"First, I start with a plain Frank," she begins while leaning against the counter, patiently waiting for the tall brown man on the other end to deliver their food. Judith blankly stares at the white side of the advertisements hung on the windows, the constant droning of an arcade machine providing a better ambiance than the sizzling of meat. "Then I look over it to make sure it hasn't been bathed in grease, and if it's good, I start with chili, ketchup, mustard. I mean, I go way out to build the biggest hotdog. Wanna know where I got the idea from?"

Judy glances at her, intending to say no but the prideful smile on Mary's face changes her mind. Sighing the minimal amount of breath in her lungs, she nods her head.

"When I was just knee-high to a Junebug, my Dad took me, my sisters Avery and Sandra, and my brother Benjamin to a carnival in Darlington. Oh, my God, girl," Mary exclaims. "It was so pretty and fun. Anyway, I entered into a hotdog eating contest with the adults."

"Did you win?" The clerk sits a food tray in front of the ladies with a generously topped hotdog weighing it down. Mary slides the tray into her hands.

"No, but my Dad gave me a fiver for my effort," she answers. The doors invite in a whoosh from passing cars when the group of men she first encountered at the bus stop opens them. "Look at this beauty, though. Who knew a small loss could account for such a huge win?"

"Mary?" Mary lifts her attention onto Judy, who's watching them march towards the side of the store. "Who are those guys?"

Furrowing her eyebrows, she whips her head in the direction Judith is staring in, but a long rack of candy obstructs her sight. She walks toward the door to peer past the display, then returns to Judy's side.

"Those are the frat guys in Zeta Psi Phi. They're not, like, super athletic or jocky like the ones in Alpha Psi Delta, but in my book, they're all the same," she explains without visible emotion. "Anyway, I'm gonna grab a Slurpee. Do you want anything? I can split this in two for us."

"Uh, no, that's okay," she says. As Mary leaves her side for a cup of slush, Judith walks around the display.

"Someone beat our score," one of the men mumbles to the Goliath of the group.

"Excuse me?" She stands behind them, her voice meek and her heart racing in her chest. His short dreads bounce off of his shoulders when he turns his head to meet her gaze. He and his friend with the fade, turn their bodies to her. "I'm sorry to bother you, but I saw you not far from my house, and I wanted to say hey."

"That's where I remember you from! My name's Jerome, and this is my friend Eric," he begins the introduction before glancing over his left shoulder. He has a gap between his two front teeth that she's hardly able to resist the urge to stare at. "And those are my friends Manuel and Khalìd."

"It's nice to meet you," she says with a smile as she looks from one to the other. "My name is Judith, but I prefer Judy."

"Was it you," Khalìd, the man with the high top, asks her. She gives him a confused look, his friends also watching him, and he elaborates, "We play Space Jungle every day, and only three other people made it to the top of the leaderboard before today. Was it you?"

Jerome steps to his left, and Eric steps to the right of the rainforest-themed machine, clearing a path for her to approach the screen. The background is black, and the font is white like many other arcade games.

Just under the word leaderboard is a score of fifteen thousand forty-eight created by a player with the initials MEH

"No, that wasn't me." She shakes her head and looks Jerome in his eyes. "I play this sometimes during my lunch break, but I don't think I'd have the time to knock you into second place."

"Judy?" They look behind her at the towhead holding a cup of blue drink in her left hand and the hot dog tray in her right. "What's going on?"

"They were asking me if I was the one who beat their score." When Mary glances past Judith, she steps next to Eric, and her friend approaches the machine.

"Oh, yeah, that was me," she casually confesses. Judy watches the disbelief on each frat guy's face while Mary sips the contents into the straw.

"She's full of shit," Manuel mumbles, shaking his head with his hands on the hips of his blue jeans.

"Yeah, so full of shit my eyes are brown," she sarcastically tells him before backing away from the glowing screen. Manuel and Khalìd argue with Mary with certainty that she's lying despite her convincing tone.

"Prove it," Eric says in a loud voice to overpower theirs. She stares at the red joystick for a moment as if to contemplate whether she should bother playing, then she shrugs her shoulders.

"Alright, then. Could you hold these for me, please?" She extends her hands toward Judy, who grasps the cup in her left hand and the plate in her right, the cold sides of the Slurpee slowly numbing her palm. "Thank you."

Mary sifts through her cluttered purse and removes two quarters, slipping them into the coin slot. The peppy music plays after the jingling of the money dropping subsides, and she's left to choose a character.

"Who do you pick," Khalìd asks her with a smirk on his face, ready to see her fail.

"I always pick the gorilla." His confidence falls just as fast as the quarters into the machine when she navigates toward a black, pixelated ape. He licks his lips, but before he can open them to question her again, she guides the arrow to her weapon of choice: a military-grade falcon.

"She has a gorilla flying a jet," Manuel states the obvious to his friends, scoffing incredulously. The game begins after a three count, and she's met with an onslaught of meteors hurtling toward her character with a dark, star-filled background.

Fifteen minutes pass before she's booted out of the game by a collision with an asteroid much more prominent than her missiles can handle. She brands her signature initials on the slot for third place before stepping away to make room for the next.

"Get us back up there, 'Rome," Eric cheers for him, slapping his back with his right hand when he stands before the screen. He lifts his hands and interlocks his fingers, dramatically popping his knuckles.

Mary and Judith glance at each other, then at him. Jerome sifts through his back pocket for two quarters. He lowers them into the slot, and the upbeat jingle plays while he searches through the list of characters. He lands on a Moose, then a flying saucer with a cannon for his weaponry.

After the countdown, the game launches just as intensely as it did for her. Jerome veers past a mass of meteors, then turns his character and fires the guns twice. Debris from the explosion flies toward him, and he curves away from each one.

