Awakening - The Last Science #1

Chapter 2 - Rachel DuValle - III

  Rallsburg, Washington—a town that would normally fade utterly into obscurity—existed primarily to serve the students and faculty of Rallsburg State University. Nestled at the southern edge of the Olympic National Forest in the foothills, it originally stood as a logging town and a railway stop between Tacoma and the Pacific coastline, but when the state decided to sponsor a new college campus, it became prime cheap real estate. The school was established, new housing built, and new residents surged into the town.

  It took a great deal of time before the well-entrenched locals came to accept the newcomers that plagued their once simple town, but as more new businesses sprang up and the town became a hotbed of economic growth, even the most stubborn homeowner came to see the benefits the new school brought. They resisted, but no trouble had ever come from the new university, and so their fears went unfounded for years. By the time the school reached its first decade of operation, Rallsburg as a whole came together to celebrate its anniversary, without a single harsh word to be found in the entire township.

  However, as the years went by and the excitement faded, coupled with the lack of any real achievement by way of the school, the town grew quiet and lonely once again. Businesses closed up shop. A new, more direct train route was opened to the coast. The college saw decreasing attendance year after year until it shrank to the low hundreds. The state program was already considering closing it for good. Rallsburg was finally accepting its fate.

  In its fifty-second year of education, the college and the town both would be rocked to their core, but for now the students of the university had nothing more to concern themselves with than the upcoming finals week and the never-ending tangled web of relationships and stories that made up a typical college life, albeit in small scale. If Rachel had her way, the transition would be as smooth and painless as possible.

  As she walked (having given up sprinting after she realized she was still perfectly capable to getting to the campus on time at a pace that didn't startle every living creature she passed), Rachel was sure to greet everyone she passed by. She knew nearly every resident of the town by name and face, and those she didn't were sure to get a friendly introduction. Rachel was the type to network everywhere she went to a fault. No matter what context, she was always building up her relationships, forming new connections, and finding new friendships.

  Her tactics were learned from a certain socialite on campus whom she was passing that very moment. Hailey Winscombe, formerly the queen of town, the one whom everyone knew and knew everyone in return. Hailey had been Rachel's inspiration, a queen spider at the center of a vast web, though she was sure that Hailey didn't see it that way. The girl was one of the most genuine and authentic people Rachel had ever met, and that threw most people off guard long enough for her to make friends.

  Yet something had changed. Hailey had become withdrawn and distant over the last year. Rachel had seen her opportunity and struck for it, becoming the new town gossip, the go-to friend for student and townie alike. A cynical observer might have called it manipulative, the level to which she tried to build her status amongst the social structure in the vacuum left in Hailey's wake, but Rachel didn't think of it that way. She wanted to meet everyone, to know their stories and their fears. Eventually, she felt she could see how it all knitted together, so that she could repair the frayed edges and keep the town whole and happy.

  So she told herself, anyway. At some deeper level of her mind, Rachel's nagging conscience reminded her that she was doing it all for personal gain to some degree, and maybe she was. But if she did good by most of the people she met, did her motivations matter?

  Rachel tried to help whenever she was able, and indeed many of the town often approached her as a sort of mediator. If there was a conflict between the old hunter out by the woods and the construction crew working on resurfacing a road near town, they called on Rachel to talk the man down from his guns. When a couple of college kids started skipping out on their rent, the landlord went to Rachel, and she in turn persuaded the pair to pay in full without incident. Even the sheriff of the town - a harsh grumbling woman by the name of Jackie Nossinger - was quick to enlist Rachel's help when there was any sort of trouble that might be solved by diplomacy rather than violence.

  After all, Rachel never forgot anything, or anyone. Her memory was absolutely flawless, and her composure rarely wavered.

  This was in stark contrast to the image the students and faculty of Rallsburg University held of Rachel DuValle only a year prior. Rachel had formerly been something of a ditzy, stereotypical blonde—but without the looks or even the blonde hair. She'd often lose track of assignments, to the point of pulling over-nighters redoing them from scratch to get them in on time. The comment from Mason earlier about the bathroom door still grated at her mind, hours later as she sat idle in class. Her door was a tricky thing, always in disrepair and with a fiddly lock that required you to practically pick it open every time with a clothespin. She'd asked Brian, her landlord, to repair it many times over, but he'd always given some excuse or other. So she'd have to ask Mason, one of her closest friends, or Will, the only two human beings she could bear to be so embarrassed in front of.

  She'd frequently forget birthdays, was terrible with faces, and had a knack for losing every important paper she wrote for days at a time before miraculously recovering them at the last moment. Rachel hated all these things about herself, but try as she might, she'd never managed to improve on it. The only thing she managed was to be on time for everything, even if she had to show up without half of her work. Her life had been a never-ending parade of stress and panic until the last year.

  It had fluttered onto her balcony one day, practically shoving itself into her hand by the bluster of the wind. She'd read from it, she'd understood its secrets, and from that day forward she'd found purpose, a new drive to push her forward. Her old plans were quickly forgotten, vague dreams of possible careers dashed to the wind. Rachel had always been the sort of die-hard 'save the world' type, but she'd never had a clear idea of how to go about doing it. As the years rolled by and the world seemed to get worse and worse, she'd begun to despair that she'd never be able to amount any real change.

  So when literal magic dropped into her lap, she didn't think twice before taking the plunge.

  The lecture she was currently sitting through was exceedingly dull, to say the least, but still Rachel was catching every word, almost effortlessly, even as she had a document open on her laptop, writing a paper for another class entirely. It was just how her mind worked now, this sort of hyper-efficient multitasking, and it was all due to the ritual she'd enacted.

  In hindsight, what she'd attempted was probably reckless and dangerous to untold degrees, but she was too excited and hopeful to pass up the chance. When she'd later told Will (in strictest confidence) what she'd done, he'd been shocked and terrified for her well-being, both physically and mentally. With the fireworks he'd witnessed, she didn't blame him for being worried.