My Professor's Secret

01|

o n e

375 days before wedding

The roads and sidewalks had finally begun to crowd as we approached the college campus I would be spending my upcoming months. My nerves had already begun to eat their way through the façade I'd swallowed before we left home and the aftermath had quickly started crawling up my throat.

Students had been carrying overly stuffed totes in their arms probably filled with as much from home as they could fit. Making their way through the multitude of people trying to do the same thing at the same time. From the car window, it looked like a hundred ants swarming around. A little part of me envied those people.

Most of them adored the way they were in the past—the way they still are I suppose—but not me. I'd be lucky if I never saw my old self again. Starting here was the start at reinventing myself into something no one would see through. For a moment, I actually wanted to kick myself at how cliché I sounded. Half of these people probably came here with the same exact mindset. Ready to start over and finally experience things like a proper adult.

In Dreycott, there weren't a lot of people which only made the pressure to be perfect more important. Everyone knew everything about everyone and people weren't afraid to gossip about you. A girl from my junior year got knocked up and people treated her like a screw up until she graduated with all honors and got into Harvard University. No one ever talked bad about her again.

My focus shifted over to my brother who had been sitting in the front seat thinking about God knows what. This was his second year so I presumed the non existent nerves he had were at bay. I always wondered how he managed to stay so nonchalant. Christian promised me last year that when it was my turn to come to college, he would help me settle into my dorm and I was gracious he kept his promise. Truth is, I missed him. He's my best friend. Probably the best person I have ever known.

"Hey ugly, dad said what's your residence hall?" Chris said, turning around from the passenger seat to look at me.

"Oh, um, it's..." I dragged on, pulling out the paper to double check even though I had studied this sheet over one hundred times last night. "Cambridge Hall."

Dad kept quiet, but nodded his head and searched around for any signs pointing to where we needed to be. There were so many people in one place at one time, I could feel claustrophobia sneaking up on me. My high school graduation was four hundred people tops, but this was way more. People were unloading cars like a can of packed sardines.

My family and I come from an extremely small town where there aren't nearly as many people outside at once. Dreycott, Minnesota. An extremely small, nearly nonexistent town that basically no one had ever heard of when I brought it up in conversations. We'd only known the living of a small town so this many people was new to us.

When Dad had successfully maneuvered around the college campus and found my residence hall, dad turned to look at me with a smile on his face.

"You excited? You look nervous."

I shoed him away. Nervous was the last thing I wanted someone to see when they looked at me.

"No. Just taking in the change of scenery is all. I have a lot of getting to know this place ahead of me. There's no time to be shy."

The boxes beside me reminded me that this was the beginning of something new. Something I had been looking forward to for ages. There wasn't any room to mess this up or to taint my chance at being who I've always known myself to be inside. It was my turn to live.