The game continues for another ten minutes until he's ripped from the match by a similarly giant asteroid.

"Okay, okay, what's the score?" Manuel rubs his palms together. The gang anxiously stares at the glass as it computes his total. He's a few points short of third place. Khalìd and Manuel groan, throwing their heads back.

"Rematch me," Jerome asks, and they avert their eyes to the ladies. Mary shakes her head no.

"My next class is in a few minutes, and if I'm gonna be late, I'd rather it be from walking," she explains. "But I had fun. Good game!"

Mary and Judith turn away from them and exit the 7-eleven. The wind ruffles her long golden hair and the front of Judith's dark afro.

"So, where're you headed," Mary asks Judy, and she's answered with a sigh. Side by side, they stroll toward the road.

"Uh, I have to be in Professor Chandler's lecture soon," she says with her eyes glued to the horizon. "I'm not looking forward to it; he's a know-it-all."

"Hm." She blows out a breath in deep thought, staring at the road below her. "Well, I'm heading to Professor Ericson's class, and afterward, I'm heading to my dorm room. If you want, you can come with?"

"I can't. I have to be home to help my Mom with the kids, but maybe next time." Judith smiles at her, but the content expression leaves just as fast as it came when Mary holds her untouched hotdog toward her. "What?"

"I filled up on my drink during that match with those losers," she confesses. "I don't want it to go to waste, and I don't have cooties."

"I'm not hungry," Judy tells her with a disgusted look. The growling returns.

"You haven't eaten, and your face is lighter than I'm sure it usually is," Mary insists, and Judith pushes a sigh out of her nose, her lips clutched together tightly. "Okay, fine. I'm sorry I offered."

"No, it's fine," she says before hesitantly accepting the food in her hands. When she releases the bookbag strap, it lowers onto her shoulder, but she ignores the pressure and takes a generous bite of the hotdog. Judith forces a smile, her lips coated with grease from the chili and ketchup.

***

"And we can thank Anna Maxwell, our American Florence Nightingale, for her hard work and impressive contribution to the establishment of the Army Nursing Corps," Professor Chandler announces just before the bell chimes. The students pack their notebooks and pencils into their bags. "Next week, we'll discuss how to properly bandage a head injury. Miss. Jefferson, might I have a word with you?"

Judith stands from her seat and hoists the bag over her shoulders. She descends the steps and approaches his desk with him. They watch the others rush through the doors before looking at each other when the room is clear.

"So, what do you think of my class," he asks her in a low voice, then folds his arms across the chest of his black button-up.

"It's - it's fine," she tells him with her eyes on his hairy, cinnamon-toned forearms. His sleeves are rolled toward his elbows.

"Just fine?" Judith looks at him, then around the room. "I only ask because when I would watch you, you seemed to not agree with certain points that I would make."

"The only thing that I disagree with is the constant mention of women in medical history only serving as nurses," she explains. He raises his eyebrows and nods his head. "But that's just the feminist in me going spastic."

"I understand. Well, I can assure you that I'm not a prejudiced man, but I won't sugarcoat the truth; women in medical history were either nurses or secretaries." Judith glances at the door when she notices movement in her left peripheral. Mary is standing on the tip of her shoes, peering through the window.

"I think that if women were offered better options, we wouldn't have just accepted those small roles," she argues without raising her voice.

"So you think that caring for the wounded was belittling to the abilities of the pioneer women," he asks, but she doesn't answer. "Because with that assumption, you'd be implying that women shouldn't be morticians or work with elderly patients because those roles just aren't fit for them."

"If that's what they want to do, then I'm all for it, but I'm saying that it wasn't until maybe three years ago that women were allowed in the US military academy. Before then, yes, arguments were made, and houses were in unrest, but it doesn't change the fact that this is something that should've been dealt with when we marched for our right to vote and our right to own land without the say-so of our husbands," she explains without a moment to take a breath. Once she completes her sentence, she takes plenty of breaths as she waits for a response, but all he gives her is a long smile. "What? Should I write an essay for you?"

"That won't be necessary," he tells her, then he drops his arms to his sides. "But I do believe that you should make the most of your time here and maybe sign up for the debate team when you next arrive on campus. You have a brilliant mind which I've seen enough already with you in my class."

"Really?" She's breathlessly smiling at him, and he chuckles.

"Yes, Miss. Jefferson, I truly believe that." Judith watches him turn to face his desk, sliding the chair from underneath it to take a seat. He lifts a small pair of glasses to his eyes. "But I'll see you next week. Have a good day."

She's stunned by their conversation's direction, so she exits the lecture in silence. Mary's smooth brows furrowed, and her thin lips are agape.

"What's got you smiling, Judy?" They walk toward the double doors.

"I think I changed my mind about my professor," she says. Mary thrusts the door open, and Judith steps over the threshold. "He thinks that I should join the debate team."

"That's great, but why did that brighten your day," Mary asks her. They shuffle through the freshly cut grass, heading down a small hill.

"He thinks that I'm smart. I know it may be hard to understand, but it's like," Judith trails off as she waits for the right words to come to mind. Judy has her hands raised in front of her chest and the same smile frozen on her face. "The way that he looked at me and the way that he described how he thought of me in those short few words was far out. He even smiled at me."

"Judy, he's like fifty years old," Mary reminds her with a disgusted expression. They reach the bus stop.

"Yeah, I know, but still." Judith lifts her arms and stares at the risen hair. "I think I have goosebumps."

"I think you need to go take a cold shower because what you're saying is kind of barf-worthy," she says before backing away. "But I'll see you tomorrow. Bye!"

Judith waves at her and watches her retreat to the girls' dormitory.