This fiction is co-authored by AuditoreanGhost and UKChuckster.
Enjoy!
Chapter II: First Class
Chuck
Chuck woke up early, as the rays of sunlight coming through the shutters blinded him. Rising up from the bed, he glanced at his digital bedside clock, whose numbers were barely visible behind the glare of sunlight. 6:23am. He definitely wasn't used to waking up at time like this. Looking at his two guitars on the rack, he smiled. He would need to restring the Viper before school, so he might as well start now.
As Chuck pulled the E string off the guitar, sliding the .14 gauge string through the bridge, taking a replacement string from a wooden box. Unbeknownst to him, his mother had just entered the room with a large jug of orange juice and a couple of french toasts. Placing his breakfast on end the table, she sat down next to him on his bed.
"Charles, do you have any classes with Sarah today?" Mary asked, happily.
"Yeah, we have the same history course," Chuck said, almost out of instinct.
"Be nice to her, would you?" Mary asked as she rose up, walking to the door. "She needs reliable friends around. Maybe you could introduce her to Miranda," she suggested.
"I sure will, mom," Chuck replied happily as he tightened the tuning peg.
Sarah
When Sarah woke up, the sun was still below the horizon, barely sending a glow across the purple sky. Although, when you considered the excitement she was feeling on going to a new school, you could call it a good night's sleep. Sarah had already bought all the books she would need, so she had started to read the first one already.
Do I have a crush on Chuck? The question slipped into her mind frequently, as she wondered about her dad's words.
What if mom was right? What if Chuck really did have a crush on me...
Sarah turned her book upside down, looking intently at the ceiling. She didn't even notice when Emma walked into the room, looking worried at her daughter.
Emma handed her daughter her notepad and asked, "what are you thinking about?"
"Chuck" was her simple answer. Her emotions could be spotted from a mile away.
"What about him?" Emma asked, smiling somewhat stealthily.
"He's introducing me to his friends today," Sarah wrote, thinking hard. What were Chuck's friends like? Would they accept her as easily as Chuck had?
"And you're wondering if they'll accept you?" Emma said, knowing full-well what her daughter was thinking about.
"Yeah, how did you know?" Sarah asked, smiling softly.
"I call it 'mother's instinct', darling," Emma replied taking Sarah's hands. "Don't worry, I think that Chuck's friends will be great."
"I hope so too..." Sarah replied.
Stanford, 7.50AM
Chuck was walking through the busy streets surrounding Stanford. It was their first official school day, since yesterday was a introductory day, which practically meant that they needed to attend for 5 hours to listen to their Dean give a moral speech. Chuck didn't mind Dean Beckman's speeches, since he could meet his friends. He had already informed Miranda and Michael about Sarah, so they would be prepared to help her if need be. He opened the main door, just as he felt his shirt being tugged.
Feeling the tug on his shirt, Chuck turned around. He saw Sarah, smiling wildly in her wheelchair. He returned the smile, looking at her friendly.
"Morning, Chuck!" Sarah wrote.
"Morning, Sarah! How are you doing?" he wrote back.
"I'm doing great, Chuck! Who am I going to meet today?" she smiled at him.
"You're going to meet Michael and Miranda in History," Chuck replied, his smile reaching the absolute limit. He just couldn't smile any wider.
"Can you tell me something about them?" Sarah asked.
"Michael is a history nerd. He speaks Italian and Latin fluently. Oh, we use the name 'Skip' when we're teasing him.
Miranda, or Miri, is a complete copy of Michael, albeit for the fact that she speaks Spanish and Italian. She found Latin to be too tedious, so she dropped it."
"Are they a couple? You're speaking of them like they were." She asked carefully.
"They've been dating since the first day in high school, Sarah. They pretty much are the dream couple." Chuck replied.
Sarah looked at the lovely couple walking towards them, who had just parked their car somewhere nearby. A tall, lanky nerd with a stunningly beautiful brunette under his arm. They are so cute together, Sarah thought. The exact sentiment was also shared by Chuck.
The couple walked next to them, with the woman giving Chuck a hug. Sarah felt a minor tug from her heart, which confused her. Was she jealous?
"It's so nice to see you again, Chuck," the woman said, as she hugged Chuck.
"It's nice to see you too, Miri," he replied, which calmed Sarah down.
