The Second Time Around

Chapter One

Nerves cause my fingers to tremble as I exit and lock my apartment. Once I'm descending the staircase, every pore on my body immediately starts perspiring. The heat is nothing like mid-September in Marseille, of course, but it is nearly unbearable all the same. I am not yet used to living downtown where the air is trapped in between old buildings and breathed repeatedly without renewal. Ew. If I don't rapidly change my train of thought, I'll be grossed out to the point of not being able to concentrate on the rest of the day before me.

Today is my first day of university in a country I've never set foot in before. No, wait, that is not entirely true. I came through here once on the way back of a road trip with my brother Hugo and a few of our friends. Still, I am unfamiliar with the local culture, particularities and geography. Reaching my building's rez-de-chaussée (aka ground level), I push the glass front door open, take a couple steps down the street to the left, then stop and stare at the sight that presents itself across the road.

On the gray stone school building's steps and spilling out into its small courtyard is a giant crowd of students, some of them old and acquainted, others new and nervous like myself. In spite of the fact that I'm fifteen minutes early, I wish to seek directions to my first classroom. In striving to do so, I find myself unable to fray a path through this dense mass of young adults. Caught somewhere in the middle, would it be worthwhile to try and blaze a trail or would I be better off waiting until the crowd dissipates? I am still considering my options when a familiar voice surprises me by calling out my name.

"Clara! Clara Pierson! C'est vraiment toi? Behind you!" I, along with about half the girls around me, turn around to face Vincent Rivère, the body belonging to the voice. When our eyes meet, a grin the size of Alaska conquers the space between his aquiline nose and pointed jawline, showing off the contrast between his teeth and warm skin. Seeing that I don't make any effort to move in his direction, he motions for me to join him just outside the mass of bodies encasing me.

In a state of shock from seeing him, I struggle to walk against the current and get stepped on more than once, but finally exit the herd of students, only to get engulfed in a hug. I am so taken aback by this display of affection that I can only contrive to stiffly wrap one arm around his oh-so-tall frame, and am totally unable to keep a most sincere astonishment from making its appearance on my face. I pardon his unprompted - and might I add, unwanted - embrace, however, because we haven't seen each other in ages and I am incredibly grateful for a face that I recognize. Even this one. But Lord, did I really have to meet him today? Couldn't it have waited a month or two?

Vincent introduces me to his friends and explains that there is no sense in trying to reach the door yet, since they aren't letting people in this early. He seems really glad to see me, which, I confess, I am more than a little pleased about. Once I recover somewhat, I glance around at the three or four friendly-looking guys and try to memorize their faces and corresponding names, but give up soon enough. I'll naturally remember their identities if and when I spend more time with them, so why add one more worry to the heap already formed?

We chat for a little bit, catching up on each other's most recent doings, but I fear that I am not comfortable enough to allow the conversation to flow naturally between us. I do my best to appear casual and collected, of course, as though I were in habit of reacquainting myself with breakers of my heart, but I feel that I'm failing abominably. One might say that I'm dramatizing the whole scene, employing harsh and dramatic terms such as 'breaker of my heart', but it is merely a 'faithful narrative' of the truth.

Vincent is studying science - biochemistry, to be precise - in the hopes of becoming a lab researcher. Why he finds that so interesting is beyond me, considering that I've always been more of a literature-and-history-oriented girl. As it is, I am working on a Bachelor's degree in Multilingual Communications, with my core classes in French, then Italian and Russian as secondary languages. I didn't choose English as one of those because I'd rather concentrate on my weak points, thus acquiring more knowledge and hopefully achieving my dream of becoming a true polyglot.