I'm either going insane or Cara was definitely watching me sleep last night.
I was only able to tell when I could feel her body heat near me. Oh, also when I peeked through squinted eyes as she was standing right by my side, analyzing my hair.
Part of me feels like I should be flattered, maybe? But then the other part of me—the part that knows Cara hates my guts—is kind of terrified that she may or may not be plotting my murder. Knowing her, though, there's no way she'd go through with it anyway; the girl can't even tell the cashier no when they ask if she wants a receipt.
As I'm getting ready for my first class, Cara is nowhere to be seen. The room has a ghostly feel when I walk around alone, searching for a good top to pair with my favorite skirt. I end up going with a brown crochet top to match the earthy tones of the patchwork-style maxi skirt I picked out last night. I throw on my favorite summer waist beads—the ones that I bought online from my favorite African seller—with a few shells mixed in, and I prep my face for some makeup. It's nothing too over the top, just enough to make my eyes and lips pop, and suddenly I'm done getting ready for the day.
My first class doesn't start until eleven, so I spend the next hour looking over my piano arrangement for my Honors piano class instead. It's ridiculously difficult, but I think I can have it down in time for the first presentation. After all, I have an entire month to learn it.
"Knock, knock," I hear a familiar singsong voice through the bedroom door. "Can I come in?"
"Yeah, it's open," I tell Norah before she swings the door open with a paper plate in her hand, holding a generously iced toaster strudel.
"I made breakfast," she beams. "It's nothing fancy but this is my favorite thing to eat in the morning and Opal doesn't like sweets for breakfast. Do you want some?"
It does look tempting.
"Sure, you can save me one," I give in, prepping my stomach for heaven. "I'm almost done; I'll come eat it in a minute."
"Okay!" Norah sets the plate down on the small dining table in our mini living room and turns on the TV we have set up in there. I can't remember who brought it, but it surely wasn't me.
Suddenly, I get a notification from my phone that catches me completely by surprise. A message from Cara pops up, and at first, I think my phone is just glitching out, but then she sends a second text as soon as I finish reading the first one.
Cara Jasper: Sorry for texting out of the blue but I have a question to ask you.
Cara Jasper: Do you want to have dinner with me tonight?
...Am I reading this right? Cara's not asking what I think she's asking, is she? How would that even make sense?
On one hand, I'm convinced she just worded her question wrong and isn't blatantly asking me out right now. But on the other hand, what other words could she possibly have meant to use? Do you want to have dinner with me tonight is pretty damn straightforward—
—Which is nothing like Cara.
context? I text back instantly.
Cara Jasper: Sorry, I meant do you want to have dinner with me and a guy I met in my class? He wants to introduce me to his roommate and invited you along too.
Of course it's not even her decision. She wouldn't go out of her way to hang out with me if her life depended on it.
what, like a double date? I respond short and stiff. If she's trying to get me to say yes, she could at least pretend to want me there.
Cara Jasper: No, no. Just meeting up and getting to know each other.
...kinda sounds like a double date to me
Cara Jasper: It's not, I promise.
i'll think abt it. I try to respond normally, though the idea that Cara's already met a new friend and it's only the first day of class just rubs me the wrong way. Aren't I supposed to be the social one? How is she getting guys to ask her out already?
She doesn't text back immediately so I put my phone away and get my bag ready to head to my first class, which includes eating the breakfast Norah gave to me. It's a fifteen-minute walk from the dorm, over in the Brewster-Daniels Music Building, which I'm ninety percent sure most people just call the Music Building. I make it easily with the help of Apple Maps and Spotify until I get to the building and can't seem to find the classroom it's in.
There's a guy lurking around the corner, seeming just as confused as me, so I take a chance and ask him if he's looking for the same class I'm supposed to be at in two minutes.
"Yeah, with Marcus Griffin?" the guy replies, furrowing his thick dark brows in confusion. I nod back.
"I think it might be in the basement?" I suggest, looking again at the classroom number. B-122.
"That would probably make more sense," he says, fixing the positioning of his black, wire-rim glasses on his nose. His eyes are a deep brown and his messy hair matches, making him look exactly the same as every other guy on this campus. Except he doesn't seem like a total douchebag. So far.
"We can walk down together if you want," I tell him and he nods. We start making our way to the staircase that leads to the next floor down and he keeps his eyes glued to his phone screen to make sure we're going the right way. "I'm Aspen, by the way."
He finally looks away to lock eyes with me, smiling. "I'm Theo. Aspen is a nice name."
I chuckle a little. "Thank you. So is Theo."
"Thanks. I feel like it's very... Barington."
"Oh?" I tilt my head, narrowing my eyes at him. "Is that a thing?"
"I kind of feel like it is," he says. "I think Aspen is also a very Barington name."
"What's that supposed to mean?" I tease him.
"I just think it's obvious through our names that we go to an art school," he explains, though I understood the joke the moment he made it.
