Lost In An Image

Chapter 1: Self Image

"Gigi! Gigi wake up we're late for Fox's class!", I yelled sitting a cup of coffee by her bed.

"Ugh! Why do we have to go so early? He's too old to notice if we're there or not", she groaned.

"Gigi, if you don't get up right now, I'll call you by your real name."

She quickly rose up from under the covers.

"You wouldn't DARE...", she said giving me the stink eye.

"Try me....GERTRUDE!", I yelled.

"Ugh! Ok I'm getting up! You're such a brat!"

"Well I'm a brat that's helping you get to class on time. You can thank me later. How you made it into NYU with that attitude I'll never know."

She quickly threw on some clothes and we were off.

~~~~~~~~~~

We've been at NYU for three months now and the fact that we constantly find ourselves waking up late baffles me. I couldn't have asked to go to a better school. It's always been my dream to go to NYU and here I am. I wanted to pursue acting and maybe directing later on in my career. I know, I know, it's a total cliché. Oooh a wannabe actor/director going to NYU. Almost 45% of the students are here trying to do the same thing. That's why I have to work harder than them. Some of the biggest and most successful actors didn't even go to college. Steven Spielberg didn't go to college and look at him now. However, I still feel like education is important and this is my opportunity to meet people with similar interests.

Take Gigi for example. She is one of the smartest and nicest girls that I've ever met. She even graduated with honors from her high school. You'd never know that just by looking at her. She had long brown hair with red ombre ends and slightly fair skin. She is about 5'7. Just looking at her, you'd think she was some sort of rocker chick, when in reality, she was actually a nice girl who enjoyed reading from time to time. She is a bit of a partyer though.

I, on the other hand, look pretty average. I have long curly dark brown hair. You can sometimes see some blonde highlights if I stand in the sun for too long. I have tanned skin and I'm about 5'8. Oh! I almost forgot. My name is Imani. It's pronounced e-man-nee. It means faith or something.

When we got to Fox's class, the place was packed. The room was in the form of a theater where the seats were all facing downward towards a stage.

This is why I get upset when Gigi and I are late.

"Hey, there's two seats over there", said Gigi nudging me in the arm and pointing.

I looked towards the direction of the seats and saw that they were in between two people. On one side of the seats, sat a tall guy with blonde hair, he looked kind of familiar, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. On the other side, sat a guy with short brown hair. We walked over to the seats trying not to fall on anyone on our way there. I chose the seat next to the brown haired guy, took out my notebook and a pen, and waited for class to start.

"Good morning class. If you just now decided to attend my class after school being in session for three  months, welcome. It's about time you showed up", said Fox.

A few people laughed. Professor Fox was one of the arts professors. We learned more about the history of acting in his class. He is about 5'9, wears glasses, and has crazy Albert Einstein hair. He is one of the nicer professors on campus. He can be pretty strict sometimes, which is why I didn't want to be late.

"Ok class, today's class is going to be short because the topic of today is the human ego. When venturing out into your future endeavors, no matter what success that you will reach, you will end up developing an ego. The Ego, however, is not who you really are. The ego is your self-image; it is your social mask; it is the role you are playing. Your social mask thrives on approval. It wants control, and it is sustained by power, because it lives in fear."

The room fell silent as he continued to speak.

"I know, that was deep wasn't it? You see class, I want you to think about who you are and what makes you, YOU. Once you can separate your ego from who really are, you will succeed. Do not let the image that people have of you, change who you really are. Class is dismissed."

As we were all leaving I thought about what my professor said. Do I have an ego? Have other people noticed? My self-image is pretty good. Gigi and I have somehow built up a level of popularity during the time that we've been here so I'd say that things are going great for me.

I turned around to see Gigi talking to the blonde guy that she sat next to. She gave him a hug and then walked towards me.

"Hey Imani, so, you remember Trevor right?" So that was his name. "He was at that party we went to two weeks ago. Anyways, he  just invited us to his party on the roof later and I said we would go, so I hope you're ready to have some fun", she said smiling.

"Um yeah sure, that sounds like fun", I said.

"Ok great! I'll see you back at the dorm", she said as she walked away.

My next class was with Professor Howlett. He was probably my youngest teacher. He had a thing for completely shaving his head and wearing fall colored blazers. He taught Theater, Musical Theater, and Dance. This guy was a triple threat. His class was probably one of my hardest classes but it was fun at the same time.

I took a seat in one of the rows closet to the wall. Pretty much everyone here knows who Gigi and I are so it's not like I couldn't find anyone to talk to. I just wanted to be alone for now. Howlett was always late anyway, and there were only about ten minutes left of class anyway. Maybe he was finishing grading our papers. We all had to write a paper on Shakespeare's view of love and I basically improvised the whole thing. I never understood Shakespeare. I don't know why the guy couldn't have just said what he meant instead of being pretentious and comparing people to things that don't make sense.

"Hey, is anyone sitting here?", said a voice.

I looked up and saw that it was the brown haired guy that I sat next to in the previous class. There were plenty of other seats. I wonder why he chose to sit by me.

"Uh yeah, sure go ahead", I said moving my bag from the seat next to me.

When he sat down, we were both quiet for a minute. I didn't know the guy and I'm not very good at small talk.

"So I'm Nick by the way", he said sticking out his hand for me to shake.

I shook his hand and he smiled at me. He is about 6'1, with hair that goes a little bit past his ears. Something about him seemed familiar but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. He was kind of cute too...

"Nice to meet you Nick. I'm Y/N", I said shaking his hand.

"Y/N? I've never heard of a name like that before. It's unique. I like it"

Oh my god please tell me I'm not blushing because that was really sweet.

"So where are you-"

He was cut off by the voice of our professor.

"Good evening class. I've finished grading your papers so if you'll come down and grab them, that'd be great", said Howlett.

The whole room stood up and we walked down towards the stage.

I found my paper and read the grade at the top. Oh my god. He gave me a 64 out of a possible 100! Ugh! I'm honestly so embarrassed that I scored this low.

I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was Nick.

"Hey Imani, what did you get?"

"It's not important...I have to go"

I quickly walked out and went back towards the dorms. I'm so embarrassed...