Visionaries

three

// THREE //

As the vegan place gets smaller and smaller behind us, Cass and I leave the awkwardness and anxiety of our lunch behind us and approach our future school.

"Oh, May, I forgot to ask you."

She looks at the ground, thinking, as she holds her two fingers to her bottom lip. Then suddenly, with a smack of her lips, looks up at me again.

"You do speak Italian right? English isn't going to cut it here."

"I was hoping that advanced and not fluent would be enough," I say almost sure that I'm okay.

She raises an eyebrow.

"Okay, I am not very advanced. But I can understand a lot. I just, I know German, English and French and I though that not being fluent in Italian wouldn't be a problem."

"It might be a liberal arts school, but there is still an obligatory language class and it's between Italian and Romansh."

"Romansh?" I exclaim. "Why the hell would we want to learn that? Ugh, I thought I was okay with the universal language of the world and the two main languages of Switzerland. But no," I continue ranting as I prolong the lenght of my 'no'.

"I need to know the third main language of Switzerland as well," I say in a mocking tone.

She grabs my shoulders and starts shaking me, "wake up, woman," she says startled and trying to scare me. I'm afraid it's working. "I was totally kidding," she continues unbelievably casual and quirky. She starts walking in front of me to the main steps of the university.

"Wait, so I don't need Italian?"

She continues walking as she shakes her head and laughs.

"What a funny joke. Ha. Ha. Ha," I mumble. She probably doesn't hear me.

"Hey Cass," I call out as I run to her. "What's with the constant mood swings?"

"Oh, it's a simple theory," she starts, playing with her ring. "Mood swings grasp the person's attention."

"That might absolutely be true. A victim, right here," I say raising my hand. She swats it away. "That's mean. You shouldn't feel victimized."

I can't help but laugh. This is another mood swing.

"I don't feel like a victim, darling, but rather honoured to have such an emotionally well rounded friend."

"Oh, shut up," she says with a smile before she whips her hair in my face and runs inside.

Between laughs, I manage to get out, "I love you, Cass."

And she responds with, "I hate you, too."

Once I let go of the railing, a long cement section leads us to the burgundy doors. I honestly don't know if they are the main doors, but they do lead us inside. Above them, there are windows surrounded by a plastic burgundy framing. A couple of students roam the stairs and a couple stand beside the door. Cass and I pass by them and lead ourselves inside.

The hallways are as clean and simply white as I could imagine them to be. There are posters of plenty of different events, parties and meetings to attend to on the walls.

The hallway leads us to an intersection. The crossing hall continues on both sides. There are steps, also, that lead upstairs and downstairs.

"Oh look," Cass says pointing to a poster beside the staircase. It reads 'OPEN HOUSE: GYMNASIUM. LEVEL 3'.

I try to look around and I see a building plan behind us, on the wall.

"Okay, Cass. So, we're on level 2 now. Take the stairs up."