Celine Chapter 1
It hadn’t been a particularly warm morning. A brisk temperature of 39 degrees Fahrenheit had expedited Adrian’s commute to his first day of actual class. His first week of college hadn’t been all that out of the ordinary, save reports of a handful of guys reported missing, and a 19th birthday, celebrated by himself. The reports of people missing probably originated out of some dumb hazing ritual for a frat- go camp out in the woods for the first week of school. He’d been to a couple parties, a drink or two more than he would have had with his high school friends back home. Not that “back home” was all that far from where he was now. His county just so happened to house a relatively big state school- most kids around here found it convenient to funnel into a decent college with both a competitive in-state tuition and lack of need to pay for a dorm. Many still chose to, however. To get the full ‘college’ experience, a place to bring back friends, girls, or whatever else was essential, they thought. Adrian, clearly, was one of those people, settling into a dorm on campus with one of his high school friends. In total, nearly 25 of the students from his graduating class had chosen to stay close to home along with him. 25 was still a lot, he considered, given the schools slightly above average requirements.
He opened his school’s app which housed the location, time, and roster for his first class. Aside from a reminder on where exactly he should be walking, Adrian was reminded of the other reason there had been a spring in his step: Dawn Miller. His class roster was organized alphabetically, by first name for whatever reason. Because of that, he couldn’t navigate to his classes page without being reminded of the girl of his, and every boy of his graduating class’ dreams. She was, in many ways, the most stereotypical ‘American popular girl’ that there could be. Golden blonde hair, head cheerleader, prom queen, with the quarterback prom king to boot. Half the school showed up for her 18th birthday last year, the entire event had to be shut down by the cops. She was popular popular No matter how much he might have liked her then, the idea of asking her out he considered beyond even laughable. It was one of those things that was just impossible. Learning to fly? Maybe he could be in some freak accident that gave him superpowers. Become a billionaire? Maybe he’d win the lottery one day. Go out with Dawn Miller? Impossible. She was the kind of girl who could have any guy she wanted under her finger in a matter of minutes. He was just about on the bottom of the totem pole as far as her options went. The captain of any of the varsity sports teams, any of the rich kids, whatever was best for her at the moment. Whatever. Here, though, everything was reset. He had a summer to get in better shape, really work on himself. And he, at the very least, had something in common with her, a conversation starter. The only problem? The school had a freshman class of about 11 thousand. Sure the number of fish in the sea of their high school had gone down to maybe 10 or 15 guys, but they just landed in the ocean. That was, until, a couple of weeks ago, when official course schedules were released, and there, upon the roster of the first class he had on the first day of school, sat her name. A gift from God. He was actually given a chance to shoot his shot. Either that or make the rest of the semester infinitely more awkward than it had to be, but hey, he could at least try to become friends first.
Adrian showed up what could be considered fashionably late the first day. It was still before class started, but most of the smallish class had taken their seats already- all as planned. Despite her popular girl status, Dawn was a double threat- she did take school seriously enough to show up comfortably early. She wasn’t the type to miss class. He saw her instantly. No surprise there, she drew the attention of basically any guy in a 100 foot radius. What did pleasantly surprise Adrian, however, was how empty the seats around her were. Guys must be intimidated, he thought, what kind of message did it send to sit next to someone like that in a nearly empty classroom. He had something they didn’t, however. He walked up in front of the desk she sat at. She was typing something into her laptop, probably setting up her notes.
“Hey, Dawn, right?” He said. He was terrified. Did that come out as shaky as it was in his head? No. He had put so much effort into making it come out natural. Her attention was coming off of the laptop now, she looked up at him.
“From Twin Pine?” He added, knowing she probably didn’t recognize him. Adding in the name of the school they shared should make things easier.
It worked. She made a slight smile as her eyes met his.
“Wow, small school, huh?” She joked. They both shared a small laugh, everyone at their school knew just how many people had ended up here and how big the school was.
“Sorry, I’m terrible with names”, She said, obviously she had no idea who he was.
“Adrian. I think we had math last year, Mr. Perewitz’s class?”
I think? Of course he knew that they did, he’d spent half the class daydreaming about her. He tried to play it more low-key, as if he only half re, hoping she might say she did as well.
“Right, totally! Mark’s friend, right?”
Yep. Mark Stratsfield. He was a gay guy, and as almost all the boys made him aware when they hung out, he was living their dream. Mark was friends with Dawn and the rest of her clique, and was Adrian’s best friend and roommate. Adrian had half-jokingly asked Mark countless times to at least introduce him to Dawn. Sensibly, Mark had declined, and Adrian understood. The last thing Adrian wanted was for the Jock of the week to view him as a threat to their relationship. That said, if Dawn had heard his name from Mark, maybe he had put a good word in for him. Even if it was only the occasional “my friend Adrian said…’ or ‘this one time my friend Adrian…’, maybe Mark really had been doing what he could.
This was going amazing, all he needed to do was commit.
“Yep, and now roommate. Anyone sitting here?” He motioned to the seat-desk combo next to her.
Why did he ask that, he should have just sat down. This could go wrong in so many-
“Nope. All yours”.
He sat down. And stared forward. He took his gaze off the blackboard only to take his own laptop out of his backpack after a couple minutes. He didn’t dare risk ruining things with Dawn by checking her out on the first day of class in a matter of minutes. He had gotten this far, now he just needed to act normal. Stick to the playbook. Make small talk every now and again, wait for the first partner project to come along, get a study session or two in with her, ask to hang out etc. etc. This was gonna be easy.
Then she walked in.