I hurriedly patted myself dry once I was clean and slipped on my pajamas. Tonight wasn’t the night to stay up late. I wanted to get in the habit of going to bed at a decent time when I had classes the next day. Friday nights and Saturday nights would be the nights I’d pull all-nighters and party it up.
Back in the room, Mel had slipped into a baggy t-shirt that had some kind of superhero logo on it, though she still wore her leggings. She had brought a small tv, and it rested on her nightstand, which she graciously allowed me to turn so I could see the screen, too. Yep, my parents hadn’t bought me a TV, or a laptop. I didn’t come from that kind of money.
And by that kind of money, I meant the middle class.
My parents might try to pretend we were more well-off than we really were, but I knew how tight their monthly budget was. I knew how they struggled to spend money on birthdays and holidays because it meant taking money away from other things, like paying down their credit card bills. We weren’t middle class. We were never comfortable. We were better off than Ash and her mom, but that was about it.
No, I was from a low-income household, even though my parents both worked. The harsh realities of America, the so-called greatest country on earth. Coming from such a low place on the totem pole, it was hard for me to agree with that, but maybe my cynical view on things would change once I graduated school and got my foot in the door with some company.
“When’s your first class tomorrow?” I asked.
“Eight-thirty,” Mel answered, her eyes flicking up from her phone.
Oh, hell. A morning bird. An early riser. This year might suck monkey balls if she always had early classes. My first one wasn’t until ten forty-five, and then they were back to back until I was done for the day at three. I tried to keep my daily schedule as neat as possible, knowing I’d need A) to sleep in because I was so not a morning person, and B) large chunks of time when I would have to spend hours in the library working on their computers.
Mel must’ve seen the concern on my face—because if her class started at eight-thirty, that meant she had to be out of here and ready way before then—for she quickly said, “I’ll be as quiet as a mouse.”
“Uh-huh,” I said, not really believing her.
That night, as I lay in bed, trying to fall asleep, I texted Ash. She immediately responded. We texted back and forth for a good forty minutes. I told her all about Mel, though I chose to keep the incident with Mel and the group of boys in the union to myself. For some reason, it didn’t seem like my story to tell.
Ash eventually stopped replying, and I knew that was because she’d fallen asleep. I lay there for what felt like hours, staring at the dark ceiling. No matter what I did, no matter how many sheep I counted in my head, sleep would not come. I’d be super exhausted for my classes tomorrow, definitely, but there was nothing I could do about it. Nothing I could change.
Maybe it was the nerves. I was too excited about this new phase in my life. Or maybe, deep down, I knew that everything was about to change. Some things for the better, other things for the worse.
Chapter Five – Kelsey
Morning came way too soon. I wanted to smack Mel’s alarm clock, yank it off the wall, and throw it out the window. Alas, I couldn’t. It was her property, not mine. All I could do was roll over, slam a pillow over my head, and wait for her to leave. Despite her alarm clock being way too loud, Mel herself was quiet. She tiptoed around the room, as quiet as, yes, a mouse as she got ready. By the time she left for her class, I was asleep again.
And then, what felt like five minutes later, my phone buzzed, my alarm going off.
Ugh. What. The. Hell.
This waking up business was shit, utter shit, let me tell you.
I threw on some clothes. Jean shorts and a cute shirt with a patterned design on it. I grabbed my sunglasses, tossed a few notebooks and textbooks into my backpack, and headed out the door.
My classes were pretty boring, really. A lot of introductory classes involving sitting in giant lecture halls and becoming one with the crowd. One of my classes, sociology, was actually a lecture hall class Monday and Wednesday, and on Friday we split up into smaller classes in a different room to get some real discussion going.
Yeah, could not look forward to that less.
I mean, after a few classes, it didn’t seem so bad. My wrists would kill once we actually got started taking notes and stuff and not just going over the syllabus and what we would do for the rest of the semester, but it felt different from high school. In high school, you had to sit there and listen. Which, okay, in most of the classes, that’s what you did. But students were also encouraged to raise their hands and ask questions, even argue with the teacher. My ethics professor sounded like he really wanted some lecture hall arguments, which should be fun.
Things were going great, until my stomach started to growl as I sat in my third and last class of the day.
I ignored the looks from the other students near
