Three Is A Crowd

Chapter 1: First Impressions

A/N: Please read my ANs. I explain things in there and I hate it when I see people commenting about something in the next chapters which I have already explained. Thanks!

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It's like a goddamn funeral procession the way it feels like she's slowly getting closer to her execution and burial; inescapable and depressing.

Lauren's throat constricts almost painfully when her sight lands on one of the more vintage dormitory buildings of Cowell-Reid University looming grimly as she slowly drives towards the place she would be calling home for quite some time; at least until she could grow some big-ass motherfucking balls to turn her back against the trust fund awaiting her when she turns twenty-one (with the stipulation that there's a college diploma hanging on her wall by then).

Right now, she couldn't.

She has been too used to her lifestyle to let it go, and while she prides herself to be a lover of the arts, the artsy fartsy, as her mom pejoratively calls her crowd, she wouldn't wanna be literally a starving artist. So fuck her pursuit of the creative arts, because obviously her parents don't give a rat's ass about her passion, so yeah, fuck her life.

This is her, swallowing her pride and letting her soul die.

She couldn't believe she's back in CRU (Lauren always called it Comfort Room Urinals in her mind, her parents' expensive way to piss on her dreams and ideals) after her very passionate speech to her whole family not too long ago, that she won't ever subject herself again (after just a year of being enrolled in business school) to the torture of what this rigidly-controlled social structure offers; its claustrophobic routines that aim to drown every generation's idealism, creativity, and passion into full submission and mold it into a singular mass-produced thought process.

Anyone who knows her will tell you emphatically that Lauren Jauregui is the last person who would willingly throw herself into this pit of insanity that people call "college"; not because she hates learning (she believes in self-learning, not institutionalized education), but because she sees how robotic people have become upon being force-fed a single set of belief and ideals, sapping off the desire to think beyond what's expected of them and rigorously instill in them that one mold of perspective.

So yeah, if it's her choice, she wouldn't go back to college. She's the epitome of a rebel, after all, not only on how she looks, but most importantly, her free-thinking outlook and her raging desire to disrupt the status quo and restrictive labels this society has been continually imposing on people.

But after her mother has threatened to cut her off from any inheritance and support she's supposed to get from the family - trust fund, allowance, credit cards, cars - it hit her like a damn wrecking ball when she realizes that life isn't as sweet as those cheesy stories her abuela used to tell her when she was a kid. Who is she kidding, of course life is not a damn fairy tale, and she sure as hell is not some Disney Princess. Well, maybe she could be Mulan, but whatever.

This is her reality, not some fairy tale bullshit that's meant for kids and hopeful dreamers. All her life she's been expected to act a certain way, to be someone she didn't wanna be, to finish a business degree so she could take over her parents' business empire in the future, considering that she's the eldest among the Jauregui siblings and the automatic heir to their beloved legacy.

When presented with an ultimatum by her mother, she's not even gonna lie -- she actually thought of murdering her parents (well, maybe she'll spare her dad, he's kinda cool) after making them change their last will and testament. It was a very tempting idea, but then again she didn't think she could get away with a double murder especially since it's known within the entire clan that she's the black sheep in the family and that she's the only one who's constantly butting horns with her mom.