Existentialists.

                “I don’t understand you people.”

                Anna’s eyes never strayed from Hemingway and Dickens. “Us with the ovaries?” She felt Anthony’s beleaguered and yet somewhat absent gaze on her and immediately felt uncomfortable. “This is a library.”

                “What’s your point?”

                “What’s yours?”

                Anthony sighed. “Sage is being difficult.”

                Anna stroked the spine of a particularly hefty volume with a degree of disinterest. “A herb shouldn’t pose much hardship for a pharmacology student.”

                “That joke was never funny.”

                “Oh. You were talking about your girlfriend.”

                “Ha ha.” Anthony frowned. He leant back in his chair and rubbed his temples, a fury of entangled suspicion and guilt crowning his features. Anna paid little attention. “How can a girl with such passion for life be so concerned with her own fatality?”

                “Strange.”

                “I know, I thought so too. She’s so full of energy.”

                Anna shook her head. “No, I meant it’s strange for a prurient existentialist such as yourself to become involved with someone who I’d call… well, not a depressing anarchist, but a confused and extremely antisocial connoisseur of undermining authority.”

                Anthony stared at her. She sighed and returned to perusing the literature.

                “Do you even understand what you just said?”

                “Yes, I just compared your girlfriend to a communist. Pleased?”

                Her friend gave her a forced and manageably wry smile. “It made me feel a little less fatalistic.”

                They sat taciturnly for a while, and soon enough there was a stale sense of inevitability that caused Anna to break the miserable silence. “I’m noticing your presence.”

                “She keeps talking about how she wants to leave everything behind. Her degree, her family, everyone she knows – her only excuse is that she feels the need to ‘be somewhere people don’t just go’.” Her friend blurted out; he stood up and moved over to the bookcase opposite them to run his fingers over the spines in a more aggravated fashion than Anna deemed acceptable.

                “Don’t relieve your frustrations on the books.”

                “Why do you even like this rubbish? No-one even knows who Tolstoy was.”

                “Educated people do, Anthony. Would you mind leaving?”

                There was a beat of silence while they glared at each other.

                He turned back to the books. “What would you do?”

                “I would leave my very tired friend alone so she could relax in the library.” Anna finally pulled a thin lecture from the pile and slid it across the table to her friend. “Resurrection. And the author is evidently a personal favourite of yours.”

                Anthony frowned and picked up the book hesitantly, turning its gothic exterior over and out in his trembling hands. “Tolstoy. I’m hardly a fan of classic literature.”

                “Then you’ll be pleased, this is one of his more Christian-anarchist stories. Perhaps it will help quell your atheistic sense of minority against the Church.” She returned to the books, all the while running one hand through her short mess of blonde hair. Anthony’s dark eyes fell to the floor.

                “You don’t know what’s wrong with Sage.”

                Anna raised her eyes and spoke decisively. “No, I don’t, Anthony, but if you want to find out then I have one suggestion; ask her.”