Arcanum

2

I was waiting outside our academic counsellor's office, chewing on my nails. It was a nasty habit that I thought I had left behind, but apparently I wasn't doing as good as I had hoped. As soon as I had set foot on the college I had picked it up again, because I was nervous about basically everything that happened to me ever since I started college. And this Friday afternoon felt like the most tense time in my entire life as a student so far. It didn't even have anything to do with me...

The door opened and I held my breath. I knew who was in there, but I was still waiting to see whether it was Allen that would come out after all. My heart started beating fast when I saw it was him. It was nearly impossible to read his expression. He almost looked like he was in shock, but I had no idea how to interpret that look given the situation that had brought us here.

"And? Did you do it?" I asked him. He turned his head to me slowly, one strand of his ash blond hair falling into his eyes. Normally he would have brushed it out of his face dramatically, but right now he just left it where it was. Whether he couldn't be bothered or whether he did it for dramatic effect was a little unclear. Knowing Allen it could have been both.

"I did it." he said, his voice sounding hollow, as if he couldn't believe that he had really done it. I cheered and pulled him into a hug. I wasn't really sure whether he would change his major at all or not, but I never would have thought that he'd go through with it that quickly. But here I was, hugging my best friend for an uncomfortably long amount of time, after he had just handed in the signed paper to switch his major from Law to... one of the Humanities.

"Awesome! Which one did you go for?" I wanted to know. Allen's interests in the Humanities were pretty diverse, so he could have gone for anything. I hoped he'd go for something that included Latin and Ancient Greek or one of them. That way I'd get to see him more. Plus, I was pretty sure he'd enjoy being in smaller size classes some of the time. But he might not have chosen that as his major.

"History as a major and Classic Studies as a minor. Meaning I'll share classes with you for a long time." he replied with a wide grin, finally brushing the hair out of his face now. It was kind of annoying me at this point.

"That sounds great! You'll enjoy History, I'm sure. You've always enjoyed it back in high school anyway." I told him and let go of him. There were a few students that were giving us odd looks. But I was just happy to see Allen get all of this sorted and finally do something he was happy doing.

"Yeah, I'll enjoy it. Until my father decides to kill me." he muttered. He was looking a little pale now and I figured that he was only now realising what he had done. Well, it was too late now. He had signed the papers and handed them in. He had officially changed his major and he couldn't change it back easily.

"You think it'll be that bad?"

"Come on, Henry. You've met my dad. Of course it'll be that bad. He hates Humanities. Thinks they're useless. And he doesn't have the money to let me study at college for the rest of my life like your family. But it's done now. It's over. I'll just have to see how long it'll take him to find out."

I glanced at him, not sure what to say to make him feel better. I wasn't going to lie to him and tell him that everything would be fine, because I knew that wasn't really true. If his dad found out, I knew that he would be really mad at Allen. He might even threaten to kick him out of home and not pay for his college accommodation anymore, all those kinds of things. Honestly, I hadn't really thought about that before I had told him to change majors and now I felt a little bad about it.

But I figured we'd find a way. He had his college fees paid for already, everything else we could probably somehow work out. There was financial aid, he could work part-time, there were options for all of this. Hell, if he had to get online pdf versions of the books we needed, then that was fine, too. We'd figure it out somehow. And maybe it wouldn't even come to that in the end.