So this was Miranda. The guy must be Michael then.
After Chuck had shaken hands with Michael, he turned to look towards Sarah. "I'd like to introduce Sarah Walker," he said smiling at her.
"Nice to meet you, Sarah," they both replied happily, both offering their hands at the same time. Sarah shook both of their hands, smiling.
Miranda kneeled in front of her. "Hi, Sarah. How are you doing?" Miri said, looking upwards at her.
She had hoped for a friend when she reached Stanford, but there she was. She had three new friends before she even entered the school. Three nerds, but who was complaining. She could learn to love nerds. Sarah grabbed her pencil and wrote, "Miranda. I'm fine, thank you. It's nice to know that Chuck's friends are so welcoming and kind. I'm sorry if I'm being intruding but how are you and Michael doing?" Sarah asked, wanting know whether their story really was a dream-like one.
"You're not intruding Sarah. Michael and I are doing absolutely great, we're talking about engagement actually" Miri replied, happily.
"That's great, Miri," Sarah wrote.
"Who told you that name?" Miranda teased her, looking bewilderedly at Chuck.
"Chuck did," was Sarah's simple reply, laughing a bit.
Miranda rose up, looking at Chuck teasingly. "Charles, what have I told you about calling me Miri?" she asked jokingly.
"Oh, Miranda! Please spare me?" Chuck pleaded.
Michael stepped in, slightly tugging Miri back from the situation. "I'm sorry guys, but we really need to get going. The class starting in 20 minutes."
The Auditorium (About 15 minutes before class)
Chuck pushed Sarah's wheelchair along, arriving in the large auditorium. It was a classic amphitheatre, although it was smaller than it's Roman counterparts. Chuck spotted a row of seats in the farthest row, motioning for Miranda to reserve those seats.
Sarah yet again tugged his sleeve, showing him her notepad "The Dean told me to go introduce myself to the professor before class. Could you join me?" She smiled.
"Yeah, I think I'm supposed to," Chuck shrugged, giving her the signature smile.
Sarah looked down at the stairs, frowning deeply, but before she could say anything, Chuck was already motioning to Michael. "Michael, could you help me to help Sarah down the stairs?" he quickly said to him. Skip quickly walked to Sarah's other side, placing his hands under her seat, and Chuck grabbed the other side. "On three... One, two, three," he said, as they picked her up. As they reached the bottom, they carefully lowered Sarah to the ground. Chuck swept the mild sweat of his forehead, looking at a very thankful Sarah. She wrote to her pad, smiling at both of them.
"Thank you!"
Chuck nodded to Michael who started walking back up the stairs, to help Miri set up.
Chuck pushed Sarah's wheelchair along, heading for the teacher's room. He was thinking about Bryce at the moment. How could he be in Harvard still? He should be imprisoned for abandoning Sarah on the accident scene.
Sarah saw the confusion in Chuck's face. She frowned, thinking about the load of work she was causing for him. He had to help her down the stairs and practically babysit her. She sighed, writing in to her pad.
"What are you thinking about, Chuck?"
Chuck looked down at the text, being held by a frowning Sarah. He couldn't bare to look at her frowning face, "Bryce..." he confessed, looking at her.
Sarah cringed at the name with a bit of anger. "What about him?" She wrote, sadly.
"Why didn't he go to prison? He was driving the car!" Chuck wrote, seeing Sarah's eyes fall to the ground.
Sarah sighed heavily, looking at him. She hasn't talked about the incident's aftermath since her doctor briefed her on what happened. She saw the sincerity in his face, so she started writing. "While I was recovering in the accident, my father tried to sue him. My dad even hired the best lawyer in town. We hit a wall pretty early in the process. Bryce's dad was a lawyer, so he basically looked through every single moment of the law in question. He eventually found a loophole and exploited it to the letter.
The Judge was basically forced to acquit him, and then they 'offered' to pay my medical bills, we could have paid for it ourselves, but our lawyer suggested to take the deal." Sarah wrote, feeling the most compassionate eyes on her. She saw a mild smile form on his face, which made her smile. She had yet again poured her heart to him, so Sarah started writing again.
"What happened between you and Bryce?" She asked, her smile flattening.
