ɪ ᴡᴀɴɴᴀ ᴋɴᴏᴡ ᴇᴠᴇʀʏᴛʜɪɴɢ ᴀʙᴏᴜᴛ ʏᴏᴜ.
Easily strung out, Cecelia Catton fled to Seattle on an
arrogant whim, chasing the scene by its ever-expanding tail. Forcing herself out from under the thumb of a failed marriage and stifling environment, the twen...
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❝ 𝑰 𝑮𝑶𝑻 𝑺𝑻𝑨𝑻𝑰𝑪 𝑰𝑵 𝑴𝒀 𝑯𝑬𝑨𝑫 ❞
NEW YORK, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, 1987 It was Halloween, the last Halloween she would spend at Columbia. The dorm corridors were littered with ghastly skeletons and cobwebs. Celia had heard rumours about a party down the hall but she couldn't bring herself to leave the sanctity of her secluded room.
Her evenings were almost always spent like this, her back uncomfortably hunched over her desk, her eyes heavily glued to the words on her scrappy textbook pages.
Recently, however, the emptiness of her dorm room was becoming ominously huge, and each time she opened her eyes she was reminded of all the work that she was supposed to be doing.
Somehow, within the last two weeks, Celia has lost the once ever-present nerve to study. It was as if her body was betraying her in her final moments, her mind battling her physiology in an attempt to defeat the exhaustion - the boredom.
It was as if her whole life was a precedent for this moment, her final year at Columbia before she would start medical school; all of the pressure she placed on herself to achieve and succeed suddenly seemed less important.
All she wanted to do was get out of this rut of a routine and experience something new; yet, at the same time she wanted nothing and to be still, devoid of expectations, of pressure, of her parents.
The only thing keeping her at Columbia was her long-term boyfriend, Cass, the music major who was animated by music and art in a way that Celia thought she never could understand. It was like Cass's brain had been professionally wired to create music, and while Celia dabbled secretly on her rough acoustic guitar, she'd never be as good as him. Never.
As the evening crept into nightfall, a large clash of metal interrupted Celia's stifling thoughts.
It seemed to be reverberating from outside of her room.
Celia shifted uncomfortably in her chair, her neck craning towards the sound on the other end of her door.
"FUCK"
"FUCK"
A woman kept on shouting, followed by what sounded like a stumble into the wall and some more profanities.
Without thinking, Celia leapt out of her chair and jogged towards the noise. Ripping open her door, there stood a girl, just across her hall, with long beaded braids balancing on one foot and hissing through her teeth.
For a moment they just stared at each other in an awkward silence.
The girl snorted and bent down to pick up a cymbal, "would you give me a hand?"
Celia's mouth had fallen open in confusion, "Oh yeah...yeah of course," Celia said, tucking her thin hair behind her ear and joining the girl bending down on the floor.
