Mandy’s pencil tapped rapidly on the oak coffee shop table. Beside her, the woman waiting for her order of coffees in the shop line stifled a round of aggressive hiccups. The teenager taking order’s shrill voice carried up the modern metal walls and around the small space. Mandy’s pencil tapped harder, and she turned the page of her physiology textbook. She flipped it back, rereading over a couple of lines she’d missed. A man with three children swung open the shop doors, talking loudly on the phone, and Mandy’s grip on the pencil tightened. She huffed, reread the line for the fourth or fifth or—oh, she couldn’t remember any more. Learning nothing new, she shoved the book in her backpack and dipped out of the shop, wishing one of the passing busses would run her over before her final.

Or better yet, a plane would crash into that no-good coffee shop, leaving her to study in the quiet ashes of chaos.