February

28 | G'day, Mate

Thursday, February 1, 2018

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Insanity:

Inviting someone along with you and then getting angry with them for...accepting the invitation?

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            Creative Writing was slowly becoming one of my favorite classes. And not just because I had stopped sitting in the front row after the first day of class and had taken up permanent residence in the very back. In the very back with me was a—ridiculously good-looking, if we're being honest—guy that I was slowly forcing to be friends with me.

            Legered was an enormous university with over 30,000 students, and thus most of the classes took place in giant lecture halls where you sat next to someone different every day, depending on what time you go to class. (1) But Creative Writing had eighteen students in it total, and honestly if anyone had sat down in my seat in the back row I would have been deeply offended.

            In the back corner of the room sat Neil Bitner, a guy who didn't seem very interested in making conversation with anyone. On the second day of classes, I had gone back and sat directly next to him, since I was definitely not a front-row type of person and I wanted to know why he had been glaring at me on the first day. I was also terrible at keeping my comments to myself during class, and the number of inappropriate things I said under my breath when other people in the class talked had finally seemed to convince Neil that I was worth getting to know. (2)

            Now, if you're sitting there thinking, "Ah, so this is the guy she ends up dating this semester," you'd be sorely mistaken. As attractive as the kid was, my Instagram stalking had been sufficient enough to show that he had a girlfriend, and I wasn't about to get in on that.

            Friends it was. (3)

            So, I looked forward to Creative Writing. I looked forward to seeing what bizarre outfit this one blonde girl would wear to class every single day—I called them 'costumes' one time and Neil yelled at me. I started taking pictures of the girl's outfit every day to send to Ashley, since she always had the best reactions to everything I sent her. Neil yelled at me for that too, calling it an 'invasion of privacy.' I called it hilarious and totally worth almost getting caught by her multiple times. (4)

            I looked forward to being able to write without feeling weird about it. Everyone in the class loved writing like I did, and it wasn't a 'different' thing to do. When we had free time in the class, after a quiz or something, I would pull up my Word doc and keep working on the latest novel that I had forced myself to start: in February 2018, it happened to be the sequel to another book I had already finished—a book that had done pretty well when I posted it online, if I did say so myself. (5)

            I'm not sure exactly why I feel the need to describe Creative Writing so intently. The class was a major part of my semester, and not just because I found someone who liked Taylor Swift's music as much as I did. (6)

            In all honesty, I didn't even have Creative Writing on Thursdays, which is the day that this chapter takes place on.

            Let's get on with that.

***

            Paige had been getting all of us excited for the entire week over her friend visiting from Australia. Paige had lived pretty much everywhere before her family settled in Utah and she decided to go to college here—she had lived in Australia for part of her high school experience, and there she had met Yara.

            When I got home from classes on Thursday, I wasn't at all surprised to find Paige sitting in the living room with a dirty blonde girl around the same height as me, laughing and catching up together.

            "Morgan!" Paige cried as I walked in the room, "I'm so glad that you're home. This is Yara!"

            "Hello," Yara grinned at me as she jumped up to give me a hug, "Paige has told me so much about you and your roommates!"

            "All good things, I hope," I laughed, "She's told us so much about you."

            "All bad things, I hope." Yara smirked, "Do you want to come and take pictures with us? We were just thinking about going up the canyon to get some pretty shots with the mountains."

            I nodded, looking over at Paige to see if she was alright with that plan.

            "I'd love to, if it's all good with Paige."

            "Totally!" My roommate stood up, smiling at both of us, "But we'd better head over if we're going to make it there while the sun's still up."

            "Good point." Yara nodded, pulling on her jacket. "Let's get going!"

            I was already in love with her accent.

            We hopped in Paige's car—for the second time in my life—and started for the canyon. Yara was by far one of the cutest and funniest people I had ever met; she and Paige told me stories about their adventures back in Australia while we drove, recounting different accounts of the same story and arguing over whose was the true tale.

            We arrived at a good spot to take pictures and hopped out of the car, taking turns being the photographers and the models. I took a ton of pictures of the reunited best friends and laughed as they insisted that I join in on most of the shots myself.

            After taking pictures for a little while we started back towards the car, and I found myself talking to Yara while Paige lagged behind a bit.

            "Paige? You alright?" Yara called back as the car came into sight.

            "I'm fine." Paige replied shortly, and I turned around in surprise. She had been laughing with us just three minutes earlier and now seemed to be sulking her way back to the car.

            "Are you sure?" I asked in concern, "Are you feeling okay?"

            "I'm fine, Morgan." Paige snapped, and I turned back around quickly. I had learned that when Paige got in her moods, it was better to simply pretend that nothing was going on.

            To this day I'm not sure what was bothering her exactly, but that day marked the last that Paige and I ever did anything together.

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Theory:

People are possessive over their own things. Sometimes, that includes people.

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(1) I usually tried to sit in the same place every day, but sometimes people took my unassigned assigned seat, and it wasn't cool.

(2) Although we have differing opinions on exactly why we started talking. I say it's because of my witty comments under my breath, but he says it's because of the fact that I saw him in the gym during the first week of the semester and he didn't want to be weird so he asked me the next day in class if that had been me at the gym, and we started talking from there. He's wrong, but it's fine.

(3) But if we're being honest, I still tried to look good every class because I sat next to this guy. He doesn't know this, haha, surprise, but yeah I made sure every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I didn't look like a hobo. He was super cute and I wasn't dumb, I didn't want to be ugly in front of the guy. But still. Friends it was.

(4) I was really good at it, though. I would hide my phone behind my laptop except for the camera and literally the only person who could see me was Neil. And he still decided to be my friend, so it really reflects badly on him.

(5) It was Dear Sydney. In February I was working on To Whom It May Concern.

(6) Pre-reputation, obviously.