Chapter One
When I find my way home, my stepbrother better be to get stuffed inside the turkey. I mean, I love Drew, but this? Not acceptable. I close my laptop—on which Drew just texted me a slap in the face—and slip it into my bag. I check for an exit, but I’m sandwiched. At least twenty of my classmates are blocking me in on either side.
Since I’m not about to stand up and call attention to myself in the middle of this four-hundred-person lecture, I’m stuck for the next twenty minutes.
A row ahead, Charlie Drake’s douchey face snags my eye. The only thing helping me cope with his proximity is the promise of vanilla mousse, which is now in jeopardy. Douche Face smirks as he reaches his arm over the shoulders of a blond in a tight blouse. His fingers graze her bare neck. A shudder reaches the depths of my spine.
I put my head down. Guys were supposed to make college more fun, not ruin it.
Ten a.m. creeps closer and closer.
“For anyone who needs a little extra help on the Krebs cycle,” says Professor Armstrong, “I’ll be holding a study group tomorrow afternoon. Bring your questions and a notepad. This will be a thorough review of most of the material I plan to include on the final exam.”
My professor looks at her watch for about the fifteenth time this lecture. We can both taste freedom.
I take hold of my belongings.
“For those of you I don’t see tomorrow, enjoy the break. Class dismissed.” She slips her materials into her bag and hurries toward the auditorium’s front exit.
I storm the student exit and beat her to the quad, but not because I need to speak to her. I should speak to her. I’m not exactly acing this course. The most I could tell you about the Krebs cycle is that it has something to do with exercise. But dentists don’t really need to know about exercise-related biologic processes. Right?
I’m in a rush because I’ve got to figure out a way home for Thanksgiving now that my stepbrother has bailed on me. Before Avery University took over my life, I had a family that needed me around. They’d be devastated if I missed any of our holiday traditions. I’m talking pre- through post-Thanksgiving Day merriment. We Italians like to drag things out. I have to get home before all the fun.
Who could I ask for a ride?
Think, Adia.
Other than Douche Face, I know about five people on campus, and most of them aren’t from Greensboro. How can I find someone who is? Would a hitchhiking sign be weird?
I run through the list of people from my high school who I know go to this college. Doesn’t Molly’s older brother? I shoot her a text asking for his number. She doesn’t reply right away. She’s probably in class. Dang.
There’s always Gilbert.
I don’t want to ask Gilbert. He’s so awkward.
I walk to linguistics, my final class before break. It’s a seminar with only thirty or so students, and the professor takes attendance very seriously.
All along the quad, maple trees burst with marigold and ginger leaves. This campus is beautiful in late fall, I’ll give it that. It showcases most of the vibrant foliage North Carolina has to offer.
The orange hues make me want pumpkin pie. Or, at least, pumpkin something. As I approach the student union, I slow my march. Do I have time to stop for a hot beverage?
My phone clock discourages it. No worries. I can wait for whatever goodies Mom has prepared.
I can’t wait to see her. We’ve never been apart this long, and phone calls just aren’t the same. I want to watch her eyes squint while she talks and hear the rustle of her busywork in the background of my day. I want to do things alongside her where we don’t even bother talking but just exist together as part of the same fabric. I want to be where I belong.
“Are you going to that study group?” Heather McCoy says loudly from behind me.
I met Heather the first day of chem class. She’s striking and athletic and gritty and, in summary, amazing. I usually let her leave class first to avoid that awkward encounter where we pretend she doesn’t know me.
Has she forgotten my name? She could at least take a hot second to check her phone contacts, since she recorded it when we met.
“Oh, sorry,” I say. “I’m headed home to see my family.”
She wrinkles her brow, looking past me.
I turn, tracking her bemused gaze.
Her pal walks around my other side and to Heather responds, “Definitely. Let’s meet at my place and walk together.”
“My bad. I thought you were talking to…”
They’re not paying attention to me anymore.
I don’t get it. I never struggled to bond with people back home, but here on campus, it’s been different. I don’t fit. This newfound freedom doesn’t feel like the opportunity it was sold as. It feels like ripping off a thousand band-aids all at once.
Maybe I do need coffee. I swivel on my heel and hurry away.
Waiting for my order, I dial Mom. I know she had plans this afternoon, but I’m in a bind here.
Voicemail. Typical.
I dial Jema.
“Hey, chicklet,” she answers in her perpetually chipper accent.
“Tell me you changed your mind about coming home.”
“It’s too expensive to fly from California for a long weekend.”
“I will sell my body to buy you the ticket, okay? Just come.”
