by C. R. Jane
I was generally a good student, but it was nice to have an hour three times a week where I could zone out, maybe nap if I needed to.
But I certainly wasn't napping right now. Not thanks to the boner I'd been sporting ever since my run-in with Everly. Although could I really call it a run-in since I'd been waiting for her, thanks to her schedule I'd charmed from Admissions. I'd told myself that I'd gotten it so that I could avoid her and at least have fair warning if she was in any of my classes.
But that was a lie.
I'd been obsessed with Everly James forever. It was a sickness that I needed to get rid of by any means necessary.
By the end of this semester, I wanted to never have to see that snake's face at this school again.
The fact that I saw her in my dreams every night was already enough.
Everly
My appetite was gone after my run-in with Jackson, so I decided to make my way back to my dorm, determined to stay low until my next class. I just hoped that Melanie was out and about for the day. I wasn't in the mood to deal with her. There was a special hell for passive aggressive people, and I was getting the feeling that she was the queen of it.
"Everly," someone called out as I was almost to my dorm.
Turning, I found Lane hustling towards me, her blue and green streaked hair flying behind her as she jogged.
"How's your first day going?" she asked when she got to me, slightly out of breath.
I just shrugged, not sure how to put into words all the emotions I was feeling.
"That good, huh?" Lane asked, a concerned expression on her pretty face. She had layered on the black eyeliner today, but she pulled it off well. It made her hazel eyes stand out even more. "It will get better," she told me sympathetically as we made our way through the front doors of our dorm.
"It's always hard to be the new girl, no matter how old you get."
"Yeah, I'm sure that's it," I responded, wishing I could tell her about Jackson, but I didn't know her well enough for that. I had learned along the way that you didn't really ever know anyone, so trusting strangers was even harder for me than it should have been.
"Do you know where the laundry room is in the building?" I asked as we stopped in front of my door and I remembered the soiled sheets that were waiting for me inside.
"It's just in the basement. What were you up to last night, dirty girl?" she asked with an impish grin.
I sighed and told her the story of my wet sheets. By the end of my story, I liked Lane even more because she looked like she was ready to throw down.
"That girl is such a twitch," she growled, and I let out a snort at the term.
She looked at me with a smirk. "My mom's a women's studies professor at Wesley, which means that I've been told since birth that I couldn't use the ‘B’ word when referencing woman," she explained.
"She is such a twitch," I said with a smile as we walked into my room, and I began to strip my still damp sheets from the bed.
"Are you sure it's just water?" Lane asked, wrinkling her nose at my admittedly threadbare sheets.
"No," I said. "But I can't afford to replace them at the moment, so let's hope that the washers are good here."
I wanted to slap myself for saying that as soon as the words came out of my mouth, but Lane didn't act fazed that I'd just admitted to being super poor. Maybe Lane would be a keeper.
The laundry room was in the basement, its spotless condition either showing how early it was in the semester to be doing laundry or showing that most of the rich kids at the school sent out their clothes to be washed instead of doing it themselves.
Not wanting to risk leaving my sheets down here, we sat on the counters and got to know each other more while they washed.
Lane was from New Hampshire, and had been born in September just like me. She'd traveled to fifty-seven countries already, thanks to her parents' various projects, and that she had a little sister who was only two because her parents "drank too much wine one night and forgot a condom."
I managed to keep Lane talking the whole time so I only had to provide a little bit of information about myself. Despite how open-minded Lane seemed, I had no idea how she would respond when she found out about my illustrious family history, and I wasn't looking to hasten her education in all things Everly James. I'm sure that would happen any day now. I'd managed to lose a friend in every grade I'd attended. I'd just not cared after a while because I had Jackson and Caiden by my side.
When my laundry was done, we headed upstairs to my still blissfully Melanie-free room. It was a shame how much I disliked my roommate already.
With a class starting in fifteen minutes, making my bed would have to wait. I just hoped that they would still be dry when I came back.
"British literature is today," Lane said brightly as I grabbed my book bag. "We have that together."
I perked up at that thought, and we headed to class after I securely locked the door behind me.
We were almost to class when someone called my name again. Landry ambled toward us, one of his eyes sporting a black and blue bruise that had not been there when I saw him this morning.
"What happened to you?" I gasped as he reached us. Lane glared at my handsome friend like he'd spit in her water. Landry didn't seem to notice as his gaze was locked on me.
"Sorry I missed lunch," he apologized. "I had an unexpected injury."
Lane snorted. "You mean Jackson Parker got you with his left-hook..." she clarified as Landry's face turned annoyed.
Shocked, I swung my gaze to her. "What did you just say?"
"Everly—" Landry began.
"Sorry, lover boy. But we've got class," Lane sang as she dragged me into our building, leaving a disgruntled looking Landry behind us. I waved at him sheepishly and then turned back to Lane, determined to get to the bottom of what she'd just said.
