Heart's Melody

Chapter 1

🎶 Everybody here was someone else before

And you can want who you want

Boys and boys and girls and
girls🎶

— Welcome to New York,
Taylor Swift

━━━━━━━ •♬• ━━━━━━━

One look and Nathan knew he wouldn't be staying in dorms for more than a year max.

While the building and the premises weren't necessarily bad, it was the people that made Nathan grimace. The thought of sharing space-whether that was a room or bathroom-with others, made his skin crawl.

It was also very loud. Too loud for his liking. He wondered if this was the default setting for the dorm or if it was just the moving-in day.

"Why does that guy have so many toilet paper rolls in his hands?" Nathan's sister, Posie, asked as she pointed to the guy who had just exited the main entrance of the dorm.

Nathan wondered how he should tell an eight-year-old that the reasons could vary from a prank to someone trying to smuggle toilet paper for whatever reason. Or maybe the guy was drunk and thought that the toilet paper rolls were his treasure. In the end, he decided to pretend like he didn't see the guy at all.

"Look at the crowd!" his dad, David Hart, exclaimed. Nathan had learned pretty early in his eighteen years of life that it didn't take a lot to get his dad excited. The man could receive a weird-looking soap and he would be the happiest man alive.

"Maybe we should have set off early so we could have made it here before anyone else," his mom, Annie Hart, said as she looked around worriedly.

"Oh, C'mon dear. We left at 6 in the morning. That's very early. It's just that everyone probably left their houses at 6 too," his dad replied and walked around to the back of their truck to open the tailgate. "Is someone going to help me unload the boxes?"

"Shouldn't we wait until that kid with the clipboard approaches us?" His mom questioned back.

As if summoned by her words, the kid with the clipboard did walk towards them. He was a lanky dude with dark hair that fell flat on his forehead and round glasses that sat snugly on his button nose. The neon vest that he had worn over his red and black flannel shirt glinted in the morning sun.

"Hello, my name is Max. I'm one of the RAs. Can I know your full name please?" he asked, holding up his clipboard.

"Nathan Hart," Nathan replied as he tried to take a peek at the clipboard. With his 6'0 frame, it wasn't much trouble but the speed at which Max was flipping pages made it difficult to make out the words.

"H, H, H..." Max muttered as he traced the column containing names with his index finger. "Here it is! Hart Nathan, room 406."

With a black ballpoint pen, he ticked off in the box adjacent to Nathan's name before looking up. "You can collect the keys from the front desk. Just tell the person your room number and name so they can cross-verify."

"Also, we are facing a little space issue as you can see..." he gestured behind him where the driveway leading up to the dorm building was packed with vehicles. "If you don't have anything heavy to move, you can pick a spot on the front lawn to unload your boxes before taking them up to your room."