She didn't exactly expect to dive into a whole social world of college immediately, but she didn't expect to barely know a single soul after one week, either.
Well, no one except for Dan from Bio class. Diabolically polite, extremely literal, and oddly specific, he's a unique one. But Lauren likes her people like that. She wouldn't call him a friend, exactly. More of an elderly gentleman encased in a barely post-teen boy body who happens to be sitting next to her the day the lab tutor tells them to find themselves partners.
He turns to her. Not just his head, but his full body, and says, "Would you perhaps be interested in working alongside me?"
"Sure, why not?" she says, popping a stick of gum in her mouth. Then she narrows her eyes at him. "You're not a complete weirdo or anything are you? I mean, I like weird, but just not like scary weird."
He blinks for a second, and then says, "I should tell you that my room mates say that social skills aren't my forte, but I'll do my best."
"Fine by me. You're already doing better than my roommate." She smiles. "If you know when to shut up, that is."
"I'm pretty sure I do," he says doubtfully.
She turns to fully face him. "Anything you want to vet before we enter into this laboratory matrimony?"
He considers her carefully, his big blue eyes scanning her face. "Do you do your work? Like, you're here to study, not party?"
"Here to study."
In high school, she pulled off both. But back then the fact that Lauren was a good student was a well-kept secret between her and her teachers. She handed papers in on time and as perfectly as she could make them, but she didn't talk in class, or answer questions unless she was called on. That would've destroyed the slim social life she managed to build with some of the party kids in her last two years, going out nights her sister was at sleepovers. Lauren was determined to take care of a few things before college, like knowing how to drink not like her mom, knocking out that pesky virginity and, you know, learning to talk to other humans. But the straight As? Those she kept on the down-low. Here, though, among kids headed for medicine and health careers, it feels normal to openly give a crap about your academic performance. So she does.
"I'm all good," she tells Dan. "Here for the 4.0 if I can get it."
"That works for me." He nods, as if it's decided.
She nods right back and turns back to her desk.
The first person other than Dan that she actually gets to know doesn't even take classes at WC. After a week on campus, she gets herself a job. She doesn't need the money, but what she does need is something to fill the long nights. Something to make her so tired that she doesn't lie there in the pink neon nights, the guilt being whatever the inside-your-chest equivalent of the elephant in the room is keeping her wide awake into the night.
She also needs a job because she needs to be somewhere where Steffi and her coven of hair-straightened, bible clutching gossips are not. Every few nights they materialise in their tiny room, taking up surfaces and filling the air with inanities that make Lauren's intestines twist with boredom. And yes, she knows she's being a gigantic bitch because the girls are always nice and say hi and offer her cookies and eye crème, but there's only so much she can take.
"We do alternate rooms to hang out in," Steffi said pointedly one night after the girls left. Lauren had come in after study hall to find them all assembled on the beds and floor and had barely contained an eyeroll. "You know, so no one gets too bothered."
"Thanks for that," Lauren said, feeling slightly ashamed. Slightly. She and Steffi have been …polite. There were about three failed attempts at a conversation in week one, and now they've mutually, happily moved to toleration and pleasant smiles. It works. Except for the nightly prayer/gossip circles.
So, the new job is about spending her nights unencumbered by the giggling gasps of "did she?" and "he what?" and fighting that weird conflict that comes with the fact that she wouldn't want to be part of this group if someone paid her, but that knowing that doesn't stop her feeling lonely.
She applies at one of those coffee lounges that pepper the small town, full of students and academics frowning at laptops and making a coffee last hours into the night. She was hired after two questions—the answers to both requiring total and utter lies. The owner, a buzzy middle-aged woman names Lara, is always zipping in and out on various errands, telling Lauren and Ray to "look after the place, will you?".
Ray's twenty, tall and wide, with the kinds of tatts and haircut that might scare off the customers if he wasn't always cracking jokes and making the best coffee in town. He's worked there for three years and doesn't plan on doing anything else, he tells her.
On Lauren's first night, he watches her fumble, taking a couple of dishes to the sink at a time, and smirks. "So how much of that application was real?"
"Not a word of it," she says cheerfully, dumping two cups on the draining board.
He laughs, a short, sharp bullet of a thing. "I appreciate your honesty. No wonder you suck."
"And I too appreciate your honesty," she tells him cheerfully. "No wonder you're in charge."
They grin at each other and some kind of alliance is born. He shows her the ropes, telling her how to stack dishes properly so she can carry more, how to write orders in shorthand on the takeout cups, and how to deal with the worst customers while keeping them on the right side of "I want to talk the manager".
It's Tuesday and thirty-five minutes to the end of shift. Lauren's already contemplating the two hours minimum she'll need to put in in one of the late-night study halls to stay on top of things.
She leans on the counter and watches the occasional person trudge past in the cold wind, wishing it would pick up. When she's busy, her thoughts can't stray and she's not wondering if right now, three hours ahead, Vanessa's putting their mom to bed, struggling to assist her with her teeny little bird bones. She flinches and focuses on a group of kids stopping and laughing at something on the pavement outside. "This is like one of those TV show small towns," she says, watching them.
"Yeah," Ray says. "Basically, if it wasn't for the college, this town would be about the size of an intimate gathering. You're a city girl, I take it."
"A New York City girl."
"Wow. You must hate it here. All this nature."
"I like nature. At least I think I do."
"If you're lucky, me and my girl Jenelle will take you on one of our hiking trips. Brutal climbs, but the view and the beer at the end is worth it."
"I honestly don't know whether I want to be that lucky."
"Why'd you come here? Half the kids I went to school with would give a kidney to go live somewhere like NYC."
