Its been a more than a week. A full week and three days. I haven't talked to Stacey for a week. I barely have talked to Dan and even Becca. I guess that the excitement of school starting up has diminished. Everyone has started keeping to themselves, including myself. I have drowned myself in my studies. My room is becoming a cold dark chamber that is leaking with knowledge and at the same time, uncertainty.
I started out this year being somewhat social and I was actually enjoying myself. This year, something felt different. I am doing too much thinking and I think I can thank Health Psychology for that... Mr. McMinn always has us entering the depths of our hearts and our minds. I have realized that I am actually really alone. I have friends, sure, but I don't have someone I can fully trust, someone who I can confide in. That used to be Dan, but now he's always getting drunk and I just have a bad feeling that something might slip out of his mouth that shouldn't while in front of too many people.
Its Thursday night and I didn't make the silly decision to go to that weight lifting class. Instead I am at home, staring blankly at the wall because my brain is fried. Because of this, I do decide to go for a little walk. I grab my coat and my keys and head out to the brisk fall night. I stop at a bulletin board right outside the building and a neon orange sheet with a pumpkin catches my eye. Of course, Halloween party at Sigma Pi on October 10- wait, October 10th? Thats tomorrow. I must have really been out of the loop because I didn't even know about one of the biggest Halloween parties of the year, and it isn't even on Halloween, which I don't understand, but whatever. I see someone walking ahead of me and I run to catch up to them.
"Hey, do you have the time?" I have never seen this person in my life but I forgot my phone and I think I have enough time to go get a costume but I'm not sure.
"Yeah, its- 7," the guy says with a nod and walks away. Nice chat buddy. I go against what I said before and walk back into the dorm hall. Once i'm back to my room, I grab my phone and call Dan.
"Hey," he answers.
"You busy right now?" I ask, just assuming he is at work.
"Yeah, work, but I can talk. What up bro?"
"Did you hear about the Halloween party tomorrow night at Sigma Pi?"
"Yeah dude, you got to come, its gonna be the most fun party you will ever go to," he says all in one breath.
"I was planning on it," I said with a laugh because I could almost feel his relief that he wouldn't have to come force me out of my room again. "I am in need of a costume."
"Ah yes, me too. Tomorrow wanna swing by Jimmy's after your class and we can look then?"
"Sounds like a plan mate."
"Ok, I gotta go now, boss is eyeing me up, see ya,"
"Bye," and I hung up. Looks like tomorrow I won't be doing much studying.
Theres a repeated rapping at my door as I am pulling a sweatshirt over my head and grabbing my keys and phone. I open the door to find Zayn standing there.
"Hi?" I ask mainly because one; its half past seven in the morning, so I am heading to my first class and two; Zayn has his own key.
"I know what you're thinking and I forgot my keys yesterday," he says with an embarrassed smile. "And last night, it was like 2 am and I figured you were already sleeping so I spent the night at Harry's."
"Oh, cool," I return. This is honestly the first time he has ever told me this much pertaining to his whereabouts. He is still standing in the hallway, so I move out of the way, allowing him room to walk in. "I'm off to class, see you."
He doesn't say anything to that just goes to the couch and jumps face first onto it. I chuckle at his small groan as he makes impact with the rough cushions.
As I walk out of the building, I stare at the ground ahead of me, so when I bump into someone, I shouldn't be too stunned, but I am.
"Hey Niall," Stacey looks at me with an apologetic look.
"What are you doing out here, right now?" I ask, she told me her schedule once, and I know for a fact that her first class isn't until nine.
"We need to talk, and I figured I would come and walk to your class with you."
"Alright, its this way," I take a step in front of her, leading her in the right direction. "So...."
"So, sorry I've been, like, ignoring you," she is walking like I was before, eyes fixed on her shoes crunching the red leaves laying on the sidewalk.
"Its ok, I've been pretty busy," I wasn't completely lying, because I have been busy studying.
"Ok. So um, are you going to that Halloween party tonight?" She still doesn't look up.
"Yeah, actually Dan and I are going costume shopping after our classes. I didn't need to tell you that did I?" I say with a nervous laugh. We are being so awkward, the complete opposite of how we were before this long, long, week.
"No, you didn't," she laughs too. "Anyway, I think I am going to too, its just that my....friend is coming down for the weekend from LaCrosse and I don't want him to feel weird going to a party and not knowing anyone, you know?"
"Trust me, he'll have a good time," I say. Basically at these parties, you go with your friends, but you end up talking to people you might have never seen before. "If you don't mind me asking, how come you hesitated when saying friend? Is he a bad guy? Do I need to call the Power Rangers to take this guy down?" I should never attempt at making jokes...
"No, he's my ex," Stacey says, looking up towards the sky now.
"Oh," is all I can say. Did she invite him down here to scare me away? I glance over at her, and then up at the sky, following her gaze. The path we are walking down right now leads to the Union, and it runs along a lake. It is really beautiful at this time of year, with the leaves changing and all.
"Hm, whats this?" She stops suddenly and bends down to retrieve something from the ground. "It looks like a book," she flips through the pages, "an empty book."
I catch her right before she puts it down and grab it to inspect it myself. I've seen this before. Leather journal... mostly empty except... yes there they are, the quotes.
"I've seen this before, in a room at Sigma Pi," I say, even though it will mean nothing to her.
"Really? Thats weird."
We walk in silence until we arrive at the Union and thats where we part ways. She tells me that she will see me tonight and all I can think about is how her ex boyfriend will be there. I thinking that maybe Stacey and I are not ready for dating right now, but after getting to know each other even more, we can think about it later.
I look down to the journal in my hand and study it carefully. It looks beaten down which is weird, judging that it has barely been used. I flip through the pages until I come across something I didn't seem to notice before. There is a chunk of back pages missing.
I walk out of my lecture room for Health psych. and proceed to head towards the doors. I am carrying the journal in my hands still because I fear that it will fall out of my bag or something of that sort. Before I can reach the doors, however, someone grabs my shoulder.
"Where did you find that?" Harry Styles asks me, motioning towards the mystery book in my hand, before completely grabbing it from me.
"On the trail by Lake Mendota," I say as nonchalantly as possible.
"Its rude to steal you know, Neil," he spat out my name, but not really my name.
"Um, Niall" I corrected him. "And for the record, I wasn't going to steal it, I was trying to find its owner." This time, it was I who left with the last word. I pushed past him and walked forward until I realized that I really needed to go in the other direction.
"Smooth," he laughed at me as I passed him a second time. I turned back to give him a cool look when I caught him smiling at me. Once he saw that I caught him, he tried to cover it up with a cough and turned around. I don't think I have ever seen his smile and its contagious; I ended smiling as I walked off too, instead of being angry, I was confused.
