From Shane's diary:
Autumn turned to winter turned to spring and summer and my life has been packed up into these cardboard boxes. I wish it surprised me how few it took to sum up eighteen years on this ball of dirt, but it doesn't. I could tell myself that boxes can't measure life but it seems as good a barometer as any. It's not even a box a year. Not even close.
Annandale University -- my college, I guess - is, according to the propaganda brochure I was sent, "snugly nestled in a creaking forest in upstate New York," the sort of bucolic bulimia that comes as a shock to those teaming millions who expect the state to be one sprawling skyscraper. That skyscraper comment was not a part of the pamphlet, but they should include it. (I'll understand if they ignore the bit about bulimia, people are queasy about induced vomit.) Apparently, the entire campus was supposed to be a massive donation by some steel or oil magnate hundreds of years ago. Who does that, just give everything away? I guess he used most of the older campus buildings to entertain and ensconce his likewise wealthy associates away from the working class. I think he had to be scared of normal people, because why else would you go through such an effort to hide? I'm an expert at that.
Even though the campus is "historic," there are these frankly hideous building crouching everywhere. They don't belong with the Victorian surroundings, which was probably the artistic conceit of their creator, bitter at his lack of endowment. I kind of like them though. It is like sci-fi intruding on fantasy. They are buildings that have traveled from the future just to be eyesores and you just have to appreciate that.
I'm living in the oldest dormitory on campus, Manor House, hidden behind one of the architectural abortions. I was excited at first but I'm beginning to think it might be my punishment for daring to be a freshman. Manor has only the most necessary comforts of the past century (including for a snack machine, because I need five year old chocolate way more than reliable heating and plumbing). From what Eliot told me, the upperclassmen shun Manor because it lacks air conditioning in the summer, but I didn't really care enough to make a fuss about it. The weather can't be that different here.
The first thing I did after I dropping off a box of assorted novels (Authors O-Z) was to twirl on my heels in the main common room like a secular dervish. The building is a renovated manor house (thus the name) that was once the magnate's personal home. From what I read, even his wife left this building alone. Creeeeepy. The wooden floors of the common room are dominated by appropriately period furniture (at least it looks like it to me, member #241,356 of the unwashed masses) though they are a red wine coloring that could not have survived hundreds of years of regular use, to say nothing of a single irregular year as dorm furniture. They don't reek of beer or bodily fluid, just faintly of decay.
I closed my eyes and ran my fingers over the stone wall. I was hoping I would catch a flicker of what was here before. Of what these walls had seen. He might have stood in precisely this spot, touched this very wall - having lived in these dorms for his first and only year here.
If the individual rooms had been a tenth as lovely as the main hall, I would have been just fine. Except, the rooms are approximately one eleventh as beautiful, no different than the rooms you would find in any dorm at any college in America for the past fifty years. It's really cruel to refurbish something beautiful to look so generic, to rip out everything that made it unique and fascinating and cover it all with the same dull white plaster. At least the ceilings are high, though I'm sure they wouldn't be if the administration thought for a moment they could shoehorn another person into the empty space.
My room is both stark and small. Lonely. This is, unfortunately, exactly what dorm rooms look like outside of television. Stupid lying television with its deceitful trickery. I've never really liked it. I can't really fathom having to share this space with another person, though I definitely will have to judging by the two tiny beds. Maybe I can just push them together and have one reasonable bed. If I'm going to be forced into this level of intimacy with another person, I want say in the matter. No one has seen me in my underwear since I was old enough to lock the door.
Okay, technically, I did have say who my roommate would be. I was supposed to fill out this survey so the college could match me with my "ideal" roommate. Except, I let my mom fill it out. She is almost a therapist, so I would hope she would know her own daughter enough to not completely screw me over.
But one of the weirdest parts was that there was this cracked, full-length mirror under my bed. There was enough other trash left by the previous occupants that it seemed kind of reasonable that a whole mirror had been left behind, but still made me a little uncomfortable. It was like there was this nervous doppelganger mimicking me under my bed, brushing out of her face the same tendril of tawny hair that was sticking out of my bandana.
