~Chapter 4~
There's something strangely calming about living in a dorm.
Based on her experiences for the past few days, it's an understatement to say that Rapunzel's floormates tend to retire for the night far later than her own bedtime. In fact, ambient chatter from the lounge often drifts through the walls of the dorm, lulling her to sleep like the "white noise" sleep aid app she used to run back in her bedroom in Corona Woods.
And after a brief two- or three-hour lull in the wee hours of the morning once everyone finally is in bed, Rapunzel usually finds herself among the first to stir. Now that she's no longer homeschooled and dictated by Mother's rigorous scheduling, she's discovered the luxury of wrapping herself up in a blanket with a book and a cup of hot tea for company, while the building slowly comes back to life around her as her floormates eventually wake up and start their day.
The other day, Snow and Rose expressed dismay and shock when Rapunzel told them about her new blanket-book-tea ritual. Apparently, staying in bed longer and getting some extra sleep is supposed to feel heavenly. Maybe one of these days, she might even try it.
But today is not going to be one of those days.
It's Monday, the official first day of classes at Walt Disney University, and Rapunzel is already paying for her poor choices from the previous night.
Having returned from the frat party so late, she was definitely not prepared for the obnoxious gong-ringing of Mulan's dragon alarm clock a mere seven hours later. Given the headache she woke up with this morning, she had clearly overestimated her ability to bounce back from just one night of inadequate sleep. (Mulan, despite being out equally late last night, sprang out of bed in a flash as if she'd actually gotten her full nine hours.)
Her roommate's first class started even earlier than Rapunzel's, so she let Mulan have the bathroom first, opting instead to get her book bag ready while she waited.
(That was the other thing she hadn't anticipated: having roommates who have to wake up at the same time she does on school days and who also need to use the bathroom at the same time.)
So while Mulan was holding up the bathroom, Rapunzel checked that she had all the right notebooks and writing utensils packed and ready. She tested each pen to make sure it glided properly (so she could take notes quickly during lectures) and ensured that each pencil tip was perfectly sharpened (it's a psychological thing). Then she logged into her account on the WDU student portal site to double-check her schedule and the location of her classes (so she wouldn't walk into the wrong class on Day 1) and triple-checked the routes she'd already planned out and painstakingly traced onto the campus map she got from orientation (so she wouldn't get lost and show up late). The sweater draped over her desk chair got stuffed into her bag as well (just in case the lecture hall got cold).
With nothing else to do except shower and get dressed for school, Rapunzel decided to make herself a cup of chrysanthemum tea. If she was going to be running late, she might as well have something instead of skipping breakfast altogether. In addition to getting some calories to help her brain focus in class, she needed to calm her nerves and quell her sleep deprivation headache.
Whenever she felt run down, or sick, or upset, or just needed to clear her head, Mother would make a cup of chrysanthemum tea. She did it when Rapunzel was bedridden for a week with fever and a horrible cough that doctors assured her was just a viral infection that would clear up on its own. She did it when she found her first gray hair. She did it when Rapunzel wanted to rethink this whole "doctor" thing and take up painting instead. Even if she didn't drink it, Mother would go and make herself a cup of tea.
Mother had an established system that she stuck to meticulously. The kettle always went on the stove first. The two minutes it took to boil gave her enough time to gather everything else: her bowl and tea cups from the china cabinet, the dried chrysanthemum flowers from the pantry, the honey from the top shelf. Two spoonfuls of the flowers in the bowl, rinsed with some filtered tap water. Hot water, just enough to cover the bottoms of the cups to warm them, then discarded. Transfer the flowers to the first cup, add the hot water, which should always steep long enough for her to sing her old childhood lullaby three times. Strain the tea into the second cup. Then the honey, one spoonful drizzled over the tea. Stir three times. Clockwise, counterclockwise, clockwise. Serve.
(She taught Rapunzel how to make tea, too, when the girl was old enough that she didn't have to worry about her scalding herself with the hot water. When Mother's health started failing, her hands no longer strong enough to hold the kettle without shaking, the task of making the tea fell to Rapunzel, who did her best to stick to Mother's recipe.)
So now she's pacing back and forth across the floor of the small kitchenette, waiting for the mug of water in the microwave to heat up. She would have preferred using the stove, but there wasn't enough room in Mother's station wagon to pack a kettle. She'll just have to exercise her resourcefulness until she's out of the dorms and can get her own apartment.
Getting her own place doesn't sound that bad, actually. Rent in Epcot City isn't that expensive. (Mother spent a fair amount of time researching the area, contemplating moving into a little apartment near campus to be near Rapunzel when she first chose to enroll at WDU, and Rapunzel had to bend over backwards to dissuade her.) And she'd be able to furnish it however she wants (no more acrophobia-inducing beds lofted six feet in the air), and cook real food in a real kitchen, and have her own bathroom that she doesn't need to share with anyone else.
Speaking of which, Mulan is taking far longer in the shower than Mother ever allowed Rapunzel. She briefly considers knocking and asking her roommate to hurry up…but is there a polite way to say "get clean faster, I need to pee" that still gets the sense of urgency across? After all, she still owes Mulan for coming with her to last night's frat party as moral support and then helping her get home unscathed. Maybe it would be best to stay on her good side. Rapunzel is non-confrontational by nature, and while she knows that part of growing up is learning to assert herself, the thought of making someone else feel embarrassed or guilty still makes her really, really uncomfortable.
Ariel, who grew up with six sisters, has no such reservations.
