The Last Girl on Campus

Chapter 6

Sunday morning was like every other morning on campus. It was dead silent. However, this was due to no one being here, not the dorm being full and everyone hungover or passed out. I took a beach towel to the park and tanned in the eighty degree weather while calling my mom. She said she was doing everything she could to find a way to get me home. Even the trains were booked solid. After our two-hour conversation, I had to hang up because Cheyanne was calling me. I walked all the way back to our room, telling her about the amazing time I was going to have later.

"You don't think any of that is true, right?" Cheyanne asked as I opened the door.

"No way! Even if this vampire was real, I'm sure she'd have better things to do than stay here at UT."

Around five I did my best to figure out the oven and stole one of the frozen pizzas that Rachel left in the freezer. I only burned it a little bit. Once that was done, I scraped it off the pan, fed Richard, and started another Christmas movie. Rachel got off work at seven. She called me thirty minutes later. I looked at her scraggly blond hair in a messy ponytail as she sat in her bean bag chair, still dressed in her work uniform from the Hug-a-Mug coffee shop.

"Long day?" I asked.

"It wasn't that bad," she said.

My roommate Rachel Steinman, yes, Steinman—who Steinman Hall was named after because her family was insanely rich—was, believe it or not, a workaholic. The most humble rich person I knew. She always felt like her family's wealth was somehow a cheat-code to life, and she wanted no part of it. Rachel drove a ten-year-old car that she bought from one of our sorority sisters with the money she had from her job Hug-a-Mug over winter and summer break, as well as the petty cash she picked up from working twelve hours a week at the pizza place across from campus. Even though she was extremely bossy at times, she kept our room spotless and in check, cleaning every night and filling out work orders whenever something broke.

"Are you ready?" I asked.

"You better keep your promise."

"Yeah, I know. I'll clean the room for a month...are you ready?"

"I don't have much of a choice, do I?"

"Of course not! Let's go to Plant," I said.

Located on the other side of campus, Plant Hall was a nineteenth century hotel that served as a winter getaway for icons like Babe Ruth and Teddy Roosevelt, which was now renovated into classrooms and offices. A small corner of it was a museum, which I hadn't been to yet but was on my bucket list.

After many past suicides by hotel guests and staff, all sorts of ghosts were rumored to be lurking around Plant Hall at night. Of course, the most legendary rumor of all was the campus vampire. It was said that the vampire looked like a college-aged girl and lived in one of the shining silver minarets that loomed at the top of Plant Hall. The rumor started back in the late 1980s after a student was murdered in the park across from Plant Hall. Three more students died since then; all in the same fashion and near the same area. The four students had their throats slit.

I didn't believe in the vampire because like many other places, there was crime around UT at night. Nearly every weekend we were emailed alerts about students being mugged or grabbed by someone on the street in the early hours of the morning. The four murders didn't deter me from going to UT. It was the most beautiful school I'd ever seen and had the marine bio program for me. The dorms were unbelievable compared to everywhere else, and after growing up in Canada, I wanted a change from the massive amounts of snow.