I had three projects for my return to Winterview University, home of the Wildcats and cheating hockey team: figure out what the fuck was up with Caroline, try to repair whatever little respect Dr. Mann and I had for each other, and meet those twins that were fucking my entire life up.

Plus, the usual other projects, including, but not limited to, pass my classes, work at Cool Beans Coffee, try to maintain a healthy social life, and not die.

First on my list, besides not dying, was Dr. Mann.

I had his office schedule from last semester memorized, but I didn't know where he would be this semester. I didn't think his schedule would be much different, but I was also really good at being wrong.

His office door was closed, but the light was on inside, so I knocked on the door and prayed he'd give me a chance to explain myself. Of course, there wasn't much to explain: Yeah, I know it seems like I'm a complete liar, but I swear I'm not. Somehow, someone else got on my Twitter account and posted that video. Oh, and I think you're a bitch too. Bye.

"Yes?" he answered.

I took in a breath. "I'm sure you don't really want to talk to me, but I'd like to explain what happened on Christmas if you don't mind."

I heard him stir on the other side of the door, then he opened it to reveal a disgruntled face.

"I really don't want to listen to what you have to say. There's nothing courageous about you. You're just another one of those entitled kids who doesn't care about the consequences to their actions. I was right all along."

"Look," I began, but he interrupted me.

"I'm going to lose everything because of you. Life isn't cheap, Amanda, but people like you are willing to cheat the system and—"

"Shut up."

He looked at me. "Excuse me?"

"If you can call me an entitled bitch, then I can tell you to shut up. Now, let's get one thing straight. None of this is because of me. It's all because of you. You were the one who decided it was acceptable to talk shit about me when I wasn't there, and I'm sorry that this happened, but I didn't do it. The person who took the video posted it."

He rolled his eyes. "Ah, yes, of course. You're not responsible for this."

"I'm working to fix it right now. I'm not happy with her, and she's going to get an earful from me once I'm done talking to you."

"So it's a female student?"

"Yeah, sure."

He thought for a moment. "It's Caroline Sullivan, isn't it?"

"I'm not really sure how you made that leap, but no, it's not."

The lie flew from my lips just a little too easily, and I mentally cringed at myself for covering up her tracks for her. I wasn't happy with her since she was painting me to be the bad guy, and there I was, just going right along with it.

"That's a lie. It was her." Dr. Mann's voice raised in triumph. "It was her."

"No, it wasn't," I spat, since I didn't have a better argument to make.

I should have talked to Caroline first. What the fuck was I thinking?

"Your face gave it all away," he said.

"Oh, so now you're an expert in psychology too, huh?"

"Just like the natural sciences, the social sciences are all tied together. Without understanding all of them, you'll never understand one of them."

He was taking me to school, and I showed up without a pencil or a shit to give about his fake science fuckery.

"And I guess it's the same thing with life. You'll never understand the whole story unless you understand each and every part of it," he continued.

"I'm pretty sure you flipped the order on those. You went from whole to part, to part to whole."

"That didn't make sense, but either way, they go hand-in-hand. You're going to find that out the hard way. I can't wait for it to hit you. Have a nice day. Or don't. I don't really care," he said, then slammed the door in my face.

That went better than I had anticipated. At least I got to say a few words.

I turned around and headed for the Sigma Kappa sorority house to forcefully inform Caroline that I absolutely was not okay with her using me as a pawn. I didn't know why she needed to get rid of Dr. Mann (and with his recent comments about me, I wasn't opposed to the idea either), but I knew that it wasn't because she wanted to help me.

She didn't like me. She had made that pretty clear.

The Sigma Kappa house itself was nice enough, old-fashioned architecture that had hastily been turned modern with white paint and colorful furniture, but the women inside fell everywhere on the spectrum of niceness, and Caroline was their president and queen.

I knocked on the door, and an unfamiliar girl with a blonde pixie cut opened it up.

I took in a breath. I had prided myself on being impervious to good looks, but she was easily the most beautiful thing I had ever laid eyes on. Dark lipstick covered her soft lips (she must have spent years bathing in Chapstick for them to be that smooth), mahogany eyes that studied my face with confusion, and a tattoo on her arm of something that I couldn't make out.

