Written for TigrisWolf at Comment Fic.
Prompt: Top Ten Signs You've Chosen The Wrong College.
UC SUNNYDALE
by Leni
10. Classes get cancelled due to the professor's MIA status.
"So, what do you think happened?"
Mia shrugs. "No idea."
"She did look pretty stressed lately."
"Yeah. Walsh could use the break, I guess." Mia tried to picture her Introduction to Psychology professor relaxing at some Mediterranean beach. For some reason, she keeps getting the woman's underdressed TA instead. Yum. "Whatever," she tells her friend, "If she wants to play hookie, I say 'go, girl!'."
.-.
9. Your prospective boyfriend up and leaves without previous notice.
"Well, he did leave a note," Caroline says with another melancholy sigh. "It just... He didn't seem the type to run away, you know?"
Her roommate rolls her eyes. "Yeah, yeah. He was a regular hero, you've said." Tina has been hearing about this guy in Chemistry twenty-four/seven as soon as Caroline came back from her first class. Now that he's gone, Caroline keeps whining about the loss. "Have you thought of, I don't know, calling?"
"We never got to the exchange-numbers stage."
"Well, that sucks."
"Yeah." Caroline sighs. "I just... I thought we could've had something, you know?"
She knows Caroline borders on manically obsessive and this guy may have inadvertently saved himself. "Maybe he'll come back next semester," Tina suggests anyway, trying to cheer her up. If she hears one more sigh...
Caroline smiles a little. "A girl can hope, I guess."
.-.
8. There are weird noises at night.
Robert presses the pillow against his ear. "Please say that's your stomach grumbling," he tells his girlfriend, who somehow has managed to sleep through the caterwauling outside.
Or she did, until he spoke right into her ear.
As punishment, Mellie elbows the softer part of his own stomach. "Here's a grumble, big grump," she says around a yawn. "What's up?"
Robert shakes his head, half amazed at her ability to ignore the world when she's tired. Then he's a little proud to have tired her out so well. "I can't believe you didn't hear that," he still says, though his tone is softer.
She gives him a patient look. "Hear..." -she lets the word hang expectantly for several seconds. Of course, nothing happens now.
Mellie cocks an eyebrow.
"Never mind," Robert says.
But a week later, the wailing wakes him up again.
.-.
7. Nobody respects the 'Silence, please' signs.
"I mean, honestly! It's a library!"
Joanna hears her best friend complain about her disastrous study date last night. Personally, she thinks Anne is more upset at having had to cut short her tutoring session with the gorgeous (though very dimwitted, but who cares?) football player, than because of the chaos a group of freshmen caused within the supposedly quiet place.
"That's nothing, Anne," Theo says from her other side. He is the only one in their group who's come here straight from Sunnydale High. "Now, the shit that went on at the high school library..." He whistles and shakes his head. "Now that was nuts."
.-.
6. Nobody ever calls Animal Control.
Callie has ever been a complete coward around big animals. She was her teacher's biggest headache if their class made a trip to the zoo, and she hasn't been to the circus since she was eight and made such a fuss her shame-faced parents hauled her back home in the middle of the lion-tamer's act.
She still gives a wide berth to her favorite aunt's doberman, no matter how Aunt Lizzie insists her pet feels ignored. It's big, and it has teeth, and the one time Callie swallowed her fear and tried to pet it, it jumped on her and pushed her onto the floor before attacking her face.
The family still laughs at her 'so-called' panic attack.
(And then they wonder why she escaped all the way to California a week after graduation...)
But perhaps she should have stuck closer to home, because, and she doesn't care that everyone else thinks she's paranoid, the howling comes from inside the college grounds.
And she's too afraid to do more than cower under her covers, behind the five extra locks she installed on her dorm door.
.-.