Rapunzel nearly jumps out of her skin as the other bedroom door flies open. Her redheaded suitemate marches through, clothes tumbling from her arms as she immediately pounds her fist against the bathroom door.
"Hurry up Mulan, I need to pee!"
So much for that.
The other day, Ariel spent a literal half hour singing in the shower. If this keeps up, Rapunzel is going to have to get up at 6 a.m. every day to beat the bathroom rush hour. And now, apparently, Ariel and Mulan both have 8 a.m. classes. They probably should have talked about this when they were going over roommate talking points… Rapunzel makes a mental note to text them later to set up a roommate meeting to lay down some ground rules about their morning routine. Things like whose turn it is to clean the bathroom, who gets up first on which days, who gets a turn after her, who needs to get up earlier so someone else can get to class on time, and who needs to be more considerate of others and not bang things around this early in the morning.
It's not that the hustle and bustle of groggy teenagers stumbling through their morning routine is particularly grating. Rapunzel doesn't mind that. She just doesn't like loud noises. They remind her too much of the summer storms that are a regular occurrence in Corona Woods, sometimes setting off rockslides or loosening the soil enough to fell trees.
One time, when she was two, they were hit with a huge thunderstorm. She remembers the sudden clap of thunder directly overhead, so loud that it felt like very ground the house stood on split in half, followed by a continuous rumble that shook the walls of the little cottage. There was also the shrieking wind that churned just beyond the windows, like the twister that uprooted Dorothy's house and whirled it away to Oz. The power went out that day, so Mother lit some candles, and Rapunzel remembers how the candles would cast long flickering shadows that reached for her like ghostly fingers.
She'd learned very early on that Mother raised her voice whenever she was angry. And when Mother got angry, Rapunzel got hurt. So even at age two, Rapunzel hated loud noises.
"Stop staring out the window and finish your dinner. We've been sitting here for the past two hours."
Mother's voice had been tired, but it was calm. Much calmer than the storm outside.
By then, Rapunzel had long since mastered the fine motor control required to feed herself with a spoon, but Mother would often insist on doing it because the girl took too long on her own. However, Mother usually loaded more onto the spoon than Rapunzel could chew.
She'd swallowed and gagged, tears streaming down her face, eliciting a sigh from Mother. A soft, exasperated sigh, she remembers, but it spoke of louder sounds to come, like thunder rumbling in the distance.
"I told you to chew it, Rapunzel. Now you've wasted all this potato."
"Children in Africa can't even eat one potato a day, and here you are, wasting some poor farmer's hard work."
"It's just rain. Stop staring out the window and chew your food."
Thwack!
The dishes rattled when Mother smacked her hand on the table.
"That's it! Get up, Rapunzel. You're done."
Rapunzel began to cry as Mother slammed things around in the kitchen, dumping the rest of her dinner in the trash.
"I said get up!"
Then Mother's hand had closed around her arm, hauling her off the chair. She was dragged up the stairs toward her bedroom. She'd stumbled on the steps, once, but Mother had only pulled harder.
"Bad little girls go to bed early."
"Very bad little girls, who don't finish their dinner on time and don't chew their food, have to stay in the closet with the Sock-Eating Monsters. I've heard they like to eat very bad little girls, too"
In the dim trembling light from the candles out in the hall, the open wardrobe door gaped like the jaws of a hungry monster. Rapunzel tried to struggle against the death grip on her arm, tried digging her heels into the floor, started wailing and begging Mother to stop, but the monster's jaws only parted wider and wider until even the flickering candlelight was swallowed by the void, and all she could see was darkness—
The microwave dings, startling Rapunzel from her reverie.
She hisses as the heat cuts through her palm.
Stupid stupid stupid. Of course it's going to be hot—she just spun a mug full of polar water molecules in the microwave for a full three minutes!
Chrysanthemum tea may remedy a lot of Mother's headaches and fainting episodes, but as far as Rapunzel knows, it doesn't cure scalds or burns. Better keep a clear head and focus on the task at hand.
Mulan has long since finished her business and left for breakfast at the dining hall, but as predicted, Ariel seems to be determined to stay in the shower until the literal last minute before she has to throw clothes on and sprint across campus to her first class.
Normally, this wouldn't be a big deal. Back home, Mother cited the water bill and restricted Rapunzel's shower time to five minutes and banned baths altogether (despite that fact that she herself showered and bathed for as long as she pleased), even though Rapunzel was the one with far more hair to shampoo and condition. She eventually got around that rule by turning the water off whenever she was lathering, and only turning it on when it was time to rinse off. So while she technically spent longer than her allotted five minutes in the shower, Rapunzel was able to successfully argue that the water only ran for a tiny fraction of her shower time, so that was the last Mother had to say on that subject.
But that's beside the point.
Time isn't the issue. She woke up early enough this morning that she still has plenty of time to get to her 9 a.m. class. And she's already resigned herself to going one more day with unwashed hair, to cut down on shower time. (Even if she were really crunched for time, she could just towel off instead of showering. Or just use the kitchen sink.)
The issue is the chrysanthemum tea.
Rapunzel shudders as she runs her tongue along the back of her teeth and feels the plaque buildup from last night, no doubt intensified by the honey in the tea. She really needs to brush her teeth before she develops a cavity.
That's easy to deal with. She can do that in the kitchen sink if she's really desperate. The real emergency is the fact that her bladder is ready to burst. The tea may have helped with Rapunzel's headache and her pre-first-day-of-classes nerves, but it is still mostly water. Water which has had enough time to enter her bloodstream and get filtered by her kidneys and dumped into her already uncomfortably full bladder. Which she can't empty because the bathroom is still occupied, its inhabitant currently singing her own personal operetta concert.
