Spera School of the Arts stood on a hilltop, the only one for miles and miles around. From the train station the sprawling campus was just barely visible – a short walk past a corner crafts store and sandwich shop later, Adagio made her first footfall beneath the tall, silver archway onto Spera school grounds.
As train-takers poured into the bus loop towards the school entrance, teenaged voices cried out and grew muffled in the shoulders of their friends arriving from the parent drop-off and student parking lot. Girls ran towards each other with bags and braids swinging, boys grinned their real grins as they pulled each other close and clapped each other on the back.
Shiny cars pulled into the student parking lot, their silver hood ornaments glinting in the high summer daylight as their upperclassmen drivers stepped out looking, in Adagio's opinion, endlessly cool with their pushed-up tinted sunglasses, dripping iced coffees, and lazy smirks. Boys leaned down to the driver's windows of new juniors and made themselves at home on the sills of their persuasion. Cooler, older groups of girls walked together laughing about the invisible things cool girls laughed at, the silk scarves tied to their designer tote bags lifting in the momentum of their springy stride like flags of tiny chariots. Adagio drank up the post-holiday reunions as if they were her own, as if these people were hers and she theirs. Soon enough they would be, if dreams coalesced.
For the briefest of moments she couldn't wait for her life.
The top of the hour neared. Students of the Spera School merged towards the school entrance gates which stood tall and silver along the perimeter of white-beige buildings. "Who's your first period?" everyone seemed to ask everyone after they've finished missing each other so much. "What's your schedule, girl?"
Grinning, Adagio turned to ask Dorian the same question, who batted his eyelashes at her then turned to Sage with a shrug. Sage sighed, asked no one in particular if anyone read their emails anymore, and pointed to a large bulletin inside the silver gates.
Right before she entered the gates with her friends, Adagio made a promise to herself.
I will never forget I prayed for this.
The campus grounds teemed with life. Leafy green vines crawled down beige columns in the courtyard as students milled in every direction carrying instrument cases and art supplies and film equipment. Laughter filled the air as schedules got passed around circles of upperclassmen sitting around patio tables on a deck outside what must be the cafeteria, for every time its doors opened a burst of happy chatter escaped. Along the courtyard's path blooms of flowers sprung from large stone vases as vines curled down from the long wooden pergola casting the students strolling beneath in a patchy shade. Adagio saw girls wearing short sundresses and frayed shorts and spaghetti straps – Ms. Turner would have a stroke – and wondered what the dress code was around here. For the weather, she guessed.
Sage and Dorian crowded their way to the front of the freshman bulletin. "Dorian," she called, "you and I have the same homeroom, the Paint Lab! Let me see Adagio's...you're in Building 1! 1-101."
"Let's go this way -- I want to drop these off before class," said Sage, lifting her canvases.
Adagio and Dorian followed her a short way up a brick path. A little way up the hill to their right, washed the faint yellow color of sunlight and standing two stories tall, stood the visual arts building. A light breeze billowed its sheer white curtains through open windows like sails on a ship and a flower garden bloomed pink and orange around a vintage stone fountain where butterflies and bugs zipped.
They stepped inside.
The inside of the art building was nothing like its outside. Fantastical creatures prowled on the walls, painted onto the high ceiling and into the tight nook of the doorway. On another two walls the interior of a spaceship spanned, and Dorian turned slowly on the spot between them.
