Won't Stop Running

Chapter 3: Melanie

Yay! Chapter 3! I'm so glad people are reading this though because I'm super proud of it.

Melanie's POV

Melanie and Flaire were silent for most of the walk to Cole's room. They had accidently stopped in the main area of their building and talked for an hour, and Melanie could tell that Flaire was extremely uncomfortable after that, so she didn't say anything.

It was obvious to her that Flaire didn't open up to people easily. She was very shy and quiet, and after talking a lot, she seemed very conscious. Of course, Melanie knew that she was easy to talk to. She made it her main goal for people to feel comfortable talking to her.

She wasn't usually very judgemental either. Honestly, nothing weird bothered her anymore, and she didn't feel like there was any reason to judge people, which was probably also why people opened up to her easily.

As they got to the third floor, she started slowing down to look for the room, three eleven, if she remembered correctly. It was the second set on the right side of the hallway, rooms ten through twelve.

There were a lot of loud voices coming from inside, although she couldn't immediately identify any of them as Cole, so she just knocked on the door. Someone from inside yelled, "I'll get it," and the door swung open.

The boy at the door was kind of tall, and had black hair. He had a smile on his face that almost immediately turned to confusion. "Who are you?"

"Hi, is Cole here?" Melanie asked, hoping that she got the right room.

Seconds later, Cole came running into the common room. "Hey Mel!" he greeted her.

She smiled. "Hey, hi, are these your roommates?" she asked, gesturing to the other three people in the room, who were all awkwardly staring at her. There was the sort of tall, black haired guy who had answered the door, and small, golden brown haired one, and a slightly chubby one with dark brown hair.

Cole nodded, and Melanie took that as a sign to continue. "Cool, this is my roommate Flaire. Uh, we were going to walk around campus and explore a bit, do you want to come?"

"Sure," he shrugged. "I need to finish unpacking really quickly, meet me downstairs?"

Melanie nodded, "kay. Bye!"

She swung the door closed, and as soon as she started to walk away, she heard one of the other boys asking, "Was that your girlfriend?" She giggled a little bit, Cole was about as straight as circle, and they'd find that out in a moment.

"That was terrifying," Flaire commented quietly. "Boys scare me."

Melanie laughed. "Yeah, sometimes. But I figure that I can probably scare them away if I wanted to by talking about really girly stuff." Flaire giggled. "But to be honest, they probably won't bother you if you act confident."

"In case you couldn't tell, I'm pretty bad at that," Flaire said. "I guess it's just... I don't know. They seem a lot more judgemental."

"Yeah, they seem that way. From what I've noticed, they joke about things a lot, so to someone who doesn't take judgement as well, no offense, but like you, it seems like they're being mean. Obviously, sometimes they are. But a lot of the time, they just joke, and I guess they find it easier than being serious."

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Melanie and Flaire stood together silently on the main floor, not wanting to sit down, since Cole would be there soon anyways. The building was for boys dorms, so they were the only girls in there.

Finally, Melanie spotted Cole as he was walking from the stairs towards them. "Hey," he smiled. "So we're just exploring?"

"Yep!" she said. "I wanted to look at the courtyard first. By the way, I know I said this earlier, but this is Flaire, my roommate."

"Hi," he greeted her, and she gave a small smile, saying "hi," back.

"So, how do we get to the courtyard?" Cole asked after a moment. "There's about twenty doors in here."

Melanie shrugged. "I don't know, let's just walk around and find it."

"Actually," Flaire interrupted quietly. "I have a map of the section. And the entire campus." She pulled two pieces of paper out of her book,  which Melanie had forgotten that she's brought, and dog eared the page that they'd been marking.

Melanie took it, surprised. "Oh, thanks. I didn't think about that." She handed one of the maps to Cole, and unfolded hers, seeing a map of their section, with all four buildings and the courtyard. "So it seems like the door it that one in the corner... Or actually I think there's two doors, one in each corner."

"The library's huge!" she suddenly heard Cole exclaim from next to her.

She looked up, seeing Flaire's eyes go wide as she peered over his shoulder. "A library?"

"Let's go check it out after we explore the section," Cole suggested, and Flaire nodded happily.

Melanie rolled her eyes but smiled anyways. She wasn't super into books like Cole, and probably Flaire, was, although she read every now and then. She mainly went to the library for CDs she didn't already have, which a college library probably wouldn't have.

"So, we going?" she asked, a little bit impatient to look around. The other two nodded and she led the way to the door. "Cole, how are your roommates?"

"They're cool," he nodded. "Avi's really nice. Luca is quiet, but really sarcastic and fun. Chay is just chaos, but he's great." He laughed. "This is going to be interesting."

Melanie nodded, and pulled open the door, a gust of wind hitting her. She held the door for the other two, and then stepped outside. The courtyard was huge. There were paths leading from each door through the grass to the middle, where there was a large weeping willow tree, with benches around it, where a few people were sitting. "This is amazing," she breathed.

"Wow," Cole exclaimed, stepping onto the path and walking a few steps. "It's really... open out here. I'm amazed that they keep it this nice."

"What are those," Flaire asked suddenly, pointing to several, what looked to be windows, on the ground, next to each pathway.

Melanie crouched down, looking into one. "There's an area below this. I think this is like lighting for the basement. There's chairs and couches and lamps down there."

Flaire and Cole crouched next to her, looking in. "Mel, this is literally so cool. I pictured, like, a dark, scary, dungeon like place when I heard about a basement. I could probably spent hours in there."

Melanie laughed, standing up. "Come on, let's go, before everyone starts asking why we're staring into the basement. Do you think we can climb the tree?"

"Not in your dress," Cole pointed out, before taking off running. "Race you there!"

"No!" Melanie yelled, starting to chase after him before she stopped and turned to Flaire.

"I'll walk behind. Go beat him."

Melanie smiled and took off running again.

1167 words

This chapter was probably a bit worse than the other chapters, as I was kind of stuck on how to write it. I'm going to post another part in about an hour, with a few character pictures, and some maps of the campus I created.

Anyways, hope y'all have a wonderful day like I did (even though I felt like I was being stabbed with a knife all day yeah that's always fun) and PEACE!

~Zoey