(Seriously, why do people get such a bad urge to go when they hear the sound of running water?)
She tries weighing out her options. A good future doctor doesn't freak out and descend into panic mode in a crisis, after all.
Her first option is to just pee in the kitchen sink, since it's the only other drain in the suite. But that's just disgusting.
She could also go door to door and pray that one of her neighbors is nice enough to let her borrow their bathroom. But with everyone waking up and getting ready at the same time (it's a miracle that the building has not run out of hot water yet), she doubts she'll be able to find an available bathroom in time.
(Oh, yeah, there's her third option. Just pee herself on the spot. Of course. Brilliant idea.)
She could always run down the stairs and find a private spot in the bushes outside, too. That was what she and Mother were forced to do, back when a pipe burst and the house was left without running water for a week. But Epcot City is no isolated little cottage in the far outskirts of Corona Woods. Anyone could see her here, and she's fairly sure public urination is both frowned upon and punishable by fines and jail time.
Then she recalls noticing a bathroom outside the common area of the floor last night. Her toothbrush, toothpaste, floss, rinsing cup, and towel are all ready to go in her little shower caddy. She doubts the common bathroom has showers installed, but it should have a toilet and a sink, which is all she needs to relieve herself, brush her teeth, and towel off to the extent that she can feel clean enough to put on fresh underwear and real clothes.
Common bathroom it is, then.
When she grabs her keys and eases the suite door open, she can't help but notice that the next door down the hall is also open. A shirtless guy with a towel slung over one shoulder emerges, scrolling through something on his phone as he shuffles forward, clearly heading for the same bathroom Rapunzel has staked.
Oh no he doesn't! She's already been cut off in the bathroom line twice in the same morning, and her generosity is in short supply.
So she breaks into a run. Her shower caddy swings wildly on her arm, and she probably looks like a madwoman, but she's in no mood to let anyone else cut in front of her again. From behind, she can hear his footsteps gaining on her, so she pulls the caddy closer to her chest (to minimize air resistance) and runs like her life depends on it.
Alas, the head start she has from her door being closer to the bathroom is no match for his longer strides. They end up reaching for the door handle at the same time—her hand lands on top of his, just a tad too slow.
Rats.
They stare at each other for a split second before she bursts into laughter. (How can she not? Here they are, two college students—two adults—racing in the halls and calling firsties!)
Her neighbor looks equally amused. "Well, good morning to you, too. You stuck in bathroom traffic?"
"Yeah, my suitemate's singing in the shower."
"It's hard to miss. I could hear her over my roommate's singing."
She giggles again. "I'll, um, be sure to let her know."
"You're Mulan's roommate, aren't you? I don't think we ever got to properly introduce ourselves. I'm Flynn."
She freezes. (Which is admittedly a stupid thing to do, since it's not like she can just camouflage into the carpet.)
It's really kind of embarrassing that she didn't recognize him sooner, since she was able to identify him last night in the basement of a frat house with strobe lights going off and a gazillion people gyrating around them. Maybe it was her preoccupation with needing to find a toilet, or maybe it was the fact that he's currently sporting some serious bedhead, his brown hair mashed flat on one side and sticking straight up in the air on the other.
She should shake the hand he's holding out to her. It would be rude not to. All she has to do is send the signal from her motor cortex down to her spinal cord, then into the ventral horn of her spinal cord, and out to the muscles that move her arm. Probably the biceps brachii and deltoid, specifically. But she remains frozen.
(Seriously, universe? She hasn't even recovered from making a fool of herself in front of this guy twice in the past week, and now she can't even make it another twelve hours without running into him again? All she has to do now is pee her pants in front of him, and this morning will be just perfect!)
He drops his hand when she makes no move to take it. "Hey, take it easy. I don't bite. You hit any other guys with pots or pans lately?"
He's trying to lighten the mood. She knows that. But the only sounds her mouth is capable of producing at the moment seem to be "I…um…uh…"
(Later, when she's taking her late-afternoon shower after classes are over, it occurs to her that a smooth response would be something like Yeah, about a half dozen, actually. So don't go feeling too special. Typical that her brain takes a leave of absence right when she needs it most.)
Flynn coughs and rubs the back of his neck. "Sorry. That was uncool of me to bring it up. I'll just—"
"Rapunzel."
A pause. "Come again?"
"My name is Rapunzel." It's the least she can do for being rude…right?
Oh gosh, she hopes he doesn't think she's being rude on purpose. She tends to…operate a minute behind everyone else when she's in high-stress social situations. He's just had the misfortune of only interacting with her when she's at her worst.
To his credit, Flynn doesn't seem at all bothered by her weird non-sequitur. "Rapunzel…I like it. Very Coronan."
Whoa.
People don't typically remember her name the first few times she introduces (and re-introduces) herself. It's an unusual combination of syllables, she gets it. Even back in Corona, people tended to have trouble with it, unless they were history buffs who realized she was named after some obscure 15th-century princess of the Seventh Dynasty. Her new friends at college have been anomalies—but then again, Ariel and Mulan knew her name before they even met, from the housing office's email that announced they would be living together, and Snow and Rose learned her name right away because she was wearing a nametag when they met her during orientation.
For Flynn to get her name right on the first try and make the connection to some arcane historical figure…she has to admit she's impressed.
