Dangerous Infatuations

RESUMPTION

Maybe someday when I die, I will look back to this day and not lament life so much.

A bit of an overreaction probably, but I was really not looking forward to my second year of college. Hence a week late was I in gracing the premises of Oakwood Park University. That too with a fresh grimace twisting my features.

If this year went anything like the first, I'd be better off doing an about-turn than trudging forth to whatever awaited me inside.

The two months of break back to the norm had spoiled me with its simplicity that I wasn't up for all the complications associated with here. Really, if I had enough guts, I would have gone for a transfer. As it was, laziness and sheer head-in-the-sand attitude had prevented me from even thinking of this place in my absence. The break had not only been welcome but much-needed to gain some perspective as to what exactly were my priorities.

And as well as the past days of simplicity had gone, that was the goal. Not that I had any ideas in the bag on how to go about achieving the impossible.

Impossible—because all I had left behind, all I had pigheadedly repressed was slamming back into my head now, imbuing my normally bored countenance with a healthy amount of anxiety.

Of course, this breakdown wasn't just about being back here to this edifying institution.

Life awaited me here. In all its ugliness and bewilderments.

Being back here was being back to all of that.

Back to petty jealousies and uncomfortably intense wants, all mingled with a cold fear for a cocktail that could be named life but more appropriately was a toast to hell.

I sighed out loud, quit stalling and recommenced with the abhorred walk—trudge—deeper into the cave. Nothing for it. One heavy step in front of the other it had to be. There was going to be no turning back from here, Charlene.

I groaned at the beginnings of a headache, as though my body itself was instinctively protesting the path. Rather, it was more about me being unused to the wee hours of the morning after the relaxed routine of two solid months. Had taken to it like a duck too when eight months of morning classes hadn't even put a dent on the sleeping habits. Oh, well, I had always known what my role in life that Shakespeare aptly gave the moniker of a stage was, and that was my whole problem. That once I had discovered the said role, I had had no conflicted feelings in embracing it as wholeheartedly as is possible of any amateur.

And really, the whole of my heart hasn't proved to be an amateur in any way. If someone didn't clock me at once within an hour of my acquaintance as a regular lazybones, all set to lurk in the outskirts doing nothing, then their powers of observation needed to be fixed pronto. While I didn't care to shudder in fear of new experiences, I didn't care to move the ten steps to meet them either.

A rather self-loathing little smile formed on my lips. As my debut year here proved, sometimes you didn't even have to take the trouble to move. Not when the trouble had no problem coming to you once you had attracted it without doing anything at all special. Really, just a nice scent would do.

At least that's what he said.

A pretty common experience it must be, since he had moved onto a fresher buffet soon enough. Or the word buffet probably didn't qualify, since he was hardly indulging, not like with—

"Oh, sorry, Char—"

The reckless bloke—Jay—skated away without a care or even a peep over his shoulder at the stumbling me. I found my footing, just, no thanks to the skater-boy, which was just—college.