Violets

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

Summer was a really busy time for me. It hadn’t always been that way, but now that I was an eighteen year old with a driver’s license and a car, it was. I drove myself everywhere unless I was going somewhere with my parents, and I had two years of experience with driving. That combined with the fact that I would be at college with complete freedom in a few months gave me the opportunity to do pretty much anything during the summer. Eliz and I created a crazy summer bucket list in government during one of our last weeks of high school, and we would finally be able to tackle everything on the list. It included everything from making s’mores on a campfire and a water balloon fight to playing messy Twister and building forts. But before we could cross much off the list, we had to attend freshman orientation for college.

Elizabeth and I were both going to attend Braxton State University. It was an in-state college for us, a few hours from where we currently lived. We both had only been there once, for a college visit during our senior year of high school, but we had fallen in love. The campus was absolutely beautiful. It was pretty large (according to me, a girl from a small town) but it was much smaller than some of the other universities in the area. It also had an outstanding teaching program, which was perfect for me, an elementary education major. It was a good school in general, and since Eliz loved the campus and the size so much, she decided she wanted to go there with me. We would be roommates in the dorms, even. We were in it together. Even though we were both looking forward to college, it was still a little scary. We would need each other to get through it.

Orientation was the first step. It was our first chance to begin to get to know campus. It was our first opportunity to meet our classmates and it was our chance to schedule our first semester classes. I was looking forward to orientation, honestly. I wanted a little taste of what my life would be like in August, when the school year started. So, naturally, I was in a good mood when my mom and I headed down to Muncie, the city where BSU was located. Parents (for the most part) came with their kids to orientation. That wasn’t to say that I’d be with my mom the whole time, but I wouldn’t be completely alone. Unfortunately, my dad wasn’t able to come, but I was just glad to have someone there with me.

“Are you excited for tomorrow?” my mom questioned me. We had just gotten settled in our hotel room for the night. The first day of orientation started at 8 am the next morning, but with the three hour drive and the hour time difference, there was no way we were going to wait until that morning to make the trip.

“Kind of,” I replied as I rummaged through my duffel bag to find comfy shorts to wear around the hotel.

“Just kind of?” my mom raised her eyebrows at me.

“I’ve heard there’s going to be a lot of information thrown at me. And I’ve heard that it’s going to be boring,” I explained. Elizabeth and I had been talking to our friends who had already been to orientations at their colleges, and we had even heard from our high school classmates who were joining us at BSU.

“Well, it’s college, Xar. There are a lot of things you need to know and prepare for. Yes, there’s going to be a lot of informational meetings and some of them will be boring, but they’ll have fun activities planned for you too. It won’t be so bad, I promise.”

“You better be right,” I decided, a smirk on my face. Just then, I got a text.

E: Hey, wanna go night swimming?

X: I’m always up for night swimming. Just let me change into my swimsuit and I’ll meet you in the lobby.