He nods at the door. "So. Bathroom. Go on ahead."
Oh yeah, good point. Now that they have proper introductions out of the way, she should probably get back to the pressing issue of, well, pressure on her bladder. Only…
"Are you sure?"
She's grateful for the offer, of course, but she can't help but hesitate. He won the race fair and square, after all. She's already overstepped the boundaries of decent social interaction by being her awkward bumbling self. She'd hate to impose further…
"Yeah, don't worry about it. I'm in no rush, but you're probably running late. Think of it as me making up for teasing you earlier. Let me at least play the gentleman and let you use the bathroom first."
"Oh, no, you don't have to—"
"I insist! Your Highness?" He opens the bathroom door and bows her in.
She has to giggle at his antics. "If you insist, then. It was nice meeting you. I'll see you around, Flynn."
He mock-bows again and moves to shut the door.
Rapunzel sighs in relief. There. That social interaction wasn't so bad. She didn't pee her pants, and they've managed to put the saucepan incident behind them. This Flynn guy seems like a decent person. True, he's a bit of a flirt, but he was nice and gentlemanly enough. And he seems to be friends with Mulan. Maybe they can be friends, too—
"Oh, Blondie, wait a sec! You dropped these on the floor!"
His hand darts through and tosses something on top of her shower caddy. "Cute panties," he adds with a wink before shutting the door behind her.
Oh my god.
The first class of Rapunzel's college career is a 90-minute chemistry lecture. She arrives at the lecture hall early and picks a seat in center of the front row, then gets her notebook and pens ready, tapping her feet impatiently for the rest of the class to show up.
There's a PowerPoint slideshow being projected onto the front wall. The open slide reads, Introductory General Chemistry I, Professor Yzma.
Always good to confirm she's in the right place.
A small bony old lady, presumably Prof. Yzma, is off to the side talking to a burly man who looks a little too old to be a freshman taking this class. Probably a TA.
The lecture hall gradually fills with students, but Rapunzel starts to feel uneasy when no one joins her in the first row. It's a pretty large class—the student portal site where they register for classes said that the maximum class size is about two hundred people, with an even longer waiting list. And yet, everyone who walks in heads for the seats further back. A few brave souls choose the second row, but Rapunzel remains alone in the front.
Aren't most of these people supposed to be premeds, too? The only people who are required to take this class are premeds and certain science majors (mostly biology, chemistry, biochemistry, and bioengineering majors), and she suspects there's a considerable degree of overlap between those two groups.
Premeds are gunners. They're supposed to want to impress the professors, so wouldn't they want to sit front and center to signal how fascinated and interested they are?
This entire situation is already making her more than a little anxious. It reminds her of Solomon Asch's conformity experiments, where study participants who thought they were taking a "vision test" would choose the wrong answer because everyone else was choosing the wrong answer, too. Maybe she should sit somewhere else. Maybe it's an unspoken social norm to not sit in the front row. Maybe these seats are reserved. It's not like she would know. She's never had classmates or had a class in a real classroom before—
"Ahem! It's 9 a.m. Time to start."
Rapunzel snaps back to attention immediately. Class is beginning, and she can't afford to blow her chance at making a good impression. Per Mother's advice, she has to think of every class she attends as an interview for a recommendation letter, so that she can score an actual interview with med schools. That means no slouching in her seat, no cowering behind someone else, no staring off into space.
"Good morning and welcome to chemistry 101. I'm Professor Yzma."
Prof. Yzma clicks her pointer to move on to the next slide. "This is the link to the course website. It has the syllabus and the grading policy, as well as all the test dates. Homework assignments are due at the beginning of class every Wednesday, starting this week. All the lecture PowerPoints are on the website, too. Come to class, or don't. If you think you can keep up with the material on your own time instead of coming to lectures, then do that. I'm not going to waste my time chasing after you. As long as you turn in your homework and show up for exams, I don't care what you do. You're in college now, so I'm not here to hold your hand and remind you about due dates."
Rapunzel thinks that's actually a pretty good policy. If people want to slack off and not attend lectures, they have only themselves to blame if they end up failing. Plus, it makes the lecture hall less crowded. Mother would be thrilled if literally everyone else in this class skipped lectures, so Prof. Yzma would have no trouble remembering Rapunzel's face.
Another click. "This is my email, that's my office location. My office hours are Tuesdays at noon. If they don't work for you, you can email me and set up an alternative time to meet separately."
Rapunzel copies down the information dutifully. Thank goodness Prof. Yzma's office hours coincide with a slot of free time in her own schedule. She makes a mental note to add Prof. Yzma's office hours into her phone calendar later. (Can't have her phone out in class, after all.)
"Now. With all that out of the way, what exactly is chemistry?"
"The study of the composition, properties, and behavior of matter," Rapunzel answers instantly.
Her response earns her a weird look from the instructor.
(What? Was her answer not thorough enough?)
"And, um, the transformations it undergoes…?" she adds tentatively.
Prof. Yzma holds her strange stare for a moment longer. "Erm. Thank you…"
"Rapunzel."
(Oh boy! Day 1, and she's already making a good impression by voluntarily answering questions, and answering them thoroughly, and making sure the professor remembers her. If this keeps up, she'll have that recommendation letter in the bag. Mother would be so proud.)
A sigh. "Thank you, Rapunzel. That was a rhetorical question, but now that we're here, does anyone else want to add to that answer?"
She opens her mouth to answer again but then thinks better of it when she realizes Prof. Yzma said anyone else. It's eerily quiet in here. It's a simple question, so why is no one answering?
