A high pitched scream pierced the stale basement air.

Matt stood motionless. 

"Hello?," he called, adapting like some deep sea creature to the inky blackness. "anyone there?"

 Blackouts were a common inconvenience on this part of the campus. Students plugging their toasters, Cd players, X boxes and oversized mini fridges into weary, overloaded, aging outlet boxes. Extension cords twisted like platters of fettucini, rigging Tv's to DVD players to subwoofers. Then again there were the practical jokesters of chi phi from last semester. The campus electricity out cold, mid winter, only to burst on 45 minutes later, 35 footlights illuminating the statue of the college founder in a bra and thong panties on the front quad. A week of seven thirty curfew and it wasn't so funny anymore.

"hello?...anyone there?..." a meek voice trembled in the narrow hall outside. The washing machine had come to an abrupt halt, the cavelike room silent.

"I'm here". he responded "You alright?" he called to the nameless voice.

Matt heard a muffled distinctly female whimpering sound. Was this a trick, a joke, another sophmoric act of humiliation of which he was to be the star? Lured by some coed siren song? He was silent for a moment but as always chivalry won out.

"Stay there. I'll find you." he pleaded "It's no big deal, this happens all the time." He felt his way along the row of dryers, his nostrils drinking in the heady mix of basement dust and chlorox bleach.

"over here" the voice hesitated, unsure which was worse, the encroaching darkness or a stranger coming towards her in a lonely basement.

The onyx blackness had softened to varying shades of grey on grey and he could begin to detect shapes and silhouettes in the windowless room.

"Hold out your hand" he urged extending his arm like a B movie mummy. He felt something brush his fingertips and flinch. "Don't worry, " his voice soothing as he fumbed clumsily grabbing a small hand firmly in his. "This is a hell of a place to be stuck in the dark" he chuckled, lightheartedly. He heard a muffled giggle through the sniffly remnants of tears.

"I'm so embarrassed" the voice confessed, seeming more at ease, "It's just I have this thing, with the dark..."

"Everybody does," Matt added, suddenly charming "I slept with a nightlight until I was 16"  A delighted giggle erupted from the girls lips, releasing any previous anxiety and he felt her hand relax in his. His self effacing humor and gentle control of the situation made her feel safe, relieved; she gave his fingers a gentle squeeze.

"Im Jenna," she offered. Matt missed a step. Not "the Jenna"?  Matt thought to himself. The Jenna who's photo every heterosexual freshman had circled and highlighted and earmarked in the "welcome new students" getting to know you handbook. No this wouldn't be Jenna the psych major from Greenwich Ct. He just wouldn't be that lucky. This would be a Jenna from kansas, or Jenna from somewhere along the Alaskan pipeline. She would  be studying phys ed. or play the pipe organ.

"I'm Matt" he answered concealing his ever increasing heart beat, please don't let her hear it...pump, pump,.... Matt was surpirsed how much more confident he was in the darkness. Here whe was anonymous. He wasn't typecast: the geeky guy from chemistry, or the loner seen lugging books from the library while others were traipsing off arm in arm, intoxicated by that fleeting world between parental dependance and adult responsibility. Here he could be anybody, or at least until the lights went on. Anyway she would have no idea who he was.

"I think you're in my Creative Writing class" she pondered. Crap, crap, crap...he thought. Suave mystery man in the dark was now nerdy author of mushy essay about pet.

"I loved that piece you wrote about your dog" she continued. "I felt the same way about my Mr. whiskers" Oh God, he thought, she thinks I'm gay. "You know a lot of famous authors wrote about dogs," she went on "Steinbeck... Jack London." Good, Matt thought, they were manly men. He pictured himself driving White Fang over the frozen tundra.

"So what brings you to these parts...?" he snickered with a corny old western accent guiding her between the aisles of instiutional grade laundry appliances. She giggled again.

"I was down here earlier and I think I lost a bracelet. I was retracing my steps but it could be anywhere. Usually I take my laundry home" he pictured her grinning. Jenna did not strike him as a girl who did her own laundry. He saw her at home, a federal style estate, languishing by the pool as uniformed attendants folded and pressed her Calvin Klein or Gucci or whatever girls like Jenna wore. "It's Ok I'll come back tommorrow. It's sentimental that's all." Great an overpriced bauble from a boyfreind, Matt thought.

"From my grandmother" she added as if answering his thoughts.

They had reached the stairway, shoulders pressed together by the confines of the narrow space. A few more steps and there would be enough light to see, she would release his hand, she would shrink back from him as the familiar world came back into focus. But for a brief moment, He was in the dark, hand in hand with the hgoc- hottest girl on campus.