"Well, it was my birthday, my 18th, actually. Morgan, my best friend, and I were talking about what sandwich to take on a deserted island..." Chuck wrote, making Sarah laugh.
"We went into my room to pick up some stuff before going out, and we could hear moaning from my room... I opened the door, and there was Bryce. On my bed. With my crush, Alicia..." Chuck wrote, looking at Sarah.
"I turned and ran out, but Morgan confronted him on my bed. I was standing outside, waiting for Morgan, and I saw Alicia run out. She said she hoped we could still be friends," Chuck wrote, laughing sadly, "And then I saw Bryce throw Morgan out of my room. He got so arrogant, like he had the right to do whatever, or whoever, he wanted on my bed. And then he said I was there on the scholarship that his Dad had set up, so he owned everything that was mine anyway. He ended up on the receiving end of my fist." Chuck gently placed the pen on her pad, looking sadly at her.
Sarah took the pen back into her hand and wrote "Let me guess, he framed you. He said it was unprovoked?" she asked, smiling sadly at him.
"Yeah, he did" Chuck replied, smiling back.
"Go figure," Sarah wrote. "Shall we?"
Dr Marston's Office (10 minutes before the lecture)
Chuck stepped up to the large rosewood door, knocking twice.
"Come in," The lecturer called out wearily. His usual visitors were either bargaining, or begging, for better marks on their tests, or other professors who wanted to 'chat', but today was not a normal day.
Chuck pushed the large double doors open, motioning for Sarah to enter first. She rolled to the office.
"Miss Walker, it's nice to finally meet you" Dr Marston said offering his hand, which Sarah firmly shook.
"It's nice to meet you too, Dr Marston" Sarah replied on the paper as the teacher sat back down on his leather chair.
"Chuck," Dr Marston acknowledged with a nod. "You're helping Sarah out?"
Chuck nodded quickly, before Marston turned his attention back to Sarah. "Miss Walker, I need to ask you a couple of questions, if that's okay?" he said, receiving a nod from Sarah. "I divide my students up into groups, for project work and just so they can help each other out. Do you have people whose group you can join?"
Sarah looked up at Chuck, asking a silent question. "I think me, Michael, and Miranda would be happy to have Sarah," he said to Marston.
"Okay, that's good. Do you have a place to sit in the lecture theatre?"
Again, Sarah looked up at Chuck questioningly. "Yes, I think there's a wheelchair place next to the door?"
"Great," Marston replied, smiling. That's it, Miss Walker. I hope you enjoy your stay in Stanford."
Lecture One: History
In the time that Sarah and Chuck had been with Dr Marston, the theatre had filled with students. Chuck helped Sarah back up the steep chairs, and she pushed herself to the gap beside the door, where there was a universal 'disabled' sign. Chuck sat next to her, but Skip and Miri were already settled into what was clearly their usual position further along the row.
Dr Marston walked into the theatre, carrying little more than a sheet of paper and a small USB thumb drive. "Good morning," he called out, not really expecting a response. "It's good to see you all made it here on time. I'm Dr Marston, I'll be your lecturer for module one of Ancient History."
Just then, the door swung open, spilling light into the darkened auditorium, and a brunette girl strode in, completely disregarding the point that she was nearly ten minutes late for the lecture. Glancing around, she spotted Chuck sitting by the other door, and she strode over to him. "Chuck," she said, clearing her throat, "is this seat taken?"
"Oh, Jill," Chuck replied, keeping his tone even, "no."
"Great!" Jill replied, flashing a huge smile that made Chuck want to throw up a bit. He didn't, mainly because Sarah was sitting right next to him.
In the two years he'd been at Stanford, Jill hit on him practically every day, even going as far as spiking one of his drinks at last year's Christmas party. Luckily, Morgan spotted her mixing in the white powder into his Cuba Libre, and quietly told him what had happened. Needless to say, he hadn't been friendly to her since then, even though she didn't know he knew what she had done.
He felt her lean in close to him and whisper in his ear, "Who's the blonde in the chair?"
"Her name's Sarah," he snapped, causing Sarah to look up from her intense note-taking and watch the two of them. "I'm helping her."
"What a drag..." Jill replied, moving closer to his face. Sarah watched as her heart fell rapidly.
