Chapter Text
Luz was laying on her bed, staring up at the popcorn ceiling of her bedroom. Her phone was just out of reach on her desk, where she tossed it late last night. She’d been awake for what felt like an hour, but getting ready for her first college classes wasn’t all that urgent. At least, that’s what she thought before her roommates started to file into the living room. Then it was suddenly too late.
The dorm was shared between her and three other freshmen. The moment the first one came out of her bedroom, Luz’s door might as well have been locked from both sides.
So she stayed there on her new bed, not yet familiar enough to be comforting. Agonizing over every decision, slip-up and mistake that led her to going to college with no friends. The unwanted voices of her roommates floated in through the door and filled her room with distant enthusiasm. They were taking so long just chatting about boring things like lunches and schedules. They sounded so excited, and it made a pit form in her stomach.
Luz stuffed herself back under her covers as quietly as she could. She really wanted to groan, but wanted to be silent even more. Maybe she could go back to sleep? She was still in her pajamas. She pulled the blankets over her head, but her brain just wouldn’t be quiet. When she first woke up, she hadn’t wanted to risk getting her things together and get caught up in conversation. Even if they wanted to be friends now, they wouldn’t once they got to know her. Or worse, they’d just bully her like other girls in middle school.
She’d moved in just two weeks ago, and before Luz knew it, her three other roommates had already established a close friendship with each other. It left her spinning in the dust, wondering where she missed her cue to join. It was fine, she didn’t want to watch TV with them, or cook meals, or go out as a group. She had enough of that before her friend group dissolved at the end of senior year.
The voices seemed to be winding down when someone started calling her phone. The ringtone was frighteningly loud in the silent room. She scrambled out from under her blankets to grab it before it could start the second ring. Overestimating her own lunge, Luz tumbled out of bed with her phone in hand. Rising to her feet, she looked at the caller ID and groaned softly. Pepping herself up with a few deep breaths and floppily shaking her hand, she answered.
“Hi mamí.” Luz whispered, glancing towards her door. Still locked.
“Hello bebé, why are we whispering?” She asked, mimicking her daughter’s tone.
“Oh- um- Just that one of my roommates is still sleeping so we’re trying not to wake her. You know, later classes and all that.” Luz prayed she wouldn’t question her white lie, and thankfully she didn’t.
“Well, are you getting ready for your class? Ooo! I’m so excited, my little girl’s all grown up and in college!” She said in a sing-song voice.
Camila gushed over Luz finally moving out and making such an important step. Luz could hear the tears of joy in her eyes. It went unspoken how proud Manny would be if he were here. She asked prodding questions like how Luz was getting along with her roommates and just how excited she was for her classes and if she visited the popular hangout spots on her campus yet. Luz tried to answer as noncommittally as she could get away with. She didn’t have any good answers. Luz had barely left her room.
Between questions, Luz could hear her sister, Vee, call out from somewhere in another room.
“Is that Luz? Tell her me and Masha said hi!” Her mamí dutifully and cheerily relayed the message.
“Well, I shouldn’t keep you, my big girl’s got important stuff to learn now. Just don’t forget to call, alright, bebé? And text me how your day was!”
“I will, mamí, have a good day.” Before her mamí could drag out the conversation any further, Luz ended the call. It felt a little cheap to plunge her room back into silence like that. Knowing that on the other end, her mamí was probably more than a little confused by the abrupt ending. But the call had reminded her that she did need to get ready for her class, and she couldn’t hear her roommates any more.
She dug through her dresser, stuffed with perfectly rolled up clothes her mamí had done for her when she moved in. There wasn’t a need for ‘making good first impressions’ with her. Because Luz knew that it didn’t matter what she wore, it was always what she did that singled her out eventually. So she threw on some leggings and shorts and a nostalgic t-shirt she bought from a thrift store in junior year. When everything was so simple and good.
