Learning a Few Lessons – Chapter 1_(0)

I had been in college for only a few months now, and already I was beginning to feel lonely and isolated. I’d never been much of a social butterfly in my life; I’d always kept to myself save for a few close friends. But my family and friends were states away – and sure I could call them and text them constantly, but I longed for a group of friends I could physically see on a regular basis. And maybe I had found a group of people I could get along with. But the question stood whether they were the right group for me to be around – and whether I was really acting myself with them or just being the silent sheep of a follower I tended to be in a pack.

I was 18 at the time, freshly graduated from high school in the top ten percent of my class. I was short for my age with no real hope of growing any taller than my 5 feet even. I weighed 130 pounds, a bit thicker than most girls my height, but I felt comfortable and fit in my own skin. Hell, I was in the best shape of my life. And where my stomach was mostly flat, my ass and thighs had no shortage of lean meat. I had b-cup breasts – something I’d once felt insecure about, but had now accepted as one of my favorite features about myself. Small breasts tended to be perkier, and mine certainly were. My skin was pale as it had always been – and no matter how much sun I got, nothing more than a slight sunburn would make its impression. My hair was naturally curly and was cut just to my shoulders. I was born brunette, but had taken to dying it red at the age of 15 and had kept up with it ever since, so it was always somewhere between the shades of a deep burgundy and a light auburn, depending on how long I let it fade for.

I was an English major, and struggling already to write my very first novel. Though with the loads of work piled on in my very first semester of college, it was hard to focus on the right words for my book. And with all the distractions around me in this whole new world, it was difficult to even find the inspiration or motivation to sit in front of a computer screen for any more time than needed for my school work.
I was wide-eyed and bushy-tailed.

It wasn’t like I hadn’t ever lived life or enjoyed myself before college, but now there seemed to be so many more options. All at once, I was free of high school, free of my parents, in my own place, alone because thank God my scholarship had been hefty enough to cover a private dorm. For once, my life hadn’t revolved around writing short stories, participating in school events, getting homework done, helping my family with household chores, and managing to slip away to the bowling alley with a few friends every other weekend or so.

This new world was terrifying for me, yet it was exhilarating.

… Which is maybe the reason I agreed to participate in the scheme my newfound friends had planned to pull. They were a bit more of trouble makers than I was accustomed to hanging around, so when they first brought the idea of their little prank to me, I was uneasy. I was afraid initially of being caught, and of losing my scholarship and ruining my life for a temporary kick. They assured me, though, that it was all well thought out, and that nothing would tie me to the crime, unless of course I was caught in the act. Which they assured me the chances were very, very low.

There was a mathematics professor that no one in the school was quite fond of. Actually, many called her by the nickname ‘Hitler’ under their breaths in her presence and out of it. Her class was difficult in nature, she would hold students far past the designated time for the end of class. She moved too quickly for most students, and refused time and time again to stop and review certain subjects. Your grade in her class was entirely dependent on one or two tests every semester, so if you couldn’t hang in and understand the content, you were sure to fail the class and lose the credit.

My friends had initially planned on sneaking into her lecture hall after hours and spray painting profanities all over the walls, tables, chairs. I didn’t like the idea, not classy enough to really take a stand – so instead I brought to them a quote from Albert Einstein: “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” I then showed them an image of a fish with a tree growing from its back. They loved it, I loved it. And it was sure to prove our point more than a few “fuck you”s.

Two of my friends gathered the supplies we needed and prepared it all into a duffle bag. One had somehow snatched a ring of keys to get into pretty much anywhere in the school. I wondered how they’d retrieved the keys, but didn’t voice my concerns. Another friend hacked into the school’s surveillance system and was to disable the cameras on campus temporarily so that I would not be detected.

I was the vital role, they all said. All I needed to do was take the keys, approach the room, open the door, sneak in, and paint out our little message all over Miss Hitler’s room.

I was unnerved by the thought of doing something so blatantly against the rules, but I did agree with the cause behind my new mission. So I prepared. I wore black pants and a black hoodie with the hood pulled over my head, just in case anyone were to see me approaching the classroom. I had a pair of gloves in my pocket so that the spray paint had no way of getting all over my hands, a tell-tale sign that I was the culprit. I lay in my bed beneath the covers, fully ready for my motions of protest as my eyes locked on the bedside alarm clock, watching the time as it ticked by.

We had all agreed on 3:00 in the morning. By that time, the maintenance men should have cleared out and all of the drink-hazed students should have meandered back into their dorms and passed out. So at 2:50, I rolled quietly out of my bed, pulled the duffle bag from under it, and stepped out into the hallway. I took careful steps, quiet as a mouse all the way from my dorm to the mathematics building on campus.

Approaching the gate that wrapped around the academics building, I pulled the ring of keys out and staggered with a few of them in the lock until one finally worked. Slowly, I opened the gate, painstaking in my attempt to keep the metal from creaking. I closed it behind me, but did not lock it back up. I figured if I needed a quick escape, it would be best to keep the gate unlocked.

It didn’t take long before I arrived at the right classroom. I hesitated at the door, pulling out the keys but freezing as my hand approached the lock. This was unlike anything I’d ever done before. A small part of my guilty conscience showed through, and a light was almost shined onto the fact I only subconsciously was aware of – I was doing this just to fit in. But I heard something then, a soft bang a few halls down. It could have been anything mechanical, but my mind skipped almost immediately to it being a person. And my body jumped into full gear.

Jumbling around with the keys, I must have tried five or six before finally, the door to the lecture hall opened. I nearly hopped into the room, closing the door behind me. Then I rushed down the empty classroom to the front, dropping the duffle bag to the ground and unzipping it as I pulled the large stencil of the fish with the tree growing out of it and taped it up against the whiteboard.

I sighed, staring at the stencil for a moment before I looked back over my shoulder. Since hearing that one little sound, I’d been a bit jumpy. I needed to get this done quickly, because at any turn I felt like there could be someone watching. So I pulled a can of spray paint and shook it wildly before getting to work at the stencil. A hissing filled the air as blue filled the canvas and my hands shook as I did so, because this was it. There was no reversing this.
Taking a deep breath once the stencil was entirely filled in, I stepped back. I pulled the stencil away and looked at my work. Then realized that the quote still needed to be painted. So I needed to get to work. I took the black spray pain and stepped back toward the whiteboard, neatly as I possibly could, writing out the words of the quote I had shown my friends. But just a few minutes into it, I heard a terrifying, soul-shattering sound.