Chapter Text
Monday, August 30, 2021
Last night, Elsa had the strangest dream, one that she can't remember. She opens her eyes as her alarm clock blares at her from the other side of her dorm room, reminding her that it's time to come back to reality. Elsa rolls over onto her back, staring up at the ceiling painted a dark gray from the lack of sunlight pushing through the blinds. Today is day one of her third year at Twin Castles University, and for the first time ever she has an 8 AM class. She'd been lucky so far to register for classes that start at 10 at the earliest, but that luck had finally run out.
Her alarm clock continues to scream, reminding Elsa of its existence. The time now reads 7:16. Internally, Elsa wills herself to sit up and get ready for class. Externally, she remains glued to her bed. Suddenly, her door bursts open, letting in the fluorescent light of the loft and brightening the doorway. The silhouette of her best friend and roommate stares at her for a moment before groaning and walking over to Elsa's desk to turn off her alarm clock.
"Oh my god loca, just use your phone like a normal person," Dana exclaims, calling Elsa by the nickname she'd given her after they ironically watched all the Twilight movies back in high school.
"Thank you," Elsa mumbles pitifully as she rolls back onto her side to face her roommate. "Mornings are evil. How do you do this?"
"Because I have to," Dana replies, referring to her 6 AM workouts. "Now get your ass up, I bought you coffee."
She disappears through the doorway and Elsa calls out, "Thank you! I love you!"
"Mhmm," Dana says from the kitchen, unimpressed by her best friend's weakness.
A few seconds later, Elsa finally sits up and rubs her eyes with her hands. She decides on taking a quick shower first, hoping the cold water will help wake her up. It's around 7:34 when she gets dried up and dressed in jeans and her favorite blue and gray sweater with the colors in a diamond pattern around the fabric. Dana eyes her outfit and sighs, "We need to take you shopping soon."
Elsa frowns, "I like this sweater."
"I know. You've been wearing it for the past three years. You're not a cartoon character, dude. Sometimes you gotta change things up."
"There's a comfort in familiarity," Elsa says as she leans against their kitchen counter. Proudly she adds, "And I like being comfortable."
"Ugh, you're the worst." Dana grabs a plastic cup of iced coffee from the counter and holds it out to Elsa. It looks like the one in her other hand, except with way less cream and way more sugar. "And you gotta go unless you want to be late."
"Please, I've never been late," Elsa says as she takes the iced coffee. She takes a sip and sighs with content, "Lovely. Alright, I'm going."
"Have fun," Dana replies in a teasing voice as Elsa grabs her bag and walks out the front door.
It's a seven-minute walk to the English building, but Elsa knows a shortcut that will cut her walk by a couple of minutes. She makes it across the lawn right before the sprinklers go off, walks inside, and easily finds Room 127. She's had a class in this room three times, now four, and when she opens the door, Professor Duncan looks at her with a raised eyebrow, "This is a surprise. Are we back in 2019?"
"Scheduling mix-up," Elsa explains as she walks across the sparsely populated classroom and sits on the long, rectangular desk next to the professor's podium. "I accidentally took a junior-level class in my freshman year, so now I have to do a semester of freshman-level English this year."
Professor Duncan nods. He looks about the same as he did last year in his khakis, tucked-in polo shirt, and graying facial hair in contrast to his balding head. However, Elsa does notice that he's wearing his wedding ring again; looks like he and his wife worked things out. "And you're okay with that?"
"Professor Duncan, I'm never okay with an 8 AM class," Elsa says, pausing to take a sip of her coffee. "But if you're the one teaching it, I guess I can suck it up."
He smiles, "Sometimes, the words you speak are more impactful than the words you write, Ms. Daerlen." Their conversation transitions into casual reports of how their summers went. By the time Elsa's halfway done with her coffee, the classroom is full of anxious, sleepy-eyed freshmen waiting for their first college course ever to begin. Only a few bold students sit at the front tables, Elsa being one of them. When class begins, a couple of seats remain empty, including the one next to her.
Professor Duncan starts the class by stepping away from the podium and greeting the class. "If you're here for English 101, then you're in the right place!" he exclaims. A couple of flustered students leave the room in a hurry after he says that. "There's always at least one," he says amused. A few students chuckle, including Elsa, and a bit of tension leaves the room along with those confused students.
For the next few minutes, Professor Duncan tells the class a little about himself and then starts to explain what they can expect from their first semester of English. "Now usually, we'd spend a lot of our time getting you guys experienced with writing at a college level, but I sincerely doubt you want to spend the next sixteen weeks just writing essays. Am I right?" Elsa bites her tongue to keep from admitting how she wouldn't mind that. "So, I came up with another idea. But we'll get to that later. For now, I want to-"
The door creaking open slowly interrupts him. The entire classroom turns to see a girl timidly walk inside. She has auburn hair tied back in a ponytail and is wearing ripped jeans and a large, forest-green bomber jacket with a gray shirt underneath. She speaks with a smile on her face, but her voice holds no confidence, "Hi sorry, I'm…uh, is this…"
"English 101 with Professor Duncan?" the professor asks, trying to help her out.
