First

29. Bearded Irises

Despite the pain in my neck and back, and the fatigue in my brain, and the cramps in my hand, I fight on.

I finish my resume. 

I hand in that communications project from hell.

I study for my remaining exams: Computing, Circuits, Statics, and Math. There is no final exam for Communications. I think that is my saving grace. 

I don't quite believe my ears when I hear, a few days later, for the last time, "Pencils down."

I had survived.

My first year was officially behind me - assuming I didn't have to re-take all these classes next year.

I join my classmates in a tired cheer.

***

Of course, there had to be a party.

Old Sarah, New Sarah, and even New-New Sarah, if she was a thing, all want to return to bed. We have to recover from weeks of wringing our brains out like wet towels. Every last drop of intelligence and determination had been squeezed out.

Unfortunately my friends are opting to fill the cavity with alcohol.

"Come on, Sarah, we're drinking our sorrows away," Greg calls, already half-cut when I found him and the rest of our study group in Red Hall.

"No, we're celebrating!" Sam counters.

"You think you did well on that exam?" Greg asks incredulously.

"No, but I have a second date with Amber!"

The boys give him a round of high-fives and congratulations. I grin. Sam had asked me for help replying to a text from this girl. It seems like I'd given him the right advice.

"How the hell did you get drunk so fast?" I demand as Greg clumsily gropes for a wall to lean on. He'd finished his exam maybe twenty minutes before me.

Greg pulls a flask from his pocket and raises it to me. "Magic."

"Come on, you have to get drunk with us! We're not going to be together again for four months!" Scott coaxes.

"So you'd like to be intoxicated for our last gathering?"

"Yes!"

I groan. "If we're going to drink let's go somewhere I can get a girly drink."

"Oh, good," says David. When everyone looks at him, he quickly adds, "Scott wants a girly drink too."

"I do not!"

"Yes you do, you love the teenie-bopper drinks." He grins, his eyes magnified ridiculously through his square-framed glasses. "Come on, Darren," David adds, grabbing the big redhead by the cuff of his sweater and pulling him toward the door. "Let's go get Scott a girly drink."

"I missed that kid," I told Scott with a grin as I followed the tiny Asian and the giant Viking to the exit. The first years had been split in half since there were so many of us, and neither of them had been in our classes this semester.

Amit swings his arms around Sam and Scott. "Apparently you guys were the favoured class this year," he tells us.

"Says who?" I ask.

"Everyone," he replies, straight faced. "All of the professors kept saying, "You are the worst group of students I've ever had to teach"."

"Oh, yeah, they told us that too," Scott grins.

"We must have lowered the bar every class," Greg snickers. Then, spotting a familiar figure, he calls, "Maria!"

"Mariah," Mariah corrects wryly, once she realizes he is calling to her.