"I think you're probably right," I tell him with a half-laugh. We make it to the classroom and he opens the door for me, where majority of the seats are already filled up.
It's a smaller classroom compared to the giant lecture halls sprawled around campus, only holding about fifty seats total. The class is Basic Music Theory, so I would assume many more people would be interested, but I guess it's not as popular as some of the other classes around here.
The classroom is set up with high school-style desks—the ones that have the chairs attached. AKA: the worst desks to ever have existed in mankind. One wrong move and the whole thing comes toppling down; nobody wants that.
There are two seats right beside each other in the far back of the room so Theo and I walk over to sit down, trying our best not to nudge anyone on the way. After a short moment, the professor clears his throat and instantly pulls up the class syllabus, and the room gets deathly silent.
The silence lasts the entire hour and fifteen minutes that Professor Griffin spends talking about the syllabus and his classroom rules, and all of it is ridiculously boring, unfortunately. But afterward, Theo is grabbing his things and trying to leave before I have the chance to ask him for his social media or anything. I mean, he seems pretty cool—we could be good friends, I think. Plus it would boost my ego to know Cara isn't the only one who can make friends on the first day.
Speaking of Cara and her new friend, I should probably text her back. I wasn't actually going to go to this double date that she so badly wants to convince me isn't a double date, but after meeting someone new, I'm feeling a little more energized. My social battery is so full right now, I think it would kill me not to go to this thing.
what are the details of this dinner? I text her almost two hours after my last message. It takes a while, but as I'm nearing the halfway point between my last class and the next one, she texts back.
Cara Jasper: Xander House second floor common room at six. Do you have any classes?
just this last one that ends at 2:30. wtf is xander house?
Cara Jasper: A boys-only dorm apparently.
oh? that's not very on brand for Barington
Cara doesn't seem to respond to my message with any sort of positive emotion. She just skips it completely and asks if I'm "for sure going," to which I reply maybe, just to piss her off a little. It works, I note, as she responds with Ughhhh instead of her boring old Ok.
I text her again that I'll be there and she just thumbs-ups my message instead of sending a real reply, and I guess that serves me right for messing with her in the first place.
My next class, Honors Classic Piano, begins and ends on the same note: boring and lonely. The professor is fine—she's a much older woman who has clearly has plentiful experience in her field; I just don't think I'll enjoy being here very much. But I have to endure it for the next few months, so I guess we'll see how well that goes.
I take advantage of my free time to grab a matcha latte from the on-campus coffee shop and explore the area a little before I head back, and I'm finally able to throw myself onto my bed at around four PM. The weather is still pretty hot outside—hardly hotter than it was in Vermont, though. Everything here feels pretty much the same, except it's much more rainy back home.
A few minutes after I finish listening to my favorite ghost stories podcast, Cara walks through our bedroom door looking completely panicked.
"Everything okay?" I can't help but ask, even though she most likely won't want to provide an answer.
As expected, she just stares me down as she drops her bag onto her desk chair. But then, she takes a deep breath and pinches the bridge of her nose. "I think you might be right."
Wow, okay, I never thought I'd hear those words come out of Cara Jasper's mouth, of all people.
"About...?" I ask.
"About this being a double date," she mumbles as if it's killing her to admit she may have been wrong. That part doesn't surprise me.
"Told you," I say under my breath until I realize it comes off a little less snarky and a lot more childish.
"Oh, shut up," she waves me off.
"I thought you promised it wasn't a double date?"
"Well, I didn't think it would be at first," she explains, running her fingers through her hair as she always does when she gets nervous. "The guy who invited us seemed friendly, and there were zero undertones of flirtation anywhere in our conversation."
"So then what changed your mind?"
Instead of responding with words, she just pulls out her phone and hands it to me to look at. The screen is set on messages between Cara and who I'm assuming is the guy she's been talking about, and her last message reads: My roommate says she's down to have dinner. Then his response: awesome! it's a date :)
Well, that does seem like pretty irrefutable evidence.
"You think he really sees it as a date?" I ask, handing her phone back to her.
She snatches it out of my hand a little too quickly and says, "I mean, you read it, didn't you?"
"Okay, I didn't ask for the attitude," I hold my palm up to her with furrowed brows. "I just think he's using it the way most people use it—as an expression."
"Okay, but what if he's not? What if he really means it's a date?"
"I mean, I don't know. Do you like him?"
"I just met him," she says, stepping onto her desk to get up onto her bed. "I mean, he's nice, but I don't think I really see him like that."
"Then you can let him down gently if it comes to it," I try my best to help her out.
She drags her hands along her face. "Ugh," she groans. "I can't do that."
I roll my eyes at her. "I don't know how you can be so blatantly harsh with me and yet so timid with everyone else."
"Well, you make it easy," she says almost too quickly—as if she didn't even mean to say it out loud. How the hell am I going to make it through this dinner?