The Twilight Twenty-Five
Prompt: Worry
Pen name: LightStarDusting
Character POV: Bella
Rating: M

Chapter 2 – With a Little Help From My Friends
1999

I truly believe that it's not the grand gestures that make an impression but the little things that people do which stick in our minds. The things that they might not even think about, but do regardless, because that is the type of person they are. Big gestures are calculated, thought and planned out. But those little things, they actually show what a person is actually like. Their true self.

Jasper and I had a fairly brief first encounter. But it was enough to make an impression on me. I didn't know him, yet he came to my rescue, which I think is what made it all the more poignant in my mind. I'm almost certain it's not something he even remembers doing. But all these years later, I do.

It was the weekend of freshmen orientation, a weekend that our small New England college with a bit over ten thousand students deemed necessary for all freshmen to attend. There were three sessions, hosting nearly a thousand incoming students during each and they all fell at the beginning of the summer. My peers and I had just graduated high school and the thought of attending a weekend away at college was both exciting and daunting. College really did seem like it was still a long way off, after all; we had the entire summer before we'd be moving into the dorms.

The summer between high school and college was a strange time in general. It ushered in a fresh start, a new beginning. When you've been with the same people for so many years, you don't have a chance to change things up. You fall into the same routine, the same clique, the same role year after year. College affords you the option. Didn't like who you were in high school? That person can fade away. Who do you want to be? What type of people do you want to associate yourself with? You can pick the best parts of yourself and create your college-self. In my mind, college was the proverbial oyster before heading out into the big world.

I spent that last summer with my high school friends, the same people I grew up with and had known my entire life. We went to school together from the time we were finger painting in preschool, to the bad hair days and braces in middle school, to 'the firsts' that came along with high school. For better or worse, we'd seen each other through it all. Promises were made to keep in touch and to hang out over Thanksgiving, but I was well aware that life was changing and we were all moving on to the next big thing. Only time would tell if those promises would be kept.

Freshmen orientation reiterated that sentiment as a group of us sat on the same lawn where we would sit four years later (and let's be honest, in some cases five or six years later) during graduation. My orientation group learned about the ins and outs of college from some very over-enthusiastic upperclassmen, all of whom were hand-picked by the Dean of Students. I was surrounded by the people with whom I would be spending the next part of my life. Somehow, sitting there, flanked by at least fifty people in the same position as I was, I'd never felt more alone.

There were ice breakers. Tours of the campus. Tours of the buildings. More ice breakers. Tours of the dorms, bookstore, and cafeterias. Tours of the laundry room. No, seriously, tours of the laundry room. Like cattle, they herded us all around campus, prodding us and never letting us stray too far off course.

We played games like Psychologist and the Human Knot. We obtained our campus cards with horrible stretched out pictures of ourselves printed on them and were told where the cards would work on campus. It was overwhelming. It was forced. Forced happiness, forced friendliness, forced excitement.

I was scared shitless.

And then something interesting happened.

When the prying eyes of the administrators were no longer resting upon us, the peppy upperclassmen morphed into real people. They told us of the friends that became like family, of the service projects and activities that bound you together. They spoke of the off-campus parties and gave us the reassurance that anyone who said that high school was the best time of his or her life had clearly not been to college. Being the first in my family to go to college, I only had their word to go on and I really hoped it wasn't their sick idea of a joke. While the forced games and banter would fade in time to a distant memory that one day made me laugh, those words would stick with me because they were true. I didn't need to worry; I wouldn't be on my own in college. The people I came to know wouldn't let me.

Toward the end of the weekend, my orientation group and I, along with another group, entered the lecture hall and the facilitator had us sit in the chairs with the flip-up desks that barely held anything. The lecture hall was intimidating with its stadium seating and overwhelming vastness. We were promised that this hall was not the norm when it came to classrooms at the college. It was merely what was used for large orientation groups and for the large prerequisite introductory classes we were forced to take during our first year. Still, I couldn't help but worry. It was part of my chemical makeup.

