Miss Quick

Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven

The Academy for Individuals Gifted with Extraordinary Abilities

I found my dorm in the sophomore dorms, which last year had been the freshman dorms, since Mr. P explained to me that normally, as long as you were at school here, your dorm was the same.

The hallway was long, wrapped around itself with many numbered doors stuck out at intervals. I found mine and unlocked it.

But, I didn't actually have to unlock it, because the door swung open when I tried. In the doorway stood a girl with long black hair. She looked Asian, and when she talked braces peeked out. Red framed glasses sat on top of her head.

"Hey you know you can't come in here. Well, unless you're my roommate, Ariah? But then, why have you come so late? You should've been here yesterday. Unless you live around here, making you a special case."

I chewed my lip, embarrassed by this girl's fast narrative. "Yeah, uh, I am Ariah but I go by Ari. Uh, hi..." I struggled to explain everything and still try to sound polite, "so you're Tara, right?"

Surprisingly she didn't interrupt me throughout my awkward introduction, and now she broke out into a smile. "Yep, you're my roommate! Hey. Oh, I hope you're responsible with a key, because I tend to lose and find mine pretty often."

"I guess, you can borrow mine if you need it, I might not use it that much," I offered in a slight mumble. She was talking at a rate slightly above normal human diction.

"Thought so. I mean-" here she took a deep breath and slid her glasses down on her face. When she now spoke, it was at a more regular pace. "Okay, sorry for me being crazy. It's just, my ability is intuition..."

"That's interesting."

"Yeah, not really. But anyway, I'd already figured out that you lived around here, and I knew you were my roommate when you knew my name already, because they tell you who your roommate is beforehand. And I've never seen you before so there's no way you could've known it before they told you."

"Oh. I see. That's clever."

"Eh, it's my ability. So I talk fast, hope you don't mind."

"I don't think I will."

"Good, so what's your ability?"

I looked at her comically. "Speed."

Tara smirked amusedly. "That's funny! So if I talk too fast you can just hightail it away from me!"

I laughed. My first impression of her had been wrong, I had thought she would be haughty, or even slightly rude, and would interrupt me, or talk too fast to care. But now she seemed kind, and smart, obviously.

She showed me the dorm, which consisted of two twin beds on opposite sides of each other, a long desk with two chairs in between them, and a shelf over each of the beds which left each of us our own corner and wall, interrupted only by the door out. The floor was stained wood, and the walls and furniture were white.

"It's nice," I said.

"I guess," Tara shrugged.

"You'll be living here though, not me," I mentioned. Her side had some personal touches like posters on the walls and some books on her shelf. In her corner were a few boxes which she still hadn't unpacked.

"I'm procrastinating," she explained, referring to them.

I nodded. "So, uh, what does a person do on their first day, while they're waiting around because they have nothing to do before class starts?"