It was already five minutes until the start of her class. Dang it Luz! She didn’t feel all that hungry anyway, so she just grabbed her bookbag and marched out of her door and through the empty living area of her dorm room. Luz’s room was on the fourth floor of an on-campus dormitory.
Luz took the elevator down, which was thankfully vacant, and squinted at the cloudless sky as she left her dorm and started to navigate the campus grounds to her first class. It wasn’t fair that her first day was so idyllic, she should have enjoyed it more. Other people did, sitting on benches or stairs and chatting with one another. Some sat in the grass reading books or sunbathing, and some were even feeding birds. Everyone looked so darn happy, it made Luz just a little jealous.
The science building was empty, which was probably a sign she was late. She really should just throw in the towel and go back to her dorm and sleep some more. Get some more rest for the next class later in the day. Be more prepared for later strifes and all that. It was reasonable! Responsible even! But she was already here, so her momentum drove her forward.
She pushed the door open to her first class to see it was like a classic college amphitheatre. She vaguely realized that she should be ecstatic being in something she had only seen in movies and anime, but she couldn’t drum up any real excitement, just recognition. This was a chemistry class or something, she hadn’t really paid attention when she was looking at her schedule. Or even when her mamí was excitedly pointing out courses from the university’s list. At the time, all she could muster was nodding and not tearing up in front of her mother.
She had entered through the back of the room, at the top of the rows of desks. Luz was perfectly willing to plop down as far from the professor as she could and just start sketching. Well, maybe after finding something on her penstagram feed to use as a reference.
Almost every other student in the class was sitting near the middle of the room. The professor was standing at the front, in a grey buttoned shirt and khakis. And admittedly, she thought he was just another student because of how young he looked. He was leaning on a wheelie-desk way too casually and chatting to a student with ash-blond sitting in the front row.
As the student spoke to the professor, Luz’s breath caught as she recognized his voice. She hadn’t heard so much as a peep out of him since his last words to her at her graduation party. ‘We should keep in touch’ was all he said before he and the rest of their friends left her all alone.
Her body moved on its own, far outpacing her brain. Before she knew what she was doing, she was scooping her bag back into her arms and hopping down the stairs. As she got closer to the bottom, her mind was a hive of activity, trying to come up with the perfect greeting to rekindle that long-lost friendship. By the time she got to the front row, she settled on all of them.
“Hey there Hunter! What’s up! How you been? Not even a text? C’mon man! Not cool! Cool hoodie, by the way.” She was smiling and panting slightly as she thudded her bag onto the table and took a seat next to him. The boy was wearing a yellow hoodie with slightly darker yellow ducky printings on it. His magenta eyes wide and gap in his front teeth on display as he stared with his mouth agape at her.
“L-luz! What are you doing here?”
“I’m enrolled, duh. Same as you! How’d that happen? I thought you’d be off at some super-genius university on like Mars or something.” The professor seemed to take that moment to withdraw and check his laptop, looking between it and the room full of students. He spoke creakily to address the whole room from his little podium.
“Alright class, it is 10 o’clock. But it seems we have a few stragglers so we’ll give them a chance to trickle in, then we’ll go over the syllabus.” Hunter pouted as the professor started clacking away at his laptop, trying to connect it to the projector that would show the entire room his screen.
“It doesn’t really matter, and besides, UCB has a fine curriculum.” He dismissed and looked forward, giving her a view of his profile.
“Uh-huh, uh-huh. So what major are you? Last I checked, you were acing all of your classes, which one did you settle on?” She couldn’t stop the smile that was spreading across her face. The eye bags were still there from the last time she’d seen him, but they were fading again. The confirmation fully dawned on her, it really was him.
“Civil engineering and Mathematical science.” He didn’t elaborate, and was watching the blank but somehow interesting wall straight in front of him. Luz crept forward, her hands under her chin with a wide grin that betrayed her obvious need to share.
“C’mon, aren’t you going to ask me what I’m studying?”
“Alright… what are yo-”
“General studies, with a minor in creative writing! But there’s no creative writing major, and gen-stud seems like I’d have a bunch of choices to learn about the interesting stuff.”
