Teachers Pet - Natasha Romanoff

Chapter 17: Inspection

I made my way into the building, heading for my room. Woahh... the lobby is way more crowded than it usually is. There's groups of middle-aged people dotted around in small groups, holding clipboards, wearing red lanyards. Hmm, wonder what all of this fuss is about.

I weave my way through the crowds, trying my hardest not to bump into anyone or tread on anyone's shoes in the process. Curiosity got the better of me, and as I looked at some of the stern-looking faces around the lobby, it hit me. Of course! It's inspection day. That's the reason I'm here in the first place, why did it take me so long to realise? I only caught on because I recognised some of the people who were delivering instructions to their small groups. They were teachers at NYU. Teachers that were pretty high up too in terms of authority, most of them on the administrative board, and... scary looking. The type of people who you never seem to smile. Ever. Miserable, strict, uptight people, which made me think that they took inspection day very seriously. Most of the other people, however, the ones who were being talked at were just employed inspectors. They had no role at the school, instead their job was primarily inspecting rooms. Those people had much more cheerful looks on their faces. More friendly looking, more approachable, more lenient perhaps. I hope whoever is assigned to inspect our room in one of those guys and not one of those unfriendly looking fellows.

I just about made it to the elevator doors without crashing into too many people which was great. I hopped in and pressed the button for floor 34, checking the time on my phone to see that I still had around 10 minutes until the inspectors would be let loose to come and examine everyone's rooms. It meant that I at least had time to speak to Wanda briefly and tidy our place up. When I finally arrived at my floor and the elevator doors opened, there was complete havoc in the hallway. There were tons of students pacing the hallways along with boxes scattered everywhere and broken furniture and loose items all over the floor, accompanied by loud chattering. Wanda and I weren't really the type to keep anything bad in our rooms. Well... anything that would get us into any trouble. We had barely been here long enough to accumulate anything of the sort anyways, so I can't imagine that either of us had anything to stress over when it came to inspection day. Everyone else, on the other hand, well I can't say the same for them. People on our floor, as well as people on any of the other floors, loved to host a good old dorm party from time to time. Despite the fact that the rooms aren't particularly huge, it never served as a deterrent and some nights I would come home to a hallway full of drunkards, limp bodies on the floor and the smell of sweat and alcohol. It wasn't pleasant, but hey, that's college for you.

But these same students who host all of these parties are the ones who have the most to hide. I imagine their rooms are littered with drugs and illegal shit, and there's probably holes in their walls, or damaged furniture. That would explain the chaos. Everybody was rushing at the last second to try and conceal the damages to their room or dispose of any forbidden items that could land them in any trouble. I tiptoed through all of the mess that seemed to coat the hall floor and made it over to my room where I scanned the key card and walked in, dodging a basketball being thrown around as I did so.

"Hey Wandz, I'm ba-" I called out, yet my sentence was cut short when I saw the state of the room. Did I walk into the wrong room, our room is never this untidy? Oh, no, there's my bra hanging on the bedpost, this is definitely my room. But why was it so messy? It definitely wasn't bad, but it was not how I remember leaving it. There were clothes everywhere, on the floor and on the desk. Neither of our beds were made and the sheets on them needed changing. The books on the shelf had toppled over, with some of them having ended up on the floor, bending and crumpling the pages within them. There were empty water bottles dotted around, loose make up items on the floor and there seemed to be a pile of shoes accumulating under each of our beds. What the hell happened, I swear it never looked like this? Or at least this bad.