An unexplainable result found her holding a 250ml carton of milk in the dining hall, pursing her lips tightly and clenching her jaw while tearing the things’ spout open with both thumbs and their corresponding index fingers. It didn’t come easy at first. It required a couple deep inhales and just as many concentrated finger ripping movements. But, finally just like she used to be able to do when she was a child, she opened the spout (albeit not cleanly) spitting only a three or four drops of milk onto her thumb’s two-week-old blue nail polish.

She put her thumb in her mouth and sucked. The milk tasted childish. Her eyes darted around in a pointless exercise and it’s fair to say that nothing randomly occurred at this same moment that would take her attention away from the milk that was still happening to her. And so she took an honest, real sip, and assumed — all throughout the liquid pouring into her not-yet-kissed-this-semester mouth — that it would be satisfying, if not at least, interesting. Why else would she have bought the milk. She was mildly lactose intolerant, okay?

She swallowed what she allowed herself to move past her tongue. The spout made a rooftop over her top lip and rubbed its scratchy cardboard surface over it in the process. She didn’t really think that necessary. No more of that. She put the carton down on top of her science textbook, face down on the table. She did not have a milk moustache.