This Could be the Start of Something New

Some Things Never Change

Gina Porter sighed as she entered her apartment. Today had been exhausting. Oh, who was she kidding? This whole week had been exhausting. One would think that having moved a total of fifteen times during her time growing up, moving away for college should be no different for the nineteen-year-old freshman. But still, it had been one thing to simply follow her mother wherever her job had led her, but a whole other thing to suddenly be all on her own in a state she had never been in before.

Not that she was regretting her move, far from it actually. After having put up with her mother's wayward ways – curtesy of the elder woman's job – Gina was glad to finally be able to put down some roots, at least for the next four years. The girl had earned herself a full scholarship to Julliard, majoring in dance. She loved it, but it was also the reason she was currently so exhausted. It was only the end of her first week here in New York, but whoever said college would be laid-back and easy had clearly chosen a very different route than her. Her head felt like it might burst any moment from all the knowledge that had already been drilled into her in her lectures and her whole body ached, muscles sore from her practical dance classes.

But still, as exhausted as she was, Gina couldn't help but smile. Because she finally got to do what she had always wanted to do. Things hadn't always gone great in her life. Her father had left the family when Gina had been a little girl and she hadn't heard from him since. Her older brother Jamie had taken off right out of high school and was now a big shot music producer in LA. After having lost contact for most of Gina's teenage years, the Porter siblings had since reconnected, had started a tentative friendship and were slowly but surely forming a sibling-like bond through regular phone calls and visits from Jamie when he was nearby. The only constant in Gina's life had been her mother, Terri. The two of them shared a close bond which was also what had kept Gina sane when she hadn't been able to stay at the same school for more than a semester at a time, never able to put down roots or make friendships that lasted.

But now, things were finally starting to look up for the freshman. She had been accepted to Julliard on a full scholarship when a college scout had seen her perform in her last school's drama department's production of the Disney movie "The Princess and the Frog" during her senior year. The scout had been amazed with Gina's acting and singing as the main character Tiana, but what had really blown him away were her dancing skills. And well, that's how she got here.

Here being the New York apartment she was now living in. It wasn't much, living in New York was expensive. But it had everything a nineteen-year-old freshman needed. A living room/kitchen, a bedroom and a bathroom. What the girl loved most about the apartment though was the view she had from her window: a clear shot of Central Park which was also her favorite destination to go running in order to keep up with her cardio training.

Another plus of her apartment were her neighbors who were all college students around her age. She had met quite a few of them already and felt like for the first time in forever she was making real friends. Friends she didn't have to just up and leave after a few months and was therefore too scared to really get close to. First there was Kourtney Greene, a sophomore studying Design at the Fashion Institute of Technology, who lived two apartments to the left of Gina. In between Kourtney and Gina lived an aspiring singer-songwriter called Nina Salazar-Roberts – Nini for short – who was a music major at Julliard and to Gina's right lived Ashlyn Caswell, a fellow Julliard freshman majoring in drama.

After learning that the three other girls had known each other for years and been good friends all throughout high school, Gina had been a bit insecure when they had asked her to join them for dinner on her first night here. She needn't have been though because after their first hangout it felt like Gina had always been part of their group, like she had been the one thing missing that made them complete and the other three welcomed her with open arms. Hearing that they came from Salt Lake City, Utah, and had gone to East High – the school the High School Musical trilogy had been filmed at – had rung some bells in Gina's mind. She clearly remembered her mother telling her, shortly before the start of her sophomore year of high school, that she was being relocated there and Gina had been beside herself with joy at the prospect of attending the famous East High. But then there had been a last minute change of plans and the Porters had been relocated to Louisiana instead.