la campanella

two

accompanying music for this chapter: la campanella - franz liszt

After the interaction with Christian in the studio, I spent most of that weekend thinking about the strangeness of it all. I couldn't help but think of the gentleness of his hands, but also the steeliness of his threat.

Thankfully, it wasn't hard for me to avoid him around the house. Between my frenzied preparations for the first week of classes and Christian's seemingly bizarre schedule, it wasn't hard for me to avoid seeing him. Although, when I would sneak out of bed in the middle of the night to grab water, I could often hear the muffled notes of his piano floating up the stairs from the studio. But I would never dare to go down there.

Orientation day rolled around a lot quicker than I had expected. Bartley's orientation day was expected to be attended by all first-year students – and because I was also technically a new student at Bartley thanks to my transfer, I was also dragging myself out of bed the Monday before classes officially began.

I was once more nervous. I knew all the freshmen would be enjoying themselves and making connections, but being a junior meant things would undoubtedly be different for me. The people I would meet would probably be all freshmen and I wasn't so sure they would be excited to befriend someone nearly two years older than them. While the other junior students that I would eventually meet would all have established friend groups. It was always hard to start when everyone had a head start.

That Monday, I fixed myself a bite to eat and some coffee in an attempt to steel my courage.

"Sup." Matt greeted me casually as he reached the bottom of the stairs.

I furrowed my brow a bit, surprised to see him up so early on a Monday. Since moving in, I had learned that Matt wasn't one for early mornings – usually, he was sleeping off the night before well into the next afternoon. My suspicions had been confirmed that Matt was quite popular.

"Do you have somewhere to be this morning?" I asked, gesturing to the time blinking on the microwave.

"Yes and no," he shrugged haphazardly while leaning across the island toward me. "I gotta go to campus this morning."

My brow narrowed even more. "You do?"

"Gee, I mean I figured you'd maybe take me up as a tour guide, considering the fact that you don't know where campus is from here." He raised his arms in surrender.

I realized that he was right. In all my time preparing and organizing for classes I hadn't even mapped where Fox Hall was in relation to Bartley campus. I knew it was close but I didn't know exact directions – let alone my way around the campus itself. "No, right. Sorry. If you're offering, I will definitely take you up on that."

Matt smiled. Despite our somewhat rocky start, Matt had been warming up to me and I had come to understand that he was mostly teasing when he picked on you.

"Perfect," Matt grabbed a large blueprint tube that had been leaning against the stairs and slung it over his shoulder. "You almost ready?"

I couldn't help but be a bit surprised that he actually needed to go to the university. But of course, Matt wasn't getting out of bed this early just for me, our tentative friendship only went so far.

I slurped back the rest of my coffee and decided to bring the toast with me on the walk. It was another beautiful fall day, the sun was beaming and it was already hot despite it being only eight in the morning. A cool fall breeze played through the trees, just to remind us that summer would be ending soon.