"I can't believe you didn't hear about it," Lane said excitedly, saving me from having to press her for information. "Everyone's talking about it. Jackson and Landry have always butted heads, but evidently, Jackson cornered him before class this morning and hit him so hard that Landry lost consciousness briefly.”
My eyes widened. "Do you know why?" I prodded as we took seats in the back of the room.
"No one does," Lane explained, shaking her head. "Jackson's known for being a wild card, but that was a little far for even him."
I nodded my head, dazed, trying to quell the hope building in my chest that Jackson's reaction had something to do with Landry's interest in me.
Lane continued to chat about something else, but she'd lost me. My attention was firmly on Jackson and Landry.
I managed to pay attention in class though, which was good since I couldn't afford not to as my scholarship depended on near perfect grades. The professor was engaging, and the book list held some of my very favorites. British lit was going to be one of my favorite classes for sure.
I'd fallen in love with the written word when I'd discovered early on that most of my tormentors had no interest in reading...which meant that the town's library could be a haven for me. Ms. Buckland, the librarian, didn't seem to mind me, and she always pointed me to books I needed to read.
That was one of the things that had made me come to Rutherford, even with Jackson here. They let seniors begin to focus their coursework on what they wanted to major in instead of wasting our time. The majority of the classes I would be taking this year were English and literature related. I guess I could at least look forward to class, even if I dreaded everything else about this school.
I already had quite a bit of homework. This class in particular moved at a quick pace. I needed to have To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf done by next class period in two days.
Luckily, I'd already read it, thanks to Ms. Buckland, so I would just need to skim over it to prepare. I would hopefully have a chance at finishing the rest of my homework thanks to that.
"Are you going to the party tonight?" Lane asked as we headed to the cafeteri
a, where I was hopefully finally going to be able to eat something today.
"What party?" I asked, confused. Did everyone else not have the same amount of homework as I had?
"The football team always throws a rager at their frat the week before their first game. Almost all of the college students go, and most of the high school ones too for that matter, it's a mad house."
Football team meant Jackson. But it also meant that Melanie would most likely be gone, and I could get a lot of work done. I really needed to be smart here. Jackson had made it clear earlier that there was nothing but trouble to be had getting anywhere close to him.
I needed to heed that warning.
"I don't think so," I told her. "I really need to study."
"Booooo," said Lane, but it came across lighthearted.
“I just need to get my feet under me,” I explained, and she gently nudged my shoulder.
“I'll let it slide just this once."
"Let me know how the party is," I told her as we stopped in front of my room.
"Of course. I'll be sure to say hi to Jackson for you."
I rolled my eyes as I opened the door and walked into a blissfully Melanie-free room.
The dorms were quiet that night. Much quieter than they had been the previous night. After getting all of my homework done for the next day’s classes, I decided to take a shower. With everyone gone, it was unlikely that I would be in for a nasty surprise when I got back to my room, especially if I locked the door behind me.
Gathering my toiletries, I left the room, locking the door before proceeding to the showers.
Just as I suspected, it was a ghost town throughout the common area and the showers. I kind of hoped that there would be a party every night so that I could have this kind of silence.
I began to shower, humming a Taylor Swift song that had been playing on Spotify while I was studying. Suddenly, the door to the room opened, and then footsteps sounded as someone walked in.
Cursing the fact that someone had decided to not go to the party, I stopped humming and waited for the sound of their shower to start.
But there was nothing. There were no more footsteps, there was no shower...it was just silence.
Goosebumps crept up my spine. I didn't want to call out and sound like an idiot if someone was just primping in front of the mirror, but the silence was unnerving.
I finally heard footsteps again, but they didn't make me feel any better because they were walking towards the last shower stall...where I happened to be showering.
They stopped right in front of my shower, and I could see a pair of brown boots standing in front of my closed stall.
"I'm in here," I called out in a choked voice, feeling like I'd stepped into a horror film.
The person just continued to stand there, facing the stall, not making any other noises. My hands trembled as I reached for a towel...and that's when the person stood up on their tip toes and dropped a black snake over the top of the stall.
I screamed as the snake quickly recovered from its fall and winded its way towards me. I jumped up onto the shower bench, crying and trembling as the snake slithered around, not seeming to be bothered by the still running shower.
I hated snakes. Loathed them in fact. Snakes and the dark were enough to make me pee my pants in fear.
How was this actually happening?
The person took off just then, and I couldn't even follow them to see who it was, seeing as I was still trapped on the shower bench, paralyzed with fear. I heard the door to the room open and then close as the footsteps faded away.
The snake wasn't enormous, but it wasn't a tiny little garden snake either. What the fuck was someone doing with a snake in a dorm in the first place?
I stood there, trembling, as tears began to roll down my face, blending in with the water that was dripping from my sopping wet hair. Why would someone do that? And how was I going to get out of here?
How was I going to shower for the rest of the year?
