Miss Arden {wlw-professorxstudent}

Chapter 3

KALINA'S POV:
Over the course of the following day my mother got my car fixed by an old friend of hers and he determined it was safe for me to drive again.

So, after walking an entire hour to my brother's high school and then to my college one day, I went to college by car again the next two and all three of them I had English literature.

I mean I was majoring in it, so, I could not really complain but it was really frustrating to sit in the second row and listen to Miss Arden talk about cranky old men. It was so very boring I started sketching cats in my notebook.

To start off every year, the college made all the majoring courses do just a listless rehearsal of things we had already done the previous years. I could have talked as vividly about all those subjects as Miss most-beautiful-person-ever had been doing right then.

Because, believe it or not, I had always been top of this course, I did jump grades in high school solely because of Keelin but I had always been exceptionally good in English. I wrote poetry and read books over books day and night and I just loved literature so much that I decided to dedicate my entire life and my studies to it. In that way I guess me and Keelin had been awfully similar and, the more I thought about it, me and Miss Arden must be quite similar in that department as well.

I had started doing that. Tracing everything back to her. And I knew that was how you got obsessed with people you could not reach but I could not bring myself to stop. It always plagued my mind how she would think of this, how she would think of that, if this would have made that facade break or if this stupid joke would have made her raise that eyebrow.

Well, however much the repetitiveness bored me, I still had something smart to add to her lesson once in a while. Sometimes she seemed rather impressed by my obvious English literacy, even if she asked for something we had to study back in our first year.

-

It was currently Friday, and I desperately wanted to get through the day and finally be able to enjoy the weekend at my grandparents' place at the very center of London.

But before that, I still had to conquer the last lecture of the day. Theatre.

Oh, how I loved theatre. I loved the endless possibilities and I loved how well respected I was in the theatrical community of this college.

In my first years here Keelin and I, and lastly only I, had helped build and organize the annual play for the year-end party in the grand coliseum adjacent to the school's main body.

To better your perspective, you have to understand that the college was in no way as come down as the rest of the town. There were a few thousand students trying to enroll every year and the town had enormous resources to keep its old, architectural structure well-nourished and upright. It, therefore, always payed great tribute to the survival of fine ancient arts.

And I loved getting to be a part of that. Watching ideas I had only once hurriedly scribbled down while on the bus come to life must have been the greatest honours of my life.

The theatre teacher was a lovely old Indian woman called Miss Ziya that also took care of the school's two libraries. I had been raving through the books on my first year there and she had quickly taken a liking to me as I was genuinely interested in all the things those halls had to offer.

Soon I had found myself immersed in the world of theatre and for a while after Keelin's death it had been the only thing that had brought me joy as it had been the one thing I had shared with her and she had not shared with me. It was me. It was not Keelin. I could be me here. I did not have to be the best friend of the dead girl.