Nervously, I rolled my pencil back and forth between my hands on the small piece of plastic that hovered above my thigh. The papers made their way from the front of the room to the back, each one deposited on a desk. Sharpened number two in hand, I leaned over, hair falling on either side of the papers resting on the desk. This was important. It was my very first testing experience in a college setting. I vividly recalled looking around the room and noticing others didn't seem nearly as uneasy as I felt. Maybe they knew something I didn't.

I lifted my pencil and started writing my name on the sheet, only to break the point as soon as I pressed down. Sighing, I started searching in vain through my bag in hopes that I had another pencil floating around somewhere, already knowing that this was my one and only.

"Oh, you've got to be kidding me," I hissed under my breath, feeling my skin flush.

My heart raced and as silly as it was, I was too nervous to raise my hand and ask the facilitator for a pencil. I was going to have a panic attack over a pencil. A pencil. My mind couldn't help but doubt my abilities for college. Perhaps I'm not cut out for college after all; I can't even manage to work a pencil. Looking around anxiously, I saw a guy from the other group sitting in the seat next to mine, watching me in amusement. He didn't look anxious in the slightest.

Raising his eyebrows slightly, he pulled the pencil that sat behind his ear and offered it to me with a wink.

Whispering my thanks to him, I took the pencil and once more looked down at the paper in front of me.

Three measly questions graced the otherwise desolate page. The lack of ink almost made a mockery of the importance of this questionnaire. Shouldn't there be more to this? The green-inked Scantron sheet sat on top of the white page, its endless rows of bubbly emptiness just waiting for me to fill out the answers.

Biting my lip and effectively nibbling off the little grapefruit flavored gloss that remained, I focused on the three questions that would decide my fate for the next year.

1. Do you smoke?
2. Do you stay up late?
3. What are your study habits?

The higher ups at the Residence Life office had clearly not taken enough time to think about their list of answers. I thought about what I would have answered, if I had more room than the minuscule bubble on the standard Scantron form.

Smoking answer: What exactly were we discussing when asking about smoking habits? Furthermore, I had to wonder, why bother asking since the inside of the dorms are all smoke free. The questions must have been around for quite some time, from when smoking in the dorms was still allowed.

I marked off "No."

Sleeping answer: It was all relative to what was considered late and what was considered early morning. Kind of like the glass is either half full or half empty depending on the contents.

I marked off the little bubble corresponding with "Yes." Just thinking of sleep I let out a loud yawn, setting off a series of yawns through the room.

Studying answer: Habits? We were supposed to have study habits?

I picked the "In silence" answer as opposed to "with music or the television on for background noise." But where was the "procrastinating to the very last minute and then frantically working through the night while pulling your hair out of your head and downing cups of lukewarm coffee" answer? Because, if I was being truthful, that's how things usually played out in "Bella's Studyland." I guessed that "In silence" would suffice. As my pencil meltdown had demonstrated, my panic attacks might be visible, but they were, by and large, silent.

I turned to my left to return the pencil to the guy but he had already left. I guess I was so focused on my answers and inner musings, I didn't notice him leaving. I thought to myself that I'd have to keep an eye out for him on campus, that maybe we'd cross paths once again. Little did I know how much our lives would intertwine, wrapping around each other and what a big part of my life he would become. And to think that it all started with a near panic attack and a pencil.

Getting up from the desk, I walked to the front of the room and handed in the sheets of paper to the facilitator. That's how my small state-funded liberal arts college determines roommates? I had to say, based on the experience, it made me worry significantly less about the whole college deal. If all college tests were like the one I had just taken part in, I figured college being a snap. I imagined a match made in roommate heaven and all thanks to those three little questions.

Then I got paired up with my roommate, Lucy.

Huh. That previous statement needed some serious reassessment.

Haaaaave you met my friend, KrisBCullen? (HIMYM reference!) She's my beta, but more importantly, she's my friend. I pay her with diner food.

Miztrezboo is writing a chapter fic for the Twilight 25 as well. Good stuff!
ElleCC is a Jasper expert (I checked her credentials) and I'm lucky to have her pre-reading.
LoreliD and TheHeartofLifeIsGood are my squish and snood.

Does it worry you to be alone? - The Beatles

What little gestures have stuck with you through the years? Did it come from an unexpected source?