I wanted to take a picture of her and send it to Arti. Hell, I wanted a picture of her for no other reason than to stare at her remarkable looks.

She was goals, and she hadn't even spoken a word yet.

"Um, good morning," she said.

"Oh, shit. Yeah, good morning. Is Caroline here?" I replied, trying to keep my thoughts inside my head and from falling out of my mouth.

She leaned in closer to me, and while this breach of personal space would have usually pissed me off, I was oddly okay with it.

"She's not, actually. Did you want me to pass on a message?" she asked.

"I'll just come back later." Maybe I'd get to see this masterpiece of genetics again. "Any idea when she'll be back?"

She shrugged. "I love her to death, but I don't know where she is most of the time." She giggled. "She's the type to do what she wants."

I nodded. "That's the conclusion I've come to as well."

"I'll tell her you stopped by, though. What was your name?"

"Amanda. And you are?"

She smiled, revealing a small gap between her two front teeth. It didn't lower her goddess-like status in my mind, though. It added character if anything.

"Drew," she said.

I smiled back at her. "Nice to meet you."

She never broke eye contact during our entire conversation, but she did for just a moment to look down at her nails, then back up at me. "Nice to meet you too."

I didn't even want to follow her eyes down to her hands. I was sure they were perfectly manicured to match the rest of her.

I took one last look at her over my shoulder as I walked away, wondering just how the fuck a person could be so beautiful. She seemed nice, too, even though "nice" wasn't usually my style.

I had been burned by that shit many, many times.

In my experience, the best people were the ones who had a heart of gold buried under several layers of sarcasm, aggression, and ignorance on the right thing to say.

They couldn't win people over with lies and bullshit; they had to do things the hard way.

I headed back to my dorm room, unlocked the door, then opened the door. Jackie stood in the room, leafing through her clothes, searching for something in particular.

She looked up at me. "Hey, do you know what I did with my black dress?"

"Uh, no. Why? You have to go to a funeral or something?" I asked.

She bit her lip. "Crap. And no, I don't have a funeral."

"Well, it's just that people generally don't dress up in college unless they have an interview, presentation, or funeral, so..." I trailed off, laughing slightly.

"Or a date," Jackie added on to my list.

"Oh, yeah. I forgot people do that kind of shit." I laughed. "Who's the lucky person?"

Although I had a boyfriend, my dating experience was rather limited, unless Taco Bell and driving around town blasting music counted as a date.

"No one's really lucky. I'm just trying to get Diego to leave me alone," Jackie replied, then ran her hand through her red hair.

"And your strategy is to give in and let him take you on a date?"

She nodded. "Yep."

"Why the fuck would you do that?"

"Free food."

"You're smart as fuck, you know that?"

She smiled. "Could you tell my mom that? She needs to hear it."

I laughed. "If I ever meet her, that'll be the first thing I mention."

"Ha, I could see that playing out well. She'd say, 'Oh, you must be Jackie's roommate. What was your name again?' And you'd just reply, 'Jackie's smart as fuck.'"

"Sounds like something I'd do," I said with a chuckle. "Just text me if things start to go south with Diego. I'll call you and give you an excuse to leave."

"Thanks, Amanda. That means a lot. But anyway, that's enough about me. How was your break? You finally catch up on your sleep?"

I laughed. "I wish. Sleep is for the weak, though."

I liked Jackie, but she didn't need to know the extent of my problems.

She smiled and shook her head. "I figured as much. You still have dark circles under your eyes."

"They're naturally a part of my face at this point. It's part of my charm."

"And they're super cute on you. You make them work."

As much as I loved Arti, the queen of negativity, sometimes having a cheerleader as a friend was pretty nice too.

I smiled. "Okay, well, I'm gonna head over to Viktor and Diego's room for a second. I'll threaten to kill him if he tries any shit with you."

"Thanks. I'm just going to hope that he'll hate me after this and never want to look in my general direction ever again."

