The Dancer

1. The Mermaid

Sara worked through the boxes of her dorm, separating the cardboard into different sections. Her organized mannerisms drew to a close once the boxes were separated and she could finally breath. Her roommate's voice interrupted the silence.

"Sara, did you manage to get that coffee maker? I'm dying for caffeine," Megan said with her sweet slightly southern accent.

"It's in one of the boxes. How about I buy you a cup of coffee, I'm dying for some too," Sara replies with a hopeful smile, in need of a break.

"Yea, but not Starbucks, that stuff is just so..." Megan trailed off trying not to insult the local. Sara gave a chuckle.

"Too commercialized? Too overdone? Overrated?" Sara tried to finish her new friend's sentence kindly with a laugh.

"Yea..." Megan was shy and always thought of other's feeling before her own.

"Don't worry, I feel the same way. We can find a small local one," she said questionably. Local one? Starbucks is local you idiot.

Sara got up, straightening her long purple t-shirt which read her university's logo in gold letters.
"I read that you can spot freshman by who wears more school attire," Megan says pointing out her roommate's shirt.

"Should I change?" Sara asks inspecting the shirt. Megan gives a nod and Sara giggles slightly.

She shuffles through a large duffel bag. Finally, she finds a light blue halter top. She shrugs and just changes in front of her friend, not caring if the girl saw her white lace bra.
When the halter top came over her body, Sara glanced up at her roommate who shielded her eyes. Sara laughed and shook her head.

"You can look; it's not like we don't trust each other. Not to mention, I'm pretty sure you're straight, and there's not much to look at," Sara says finishing with a self-degrading remark as she usually does.

"I'm straight...but don't sell yourself short, you got a great...rack?" Megan says questionable. Megan wasn't one to keep up with new phrases, hell, she grew up so conservative that she barely knew what Twitter was.

"Thanks, I guess," Sara says laughing.

The girls throw on light jackets and some boots. Both loving that they accidentally wore similar outfits.

They walked down two blocks until they found a coffee shop that wasn't a chain. Sara waiting in line while Megan ran to the bathroom. Acoustic music played in the background, conversations covered the music, the sound if steam coming from the expresso machine covered them every so often. Sara could barely hear the music or the conversations, her severe hearing loss caused the sounds to drain. Sara ordered coffee for Megan and her, then gave them her name. Similar to Starbucks.

The girls huddled by the pickup bar. Sara had her coat tightly wrapped around her as she shivered slightly and felt the cool autumn breeze sweep through the shop as the doors opened again. Her phone buzzed away with a dark upsetting tune set for when her father called. She answered it reluctantly and tried her best to sound happy.

"Hello?" She answered with a happy-go-lucky voice.

"Hello...your mom and I are about thirty minutes away. My friend, Malcolm, he is free for lunch so we could go meet up with him at that seafood place by the pier. Sound good?"

She wanted to groan, of course, her father never asked her if she wanted to or was able too, he just assumed and if she argued the man would say that he did ask her days ago.

"Yup," she replies biting her lip.

"Good. You can invite Megan if you want," he says trying to make the event more appealing.