Living in her Shadow
Disclaimer: i own nothing, it all belongs to Meg Cabot except a couple of characters that i created
I used to study English at a renowned science college- I guess I figured that if I had a impressive name on my C.V no one would look into the fact that the whole English side of the place wasn't anything to really boast about. My plan must have worked I suppose because I'm now a foreign correspondent for a successful news programme- not quite as well known as CNN or anything like that, but it pays the bills and puts discount Jimmy Choos on my feet every now and then.
But back to college. I lived on the quiet, boring side of campus in a walk in closet, which you could barely fit a shoebox into, and shared a floor with about sixteen scarily intelligent scientists who didn't take me seriously because I was to 'artsy' for them or something. However, living arrangements aside, college life was more or less everything I hoped it would be. My lectures were on the whole pretty dire but I had found the most amazing group of friends who I hung out with every night at our local bar, The Orange Peel. At school I had always been a bit of an outsider- to normal for the cheerleaders, to shy for the drama students and to lazy for the athletes but here at college I seemed to fit right in immediately with these people. Cara had read practically every book ever written and was always willing to recommend one to me and then have an in depth discussion about each and ever one, Pete and Terry had this terrific house on the outskirts of campus where they threw the most wild parties practically every week that left everyone reeling for days afterwards. Lily, the unspoken leader of the group was passionate and head strong-she had her very own complaints column in the college paper and filmed a public access TV show from her dorm- she once made me demonstrate outside McDonalds for eight hours to raise awareness about the use of battery chickens. Lily refused to talk to me for a week when she caught me sneaking out of McDonalds a week later eating a Mcchicken sandwich.
But the best thing about college was by far Lily's older brother Michael- tall dark and handsome with an IQ higher than Einstein's and his very own band that played at The Peel every Thursday night. He wasn't exactly part of our group but being related to Lily and everything meant we spent a lot of time together. He was training to became a brain surgeon or something intellectual like that. The only downer was his ex girlfriend was a princess- A PRINCESS!!! How on earth could anyone compete with that? I didn't even own my own dorm room but she owned her own country- well it was actually a principality or something like that but still she ruled over thousands of people, or she would do in a couple of years. I was lucky if I even got my tutorial group to listen to me once in a while.
They had broken up amicably when she moved back to Genovia (her country) and Lily once told me that Michael was utterly heart broken when she left and would probably never stop loving her. That's just the thing I wanted to hear but I suppose someone like Michael is bound to have an amazing ex girlfriend- with guys like him its practically a rule. I would always be living in her shadow.