The snake seemed to like my shower stall, not bothering to explore the rest of the expansive room. I knew I should just buck up and dart to the curtained off section where my things were and try to get out...the odds of the snake being poisonous were very slim. But I couldn't do that. So I stood there, fifteen minutes, then thirty minutes. Finally, the water went from hot to cold and I was a shivering, weeping mess.
The only good thing about that was that the snake seemed to not like the cold water so much and it finally began to slither away, trying to avoid the falling ice water. Once it slithered out of sight, I stood there for another ten minutes, just making sure that it wasn't lurking in the next stall, waiting to pounce as soon as I stepped off the bench.
Finally, I couldn't take the cold any longer, and I was going to have a nervous breakdown if I was in this room with that snake for a minute longer.
I jumped off the bench and threw my tiny, threadbare towel around me as I grabbed my things...still crying. I didn't care about the fact that whoever had thrown the snake could have tricked me and never left the room, I hadn't been paying that much attention due to the snake trying to come after me. I just needed out of there.
Luckily, the room was empty and the snake must have still been in the shower stalls as the main area by the sinks was snake-free as far as I could see. I ran to the door, my feet slipping and sliding due to the fact that I was still soaking wet.
The lounge area was still completely empty as I ran out into it. Not that I thought the creepy voyeur was going to stick around if he or she wasn't still in the shower room waiting to jump me. I was frustrated because I wouldn't even be able to tell the school authorities what gender my creepy snake person was. The boots had been nondescript, a brown leather style that I'd seen on boys and girls.
I ran to my dorm room not caring if my lily-white ass was showing or not. I kept throwing looks behind me, making sure that the snake wasn't somehow following me.
In my panic, it took a minute for me to undo my door lock before I managed to get it open and get inside. Once in, I locked the door behind me and put my desk chair under the knob for good measure. Hopefully, Melanie would find someone she wanted to follow home tonight because I wasn't moving that chair.
Darting to my cell phone, I glanced at my bed and then threw off the top covers, sure there would be snakes lying in wait for me. When there was nothing...and my sheets were blissfully dry, I abandoned my plan to call school officials right away and went to work searching the room for any snakes or other creepy crawlies. Thirty minutes later, when I'd checked every one of the surprisingly numerous crevices in the room, I sank onto my bed, shivering and hiccupping as I came down from the adrenaline rush that only being trapped in a stall with a snake could bring.
Finally calming down, I grabbed my cell phone and looked up the dorm emergency number. When the person picked up, I frantically explained the situation, and they told me they would be right there.
I set my phone down, and then realized I was still in my tiny towel. I threw on some sweats and a tank and waited for the person to arrive.
Fifteen minutes later, there was a knock on my door. Fifteen minutes seemed a little too long with the fact that there was an actual snake in the dorms, but what did I know?
Opening the door, there stood an annoyed looking man in a janitor's jumpsuit. "Were you the one who called about the snake?" he asked with a sigh, a look on his face like I had to be lying or I was drunk and seeing things.
"Yes," I answered, my voice coming out in a pathetic whimper. I cleared my throat. "It's in the shower rooms. Someone threw it in there while I was showering."
His eyes widened at that announcement. "Someone threw it at you while you were showering?" he clarified.
I nodded my head, tears threatening to spill just at the memory of it.
"Well...okay then. Let's go get this snake," he announced, backing away from the door and setting off towards the shower room.
I noticed that his hands were empty
. "How are you going to catch the snake with your bare hands?" I called after him. He stopped and looked at his hands like he had just noticed.
"Right. I'll be back," he said, beginning to jog down the hallway towards the fire stairs.
Obviously, whoever I'd spoken with on the phone had thought that it was a prank and relayed that to the janitor.
I realized I was shivering, so I threw an old, holey sweatshirt over my tank top while I waited, my door closed and locked of course. I didn't like the sound of the janitor's use of the term "let's." If he thought I was following him into that room where the snake was waiting for me, he had another thing coming. The campus would be lucky if I ever showered again.
Five minutes later, there was a knock on my door, and I opened it to see the janitor standing there with what looked like a trash grabber and a bucket. I wasn't sure that either were going to be effective for this snake, but I guess he could try.
"Okay, I'm ready," he said, gesturing for me to move out of the safety of my room.
I took a few hesitant steps out into the hallway, wrapping my arms around myself. "It was in the last stall, and then it slithered away. Sorry...but I can't go in there with you. I may faint," I explained.
His eyes widened, and he took a step away from me like he was afraid my fainting might be catching. "That's alright. I'm sure I'll see it," he said as he continued to back away from me. I gave a sigh of relief as I watched him disappear into the shower room.
A minute later, he darted out, his face an ashen grey color as the shower door slammed behind him. "You weren't kidding," he said as he held the door closed behind him like the snake somehow had the ability to sprout arms and open the door and come after him.
I wouldn't put it past that snake actually.
"I'm going to call animal control," he stuttered, letting go of the door handle and darting away. I watched open mouthed as he ran to the stairs and disappeared from sight.
I slid back into my room, locked the door, and then crawled onto my bed. It was going to be a long night.