The professor points at someone a few rows back, and Rapunzel turns around to see that a number of people have raised their hands.
…Oh.
Honestly, Rapunzel! How many times are you going act like a complete idiot here?
That's funny, her internal monologue sounds just like Mother. It's as if the woman just manifested like a tiny devil on her shoulder.
Don't blame me, she shoots back. You're the one who slaps me if I don't answer a question within five seconds. How was I to know we were supposed to raise our hands? I never went to public school!
She imagines the little horned figure rising to its full height and staring her down menacingly.
Oh, so I'm the bad guy now? If it weren't for me, if I hadn't taught you everything you know, you'd be working for minimum wage at McDonald's. Or worse, you would still be at that old apartment in that horrid neighborhood, living with your father. Would he have gotten you into Disney?
Yeah, I get it. Nothing I've achieved was my doing, and I'm a horrible daughter. Happy?
You can sass me all you want, darling, but you and I both know you would never say any of this to my face—
Rapunzel squeezes her eyes closed and presses her palms to her cheeks. Hopefully, the students sitting nearby will think she's just flushed from embarrassment and not because she just had an emotionally-draining catfight with a figment of her imagination.
Okay, so she blew her first impression. That doesn't mean she can't still salvage it, though. Maybe she can stay behind after lecture to apologize for speaking out of turn. Or apologize at office hours on Tuesday—tomorrow. Or would that be too late?
Maybe Prof. Yzma doesn't even care. She's not exactly the youngest educator around, and WDU is known for its diverse student body. Maybe she's seen weirder people in her classes, so she brushed off Rapunzel's blunder as a nonissue. Maybe an apology over email will suffice. Or maybe Prof. Yzma has forgotten already, so Rapunzel would only be shooting herself in the foot by reminding her. Maybe she can make up for it by paying rapt attention in class, going above and beyond on her homework assignments, and getting perfect scores on all the tests.
Ugh, this is going to eat away at her until she gets it off her chest.
Mother would know what to do. She should text Mother for advice.
But Mother would preface her advice with a thorough dressing-down, detailing every last thing Rapunzel has done wrong since birth. She always does that—if Rapunzel's in trouble for something minor like not taking the trash out on time, it turns into a two-hour lecture about how she never scrubs the toilet properly or how she puts too much honey in the chrysanthemum tea, which snowballs into another lecture about how, instead of studying, she forced Mother to waste two hours scolding her, so she's going to be a failure and never amount to anything…
Yeah, better to figure this out on her own. She's already exhausted from dealing with the tiny imaginary devil on her shoulder. She doesn't have enough emotional stamina to handle a real, actual fight with the real, actual Mother right now.
As she shrugs on her backpack and follows the other students out of the lecture hall, Rapunzel catches bits and pieces of the other kids' conversations. Some are already discussing the homework problems and debating whether benzene will vaporize or float on top of a beaker of water. Others are already planning for the weekend and talking about meeting up with some visiting high school friends.
…And then there's Rapunzel, who hasn't started the homework yet, doesn't know anyone else in this class well enough to be spending the weekend together, and doesn't have any friends from high school. So she's just walking along, staring at the ground and hoping nobody will notice what a loser she is for not knowing anyone else in this class. (At least no one has recognized her yet as the dummy who didn't raise her hand before answering questions because she forgot that other students exist.)
That's what she gets for choosing a prestigious university like WDU: lots of competition and the ever-present nagging feeling that she doesn't really belong in this place where it seems like everybody's smarter than she is.
She read somewhere that about 70% of the population experiences impostor syndrome at some point in their lives. If Mother were here, she would tell Rapunzel to stop being ridiculous, as if her insecurities were an affront to all the painstaking preparation Mother has put her through. (For someone so well-versed in the sciences, Mother harbors quite a bit of disdain for psychology, considering it a "soft" science, more in the realm of a humanities field.) Intellectually, Rapunzel knows she isn't an impostor. All those years of rigorous homeschooling made sure of that. And yet, when it comes to social norms like how to make small talk, or where to sit in a lecture hall, or when to speak up in class, she might as well be an alien in a human suit.
Up ahead, the path branches, the crowd of students dispersing off to their next classes. Rapunzel doesn't have anywhere to be until the afternoon, so she heads to the freshmen cafeteria for lunch.
She's been there for every meal since arriving on campus, but she's always gone with her roommates or the entire floor, never alone. Hopefully she'll be able to find someone she knows there, so she won't have to sit alone like some pathetic loser. Mother wasn't kidding when she warned her to make as many friends with random strangers as possible early on. The cliques are already starting to form. She's pretty sure she'll get weird looks now if she picks a random table and asks to join the people there. Worse, she'll say something stupid—well, stupider—and then the entire cafeteria will clear out—
"Hi, Rapunzel!" someone chirps as she nears the glass doorways of the dining hall.
Wait, what—? She whips around, spotting Snow and Rose on their way out, probably off to class.
Should she say hi back? Or would it make it too awkward? If she doesn't return the greeting, they might think she's being rude. If she does, they might turn around to chitchat, but one of them might walk into a lamppost or something, and everyone's going to laugh at her, and then she'll hate Rapunzel forever for humiliating her, and the other one's probably going to think Rapunzel is some kind of malicious person who makes people embarrass themselves in public, and then she'll lose two friends, and then word's going to get to Mulan and Ariel, and then Rapunzel will have zero friends, and she'll have to share a room with a roommate who hates her, and she'll have to have to transfer schools, and Mother's going to hate her, and she's not going to get into medical school, and…
(At this point, she's already in line to get her student ID swiped by the lady at the cash register, and Snow and Rose are long gone.)
