College Days - On Hold

Settling in

"Anne, there's the desk! Let's go find out where our rooms are." Lacey said excitedly.
"They had better put us together, I don't wanna have some stinky drama queen as a roommate." Anne said.
"Me neither, that's why I feel bad for your roommate." Lacey said mellow dramatically.
Anne punched her arm. "Oh shut it. Here I am, trying to be optimistic on possibly the most important day of our lives, and then you insult me like that?" Anne asked in mock disdain.

She was right. No, not about the insult thing, but the most important day of our lives. It was our first day of college. From here on out, we are adults.

That thought suddenly made her nervous.

"I don't know how to grown- up." Lacey pouted.
"Hey, it'll be fine. It's our first day of freedom! No more tightropes for you." Anne suddenly spun on her heels and pointed at the guy behind the desk. "Hey, you. Yeah hot desk guy, tell my friend she's got an awesome roommate." Anne prompted, indicating in Lacey's direction.
"Name?" He asked.
"Lacey Dickinson."
A moment passed while the computer loaded.
"Room 402, here are your keys." He said, handing them to me.
"And what about her roommate?" Anne asked.
"Monica Joseph. Good luck with her." He said with disdain. Great. Just the encouragement Lacey needed.
Anne Scowled at "hot desk guy", while she got her keys.
~
Lacey unlocked the door marked 402 and took a deep breath before opening it.
Her first impression of Monica was good, she was pretty average. Had some family pictures up.
And then Monica spoke.

"Hi! I'm Monica Joseph! Didn't catch your name." It wasn't so much of what she said, but how she said it. She spoke through her nose and it was a pitchy sound.
"Um, I'm Lacey Dickinson." She said quietly, feeling shy.
"What was that? Didn't quite hear you."
"I'm Lacey Dickinson." She said a little louder.
"Oh, a pleasure to meet you." She said, outstretching her arm to shake Lacey's hand. Lacey took it, if somewhat reluctantly, and really wished she had accepted Anne's offer for her to escort her to her room.

Luckily, she seemed pretty busy after that with finishing setting her side of the room up. It wasn't a huge room, but Lacey didn't really mind. She wasn't picky in those sort of areas.

~~~

Blake wandered around for a little while. He had already somewhat organized his room. Only a quick sweep around really, he was really excited to get out and see the campus and all the people he was about to come to hate.
Blake was always a bit of a loner. Not that he was ugly or anything, he was actually pretty good looking, but he just had this air of nerdiness.

His roommate hadn't arrived yet, and he was eager to meet him.
He didn't know who he was, but they could become like best friends, and he could be the best man at his wedding. Or maybe... Blake shook that thought away.
If he walked in there thinking those kinds of things, he'd just act weird.
Little did he know that he was going to be the sane one in that room.

Blake was so preoccupied in his thoughts that he didn't even notice the girl he was about to bump into until the coffee in her hand was all over both of them.

"I'm so sorry, I didn't see you there. Are you okay?" He asked, mentally shaking himself for such a lousy first impression.
"You'd better be sorry! This was a designer shirt!" She yelled, drawing attention to them.
Oh crap, no please. This is not the kind of attention I need right now. Blake thought.
"I didn't mean to, it was an accident, I..uh"
"You, uh what? You're uh idiot, maybe? I-" she was interrupted by a shout somewhere to their left.
"Oh my god! It's a naked man on a skateboard wearing a dildo! And I think he's reading fifty shades of dark white. What was that book called again?"
Blake quickly made his exit while everyone's eyes were looking for a possibly insane man.
He knew he should probably have left the scene all together, but he really wanted to see if it was real.
He felt a tap on his shoulder. When he turned around he saw a kid about his age grinning up at him.
"Are you that girls poor victim?" He asked.
"Uh, yeah. How did you know?"
"You've got coffee all over you." He said, still grinning.
After a moment of awkward silence, the kid asked in exasperation "well, aren't you going to thank me?"
"For what?" Blake asked, confused.
"For making your escape, duh. No one wants that kind of attention on their first day."
"You said that to everyone? Oh, thank you. That girl was ticking me off."
The kid sighed. "What are you? Barney? Ticking me off, I'm not five." He said.
"Fine, that girl was pissing me off. Better?"
"Much. I'm Dean by the way. Not the school dean, obviously."
"I'm Blake. Is this your first year?"
"Yep, we can learn the ropes together. Shouldn't be too much harder then high school, right?"
"Um, I think so. I guess we're just going to have to find out the hard way." Blake said, kind of surprised by the kid's -by Dean's- offer of friendship.

