Moonstruck ⟡ HS

18

♫
link: spoti.fi/3sEmaLi
MADNESS | MUSE
THE NEW ROMANTICS | TAYLOR SWIFT
TIGHTEN UP | THE BLACK KEYS
HEART OUT | THE 1975

Princeton, New Jersey
August, 1983

    "And here's your room!"

Silently, he looks around the four white walls and the piece of shit bed, keeping his hand tightly wrapped around the handle of his suitcase, and while the small room wasn't much different from his room back home, he sighs. He doesn't say anything in response, he hasn't said anything during the entire tour he was given, but that never stopped the girl from explaining everything like she was given a fist full of uppers. She's been that way since that morning when they met, shaking his hand as energetically as she could while telling him her name, Piper.

Piper Crenshaw was her name, the leader of whatever club was in charge of the incoming freshman, and she had been by his side since he was in the administering office asking for his new schedule. He would have assumed that she was some sorority bitch with community service hours needed to be done or something like that, with the Princeton t-shirt all tied up paired with her expensive looking jeans, but he promised himself that he would stop assuming things about people. Even if it was some random girl he probably would never see on campus again.

    "Do you have any questions? About your schedule or the campus or anything?" She asks him when the silence becomes too much for her, and as he slowly walks into the room, leaving his suitcase at the foot of his bed, he turns around, and shakes his head. His schedule was easy to understand, the campus wasn't too hard to figure out, and all he planned to do was go to class and make it out alive. "Okay, well my name's—"

    "Piper." He says, "I know."

    "Yeah . . ." She chuckles, finding his subtle input amusing. "well, if you have a question later or need something, I live right down the hall." She tells him and he nods his head, pursing his lips together, and he has a feeling her uppity sweetheart persona is a bunch of bullshit. He can see it in her eyes, her forced tone of purity and helpfulness, and while girls weren't really his peaked interest, seeing through people was.

And he saw right through her.

    "Is it your job?" He asks before she can reach for the door, "To be all . . . annoying and shit?" He didn't intend to sound like an asshole, but it came out that way, and unlike more girls who would feel offended by his words, she laughs. He can tell she wasn't expecting him to ask this, but she laughs with a shake of her head, hanging on the doorknob while he stands by his bed.

    "I guess so, yeah." She replies with her smile still tugging on her lips while processing his words, "But do I really come off annoying?" She quickly asks him, and as he sits on the edge of his bed, he presses his lips together and nods his head. "Aw, shit." She sighs and he can't keep himself from laughing under his breath as she walks further into his new dorm, where he would be living for the next year. She sits on the bed beside him, but she wasn't close enough to make him uncomfortable, and for some odd reason, he doesn't have any immediate need for her to leave him alone.

    "How long have you gone here?"

    "I'm a sophomore, only one year off from you." She responds, sounding much more natural than before when she was trying to sell the school he's already paid for—well, the school that his grants and scholarships paid for. "I—um, some of my friends and I are gonna hit up some of the bars near campus, wanna come with?"

    "I don't think—"

    "They don't card, and my friends aren't annoying." She tells him with a small smile, a convincing one that makes him want to say yes more than he wants to say no. An internal battle was formed in his mind, reminding himself about what he knows and what he's felt, but he also knows that as much as he would like to stick to himself and tell everyone else to fuck off, it will only make college hell. "You can say no, if you want . . . I just know how hard it is to find decent people in this prestigious place without a certain nickname slapped on your back." She tells him with a shrug to her shoulders, only before pushing herself up from the bed and on to her feet.