I touched her fingers, the me in the mirror, the one who has fallen through the looking glass, and told her (or she told me), "You're going to be okay. Really." Mirror Shane did not look convinced, her bottom lip finding its way between her teeth. She's lousy at subtlety.
I recoiled when I saw the red dropping upward from Mirror Shane's fingers. I looked at my fingers, the reflection following suit, and saw I cut my finger.
"Stupid girl." I wiped the wound clean with a bit of tissue my mother had given me. Mom was much more upset that I was "leaving the nest" than I could be. I needed to get away and we both knew it. Still, I accepted the tissues from her with what I hope was a reassuring smile, not wanting mom to cry more. I absolutely cannot stand people crying around me. It's like I don't know what to do with my arms, what is even appropriate. It is much, much worse when I am the reason someone is crying.
On the way here, the scenery flew by, like the car never started and everything outside was just a matte painting being scrolled by my window. I could open the car door at any second and step out. The painting would stop spinning and I would still be in front of my house. I could go to my room and read some comfortable novel for the tenth time and not have to face the idea of college.
My mom kept chirping up with these platitudes about how this was a new chapter and all the happy crap. A few she only got halfway through before I could hear the tears in her voice. "Every cloud has a silver-" "College a place where girls become-" She wouldn't even look at me, not even at stoplights. Her eyes stayed straight on the road the whole time. I wanted to write, just to give my hands something to do. I couldn't even fake sleep, since I don't think she could deal with my leaving her any more than was absolutely necessary. So I just stared at my feet or at the blurring matte painting or anything that wasn't mom.
This was all screwing with my emotions. When we stopped at a light just before the college, this huge black bird landed in front of the car. I expected it to peck at the ground or whatever birds do. Instead, it did a little dance and just stared through the windshield at me. Like, really stared at me. The light changed and my mom hit the accelerator fast. I had to scream and pull the wheel to stop her from hitting the bird. Which was kind of weird. I like animals and all, but if a bird isn't smart enough to get out of the way of on-coming traffic, it seems like it won't contribute much to the gene pool.
There isn't going to be enough room here for all of my books. Maybe if I put a lot of them in the closet or put up shelves. I didn't taken more than the bare minimum of books, just the ones that had kept me feeling alive this past year, but they still took up several big boxes that made climbing to the third floor a pain.
The boxes smell great, yellowed pages as familiar as baking bread. I can almost imagine that I'm back in my library, its mustiness obscuring the vanilla oil I used to wear to get Eliot's attention. Maybe I should stop wearing it now, but it is just part of my routine. If I stop wearing it, it will be like giving up. Anyway.
After I finish bring up more boxes than I remember packing, I'm going to explore the campus. It seemed more productive than trying to fit my life into a thirteen by six space. At worst, it would mean I'd stop being pestered by all the other freshmen moving in. One had even pushed open my door with a huge camera and took my picture before I could ask him what he was doing. I yelled down the hall after him, but it was like he vanished into the crowd.
The lottery process that put me here seems to be more than a little rigged; I doubt any of these people stifling early onset homesickness has a single college credit under their belts. I am not homesick. Okay, but I can't keep blaming Eliot. This past year didn't touch me because I didn't let it touch me. I didn't want to be in world without him. But, I've got to socialize and give up on this Emily Dickinson routine before I end up in an attic. I like the sun far too much to be a shut-in, even if it doesn't favor my freckled face. Maybe Annandale will be my world now. I could get to like a world that doesn't involve school dances and ringing bells.
We Shadows is a serialized novel being written by Xen, also known as Thomm Quackenbush. It didn't happen to you, your best friend, or his cousin. Why? Because it didn't happen. All persons, living, dead, undead, or unliving are purely coincidental. Any real persons are used fictiously. What you are about to read is not a news broadcast. No portion of this book may be distributed without the expressed written consent of Xen. Feel free to rope your friends into reading it, though. Do it or I start shooting PuppyOrphans.