~~~

"Oh my god! There's a naked guy wearing a dildo on a skateboard! And I think he's reading fifty shades of dark white. What's that book called again?"
Anne looked at Lacey and they burst out laughing.
"Maybe college won't be so bad after all, eh?" Anne asked.
"Maybe not." Lacey said, holding her side from laughing so hard.

They continued discussing their roommates as they walked on, exploring the campus.
Luckily, Anne had a pretty decent roomie. She was kind of boho in a hippie way that really suited her nice blonde hair.

In fact, they were talking about her as they were passing this really hot, tall guy with dirty blonde hair who was struggling to carry several cokes at the same time -coke as in coca cola, honestly, clean up that mind of yours-, when he dropped one.

Quick as a flash, Anne grabbed it before it hit the ground.
"Whew, thanks. That was close." He said, taking the pop from her.
"No prob, that's why I play short stop." She said, winking.
"You play baseball?" He asked.
"Softball, close enough. Not there's anything soft about it."
He laughed. "No there isn't."
"It's too bad I can't play anymore, I'm gonna be swamped here."
"I know what you mean, and if you need a job on top of that. Than there's no way I can manage a team."

At that moment, two guys joined them. One of them had coffee all over him.
"Oh, you found yourself some friends too." He said, indicating both us, and the coffee dude.
Apparently coffee dudes name is Blake, his friend is Dean, and coke/baseball guy is Landon.

"We were just going to go see all the clubs. Want to come with?" Dean asked Landon.
"Sure." He turned to us. "Did you guys wanna come? You're welcome to."
Lacey looked at Anne, nodding. Anne rolled her eyes, Lacey never did the talking-to-strangers thing well. Which left outgoing Anne to do that.
"Sure, why not?"
"Great. Let's go."

It turned out that "let's go" was a lot easier said then done. The place was packed with freshmen such as themselves, trying to get a nice tour of the campus. Such as themselves. So finding it turned out to be the hard part.
On the other hand, at least they really did get a nice long tour before they found what they were looking for. Which was half over by then.

"Ah whatever, we've got enough time to look at everything." Dean said. Blake nodded.
Anne and Landon really hit it off, teasing each other and joking around.

Somehow the conversation got onto the topic of first jobs.
"Hey, what was your first job, Lacey?" Blake asked.
Lacey groaned.
"Oops, did I hit a soft spot?"
She nodded.
Blake was suitably content with that answer. If she thought that was going to get by Dean and Landon however, than she was horribly mistaken.
"Oh, come on. You can tell us." Landon said.
"Yeah, we won't laugh... Very hard. Maybe," Dean chimed in.
Landon elbowed him. "No, we won't laugh at all. Come on, please?"
"Alright, alright, fine." She gave in.
The two rubbed their hands together in anticipation.
"It's when I was like six, I-" she started, but all three guys were surprised at her age. Anne of course, already knew the story.
"Six?!" They asked.
"Yes, I was six. Do you want to hear the rest of the story?" She asked.
"Yes, yes. Please continue." They encouraged. She rolled her eyes.
"Alright. I walked a tightrope in front of many, many people and I fell."
The three of them looked at her, surprised again.
"You... But... How. Why?" Blake asked, finally settling on a word. "Yeah, why?"
"My family owns a circus."
The three of them stifled laughs. "Oh, I see. I'll make sure never to cross you, I don't wanna see how many clowns you could bring in a small car back here." Landon said, thinking his own joke was much funnier than it was.
"Oh come on, this is why I don't like to tell people. You guys said you wouldn't laugh." Lacey pouted.
"Yeah, she's right you guys. Let's cut her some slack and stop laughing." Dean said.
Everyone eyed him for a moment, waiting for the crack.
"So are you majoring in pie throwing?" He asked innocently.
"Yes, and I always keep back up, so if I were you I would stop the yammering." Lacey said.
"Okay, okay. Jeez."
"Anyone up for a pizza? I'm hungry." Anne said, trying to change the subject.
"Sure, why not?" Blake said. "Just so long as Lacey doesn't order as a mime." He added, not being able to resist some sort of dig.
He was glad to see though that Lacey just rolled her eyes.