BODY. ❪ eclipse ❫³ [REWRITING]

𝐢𝐯. EMOTIONAL CRAVINGS

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  THE UNIVERSITY'S CAMPUS WAS FAIRLY large. It was about 8 180 acres with over six hundred buildings which meant they wouldn't be able to visit everything in a day. Instead, the tour was focused on mainly showing Bailey the areas, faculties, and facilities that Bailey was most interested in seeing; the physical sciences.

The dean walked them around spewing out facts about the school and campus life.

"Stanford prides itself on a culture that is intellectually stimulating, collaborative amongst its students, challenging and yet highly diverse. You will be surrounded by some of the brightest minds in the world," the dean said, as they walked around.

The dean was a man of average height, with salt and peppered hair styled short, widely set light brown eyes, and a sort of mousey face. He seem almost overtly excited to show Bailey everything from the very moment they met when he grabbed her hand and shook it vigorously. 

Although her first impression wasn't the best, she didn't like being touched so suddenly, Bailey had started to lean in favour of the man once they started talking about the school and its prospects. She was most interested when she heard him say that there were over 7, 500 externally sponsored research projects the school conducted and that their total budget was 1.82 billion dollars.

Every so often Bailey would slow her walking pace to make sure that Paul didn't get too far behind. He seemed to be allowing them space so that they could talk among themselves but, admittedly, she liked it better when he was closer. 

"Ah! Here we have our Bintu lab. This is where we use systems and synthetic biology approaches to characterize the dynamics of gene and chromatin regulation in mammalian cells. The main goal is to build a quantitative and predictive framework to improve mammalian cell engineering." 

Bailey basically had her face firmly pressed against the glass as she inspected the laboratory. She memorized the tools that they had and the layout all in an attempt to see how it would all look back in Forks. 

"It's beautiful," she confessed. It was unlike any place she'd ever seen before. She pictured how much work she could get done if she'd only had the right facilities a lot sooner.

The dean (truthfully, Bailey had already forgotten his name) looked pleased. 

"You mentioned your interest in chemistry and engineering as well?" he asked. 

Bailey nodded, turning to face him. 

"This way Miss Swan... and friend," he smiled forcefully and they started walking away from the Bintu lab.

Normally, Paul would've been bothered by the fact that this random old white dude was acting as if Paul's mere presence was a nuisance. It was so obvious that he wasn't expecting Bailey to arrive with someone who clearly wasn't her parent. Normally... But this wasn't a normal instance. This was potentially Bailey's future.