Surviving Together: The Collapse

chapter 1

Most of the seats in the lecture hall had been filled with college students, some were in clusters while others sat with their hoods up. Array of students of all backgrounds and ethnicity waiting for the professor to arrive, although it was no secret at all that the professor takes his time getting to class. Most who are new this semester had no clue what to expect. Some were overly prepared while others who had taken this class last semester was not expecting too much.

The huge white board at the podium was written in mathematic language, meaning if one didn’t know anything about math, would be completely lost. It mostly looked like a foreign language, although this was the beginning of the engineering department, unfortunately this type of field was more for the male dominated area, there were a few women. Unfortunately that was far and few, most engineer’s were men, it wasn’t like women weren’t interested it was more like, this area bullied the women out.

Shoot. I better pick my seat and fast. It was barely eight o’clock in the morning already. I had heard the professor likes to be late for class, but I didn’t want to be later then the teacher seeing how I am only one of the few women that decided to be here. Today was my first day in college. I had taken a year off after I graduated, I didn’t want to overwhelm my brain, and besides, working and saving every penny and dollar for my college tuition was well worth it. When I paid for tuition for this year, I swear I could hear my bank account scream in agony from it. I decided engineering was what I was going to go for, so I better not squander it.

I made my way until I found one of the very few seats left, slowly setting my stuff down and preparing myself for the lecture. I glanced at the guy who I decided to sit next too. He was actually not that bad looking either. He sat slouched, short black hair, deep chocolate eyes holding a steady gaze forward. He wore a band t-shirt, a leather coat, black ripped jeans for style, and black combat boots that looked as if they’d seen some shit, they were badly scuffed up.

He glanced at me as I sat down, I smiled. “Hey, I’m Sabrina but you can call me Bri.”

His chocolate eyes sliced into me, and the corners of his mouth tilted up. I was not expecting the dimples in that smile. I suddenly had a feeling of darkness slide like a shadow over me. A bad feeling, that temporarily clutched at my stomach, it vanished in an instant. But I was still staring at him. His smile wasn’t friendly. It was a smile that spelled trouble with a promise. A bad boy.

Most girls loved a bad boy. Unfortunately I wasn’t looking for trouble nor was I looking for a partner, I promised to keep to my studies.

I sat perfectly still in my seat. I wasn’t sure if he was just an asshole, or antisocial—I’d smiled and introduced myself, deciding that he was after all antisocial, I left it at that. I wrinkled my nose when suddenly I got a waft of something, trying to figure out what it was. It struck me that the smell was coming from him, it was obvious the guy liked to smoke, it stuck to him like a foul cologne.

Glancing at the clock on the wall and tapped my pen in time to the second hand. I planted my elbow on the table and propped my chin on my palm, wondering when the professor was going to get here. I wasn’t the only one who was restless. The entire class was murmuring and some even was questioning whether the professor was coming today. I let out a sigh.

Great. Just my luck for the professor to not show.

I had my eyes pinned forward, but the gliding sound of a pen next to me caught my attention. He was drawing on a piece of scratch paper, I started to get invested what he was doing with so much concentration. Ten minutes of him drawing a lighthouse with a full cliff and he was adding detail with waves crashing into it, it was all done by pen. I was amazed at how realistic it looked, I wasn’t much of an artist myself, but this guy had some skills. He should be in the art department not in the engineering department.