Drafts

Chapter 0.

Amethyst had gone home for two weeks of summer break, leaving a week before the semester started again to become reacquainted with her university. That was her first mistake. Not only was it freezing in her home country of Australia - as it was winter in the southern hemisphere - but as soon as she stepped back onto American soil, Amethyst immediately regretted leaving at all. Of course Amethyst loved her parents and her home town (to a degree), but there was nothing for her in Australia, so she left. She wanted to be out in the world where she wasn't able to call someone for immediate help; anyone except her best friend.

The dark-haired girl had been accepted into university just before her eighteenth birthday, but her younger best friend took the cake, being accepted to the same university at just seventeen years old. Kiaranna had wanted to take a gap year before buckling down into coursework, but of course Amethyst was able to convince her to take up her acceptance at their mutual first-choice university, begging her best friend of five years to not leave her completely alone in a foreign country. Kiaranna was extremely loyal to her best friend, and gave in with little pressure after only a week of receiving their acceptance letters.

Amethyst and Kiaranna could have easily stayed in Australia. Amethyst was an English and General Arts double major, with Kiaranna doubling also in Dance and Acting, which meant they could study in any English-speaking country and be able to complete both their major courses. But the pair wanted to be free birds, in an open sky, able to stretch their wings and soar to brighter things. So, they sought out America.

With fair skin (which she wanted to keep that way), Amethyst found comfort in the fact that the sun was not as strong in America as it was in Australia. She was actually able to go outside without being paranoid of turning into a peeling tomato. She strolled around the gargantuan university campus, scouting out everything that she had missed on her trip back home, without a care in the world about the sun's radiation - something she hadn't been able to do in Australia, even nearing the end of winter the sun was still strong enough to burn unprotected skin. The shorter girl located her favourite university cafe, a little booth-like set-up on the Northern end of campus called 'A Touch of Paradise', and ordered herself an iced chocolate.

Earlier in the day, Amethyst had checked back in with her roommate, who hadn't left campus-housing for the entire duration of the summer break, choosing to only make a handful of day-trips to her parents house only a few miles from the university. Violetta was a very good roommate. Always tidy, keeping all of her possessions (anything she didn't have stored in her parents' house) on her side of the room, mostly under her bed in rolling tubs - something that proved very effective in keeping her region of the room clean and uncluttered. She was slightly eccentric, having dyed her hair a violet shade to match her name (something Amethyst had helped her do every two months of the last year), exclusively wearing different coloured socks, and often waking up and functioning at ungodly hours of the morning (around 6am) to do yoga in the dorm common room with an equally eccentric group of girls from all over campus. But Amethyst only had nice things to say about Violetta - save the times Violetta had accidentally woken her up as she was leaving for yoga.

The staff member of the cafe called her name, pulling her from her fond memories of the roommate she had missed for two weeks, and handed her the drink she had ordered. Now she could go back to her dorm room to continue the guilty pleasure she had been neglecting on her trip home; her fiction writing.

Amethyst had unpacked as soon as she arrived back on campus, finding it stupid that some people were able to leave whole suitcases full of clothes still packed for weeks or months on end, which meant that that job was already done, and subsequently, she could settle into the beanbag that sat waiting for her at the foot of her bed with her iced chocolate and her laptop.