The guy in line ahead of Rapunzel asks the cafeteria worker for a to-go box.
Huh, she didn't know that was an option. Maybe she'll ask for a box, too, and take it to the library or a study lounge or something. Some place where it's normal to sit alone with no friends, unlike the cafeteria.
The cash register worker doesn't bat an eyelid. Just swipes her student ID card, reaches over, and hands her a paper box and a plastic-wrapped packet containing a napkin, knife, spoon, and fork.
Cool. The plastic utensils are even made from biodegradable plastic and can be composted.
She's here a little early, though. According to the school website, the freshman dining hall runs on a schedule. Breakfast is laid out at 7 a.m., lunch at 11, and dinner at 5 p.m. The breakfast foods from this morning have already been cleared out to make way for the lunch options, but some of the food isn't ready yet. They do have pizza, hotdogs (ew!), fruit, and sandwiches available at the moment, so Rapunzel fills her to-go box with a turkey sandwich, a pear, some cantaloupe and grapes, and a cup of yogurt. (Mother used to make her document what kinds of food she took in, and Rapunzel always got a lecture on proper nutrition when she wanted anything remotely "unhealthy," like red meat or more than one cookie. Which was unfortunate because Rapunzel loved baking as a kid, but most of her baked goods ended up going to Mother's workplace to be shared with her coworkers. The strict food diary enforcement stopped a while ago, but some habits are hard to kick.)
As Rapunzel makes her way out of the dining hall, she passes a group of freshmen sitting in a circle on the quad. They look so at ease with each other. With the way they're laughing together, one would think they've known each other all their lives, instead of for a week.
She images they're probably looking at her to-go box and thinking, Hey look, a loser with no friends. That, or Premed gunner who overloaded on classes and doesn't have time to eat at the caf.
She's fine. Really. It doesn't bother her that much. She's heard stuff like that thrown around by the other teens volunteering at the Corona Woods Nursing Home. Besides, people are statistically more likely to be too focused on their own self-perceived shortcomings to notice hers.
She's fine. This is fine.
She has Calculus II with Professor Doofenshmirtz at 2 p.m., which is perfect because she spent the past three hours at the library doing the chemistry homework that's due Wednesday.
Calculus is in the same building where she had chemistry with Prof. Yzma this morning, except it's apparently in a small room upstairs with about 30 seats, instead of in the lecture hall. Which is strange, because just about every STEM major has to take this class. She was expecting a class size in the two-hundreds like this morning's.
Most of the seats are already taken when Rapunzel arrives, except for one in the back corner and a few in the front row. The one in the corner looks a little hard to get to, so she sets down her bag and sits in the front row to wait for the professor to show up.
The room is dead silent. Evidently, no one here knows each other. Rapunzel picks at a loose thread on her shirt and absently braids a strand of her hair to pass the time.
Moments later, there's a sound of high heels clacking down the hallway, and everyone sits up straighter. However, it's just another student scampering into the room, a little sheepish about being late. She's fairly short, about Rapunzel's height, with bronze skin and black hair down past her waist. Rapunzel accidentally makes eye contact with her, so she smiles awkwardly, and the new girl smiles back, equally timidly, before sitting down next to her in the front row.
Everyone goes back to fidgeting, scrolling through their phones, and resolutely ignoring one another. Rapunzel starts looking around the room at the people in her class. There's a guy in the back wearing a bright green beanie. The girl behind her is a strawberry blonde who's wearing a cute headband with a flower on it. The brunette girl on Rapunzel's left is doodling a picture of a gorilla into her notebook. If she had known ahead of time that there'd be this much waiting involved, Rapunzel would have brought her sketchbook, too, to document all her new surroundings.
At 2:15, one guy actually gets out of his seat, announcing, "If the professor doesn't show up after fifteen minutes, we're legally allowed to leave." He grabs his backpack and walks out the door.
No one else follows his lead. Clearly, they're still holding out hope that the instructor will arrive and don't want to make a bad first impression by leaving. Rapunzel is playing what she calls the "24 Game" with the digital clock on the wall. (Basically, each digit on the clock is a number, so if the time is 02:15, then her numbers are 0, 2, 1, and 5, and she has to use all four digits and a combination of the four basic mathematical operations to get 24. She has a minute to solve the puzzle and either get to 24 or declare this set impossible, before the numbers change again.)
At 2:25, about half the class has given up and left. There's still no sign of a teacher, and nobody has shown up to indicate that there's actually supposed to be a class in here.
One of the girls behind Rapunzel—the strawberry blonde with the flower headband—clears her throat and says, "So…since no one's here to teach us, do we just assume they're running really late…or do we assume we're all collectively getting punk'd?"
No one else says a word, so Rapunzel suggests, "Let's give them a little longer. Then we can leave a note on the board or something."
"Okay. I'm Giselle, by the way."
"Rapunzel."
"Oh! I know how we can spend our time waiting! Let's all introduce ourselves! I'll start! I'm Giselle, and I'm from Adalasia. And, um, I haven't decided on my major yet." She beams expectantly at the green beanie guy sitting in the back corner. "Your turn!"
They go around the room, but at this point, Rapunzel has heard so many introductions that she doesn't really remember anything about anyone anymore. Besides Giselle, the only person whose name stuck with her was the black-haired girl on her right because she was the last person to introduce herself. (Her name is Jasmine, from Saudi Arabia, studying political science.)
