The Arts

1 - The Arrival

ANDI

          Usually, move-in happened during the last week of summer, preceding the beginning of The Arts' fall semester.

Andi Clarkson had procrastinated until the Sunday before.

For the first couple of days, her parents were cool about it, but by the time Saturday rolled around she was being screamed at for not just bucking up and getting all her packing done basically the second she found out she got in. "You're not a child anymore, Cassandra," her father had said. "If this is any indication of how you're going to treat your studies while you're there, maybe you shouldn't go. If you want to go to a private school we can enroll you at St. John's instead."

So, yeah. That was literally the most infuriating way to begin what was supposed to be, according to every movie and TV show Andi had ever watched, the "best four years of her life." It wasn't even that she was procrastinating so much as overwhelmed. She still couldn't believe she had passed her audition. From filling out her application to getting a call from the principal to let her know that she had received a scholarship, the entire process of enrolling at The Arts: Academy for Creative Performance and Design felt like a fever dream.

Andi took extra time getting ready the morning she left. After all, high school was serious business. The teen movies had spoken: the most critical period for a glow-up was the summer between eighth and ninth grade, and Andi really had no choice but to trust that information and work with it. She had spent the first thirteen years of her life growing out her hair and never doing anything with it, simply wearing whatever was gifted to her on birthdays and holidays, and being woefully under-skilled in the makeup and skincare department. But she was almost fifteen now. Drastic changes needed to be made.

Examining herself in the mirror on her closet door, Andi deemed her move-in outfit totally cute in a grungy sort of way: oversized, distressed crop top; black capri-cut leggings; cutoff denim shorts; worn-in combat boots; black and white flannel tied around her waist. She accessorized with a studded belt and her favorite necklace, the one with the bright pink guitar pendant. Her makeup left something to be desired— she couldn't quite get her eyeliner even, so she just kept piling it on, resulting in her looking something like a humanoid version of the raccoon who dug through her family's garbage after pizza night.

Her favorite thing about her new look, perhaps, was her hair. Growing up, she had long, pin-straight, strawberry blonde hair, which adults thought was just the most adorable thing for some reason. She never cut it because everyone else seemed to like it, it was always too flat and thin to style, and on top of it all, sometime between the fifth and seventh grades that beautiful red-tinted color had been poisoned by puberty and turned into more of a dull brown. Over the summer, she had rectified her sad tresses with her first ever trip to a salon. Now, her hair was a deep auburn, layered up and falling right at her shoulders. She looked older. Better. Ready to take on her freshman year at The Arts.

The drive down to Big Creek was an insufferable one. At the risk of saying something totally rude, Andi tried to speak as little as possible while her dad talked at her about how difficult it would be for her living on her own and juggling course overload and how maybe she wasn't actually ready for this because she's never had a strong work ethic and was she even listening to him?! Jean, her mother, optimistic as she tried to be for Andi, was also powerless to the rants and ramblings of Larry Clarkson. Also, her younger siblings wouldn't shut up about how hungry they were for basically the entire drive, which certainly wasn't helping things.

After a three-hour drive, fifteen minutes of getting lost on campus, twenty minutes of Billy and Wanda asking for food and Larry telling them to please shut up or he would lose his freaking mind, a half hour stop at the food court, and ten more minutes of getting lost on campus, the Clarkson family finally rolled into the drop-off site of the girls' dorm. Jean and Larry helped her carry her bags into Room 406 and exchanged their goodbyes, leaving Andi to her own devices.