"No. She's fun, and interesting, and it's my pleasure to help her out as much as I can." Jill scoffed in reply, and Chuck responded by pushing her away from him. "I really need to take some notes, Jill." As he turned to pull his pad of paper out of his bag, he saw Sarah staring at him and Jill, with a worried expression on her face. Leaning in, he wrote on her pad. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," she wrote back, looking away quickly and attempting to focus on the lecture.
Chuck frowned, but let it go for now, returning his attention to the lecture.
"Now that the introductions are over, we can start," Marston said, before pressing a button on his computer and showing a map on the projector. "Since we will be starting with the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, I thought that we should start by looking at what the Empire looked like at the height of it's power..."
The lecture dragged on, moving from an intense study of the map that was onto the screen, to a detailed explanation of the Roman Republic that preceded the Empire. Marston was just going through the finer points of the plebeian social dynamics, when the door swung open once again, this time revealing a stunning redhead, who went through the same process that Jill had done earlier on. Except this time she spotted Sarah, not Chuck.
"Sarah?" she said tentatively, having walked straight past Chuck and Jill.
Sarah abruptly dropped out of her trance, looking away from the doodle of a Roman aquila that she had been working on, and up to see the redhead standing over her. Carina? she though in disbelief, blinking at the sight of her best friend, who was supposed to be studying at Harvard.
"You left, and I figured your entire non-academic life would be screwed without me, so I decided to transfer," Carina said, with a giant grin on her face. "That, and I couldn't let you go alone after what Bryce did," she added softly, leaning in so that only Sarah could hear what she said.
Chuck watched the scene with a smile on his face. Quickly deducing that Carina was one of Sarah's closest friends, he nudged Jill awake (she had fallen asleep ten minutes into the lecture) and told her to move up, before moving up himself. "Um, excuse me?" he started, and she quickly turned to face him, "do you want to sit down?"
"Thanks..."
"Chuck," Chuck replied.
"Carina," she said, holding out her hand, "I was at Harvard with Sarah."
"Yea, I figured," Chuck laughed.
"I requested the transfer the moment I heard that you were gone," Carina said, sitting down and turning back to Sarah. "Though, I had time to smash Bryce's face in when he tried to ask around for you. I think his ego took most of the punch though."
Sarah's face broke into a smile, before she brought out her pad and began to scribble on it. "Carina," she wrote, smiling at her. "I'd like to introduce my friend, Chuck." Sarah looked at Chuck whilst she was writing it.
"Your boyfriend?" Carina asked mischievously.
"Carina!" Sarah wrote, looking at her incredulously.
"It's not a denial," Carina said, looking at her amusedly when she rolled her eyes. They're both so blind, that they can't see it...
The End of the Line
Jill approached the row of the tables Chuck was sitting in. She planted her hands on his table, taking a firm look at him.
"Chuck," she raised her voice, which caused Chuck to lift his gaze from the book he was reading. Sarah's expression got grim as she saw Jill's blouse buttons undone. She turned to look at him, which surprisingly calmed her. She could see the hidden grimace.
"Yes, Jill?" Chuck asked clearly annoyed by her seduction attempts.
"I thought we were in the same group!" Jill asked angrily.
"It's four to a group, and I wanted Sarah to be in ours," Chuck replied somewhat coldly.
"But she can't even speak or hear Chuck!"
"She has perfect hearing, Jill," he replied, as Sarah's eyebrow arched at Jill's words.
"Chuck-" Jill tried to continue, but then Carina came out of one of the library aisles, walking towards them.
"Who's this?" she asked, clearly noticing that Chuck wasn't happy with Jill being around.
"This is Jill," Chuck said, motioning towards the brunette.
"Oh. The librarian said to keep it down or leave, Jill," Carina replied, a smirk on her face.
Jill turned on her heel and stalked away, growling. I will ruin their friendship!
Chuck sat back down, settling in his chair. He placed his hands on the desk, grabbing his pen with his right hand, only to be stopped abruptly. He felt a silky touch on his right arm, which startled him immensely. Chuck looked at his right, spotting a hand on his. He then lifted his gaze to Sarah, who's eyes were slightly watered. She was touched, to say the least. Sarah then gave Chuck her notebook with her right hand, smiling softly at him. Chuck looked down at the notebook spotting only two words, though these two words could move mountains.
"Thank you."