Giselle strikes up a conversation with a girl who said she was from New York, but Rapunzel just listens in because she has nothing to contribute from living exclusively in Corona Woods, as per usual.
The professor never does show up, as far as they know. Jasmine finally writes, "We were here until 3" on the board before they all pack up and leave.
It's not until she's at dinner with her Valley Tower 6-West floormates that Rapunzel finds the email the calculus professor sent out to the class:
Hello, Calculus II students.
Apologies to those who have Monday sections and went to class today to find that no one showed up. For those of you who are new to Disney, our lecture class meets Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10 a.m. to 10:50 a.m., and section times vary. Your section will be led by a TA (Norm on Mondays, Vanessa on Fridays), who will answer questions you have regarding the course material or homework. We will have lecture tomorrow morning, and sections will start meeting next week.
Welcome to our class. I hope you have an enjoyable and rewarding time in this course.
Heinz Doofenshmirtz
So have you decided on a major yet?"
Drat.
And to think, this conversation had been going so well. "Yes, Mother, I'm studying very hard." "Yes, Mother, I'm meeting new people." "Yes, Mother, I'm eating healthy." Rapunzel had been prepared to say goodnight and hang up, but now it looks like she'll have to deal with Mother a bit longer.
She does feel a little guilty, though, about wanting to get rid of this call. (And for not telling Mother about the yesterday's frat party. And about the horrible things she said to Imaginary-Mother during chemistry this morning.) Mother's all alone at home now, while Rapunzel's meeting new people and living in the big city and draining her wallet dry. The least she can do is spare her a few more minutes.
As for Mother's question…
Here's the thing: Disney doesn't require students to declare a major until the spring of sophomore year. (Premed isn't an actual major; it's just a set of courses that medical schools want applicants to take by the time they graduate.) Which is why Mother already has Rapunzel's first two or three semesters' worth of classes mapped out: the plan is to get the premed classes out of the way before she starts taking classes specific to whatever major she eventually decides on.
The problem is that Rapunzel doesn't know what to major in. She's always had trouble making up her mind—she used to think that she wanted to be an artist since she loved painting, but when she was six, Mother signed her up for art lessons with one of the most prestigious art teachers in Corona. That lasted for a week, before Rapunzel decided that the teacher yelled at her too much, and he smelled too much of tobacco, and art wasn't fun anymore when she had to do it the teacher's way instead of the way she wanted. So Mother pulled her out of the class, and art has been relegated to "hobby" status ever since. Same thing happened when Rapunzel showed interest in music, and pottery, and gardening, and a half-dozen other hobbies.
And then Mother started pushing her into biological sciences, when she was still too young to know what she wanted. All she knew was that she didn't want to be premed, but by the time she realized that she was only going along with it to please Mother, there was no backing out because it was all Mother had been teaching her for years, so it was all she knew.
She shouldn't complain, though. A career in the medical field pays well and guarantees job security. And there's nothing wrong with helping people. And if she's good enough and works hard enough, all of the blood, sweat, and tears will pay off. She might even save up enough to retire early, instead of being forced to do something she hates in order to stay alive, only to stay alive to continue doing something she hates.
Mother is still waiting for a response, so Rapunzel mumbles, "No."
"Have you even looked into it yet?"
"Of course." (If googling "WDU majors" and skimming through the list of programs offered counts.)
"And…?"
"Well, I was hoping to get all the premed classes out of the way first, and then maybe choose a major that has a lot of overlap with premed classes. Or one with fewer credit requirements…"
"Fair enough. But I was wondering, what will you do if this premed thing doesn't work out?"
"Uh, I—well, uh…"
Honestly, Rapunzel's kind of just crossing her fingers and hoping that she does actually get into a medical school somewhere. Mother has her sights set on Harvard or UPenn or Johns Hopkins or some other ridiculously prestigious medical school in America. (WDU doesn't have a bad medical school; it's just less well-known.) It's terrifying, knowing that somewhere out there is a child prodigy who's discovering cheap alternative diagnoses for cancer, or coming up with a solution to world hunger, or doing humanitarian work and setting up charities in war-torn countries. Rapunzel could never compare to these kids, so getting into one of these prestigious schools is just a pipe dream.
But what will she do if she doesn't get accepted anywhere? They've never had this discussion before. Rapunzel always thought it was implied that if she doesn't get accepted to medical school, then Mother will cut her off for being a failure, and she'll be left to fend for herself.
She needs to come up with an answer—fast—before Mother starts sighing exasperatedly and asking, Do you even want to study what you're studying? Do you even care about medicine? Because the truth is, no, she doesn't. But she can't risk disappointing Mother. She's put too much work into getting her where she is.
When Rapunzel doesn't respond, Mother sighs. "Very well. But if you're looking for a program whose classes overlap a lot with premed, I suggest that you look into Disney's bioengineering program."
"Yes, Mother."
When Mother "suggests" something, it's actually an order. But at least it saves Rapunzel the trouble to having to research 100 different majors' required coursework. Bioengineering it is, then.
Mother continues, "A lot of their courses are also required for premeds, and bioengineering can still make for a pretty comfortable future if med school doesn't work out, unlike…certain other majors."
