Filed to story: Shhh Professor! Please Don’t Tell! Novel Free
I gripped the straps of my backpack and looked up at the building in front of me. Red bricks and a colonial design. Built in 1880, if my memory served me correctly.
I focus on facts when I’m nervous.
I didn’t expect to be nervous today. I’d been looking forward to going to college since I was five years old. And I’d always wanted to go here, to Flynn University. When I was a little girl, my dad had taken me on his knee and showed me pictures from when he was an undergrad. I’d daydreamed about walking through the old buildings and under the tall oak trees, a textbook in my hands.
I’d spent three years working at a bookstore in my hometown after high school, saving for tuition. Some of my best friends had done the same thing. College had been a huge goal for us: a shining city glittering on the horizon, slowly getting closer and closer.
Now that I had found myself here, six hundred miles from home, staring up at the Willard Laurence Center for History and Philosophy, I was definitely nervous.
“You’ve got this, Ellie,” I told myself. “Take deep breaths. Take it one step at a time. Your first step is going up those stairs.”
I smiled a little at my semi-unintentional pun and climbed the stairs.
The building smelled of old paper and lemons. Probably a cleaning product. The halls weren’t crowded, but even the handful of students I saw walking through at this early hour of the morning made me swallow. Back home, I’d been popular. Kind, athletic, and smart it had made me a lot of friends. Now the prospect of having to start building a new community all over again felt overwhelming.
I felt my phone buzz in my pocket, and I pulled it out.
Have a great first day at school Ellie!!!!
It was my friend Allison. I smiled and took a deep breath. I suddenly didn’t feel so alone anymore.
Thank you!
I texted back.
Enjoy your last day of freedom! 😉
Allison started school tomorrow at a college in New York on the other side of the country.
I’d been excited to be in California, in the beautiful northern wine country, close enough to L.A. to make a weekend visit easy enough. In this moment, though, I would rather have my friends with me. Maybe I should have gone to New York, too.
“Make new friends, Ellie,” I told myself. “Stop moping. One step at a time.”
I’d walked around campus finding each of my classrooms yesterday. I’d read that that was what you should do. So, I knew where my first classroom was. I walked down the hall, down a flight of stairs, and to the left. There it was.
I stepped inside. It felt a little bit like the dungeon classroom of Professor Snape the only windows were high up and narrow. No direct sunlight was coming through on this side of the building. The desks were old, probably from the seventies. I did like that. I’m not a history major for nothing.
I found a desk in the front of the class. I sat down and took out my pencil case and the notebook I’d designed for this class. I’d decorated the cover with stickers of ghosts and maps and little cartoon heads of famous people.
“I like your notebook.”
I looked up and saw that a girl had just set her backpack on the desk next to mine. She had long brown hair, which she’d braided into a crown around her head, and was wearing dangly purple earrings. Her t-shirt said, “History geek. I’d find you more interesting if you were dead.”
It was an oddly rude t-shirt for someone who was smiling so warmly and had a face like a pixie. She seemed really nice.
“Thanks,” I said, grinning. “I like your t-shirt.”
She grinned back and sat down in her desk. “Too heavy-handed for the first day?” she asked. “I bet the guys will think I’m just a wannabe.”
I turned my body towards her. “What is it with guys and thinking girls aren’t really into history?” I complained, grateful for someone to commiserate with.
“I know!” she said. “It’s like, ‘Pish, you’ve never been in a Civil War reenactment, so you obviously don’t actually know anything.'”
I threw my head back laughing. “I have literally had that conversation before,” I said.
“Nerds are snobs,” she said. “I confess I am no exception.”
“You don’t seem like a snob,” I said, smiling.
“Not until you make an incorrect statement,” she said, grinning. “Then I trample people’s egos without mercy. I’ve made some enemies that way.”
“Well, you won’t make an enemy out of me that way,” I said, holding my hand out to her. “I’m Ellie.”
“Annie,” she said, shaking my hand. Her hand was small, but her grip was firm. “Nice to meet you.”
Class began. Our professor was an almost-elderly man in a sweater vest. Nothing could be more iconic, except for maybe the fact that he wheezed slightly when he laughed.
When class was over, I tucked my belongings back into my backpack and stood up.
“What’s your next class?” Annie asked me.
“I’ve got Art and Psychology next,” I said.
“No kidding!” she said eagerly. “With Travers?”
“Yes!”
Perfect. One hour in, and I had a friend already.
By lunch time, our team had increased to four. We met Cynthia in Art and Psychology she was covered in piercings and tattoos and wearing a light pink sundress and Jasmin in Ancient and Medieval History. She had four pencils tucked into her messy bun and was wearing a hoodie with rabbits printed all over it. Cynthia and Jasmin were both my age: twenty-one. Cynthia, Jasmin, and I bonded quickly over finding other freshman who weren’t the regular age of eighteen. Annie bonded with all of us. We teased her about being the baby.
We walked to the cafeteria together, talking about what clubs or fraternities we wanted to join. Jasmin and Cynthia were interested in a couple of them. We talked at length about how bogus it was that the co-ed Greek clubs were called fraternities instead of something else.
As I was sitting down with my tray, laden with a self-made salad and a cheeseburger that was probably only eighty percent real food, Jasmin said, “Did you guys hear about the new professor yet?”
“No,” Annie said, taking a sip of chocolate milk. “One of our professors?”
“Not unless you’re planning on taking business classes,” Jasmin said. “He’s teaching a business class, Management and Organization.”
“Okay, what about him?” Cynthia asked. She’d created the strangest-looking sandwich I’d ever seen. I was pretty sure I saw watercress and barbecue potato chips in there. I was very impressed.