesting about her is her name. And the huge smiley face on her grey sweater that she wears with leggings.
Suu briefly watches a sad nervous girl on the other side of the room. She would draw this girl with two faces; one sad and wrapped with bitterness, and the other one nervous, chewing on her pinky nail. She would draw a lot of things tonight if she had brought her notebook, which she didn’t because she was under the impression that she would have a good time.
The beginning of the party was time. Tim and his other roommates from the science department decided to hold a “medium sized get together. Cool people only” on the first day of the second semester. The “cool people” Tim referred to included everyone who wasn’t invited to any of the big parties over the weekend. Unfortunately, the party hounds got wind of it and crashed because they knew Tim was too much of a wimp to do anything about it.
When they pushed everybody aside to dramatically move the kegs into the bathtub was when Suu should’ve left. No, when she heard the doorbell followed by “Tim brah! It’s where the party’s at!” is when she should’ve left. However, her ride home didn’t want to leave and she didn’t feel like walking home alone while the dogs were around the area.
She watched them turn Tim’s nice kitchen table into a beer pong platform, taint his stereo with Young Jeezy, and stain his furniture with saliva from their girlfriends. She watched as Tim stood by helplessly and watched his party and new apartment get overtaken by idiots. She kind of felt bad for him.
Suu saw a mess of red out of the corner of her eye. “Oh God…” he inwardly groaned. Keri, her roommate was lurking around the sides of her room. Of course she would be here. Keri seemed to always know where she wasn’t wanted and made a point of being there. There were few people Suu hated more than Keri. Suu had the reaction of a bull when she saw Keri’s big red hair. Innerly of course. Suu has never expressed anger or hatred.
Both semesters the dorms were full and both semesters Suu was stuck living with Keri. Suu strategically placed all of her classes in the morning to avoid Keri, who slept in, took afternoon classes, and was gone at night.
The first thing Keri said to Suu was “Thank God you’re my roommate! I suck at math!”
Keri was basing her assumption that Suu was good at math because she’s Asian.
“Oh man, that sucks. I do too. I’m an art major.”
But because Suu never expresses anger or hatred, Keri adores Suu and thinks they’re friends. Keri spots Suu from across the room, waves, and heads towards her. Suu wishes at this moment that she left earlier.
Suu is a pack of people away from total annoyance as Keri walks her way when she hears someone say her name in her ear.
“Hey Suu.”
She looks next to her to see Joe, a small boy with small muscles, greasy black hair, and thick rimmed glasses. Joe, the cute architect major she sat next to in design class last semester. He was one of Tim’s roommates, a fact Suu knew when she agreed to come to the party in the first place.
“I noticed you out here all alone. Would you like to….” Joe’s last words were muted by a group of guys screaming their victory in beer pong.
“What??” Suu yells.
“Would you like to come to my room?!” Joe yells back.
Suu scrunches her face in offense. She can smell alcohol on his breath, but she didn’t think he could ever be that rude, even when intoxicated. Joe immediately reeled back in fear from her expression.
“There are other people!” He nervously tries to explain over the din.
Suu doesn’t quite understand him because it’s so hard to hear him, but she can see the Red Mess of Doom coming closer to her so she nods.
When she gets to Joe’s room, she immediately understands what he was trying to say. A portion of the original party is hiding in there.
“Oh good, you found Suu” says a tall girl who wears a plaid blouse and isn’t yet aware of her beauty. Lauren is one of the girls she came here with.
“Umm, I’m sorry” Joe laughs nervously to Suu. “I uh, I didn’t mean it like that, asking you to my room you know?”
“Yeah, we’re all hiding in here” Lauren says with a subtle eye roll.
“Hey! We are not hiding in here! We’re just hanging out in here!” Tim says. Suu admires his attempt to maintain enthusiasm.
Besides Lauren, Joe, Tim and herself, there is only Randle, the third roommate in the apartment.
The door opens and everyone looks up with fearful anticipation. A girl with a large silver bow in her hair and a black dress peeks through the door and is followed by a girl with short red ringlets and a floral peasant top.
“Oh, there you guys are.” She notices everyone’s faces, that they were expecting a rowdy drunk to come in. “Shit, you all are pathetic.” She closes the door behind her. Lily is a fashion major who thinks that she can’t be a fashion major unless she throws an attitude around once in a while. The girl with the ringlets is Megan, a girl with a bubbly personality and bubbly mouth to match it. She talks as if bubbles fill her mouth.
Lily, Megan, and Lauren are close friends and the only girls on campus that actually talk to Suu. Suu liked them well enough, but found it hard to get close to them and become an official fourth in their little group. Lauren started talking o Suu because she’s too nice not to and the other girls started talking to her because Lauren did. Suu would consider them the closest things to friends she has, though she doesn’t think friends is the best word to use.
“Ok, so who told the idiots that we were having a party?” Megan demanded in her adorably stupid lisp. “Tim, I thought this was supposed to be a ‘medium sized gathering. Cool people only.’” Though Megan is serious at the moment, she wasn’t fooling anybody. 2 more beers and she would be on the coffee table, showing off her old lady bra because one of the idiots told her she was pretty.
“Don’t look at me, it was Randle”
Randle, a red headed kid with large dark eyes looked up with surprise from whatever he was fiddling with in his hand.
“Tell them what you did Randle”
Randle rolled his head in exasperation.
“Dude, all I did was tell some guys in my math class that we were having a party”
“Seriously?” Megan yelled. “You have to be careful who you tell! These guys love to take advantage of people like us.” There was a slight smirk in her voice when she said it.
The three of them started bickering and Suu glanced over Joe’s room. She had never thought about Joe’s room before. She had never dreamt that she would be seeing it. It was neat, and orderly, but not too much so that she would have to worry about his sanity. His bed, which was occupied by Lauren, Randle, and Tim was made, but poorly, with dark blue sheets. He had a desk which was orderly and decorated with a pyramid figurine, a couple of action figures, a picture of his parents, and a Rubix cube.
She aimlessly walked around the small room and found a cluster of postcards on the wall by the desk. She moved a little closer and saw that they were just buildings and landscapes. She couldn’t understand what was so special about them. She heard a small cough behind her and turned around.
“That’s Frank Llyod Wright.” Joe said. “He’s a genius. He’s a huge inspiration to me.”
Suu wanted to ask him what was so special about Frank Lloyd Wright and why he loved him so much, but she didn’t know how to ask. She wanted to know a lot about Joe, but was always too afraid to ask. Before this, the only thing she knew about his was that he was an architect major. She wasn’t too interested in people, yet she wanted to know what Joe’s favorite color was, and what kind of music he listened to.
She just didn’t know how to ask.
So she nodded and gave him a small smile.
“I’m going to get a drink, I’ll be right back.”