The girl nods, but keeps her hand on the door handle as if she's prepared to be wrong.
Professor Duncan gives her a comforting smile, one that Elsa's seen many times before. "Yes it is, young lady, you're in the right place. Find an empty chair and take a seat, we're glad to have you."
The girl gives a small smile of her own. "Thank you. Sorry." She goes for one of the back tables, sitting at the seat of one of the confused students that left earlier. Professor Duncan waves off her apology and continues with his thought, telling the class that he wants to get to know a little more about them. "Tell me who you are, why you decided to come to Twin Castles University, and what your dream is. What's the one thing you want to accomplish in this world? We'll start with this half of the room."
He gestures to the side of the room that Elsa isn't on, and she shamelessly lets out an internal sigh of relief. For the next half hour, she listens to twelve different iterations of the same nervous speech. "Hi, my name is So-and-so, I went to Insert High School Name Here, and I did this and that." The dreams varied. Some people wanted to be doctors or nurses, others wanted to be engineers or work for some tech company, one of them was here on an athletic scholarship and wanted to be a pro baseball player, one person boldly said they were going to be a famous Youtuber.
And then it was the girl's turn. The one that Elsa glanced at more than a couple times for reasons unknown to her. She stood up, took a breath, and spoke, "Wow…there's a lot of you." A couple people chuckled, including Professor Duncan. Elsa turns her chair and leans forward, waiting to hear more.
The girl places her hands in front of her, fidgeting and gesturing as she continues her speech. "Uh hi. Hello. My name is Anna. Anna Kristey. I'm from- well actually, I live here in the city. Near the gas station on 7th and Bell. I was in the theater program at Hillsaint High School, so I'm here on a Performing Arts scholarship and…uh, I'm sorry what was the last question you asked?"
Without missing a beat, Professor Duncan replies, "Your dream. What do you want to do with your life?"
"What do I want to do?" Anna asks. A couple of seconds pass, though they're on opposite ends of the room Elsa can clearly see the pained uncertainty in the anxious freshman's eyes. When she answers, it hits Elsa more than she's expecting. "I don't think that's my choice."
Tuesday, August 31, 2021
Elsa raises the speed on her treadmill so it's at a speed-walking pace. She turns to Dana, who's on the treadmill next to her, and asks, "Hey, do you remember when we were freshmen?"
"I try not to," Dana responds. "All those gen ed classes were a bitch."
"Yeah, I know." A couple of seconds pass, the clanging weights and breathy grunts of the gym fill the silence before Elsa continues her seemingly aimless thought. "But I mean…we were different back then, right?"
"I had a flatter ass if that's what you're talking about."
Elsa rolls her eyes, "You know that's not what I'm talking about." Though she still mentally applauds her best friend for her increased body positivity. Two years ago, she'd always feel incredibly self-conscious wearing yoga pants and bikinis, and now she's a part-time fitness model. She's not afraid to show off her body anymore, as evident by her matching pink sports bra top and tights that compliments her tan skin and her dark-brown hair tied up in a tight ponytail, covering most of her blonde streaks. Elsa, in comparison, is wearing a gray athletic shirt and blue runner's shorts and her hair is tucked beneath a baseball cap.
"Then what's up?" Dana asks.
"Just thinking about stuff from English yesterday. Professor Duncan asked the freshmen what their dream is."
"Ah yeah, I remember that. I think I said that I wanted to drag my family on the stage for Dr. Phil to see if he can straighten our shit out."
Elsa chuckles, her best friend always has something to rant about when it comes to her family, though she herself has never seen anything wrong with them in the hundreds of times she's been to Dana's house. But there must be something there, Dana's joked before about how she chose to be a Psych major so she could "diagnose the hell out of everybody."
"My half of the room's going tomorrow," Elsa says.
"What are you gonna say?"
"Pretty much the same thing I've been telling you for years."
Dana scoffs, "Boring."
"Well excuse me for knowing what I want," Elsa replies with mock offense.
"You know what I want?" Dana presses the button to raise the speed on her treadmill a few times. "Breakfast. Can we start running now so I can eat?"
