After (a rewrite)

Chapter One

I toss and turn in my bed, waiting for the alarm to ring. I spent most of the night watching Brooklyn 99, and staring at the ceiling (a bad idea, really; today’s a super important day). Right on time, the shrill beep of the alarm rings. Hitting snooze, I jump out of bed.

I’ll tell why you why today's a super important day: it’s my first day at WCU - Washington Central University. I should probably feel something, excitement, maybe. Default, normal things people feel at the first day of their college. Instead, I feel blank. I brush my teeth and look into the mirror, examining the dark circles under my eyes. Damn, I should have got some sleep.

“Tessa, I hope you’re ready!” I groan. My mom was the opposite of blank today. She literally planned everything to the last minute.

“I’m almost done!” I yell back. I quickly shower, and pull on a dress I know my mom would favour. I struggle with the zip. Stupid thing.

“Tessaaa!” my mom yells, again.

Ditching the dress, I pull out a shirt and a pair of jeans out of the closet, and hurriedly brush my hair.

To be honest, this was what I was waiting for, these past couple of years. From the first day of highschool, my mom made sure I planned about college right from the start. It was WCU or nothing. So every assignment had to be perfect, every test had to have a straight A, my record had to be clean. No stone should be left unturned. I complied. The hard work paid off. I was accepted to WCU. Above all, the way my mom hugged me, when I got my acceptance letter, the way she smiled, as if I’d finally made her proud, almost made the toil worth it all.

Unfortunately, the downside of obsessing over perfection is that I never really got a chance to have any friends, or get close to someone. My mom made it clear I wasn’t to associate myself with “the wrong crowd” (read: teenagers just trying to be teenagers). But that didn’t matter; the only thing I desperately cared about was her approval.

My mom yells my name again, and I go downstairs. My boyfriend, Noah, was waiting there, too, blond hair impeccably in place. Noah was not in “the wrong crowd”. He was a year younger than me, and we knew each other since he came to highschool.

“There’s the college girl,” He says with a grin, and hugs me. I hug him back, and smile.

My mom critically appraises me from head to toe. Consciously, I smoothen my hair.

“Tessa, your hair looks terrible! Didn’t you brush it today? Go fix it, we still have a couple of minutes.” I probably should have curled my hair the way she likes. Would’ve shut her up at least. I run my hand through my hair, and tie it into a neat ponytail. Much better.

After loading my luggage, we sit in the car, Noah in the backseat with me. My mom and Noah talk, mostly about his college applications and plans. He’s thinking of coming to WCU and I’m sure he’d get in. Dude obsesses over his stuff more than I did, and he’s actually serious about this.

As I look out of the window, the blank emotion I had was replaced with dread. How was I going to manage on my own? With so many people around me, year round? I couldn’t even manage my highschool luchroom without freezing. I could handle hours of studying and calculus and college applications and shit. I can even handle my mom's condescending little comments. But I hate being around people.

The sick, familiar feeling of anxiety coils in my stomach, for the rest of the car ride.
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A/N: hey, i'm rewriting after, because 1. i really fucking hate it, both fic and book, and 2. because i wanted to give tessa an actual character, rather than her being a self-insert.
this story is a rewrite of the sorry original, which belongs to Anna Todd.