Cheesecake

01. The Knox Family Curse

                                                    CHAPTER ONE

                                               The Knox Family Curse

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Looking up at the stone walls and spiked tops of the business building had her a little scared from the start. Avery hadn't even made it to her dorm yet and she was already feeling light headed.

She stood there for a while watching people go in and out of the large doors, fingering the sharp edges of the map in her hand.

Avery imagined her mother walking up to this building on her first day, feeling the same way Avery feels now, only with an excited grin on her face. This is where she met Avery's father, just a few feet away on the steps of the business building at Baylor University, home of the bears and expensive campus-ran coffee shops. This is where her life began, and this is where Avery will come on Tuesday mornings.

Avery doesn't believe in the mumbo jumbo about falling in love here. College is just a place like any other, one that makes you quickly realize you're not as smart as you think, as good-looking as the boys in high school told you, as mature as your parents lead you to believe, nor do you have as many friends as you thought. All Avery's friends are either still in Houston, taking things slow with community college and a part-time job, or they're at universities in Colorado or Florida. She seriously doubts that they'll make any attempt to call, text, or even message her on Facebook. All their lives are so distant now. They're probably moving into their dorms today too, only Avery knows they're off to a much better start than her because they actually have something to be excited about. 

Avery is only here because her parents are paying for a business degree and she is just going along with it, knowing that some day she'll have the top position at her family's brewing company. In a lot of ways, you could say that Avery Knox is a lucky girl. She has no strong aspiration to be a doctor, teacher, or an engineer, and it's not that she doesn't care about her future; she just has no desire to be anything in particular. She hasn't yet found that one thing her parents have described to her as a spark.

Avery was jerked out of her reverie when someone shoved past her, knocking her shoulder hard with their backpack.

"Ouch!"

The boy looked back with an irritated glance and pulled up the strap of his backpack. "Don't stand there all day. Some of us have classes to get to," he spat as Avery rubbed her shoulder with her free hand and looked down at the map in the other.

When Avery reached room 212 on the second floor of the girl's dorm building, she noticed a bulletin board nailed to the front of the door. Her name was printed on a pink sheet of computer paper, and stickers surrounded a picture she submitted to the Baylor website. Beside her name and picture, there was another of a girl named Serenity. Avery leaned forward to study the photograph, but the door was yanked open and she let out a small gasp of surprise. Her hand was halfway to her chest when a girl with blonde hair came rushing towards her for a hug.

Avery's face was instantly buried in silky coconut-scented hair and the shoulders of a tall blonde girl. She could feel the girl's boobs pushing against her neck and Avery felt very uncomfortable.

When Serenity backed away, she gave Avery a gorgeous smile. "You must be Avery," she said. "I've been waiting for you all morning!"

"Am I late or something? I didn't know I had to be here at a certain time." Avery walked past Serenity and into the dorm room. She set her bags down on one of the beds and took off her scarf. Sure, it was nearly ninety-five degrees, but the light material of the pink scarf didn't affect Avery's body temperature too much. Plus, fashion is meant to be painful. At least that's what she told herself when she trudged around in heels and tight jeans...