"Ugh. Fucking Mondays."
A small, pale hand emerged from underneath the bed covers. It groped for the iPhone blaring its 7 AM alarm, its owner unwilling to open her eyes. Once the phone was silenced, the girl grudgingly got up, rubbing her eyes and yawning. A fair amount of dried drool coated the right side of her face, and her black hair was a great mass of tangles. She grabbed her towel and some clothes and walked out of the dorm room for her morning shower.
This was Nicole's morning routine. She was a college freshman, although she didn't look it. She was short for her age and a bit scrawny too. Mathematics was her concentration. She thought it was simply beautiful. Nicole relished the feeling of solving new and difficult problems, and loved the fact that there were so many ways of answering them. People rarely understood her fascination with math, but that didn't bother her.
After an unusually long time, the door swung open and Nicole walked in, hair wet and wearing a hoodie that said "Fire and Blood" with a picture of a red, three-headed dragon, and a pair of jeans. After hurriedly putting on a pair of sneakers, she gathered the leaves of paper strewn all over the floor. Her notes, which she had been studying the previous night. After stuffing them into a backpack with her phone, and a heavy calculus book, she rammed her glasses on and ran out the door.
"7:28. Shit," muttered Nicole to herself. She was going to be late for her 7:30 calculus class, which was in a building on the opposite side of the university's huge quadrangle. Normally, she'd manage to get there early, but this particular day just seemed off for some reason. Pulling her phone out of her bag, she broke into a run. She started composing a text to her seatmate, Martin, asking him to please tell Professor Stewart that she would be a few minutes late, just in case he decided to spring a pop quiz on them or something. Nicole had just pressed 'send' when she collided with something tall and hard. She hit the foliage-covered ground face-first; the red, gold and purple fall leaves were the last things she saw before blacking out.