5. People drink too much.
"Please, baby," Ryan starts the twentieth message he's left for his (ex?) girlfriend since the mess of last week. He wishes he remembered more about that night, but the bit and pieces that have come back to him make little sense. His last clear memory was trying the new beer at Jack's, and after that... a jumble. A jumble with lots of roaring and grunting and... what had they slipped him, that he'd be so scared of loud noises? And had he really felt mesmerized by fire?
Crazy. The whole night had been crazy.
And Paola had seen him in the middle of it.
His (ex?) girlfriend hasn't talked to him ever since, except in that round-about way he'll make sure to tell her he adores about her if she ever lets him back. The one contact he's had with her, is when she told her best friend to tell his best friend that he's a mannerless brute and that's not the kind of guy she's looking for.
Her best friend also mentioned that, the only bright thing to his plight, was that he hadn't actually cheated on Paola (like her loser boyfriend back home). It's a slim hope, but it's better than nothing, so Ryan hangs up the phone and dials her number again.
Time for message number twenty-one.
.-.
4. Non-college kids keep mingling in the crowd
"Oh my god!" Aura screeches, slapping her best friend in the arm. "Wasn't he like, dead or something?"
Maura squints. "Uh?"
(Yes, the rhyming names was the first sign they were meant to be best friends.)
"That's Cordelia's awful faux-pas, don't you remember?"
Maura vaguely remembers pitying the other girl, why would she date so below her standard? Then she remembers how Cordelia always sneered down at her, always so superior and smart, and then she remembers laughing along with the others when Cordelia's love life crashed and burned anyway. "Eh... Larry, right?"
"Harry, honey," Aura corrects her. "I don't know. Should we say hi?"
The two of them look at each other, trying to see the upside of greeting the high school loser. They might get karma points for being so charitable, but then they might be seen by their new friends.
"Or not."
"Yeah." Maura nods. "Better not."
.-.
3. Night patrols are not friendly at all.
"I hate my job," Damon mutters, glad to have come to the end of his assigned route.
His replacement is already there, grinning too much for a graveyard shift. "Hey, D! Another rough weekend, eh?"
He doesn't dislike John as much as he dislikes most of his other co-workers. At least the boy doesn't press him to take their partnership into the daylight hours. Damon appreciates the space.
"Lowell House went nuts," Damon says, shuddering at the memory. But still, better to belong to the night watch than the only other job he may be eligible for. Nothing on Earth can make him wear those ridiculous Doublemeat Palace hats. "Damn Greeks."
John shrugs. "They're not as bad as some of the other frats."
"Oh, you'd be surprised."
"Well, boys will be boys," John says philosophically, grinning again, and reaches over to slap his back. How the guy keeps himself so cheerful is a mystery Damon has no wish to uncover. "I'm sure you still remember the good old times, eh, old man?"
"I'm thirty-one," Damon growls.
His twenty-something co-worker just smiles. "Take it from me, D. Age is just a number."
.-.
2. Small town people are weird.
Gus breathes in relief when he catches sight of the two guys ahead of him. They look older, but they aren't wavering on their feet or giggling at empty air, so Gus will trust they're reliable.
"Hey!"
The two guys turn to look at him.
Wow. They might be sober, but they sure look intense.
"Sorry," he starts sheepishly. Gus has never been good around strangers, but needs must, right? "I'm from out of town and I'm so fucking lost," he explains. "Mind giving me a hand?"
The two of them seem amused.
For a moment, Gus fears they'll just laugh at the new kid and leave him stranded way after midnight in the middle of Sunnydale. It's not that it's a big town, but it sure gives him the creeps to walk around by himself. Should have stuck with your crowd, he chastens himself. But, seriously, if he had to hear to one more drunken story about that 'big snake' that crashed graduation last year...
"Sure," the guy on the right says, cutting off Gus's train of thought.
The other one waves him over. "Come on. We'll show you the right way."
Gus grins- "Thanks man!" -and rushes to them.
.-.
1. Nobody asks if you want eternal life.
.-.
THE END
10/10/14