New Romantics

Chapter 1

There were many things a person could do on a Saturday night at Oracle University.

There were the bars in uptown Oracle, famous for their sprawling patios and perfect pool tables. If you weren't interested in being hit on by your TA (or lonely professor) in a bar, there were always the frat houses around the corner, jungle juice, and cheap beer ready by the gallon.

If you craved some action, the championship football team and its fancy, multi-million-dollar stadium were on their annual trajectory toward a perfect-season record.

For the arts, there were fashion shows, slam poetry contests, exhibits, and wine tasting. If you liked history, you could take a tour of every haunted hotspot on campus with the guarantee of one paranormal encounter or another.

Apparently, the aforementioned list of activities wasn't good enough for Leo Aldridge.

No.

He decided that hanging out on my balcony was a better idea.

Well, not really hanging out—more like falling out. Of a window. Absolutely wasted.

But, let's start from the beginning.

I couldn't say it was a quiet Saturday night. That was never the case for Oracle Tower Apartments, Building C, and like always, the boys of Apartment 302 decided another weekend meant another raging party.

The heavy thumps of a bass-boosted song reverberated from upstairs, followed by muffled cheering and a loud, teeth-rattling thunk, and I looked up from my computer screen, half-expecting someone to fall right through the ceiling and onto my bed. With how thin the walls were, it was a very real possibility.

"What was that?" Amit Singh asked from his spot in the corner of my screen, peering into his computer as if he could see more than the few inches of space my camera allowed.

"It's the party again," I said with a deep sigh. "They started at eight. It's already one in the morning. Shouldn't they have gone to the bars, like, three hours ago?"

Amit shrugged, pushing his square glasses onto his forehead, and rubbed his tired eyes. "That's what we used to do back when we had a social life. Maybe the rules changed and we didn't get the memo?"

"I wouldn't be surprised."

Going into my third year of university, I wasn't shocked by the fact that my classes were even harder than before. What surprised me was how—from the very first day nearly a month ago—they'd taken over my entire existence. Free time? Never heard of her. A balance between work and play? Not if I wanted to do well in organic chemistry. I saw the inside of the library more than I saw my roommates.

Four weeks in and I was starting to question my sanity again.

You chose to be Pre-Med, Aria. You had the chance to switch majors.

And never hear the end of it from my family?

No, thank you.

Shaking the tension from my shoulders, I returned to the task at hand: nucleophilic substitution reactions. Burying my face in my hands, I groaned. "I hate this."

"No, you don't, Aria. You're just..."

"Bad at it? Yeah, I know."

Amit frowned. "It's not supposed to be easy."

"Easy for you to say," I said. "You're not the one retaking it."

Sitting at my desk beside my window, I stared out into the courtyard between buildings C and D, the tiny, circular lights of the walkways painting the grass shades of gold. Directly beneath my window, my balcony hung a few feet from a long covered porch, and the hums of a birthday party filtered in through the crack of the window, and my chest hollowed.