Emma doesn't care for making friends or 'making memories' anymore since she's moved away from her hometown when she graduated high school. She just cares that she'll pass her community college courses and pay her rent... But when a group project, a...
I groan as I rip out another page from my spiral notebook and set it aside. I wasted another page on three sentences. Why do I always do that? Why don't I just cross out the words and start again, another line underneath it? I'm killing so many trees writing this way.
I toss the notebook off to the side and sit up on my bed. If I don't get up now, I'll end up wasting my day sitting under a pile of torn out pages from that poor notebook.
I reach back over to grab the torn page and reread the last few sentences.
"The poor water nymph couldn't stay in the nightmare any longer. The call of the ocean beckoned her to awake, and to move on from the terror she had faced under her eyelids. And yet, she still rolled over as if to say to the waves, 'Five more minutes.' "
Maybe it was best that I tore that page out. Fantasy books are becoming an over-saturated market, anyway.
I turn my head over to the calendar that I have stuck to my wall with several colorful pushpins. September 18th, 2023. In smaller handwritten letters, I had so carefully written underneath it, "MARKETING AT 2:45." I then look over to my ancient digital alarm clock, which had just barely enough brightness to read the time 2:05.
I stand up and stretch. Sure, my class wasn't for another 40 minutes, but I need to drive a half hour to get there and then I like to take my time getting to the class.
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I park my car on the campus lot and start grabbing my things out of my passenger seat.
I put on my backpack and start walking towards the front doors. I didn't mind going to community college. It was always my plan A in high school, anyway. The idea of signing up for thousands of dollars' worth of debt was too scary of a thought to deal with back then. And, if I'm being honest with myself, it's still too scary now.
I pushed open the front doors and started walking through the front foyer, pushing my way past plenty of other students. Or were they teachers? It's hard telling the difference sometimes, since there's so many older adults that attend here.
I make my way down the first hall, take a left, then a right, and push through the second door on the right. It looks like I'm one of the earlier ones here again. There's only two other people seated in the room, one being an older man who sits front and center, and the other being a woman who could be my mom, seated in the middle row, near the wall.
I head up the steps in the small lecture hall and sit in the very last row. If it weren't for the backs of the seats, my spine could touch the cold wall. I set down my bag and unzip it, taking out my notebook and pen. I look over at the clock on the wall. 2:35. Maybe I did get here too early.
I watch as the next couple of students file into class. A boy, in his thirties, perhaps, walks in first. He was wearing obnoxiously big headphones that took him forever to fold up and put in his bag when he sat down. Next, a younger girl, that I recognized immediately. Not because I knew her, but because she made herself known to the class that she was a high school student taking college credit when the semester started. Since then, it feels like she has been a consistent show off every time we have class.