Elsa smiles and sets her treadmill to match Dana's speed. "Fine, we'll cut our warmup short." Thirty minutes later, the two finish up with their cardio workout. As they're stretching, Elsa looks out the one-way mirrors that act as the glass wall of the college gym. At the roundabout in front of the entrance, she sees someone get out from the passenger side of a blue sedan: a familiar girl wearing a forest-green bomber jacket. Elsa's eyes stay drawn to her until she disappears behind the admissions building.
Wednesday, September 1, 2021
Elsa stands up and takes a breath, putting on a polite smile before starting, "Hello everyone, my name is Elsa Daerlen. I'm a junior here at Twin Castles University, currently majoring in English with a minor in Creative Writing. I'm not from here, I'm actually from Colorado Springs."
She's interrupted by one of the students exclaiming, "Yeah, Colorado Springs!"
Elsa gives him a thumbs up before continuing, "I won a national short story competition in order to get a scholarship for TCU, and that's pretty much what my dream is. I want to travel the world and write stories, ones that people never get to hear, ones that are true and honest, ones that celebrate humanity. Anyway, that's who I am. I hope you all have a great time here at TCU."
The class gives her a polite applause as she sits down. Professor Duncan comments, "Elsa has been a wonderful student of mine for the past three years. If you have any questions about how college works, what to expect and all that, feel free to ask her." Elsa raises an eyebrow as if to say they never discussed that, the professor smiles knowingly as if to say they just did.
The rest of the class period goes by with the other half of the students making their same tiny speeches. Elsa's eyes glance around the room, curious to see who's still paying attention. As she makes it to the back of the room, her curiosity strangely increases until she fixes once again on the girl with the bomber jacket.
Anna Kristey.
It's…well, it's strange how her eyes seem drawn to her. Ever since she heard Anna's answer about her future, something's been nagging at her in the back of her mind. But she doesn't get any answers from looking at her, in fact it just leaves her with more questions. Questions like why is Anna looking at her too?
She's quick to look away, but Elsa's certain that Anna was looking at her. Maybe Elsa should say something? But what? And why would she have a reason to talk to Anna other than sudden curiosity? Is she dreaming?
Before she knows it, Professor Duncan is dismissing them, saying something about getting the real work started on Friday. The students shuffle around, grabbing their bags and pushing in their chairs before leaving the room. Whether or not Elsa will talk to her doesn't matter anyway, Anna's already gone when she turns to walk out the door.
"Have you found your story yet?"
Elsa looks towards Professor Duncan, who's sifting through papers at his podium. "The one you want to tell," he adds. "I have a good feeling about this class, there are a lot of interesting personalities. Maybe you'll find one here."
She doesn't have the heart to say that they just feel and sound like regular freshmen. "Maybe…" she replies instead. "Did you have to tell them to come to me if they have questions about TCU?"
"Of course! I believe you have a lot of wisdom to offer."
"I really don't think knowing when to line up for breakfast in the Student Union counts as wisdom."
"You know what I mean, Ms. Daerlen," he says and looks at her with a knowing grin. "I've graded enough of your papers to know that you have an invaluable amount of knowledge."
Elsa frowns, confused and uncertain, "We'll see…" She leaves the classroom with Professor Duncan's endorsement ringing in her ear, thoughts about Anna successfully pushed away for the time being.
Thursday, September 2, 2021
Four days into the year and Elsa already has one big assignment she needs to work on. She's sequestered herself in the corner of the campus library, on the side without the glass walls, and is using her free time between classes to gather all the sources she needs to figure out everything she needs to know about Hemmingway's writing style. Save for when she's asleep or in the bathroom, this is the first time this week she's had to herself. It feels nice, refreshing, despite her head buzzing as she opens tab after tab.
Tuesdays and Thursdays are her roughest days of the week, she has classes from 10 AM to 5 PM with only a couple of breaks in between. Right now, it's only 12:04. No one ever said her third year would be easy, but damn if she isn't already looking forward to the weekend.
Maybe she should get something to eat before her next class? No, all the food places in the union are packed right now, even the coffee shop above her. She's not that hungry anyway.
The word "Hemmingway" is turning to mush in her mind, Elsa closes her laptop for the moment and leans her head back against her plush chair. She takes slow breaths hoping to reset her mind, or to at least relieve some of the strain from the back of her eyes. The sounds of hushed conversations and sporadic coughs act as white noise, thoughts of the rest of today's class schedule fade away, and her shoulders relax as the tension in them releases.
Slowly, she brings her head forward again and opens her eyes.
And Anna's right there.
Not in front of her or next to her, in fact she isn't near her at all. She's at the circular help desk at the front of the library. She's still wearing that same jacket and is looking around wearily, as if she didn't mean to come here and now feels like she's trapped inside the library.