“It’s not about the money. It’s the practicality…”
Cradling my phone with my shoulder, I grab my to-go cup. My fingers savor its warmth.
“…waste like four hundred dollars traveling like a crazy person back and forth, or I could stay here, which a bunch of my friends are doing, and use the extra time to study. I’ve got, like, so much to do.”
I whine. Thanksgiving will be less sweet without my best friend around for all our little rituals. Who will talk me down from my fifth set of doorbuster Christmas pj’s?
“Who do we know at Avery that went to our high school?”
“Bad-breath Gil.”
“Besides him.”
“Um, Molly’s older brother Jordan goes there, I think. Why?”
“Drew backed out on picking me up because he’s staying at Clemson another day so he can bring Claudia, his new girlfriend, home to meet us. She’s got a Pilates class she can’t miss, apparently.”
“Drew’s bringing a girl home?”
“Crazy, right?”
“Totally.”
“Well, I guess I need to let you go so I can arrange a ride with Gil.”
“Seriously? You must be desperate to go home.”
“We’ll be in a car, so there’s built-in personal space.”
“Yeah, and a limited amount of circulating air.”
I stop at the top of the steps to Gerard Hall. “Unlike some of us, I’m willing to make sacrifices to see my loved ones.”
“I have FaceTime. Plus, you know Thanksgiving’s not a big deal for us anyway.”
“Fine. I just hate you.”
“I know. Talk to you tomorrow, okay?”
“Yeah, okay.”
I miss her face so much.
My phone vibrates in my pocket.
I know the linguistics professor’s rules, but in this one instance, I must break them. We’re talking about family time here. I shift in my desk and slide the edge of the screen into view to skim the notification.
Gilbert Stoddemeyer: No problem. I’m leaving at noon from my dorm, which is Henson. Can you meet me there?
Class ends at 11:30. I can make this work if I pack quick.
Which means I can no longer avoid my roommate Adrienne’s yoga party. Or her friends’ way of making me feel like a fourth wheel in my own living space.
How essential are toiletries?
Professor Frume is still writing on the whiteboard. I unleash my phone entirely. I’m about to type a response when a text from Mom pops up. A ghost freak-out face. I send her the good news that I no longer need a ride. She starts to text a response. I look back up and quickly conceal my phone under a notebook as my professor turns toward the classroom. The vibration from Mom’s reply makes a faint buzz against the plastic desktop.
Professor Frume’s eyes darken.
I pull my hand back out into the open.
He isn’t fooled. He marches over to me.
“Miss Bell, was that a device I just heard?”
I suck in a large breath and nod. Don’t take my phone. Don’t take my phone.
“And what is our class policy about disruptive cell phones during lecture?”
“They are to be removed from class,” I recite.
“May I have the device, Miss Bell?”
He thrusts his old wrinkly palm into my face. I droop.
“The phone, Miss Bell.”
“Okay, can I just…” I pull out the offending object and tap on the text from Mom. All I get is some sort of address before he snatches it. I wonder what she has planned!
“Take this to the administration office,” Professor Frume says to the teaching assistant. “Miss Bell can retrieve it on her own time.”
He swings back around and resumes his discussion of indigenous speech patterns. The TA disappears with my lifeline.
I nurse my pumpkin latte, plotting how I’m going to recover my phone, get back to my dorm to pack, and reach Gil before he leaves me behind. A wad of cinnamon cream gets caught, but a few throat clears and a chest pound preserve my life without attracting any attention.
Poor phone. I don’t even know where the administration office is.
“It’s on the other side of Bezley Hall,” my classmate says as we walk out of the language arts building. The sun shines brighter now that I’m done with lectures for the long weekend.
“Where is that exactly?”
She points to North Campus.
Nuts.
First of all, I have never heard of Bezley Hall. Secondly, that is the exact wrong direction I need to be going. So…?
I go without a phone for a few days.
That won’t be so bad, right?
As long as I make it to the getaway car in time, I won’t need a phone. I’ll be too immersed in family activities to care about the outside world.
I turn toward South Campus and sprint. Okay, It’s more of a trot. Boots are heavy.
Audrey FurnasHoliday breaks are often noteworthy, but some are more memorable than others. Think of that first holiday with a new family member. Or that first where someone's missing. This book is about that initial bittersweet visit home from college. Adia, the main character, is feeling the pinch of change in her life. She is longing to return to what is familiar. And what better time to do it than during Christmas...or so she thinks. If you want to read more about Adia's Christmas adventure, Totally Elfed will be available for presale in August of 2020.