Part of a new story

As I walk through the crowded cafeteria in the center of the small college campus my head is swimming, full of things I need to do. I scan the rows of tables trying to find an open seat. To my left is a table of snarky sorority girls with a couple seats empty. I hesitantly make way over to the table, but stop cautiously when one of the girls, a skinny blonde, with perfect, Barbie-like features, looks my way. I look down and mindlessly rearrange the food on my tray trying to ignore the mocking laughter and almost painful glares coming from the girls. I look up slightly, peering through the sheet of dark hair now hanging in my face. I can tell by the look in the girl’s eyes that I am not welcome. I immediately take a step in a different direction.
As I walk aimlessly across the space, an entire table of football players stands and makes their way outside laughing raucously and punching each other. I sit at the empty table and eat alone. I look at table after table of laughing faces and cheerful eyes and feel a pang of loneliness. It has been nearly two months since the semester started and nearly three since I moved away from my friends and what is left of my family back in Chicago. Now I sit in a new school, in a small town in Nevada, where I know no one except for my two roommates Kat and Bianca, both of which have better things to do than sit around the dorm room and chat and both of which are sitting across the cafeteria with the snippy blonde girl.
I eat in silence glancing around the lunch room now and then observing the activity at the other tables making my heart ache a little bit more with each smiling face. As soon as I finish my lunch, I slowly make my way across campus to my next class. My thoughts and stresses bounce throughout my mind and I can feel my muscles become tense. It takes me a moment to realize that a girl is walking beside me, a hopeful grin stretched across her face.
“Hello?” The girl asks timidly, “I’m Lilly. I think you’re in my next class. Humanities, right?”
“Uh, yeah” I reply shaking my head a little to clear my thoughts. “Hi, my name’s Aletta.”
The conversation ends there. We walk in silence toward the northern part of campus. Finally Lilly speaks, her voice cracking.
“Are you alright? You seem a little…stressed.”
I bite the inside of my lip trying to keep the words I so desperately need to say from spilling. Just wait until you can write it all down. You can wait that long, I urge myself. “No, I’m okay.” I answer as coolly as possible.
“Are you sure? You’re all twitchy and your muscles are tense.”
“Do you really want to know why I’m so freaked out?!” I blurt a bit too harshly.
Slowly Lilly nods her head, her eyes slightly frightened.
I take a deep breath and regretfully let the chaos break free. “My mother died a month ago. I started school in a college on the other end of the country. My dad is so drunk and doped up on anti-depressants that he has no idea what’s going on. My brother is on a “self-search” expedition in France, and is totally disconnected from my family. I have seven tests within two weeks along with four opinion papers, three with the same due date. I’m taking overlapping classes from professors who could care less and I’m working two jobs to pay for it all.”
I take another deep breath and stretch my hands out of the cramped fists they had formed. I slowly turn my head toward Lilly, half expecting her to have run away, but there she stands with a sympathetic look on her face, her dark green eyes comforting.
“Feel better?”
“Much actually.” I take yet another deep breath and squeeze my eyes shut trying to relax my muscles.
As fate would have it my toe catches on the cracked cement path and I fall hard onto my knees, my armful of books and binders flying. Lilly’s warning shoots through the air a little too late but she is at my side in an instant. I slowly open my eyes as I hear my books and binders slap the ground. I frantically reach for the papers fluttering away in the breeze and shove them into my bag one by one. Just as I reach for my Biology book the same blonde haired sorority girl walks by and kicks the book with one of her high heeled feet, a wide smirk on her face. The book flips across the grass and flies open landing on it’s pages.
Lilly pushes herself up from the ground and dashes across the lawn to where the book lays crumpled. She quickly picks it up and starts scavenging for any other loose papers that may have gotten away and then slips the book and papers into my arms.
“Thanks,” I mutter, my face flushing red.
Once we get everything picked up and safely put into my bag we head off toward our class once again.
“I hate her,” I mumble after a few moments of silence. “I don’t even know her and I hate her.”
“I don’t think that’s entirely fair,” Lilly says softly, her face slightly shocked.
“Did you not just see that entire thing?” I ask in disbelief. “I’ve never done anything to her! I don’t even know her name!”
We fall silent again as we make our way up the steps to the Science building. I blink my eyes hard to force back the tears that are threatening to spill. It only takes that long for my foot to catch on a step just a short way from the top, but this time Lilly catches me by the arm and keeps me from falling to the concrete.
“Thanks,” I murmur, my cheeks flushing a deeper red.
Lilly smiles and stifles a laugh. “Walking really isn’t your thing is it?”
I laugh at myself as I feel more blood rush to my face. “Are you kidding?” I ask sarcastically. “Gravity is totally against me. I trip just thinking about it.”