The words of Professor Duncan ring in her head about the wisdom she has to offer, a part of her wants to get up and see if she can't help the lost freshman. The rest of her is trying to find a reason not to do that. Maybe she doesn't need help. Maybe she's exactly where she wants to be and that's just how she usually looks. But no, Anna's unfolding a piece of paper and studying it carefully, no doubt it's a map to the school.
Elsa once again tells herself that she should help Anna. It's the right thing to do, and maybe it'll help satiate the odd curiosity she feels about her. She goes to pack up her laptop, but that's when one of the workers at the help desk gets Anna's attention. Elsa watches as Anna shows them the map, they point at her map with their finger and trace some sort of path. Anna nods and says thanks, but Elsa can tell from her eyes that something didn't click. Once again, Elsa's too far away and Anna disappears through another door.
So much for being helpful, but maybe things worked out the way they should have. Nothing hinges on the two of them talking anyway.
Friday, September 3, 2021
"...and last but not least: participation. I want you to be engaged in this class, I want to hear your voices. Ask questions, give answers, bring me a muffin if you're desperate. Preferably poppy seed, but I won't say no to blueberry or chocolate chip either."
Elsa grins, she was wondering when Professor Duncan would bring up his obsession with muffins. After a brief writing assignment, he's spent most of the class period running through the syllabus.
"I know asking you to take part in an 8 AM class sounds like pulling teeth, but trust me it will help you in the long run. That's why participation is worth five percent of your grade."
He presses a button on his laptop and the presentation goes from a slide full of percentages to a slide with the words "One more thing…" in big letters. He steps away from the podium, in his hand is a stack of cards. "There's one last order of business to go over before I dismiss you. Show of hands, how many of you are enjoying college life so far?"
Most of the class raises their hands, Elsa being one of them. She pretends not to notice that Anna is one of the students who hasn't raised their hands.
"That's wonderful!" Professor Duncan exclaims. "But rest assured, there will be hard times ahead. You'll feel stressed out by your assignments, your roommates might do something that really ticks you off, and if you came into college already in a relationship, well…hang in there." Elsa frowns, remembering her last relationship and the lessons she had to learn the hard way.
"It's important that you have a support system while you're here, you want people who you can rely on to listen when you have a problem and pick you up when you're down. I want to help you all by adding to whatever support system you already have."
Elsa straightens up in her chair and raises her eyebrow. She already has a nice support system in place with Dana here and her mother back home, Professor Duncan could probably count as another person to add. Maybe he's extending that same offer of support to everyone here.
He holds up the cards in his hands, "On these cards are the covers of several famous works of literature. Once I hand them out, your job is to find the other people with the same cover as yours. These people will be your support group throughout the semester. You'll be doing group assignments with them, sitting next to each other, and spending as much time outside of class as you're comfortable with. Due to the class size, everyone will be in groups of three, except for one group which will only have two people."
Professor Duncan shuffles the cards and begins passing them out. When Elsa gets hers, curiosity immediately gets the better of her and she turns it over. The Pygmalion, not technically literature but still a good read. She remembers reading through the play back in high school, Eliza Doolittle's proud expression takes her back to those days for a moment.
"You can now look at your covers and find your matches. Once you've found your group, you are free to leave." With those instructions, the classroom bursts with activity as everyone stands up to begin looking for their partners. Conversation is muted at first but it gradually crescendos as people start forming their groups.
Professor Duncan catches her eye and looks at her card excitedly, "I see you got The Pygmalion. I snuck a couple of plays into the cards."
Elsa looks at Professor Duncan and frowns, "Are you sure I should be in a group? I'm not in any other freshman-year classes, it'd be weird."
"Of course! I'm not asking you to help them in their other classes, just this one. And besides, I believe having someone to turn to will be of excellent value to you and your partner." He nods and points at something behind Elsa.
No, not something.
Someone.
A certain someone who gets startled when Elsa turns to look at her. A certain someone in a forest-green bomber jacket and faded jeans, using both her hands to hold a card in front of her with The Pygmalion on it.
Call it fate, call it coincidence, call it whatever you might, but it seems that Elsa and Anna have met each other at a crossroad. And only time will tell where they go from here. Elsa holds up her own card, letting the curiosity show on her face as she says politely, "Hi."
Anna's expression is unreadable at first. There's a definite shyness in it, and when their eyes met she immediately looked down at the floor. But her deep frown makes way for a stronger emotion, something that looks akin to fear. Anxiety. Maybe social interaction isn't her strongest suit…or maybe she's intimidated by Elsa. Neither of those are fortunate if true.
But something changes again. Anna closes her eyes for a second and takes a breath, her expression softens. Whatever Anna's had to work out in her mind ends with her slowly looking back at her newfound partner. And for the first time, Elsa notices that Anna's eyes are blue.
The corner of Anna's lip raises slightly, and she replies, "Hi."