“Isn’t- No one calls it gen-stud, Luz.”
“I do, I’m a trendsetter.” Hunter looked like he wanted to argue more, but he huffed instead. His little hair noodle flopping at the gesture.
“Why didn’t you just go to a school with an actual creative writing program?” He asked curiously.
“Oh- I uh- kind of enrolled last minute.” Luz chuckled nervously,
“Yeah, you and Amity were going to go to college together. How uh- how is she?”
“That’s uh– haha. Well, we kind of broke up. So I- don’t know?” Luz stumbled through her words. Hunter had the good manners to look a little embarrassed at the question. “I’m sure she’s doing great, you know? Nothing could ever get her down. Not even me!” Luz joked, but Hunter didn’t look like he found it funny.
Before he could say anything, the professor loudly exclaimed his abandoning of the projector and began to turn on a weird camera thing that Luz thought was a lamp at first.
“So how have you been? You know, what has the great Hunter Deamonne been up to this summer?” Hunter kept looking at her like she was a stray cat out in a storm, and Luz was terrified he might not say anything to her, or worse that he’d want to know more. But he let out a little breath before answering.
“Well, I got a job at a library. I worked part-time to make some money for the school year. Darius didn’t let me do full-time even though it was the summer and I basically had nothing else to do.” Hunter complained, squinting his eyes remembering the frustration.
For a few minutes before the professor got ready, they caught up. Luz was delighted when Hunter started warming up bit by bit. Though they stopped talking as much when the professor finally got what Hunter called an ELMO to work. He smiled when she joked it wasn’t red, furry and teaching moral lessons on children's television. Luz felt the easing of a tightness in her chest she didn’t realize was there. Or maybe she had just gotten too used to it.
The class period turned out to be the professor showing off a printed out copy of the syllabus on the projector. His pen tapping and underlining certain lines as he read it out word for word, and explaining it as if he didn’t trust his students to read it in their own time. Which was nice since Luz wasn’t planning on it.
Hunter had to shush her a few times during the class, because she kept coming up with these great little jokes or quips. She really had to control her enthusiasm, but how could she?! Hunter was going to her college! Maybe she wouldn’t be completely alone for her college career.
Despite being in the front row, the professor didn’t call her out. So that had to say something about her sneaky skills. Sometimes she did have genuine questions that Hunter would invariably have the answers to. By the end of the class period, it was like they were finishing a class back at high school in junior year.
Hunter stood and slung his backpack onto his back. “What other classes are you enrolled in? I’m knocking out my gen-eds this semester, nothing to do with my majors.”
“Wait, your majors?” Luz paused, scooping her stuff into her own bag.
“Yeah, Civil engineering and mathematical sciences.”
“Dude, I thought maths science was your minor. You’re double majoring? That’s awesome!” It probably shouldn’t have been so surprising, since Hunter was one of the smartest people she knew, but it was still something she found herself excited over.
“Yeah, heh– Darius thought it was unnecessary. But I think it’ll be an early sign of my dedication and hard work in my career.” He said with the familiar ego that she and the rest of her friends found so endearing.
“Heck yeah, you show them your work ethic!” Luz declared, pumping her fists in the air and smiling wide. She partially skipped out of the chemistry room with Hunter at her heels.
“Anyway, your classes?” He asked again as he moved to be next to her as they walked down the halls.
Luz checked her photos app for the picture of her schedule, she didn’t need to look far. It was the first one in her camera roll, despite being taken weeks ago. When they compared schedules, she was delighted to find that they shared two more classes. One later that day and another tomorrow.
“I have some other stuff I need to do, but I’ll see you at 2.” Hunter gave her a smile and a small wave as he stepped away.
“Yeah, I'll see you then!” She waved goodbye to her old friend, eager for when they’d meet up again later that same day. As she strolled back to her dorm to hang around for a few hours until then, she found herself still skipping. Enjoying the day and the sun on her skin.