I rose my eyebrows. "That's—not how I would handle this, but hey, whatever works, I guess."

I made sure I had my key with me, then headed over to Viktor and Diego's room.

I knocked on the door a couple times, then said, "Let me in, losers. I have something important to talk to you guys about."

"Could you get that?" I heard Viktor ask Diego.

Diego laughed. "Ha, she's your girlfriend, not mine. I don't have to do shit for her."

"I would let her in, but I'm a little bit broken right now." Viktor paused. "And that's Amanda out there, not Caroline."

"Same thing."

I kicked the door. "Open this shit before I lose my shit. I'm not a little bitch like Caroline."

"Considering you cried when I shot you, you're definitely a little bitch," Diego replied with a laugh.

"That's mean. You were in an alliance with her. You shouldn't have gone after her," Viktor said.

"Hey Amanda, you know what's better than making little friends? Saving thousands of dollars," Diego continued to taunt me.

I took a deep breath. "Let me in so I can kick the shit out of you. Or are you a little bitch too?"

"You guys, stop. It's only our first day back," Viktor said.

Diego laughed. "I'm not a little bitch, and I'd love to see you try to beat me up."

"Then let me in. You're about two seconds away from catching these hands for being a piece of shit to both me and Jackie."

"Oh, did she send you over here to 'have a chat' about my intentions? Because, Amanda, sweetheart, I can assure you that my intentions are very pure."

"Uh huh. I'm sure. And no, I actually just wanted to ask Viktor where the hell Caroline is. She's second on my list of people that need shanked right now."

"Am I first?" Diego asked.

I nodded, even though he was on the other side of the door and couldn't see. "Yep."

"No shanking people. That's not nice," Viktor said. "And I think she should be here by now. Did you try the Sig Kap house?"

He finally opened up the door for me, so I smiled and walked inside. He followed behind me, although it took him a little bit of effort to keep up for the few steps we walked.

His surgery was a success, and that put him on track for a return next season.

Of course, that didn't help the fact that he still wouldn't be completely better by the time the NHL draft rolled around, but I tried to count our blessings. It was an unsuccessful effort.

I was a bitter ball of hate about the whole thing.

"Yep, but she wasn't there. There was just this super pretty girl," I said.

"How pretty?" Diego asked.

I rolled my eyes. "Shut up. Don't you have a date with Jackie?"

"Not for a few hours, so I'm available until then," he replied.

I wanted to smack that smirk right off his face.

"God, how the hell haven't you been murdered yet?" I asked.

He shrugged. "I have no idea, to be honest."

"They're having a back-to-school party tonight, if you want to go, Candy Cane. Maybe you can talk to Caroline then," Viktor said.

"I'm not really feeling it. Their last party sucked," I said.

"Okay. That's fine. I just thought I'd say something."

"Wait," I said. "Are the Jardetzky twins going to be there?"

"Probably. Caroline always invites the hockey team, plus she obviously is pretty close with Adrian and Hunter."

I sighed. "Well, we're both going to be missing our roommates anyway, and I have some answers I need from the three of them. Do you care if we go? I mean, it's still pretty hard for you to get around."

He smiled. "It's not a problem at all."

"That's not true, but we're going anyway. I have some questions that need answered."

"About what?" Diego asked.

"This doesn't concern you. Just shut up," I replied.

Diego gave a small smile. "I like a good mystery. I'll figure it all out soon enough."

"Good luck. Nothing makes sense, and I'm probably going to get arrested before this is all over."

"I'm canceling my date with Jackie. This is much more interesting."

I stared at him for a moment. His number one concern was always girls, so what was up with the sudden change?

"No. I don't want you getting your grubby little hands on this. I have it handled, thank you very much," I said.

If I couldn't figure out his motive, he wasn't allowed to be involved. I had learned my lesson from Caroline.

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Hello, everyone! Thank you for reading! So we're back at Winterview now. (I already miss my babies Blaine, Matt, Arti, and the triplets.) Is Amanda's quest for the truth going to go the way she expects, or is there still more to uncover?