Why I Always Sit by the Windows

June thirtieth. Someone asked me a question in class today and I've been turning it over ever since. Not a hard question. Just one I didn't have a ready answer for.

We were maybe twenty minutes in. The instructor had us working on something at our own pace, heads down, hands busy, and I had drifted, the way I always do, toward the end of the table closest to the windows. I do this every session. I don't decide to do it; I just end up there. The person next to me, a woman maybe a few years older than me, I don't know her name yet, she wears reading glasses on a beaded cord and takes very neat notes, looked up and said, almost conversationally,

That face when someone asks you a question you actually have to think about.

Post-class. Still thinking about it.