"No one there calls it that, you know."
"Like I care." And the beautiful thing is he doesn't.
"I just wanted to…" For some reason, she doesn't feel like lying to Ray, saying something about the college program, or whatever crap she typically utters to the few people who've asked the same question. Instead, she hears herself saying, "I just needed to get as far as humanly possible from my family without having to use my passport."
He nods. "I feel you."
The door opens, letting cold rush in.
"Good evening, Lauren." It's Dan from Bio, shaking a leaf out of his shaggy brown hair. "I saw you from the street."
"You sound just like my grandpa." She grins at him. "Top of the evening to you, too, Dan."
"According to all reports, I sound like everyone's grandpa." He waves at a group of people standing outside. Her eyes widen. She didn't think of him as having friends.
"I was going to email you. Do you want to work on the genetics project tomorrow?" he asks.
"Sure. I've got work until nine, but I can meet you after that if it's not too late."
He hesitates.
"Come on Dan, study on the wild side," she teases. "I promise you'll be back in your bed before you turn into a pumpkin."
"Okay, I suppose I could."
"Good boy. Want some coffee?"
"Hey, you coming, Dan?" A guy with wild black curls jammed under a beanie pushes open the door and comes over, wrapping his arm around Dan's shoulder. He looks between Lauren and Dan and his eyes go wide. "Hang on, could this be a social exchange you're having? Outside of the house?"
Dan starts to say something, but two girls join them, cheeks pink with the cold, letting the door clatter behind them. The short one stares off into space, like she's barely there, while the taller girl, with a mass of glossy dark hair tangled in her scarf, loops her arm through Dan's free one.
"Guys, this is Lauren from my genetics class," Dan says, all formal, wriggling a little as if to loosen himself from them. "These are my room mates. Raf, Leyla and Kim."
Raf, with the crazy hair, lets go of Dan and grins at Lauren. "Well if it isn't Ponytail." He turns to the glossy-haired girl, Leyla. "Recognise the hair?"
She smiles. "Sure do."
"Her name is Lauren," Dan says. "I just told you that."
"Relax, Dan." Raf pats Dan's shoulder and turns to Lauren, "You're in Film Appreciation, right?"
"Uh huh." Her one attempt at getting some arts in the famed liberal arts college. It's kind of nice to be staring at a big screen instead of into a microscope for a couple of hours a week.
"Nice to meet you, Lauren, aka Ponytail."
"Why are you calling her that?" Dan asks.
"Because she's always got this jaunty yet serious brown ponytail," Raf says, as if it's perfectly obvious. "It kind of bounces as she takes notes. That's how we remember her."
"She always tightens it before she answers a question, too," Leyla adds. "That ponytail means business."
Lauren fights a blush. How did anyone notice that? She's never even noticed that. "The real question here," she says as casually as she can, "Is why are you even talking about me anyway? I've never met you in my life."
"We talk about everyone," Raf says cheerfully.
"Not like, gossip, Leyla says. "We just wonder about them."
"Yeah, like Hot Pink Backpack," Raf says. "You know her? Sits in the front row."
Lauren scrolls through lecture hall memory until she sees her, the tiny redhaired girl with the backpack half the size of her body. Lauren's always wondered what she keeps in that thing. "Yeah, she looks like she's twelve."
"We've decided she's some sort of child genius auteur or something," Leyla says.
"She's gonna win an Oscar by eighteen," Raf says. "For sure. I just can't decide if it's for screenwriting or directing."
"She could just be small," Lauren argues.
"Yeah, but that'd boring." Raf turns to Dan. "Anyway, you coming home for dinner? Kim's burning something for us all, remember?"
"Shut up," the short girls says, coming out of her reverie to give them all a dirty look. "At least I'm not going around calling total strangers names."
"You do kind of have a habit of lightly blackening most foods," Raf says. He jerks a thumb at Lauren. "And anyway, she doesn't seem that offended,"
"No, because I enjoy being named after my most inspiring, exciting features," Lauren drawls. "Make me feel all warm and fuzzy, ya know?" She picks up a tray of dishes and nods at Dan. "See you at tomorrow at study hall?"
He nods, eyes wide, like he's certain there's some tension, but can't identify it exactly or what to do about it. She gives him a reassuring smile. "Don't worry, we're going to nail this genetics thing. See you later."
"About time. We're about to drown in dishes," Ray grumbles as she joins him behind the counter. "If you can be spared from your little college friends."
They're not my friends," she mutters. "And don't worry, I'll still remember my real friends from the big bad streets of Walla Walla when I do finally move up in the world."
He chuckles. "That's why I like you. You give as good as you get. Last guy, I told him a zombie with a head injury moved faster than him and I swear he got teary."
"Well, you are kind of a lot to take, you know."
He flexes a bicep. "I know," he says proudly.
"Kind of not what I meant." She turns back to her pile of dirty dishes.
"Hey Lauren."
She turns back to the counter. It's the girl with the hair. Leyla. "Yeah?"
"I just wanted to say, we weren't meaning to be rude or anything." She shakes her head and gives her a small smile. She has an accent, something lilting and soft that Lauren can't place. "We're not mean. We just make up stories about people we're curious about when we're bored, that's all. And, well, you've heard that teacher. We get bored."
Lauren can't imagine conjuring anyone's curiosity. Especially not dug into her oversized maroon hoodie, sitting somewhere in the anonymous fringes of the large lecture hall. She shrugs and picks up a pile of coffee mugs. "Okay."
Leyla looks at her for a long moment and nods. "Okay." She turns and walks away.