(She doesn't say it, but Rapunzel knows Mother is referring to biology or chemistry, where rejected premeds can't really do much with a bachelor's degree besides teach middle school or go into a graduate program. Mother's disdain for biologists or chemists runs deep, on a more personal level. Rapunzel thinks it has something to do with the fact that Mother was majoring in biology at Corona U when she met her father, a chemistry major. They were both premeds, but neither of them got into medical school, so they both applied for masters programs instead. One thing led to another, and then they both dropped out of grad school when Mother got pregnant, and things went downhill from there.)
"Do you know how the process of declaring a major works?"
No. "Uh…I'll ask my academic advisor when I get a chance tomorrow. They'll probably want me to fill out some forms and get them approved by the director of the program."
"Do that. And be sure to stay on top of things." (Oh boy, here it comes…) "You have to take more initiative, Rapunzel. I can't do everything for you—"
"Yep! That sounds great, Mother! I'll talk to you tomor—"
"How was class today?"
What is this, the third degree? How many uncomfortable and probing questions is Mother going to ask in one night?
"I only had chemistry today. Calculus was actually supposed to be a TA section, and those don't start until next week, so—"
"Did you answer all of questions your professors asked in class?"
"Not all of them, because the professor called on some other people."
"Rapunzel." Ugh, here it comes again. You need to make an impression on the professor so you can get a good recommendation letter.
There's only so much "You must do X, Y, and Z to get into medical school, or else you are a disgrace to call yourself my daughter" she can handle in a day. Enough is enough.
In her cheeriest voice, Rapunzel chirps, "Oops, it looks like my phone battery is about to die. Good night, Mother! Don't forget to drink your chrysanthemum tea!" and ends the call.
Then she buries her face in Pascal, her plush chameleon, and shrieks.
Over the next two weeks, Rapunzel gradually falls into a pattern: go to class, eat lunch from a to-go box in her room while doing homework, go to another class, eat dinner with her floormates if the RAs take them out to "family dinner" or if Mulan invites her along (or alone in her room if they don't), do homework in her room.
Decline partying invitations from Ariel. Decline hanging out in the common area because she needs to study.
Sleep. Wake up. Repeat.
She also gets acquainted with using her preloaded student ID card to pay for laundry and printing at the library. And there's a trash room down the hall, where there are communal recycling bins. There's also a chute in the wall that trash bags are supposed to go down, though students have to buy their own trash bags from the Disney University Mini-Market down the street from campus. Also, Maintenance comes to vacuum the hallway outside every Thursday, and they leave three rolls of toilet paper in the hall, in front of every suite, so at least they don't have to buy those.
She also learns that there's a Barnes & Noble a block from Valley Tower, where students can buy (overpriced) school supplies, dorm room essentials, and WDU hoodies and other university-related paraphernalia. There's a school-funded shuttle service that operates on a schedule and stops at a shopping center north of campus, where students can get groceries or browse the mall.
It's all very important stuff.
The RAs even got a group together for a mall excursion once. Rapunzel managed to find a pair of flats for eight krouns (which she assumes is a fair price because it's not like she's ever bought clothes before), so at least she doesn't have to risk her ankles running around campus in wedge sandals anymore.
Her social life has been quite pathetic since classes started. She Facebook chats with Rose and Snow sometimes because it's free and won't go on her phone bill like it would if she texted them. But she doesn't do that much because she doesn't want to get addicted to social media or give people the impression that she's on Facebook all the time because she has no life. Snow and Rose come over a lot to visit Mulan and Ariel, but Rapunzel always declines to join them, citing the pressures of being a premed when they invite her to "Girls' Night" on Saturdays in Ariel's room. (They always extend her an invitation, though, which is nice.)
Besides them, Rapunzel still doesn't really have any friends, except for Jasmine from her calculus TA section (they stick together because they always run into each other on the way to section and then walk to and from class together). She says hi to Flynn and Aladdin and some other floormates in passing, but they're really just acquaintances.
Most days, if she's not in class, she's in her room. People who regularly drop by to visit Mulan and Ariel are probably convinced that Rapunzel is some kind of dorm hermit because she's always the one who answers the suite door, and Mulan and Ariel usually aren't here anyway.
Mulan spends most of her time outside of class in the common area with their floormates, either doing homework or just hanging out. From the sounds of it, they hold "laptop parties" and group homework sessions out there now. And Ariel joins her sometimes, but she still spends her Friday nights out partying.
One weekend, Ariel didn't return until Saturday afternoon. Rapunzel and Mulan were starting to worry that she'd been taken advantage of or something, but then she came stumbling in, all covered in dog hair and barely conscious. She'd mumbled "good night" and flopped into bed. (They learned later that she'd been stalking her crush, some upperclassman named Eric, and he'd drunk too much at a frat party, so she had to help his roommates get him to his apartment and watch over him all night to make sure he didn't stop breathing or something. She also had a sore throat from singing to him all night because he'd seemed to visibly calm down whenever she sang.)
Mother is still nagging at her to suck up to her professors and go to office hours. Except, Rapunzel already knows all the material for her classes, so she doesn't need any extra help. Heck, she doesn't even need to read the book ahead of class to keep up in lecture or to do the homework. Prof. Yzma even gave her a weird look and asked, "If you don't need help, then why are you coming to my office hours?" when Rapunzel was trying to impress her with her extensive chemistry knowledge.
She supposes she'll have to act dumber or something—but not too dumb because then she wouldn't stand out.
It's very frustrating.
Endnote (Oct 6, 2018): I think I overdid Rapunzel's social awkwardness the first time around, so here's the revised chapter. I split it in half because the original was 13k words, while all the previous chapters were around 7k.