My Wonderful Disaster

Chapter Three — First Impressions [Part One]

Hartwell University was — a lot.

The last thing I actually remembered was standing in a high school cafeteria covered in fruit punch while sixty people laughed at me.

And now I was here.

No transition. No explanation. Just — university. Move in day. Red brick buildings draped in ivy, pathways lined with trees going gold at the edges, students everywhere dragging boxes and mini fridges and inexplicable amounts of fairy lights like they'd all received the same memo.

I stood next to our car and took it all in.

Okay, I told myself. Okay. You can do this. You have done harder things than this.

I had not, personally, done harder things than this. But it felt important to believe.

"Mavis!" Mom was already at the boot, pulling out boxes. "Dorm building is that way — come on, come on, we're losing the good parking!"

I picked up the heaviest box, because apparently that was a thing I did now, and followed her.

...

The box incident happened four minutes in.

I was navigating the path toward the dorm building, box stacked high in both arms, trying to see over the top of it and mostly failing, when I walked directly into a person.

The box lurched sideways. I lurched with it. What followed can only be described as a full physical negotiation with gravity — arms windmilling, one knee bending at an angle that should not exist in nature, a sound escaping my throat that I will be taking to my grave and burying deep — Two hands caught the box.

Just reached out and caught it. Steady. Easy. Like it was the most natural thing in the world.

I looked up.

The boy holding my box was tall — very tall, the box sat at his chest while it had been at my face — blonde hair, blue eyes, the kind of easy confidence that suggested he had never once experienced an awkward moment in his entire life. He was looking at me with genuine concern that was slightly undermined by how unreasonably good looking he was, which felt personally offensive.

"I'm so sorry," he said immediately. "That was completely my fault —"

"No I just couldn't see over —"

"Are you okay? Did you hurt yourself?"

"I'm fine, honestly —"

"Here —" he adjusted his grip on the box, "— let me carry this. I came out of nowhere, it's the least I can do."

"You really don't —"

"I want to." Simple. Warm. Completely sincere.

"I'm Kai, by the way. Kai Flores."

"Mavis," I said. "Delacroix."

"Mavis Delacroix." He tried it out, nodded like it passed some kind of internal test, and smiled. The smile was the kind that made you feel like you'd said something right even when you'd just said your own name. "Cool name. Which building?"

I pointed. He started walking, still carrying my box, chatting easily about move in day and the campus and had I seen the orientation schedule, and I followed slightly behind him trying to process what had just happened.

Here's the thing about boys being nice to me — it didn't happen. In my world, my real world, boys looked through me like I was furniture. Or worse, they looked directly at me and laughed. I was not the girl boys carried boxes for. I was not the girl boys asked questions and actually waited for the answer. I was not the girl who got a smile like that aimed at her like she was something worth smiling at.

I didn't know what to do with it honestly.

Mom appeared at my elbow from absolutely nowhere.

She looked at Kai's back. Looked at me. Raised both eyebrows in one slow, deliberate movement that communicated forty seven things without making a single sound.

I shook my head at her so aggressively I nearly pulled something.

She looked away, smiling at absolutely nothing, humming quietly to herself.

I was going to have a word with her later.

Kai left us at the dorm entrance with a "good luck with the rest of move in" and a smile that Mavis Delacroix — the real one, the one who presumably lived this life — would have probably taken completely in stride.

I stood in the lobby and watched him go and felt absolutely normal about it.

Completely normal.

Moving on.

Mom stayed for exactly two hours.

She unpacked boxes, reorganised things I had no opinions about, asked me twice about the desk placement — yes, Mom, I'm sure, the desk is fine — and spent a deeply concerning amount of time inspecting the communal bathroom down the hall with the energy of a health inspector.

When it was finally time to go she stood in the middle of my small, plain, just-beginning-to-look-like-a-room dorm room and looked around it with an expression I recognised now. The one that meant she was holding something in.

"It's small," she said.

"It's a dorm room, Mom."

"I don't like how small it is."

"They're all this small."

She looked at me. The chin wobble was happening. I braced. "You're going to be okay," she said, and it came out like she was saying it to herself as much as to me.

"I'm going to be okay."

"You're going to make friends and —"

"Mom."

"— and eat properly and sleep and not overdo it with training —"

"Mom."

"— and call me —"

"Every day. I know."

She pulled me into a hug that I walked into without hesitating. Getting good at this. Her perfume, her arms, the specific warmth of her. I held on.

"I am so proud of you," she said quietly. "You know that right? Your dad would be so proud too. He is so proud — I know he's looking down at you right now and just —" her voice cracked slightly, "— just bursting."

I kept my face perfectly neutral against her shoulder.

He was looking DOWN.

From ABOVE.

Like in HEAVEN.

He was DEAD.

Right. Yes. Of course. Totally knew that. Was completely unsurprised by that information and had definitely not just experienced a minor internal earthquake.

She pulled back, held my face in both hands, looked at me for a long moment.

"I cannot wait to watch you become the most brilliant accountant this world has ever seen."

The laugh came out genuine and slightly wet.

She kissed my forehead. Picked up her bag.

Paused at the door.

"Accountants are very important people, Mavis."

"I know, Mom."

She left.

I sat on the edge of my bed. Stared at the wall. Gave myself some time to feel everything.

Then I stood up, straightened my jacket, and went to orientation.

...

The hall was already full when I arrived.

Not embarrassingly late — just slightly, the kind where the doors are still open but everyone is already seated and the person at the front is mid-sentence and approximately forty heads turn when you walk in. I did the universal sorry-I'm-late walk — fast, low, trying to be invisible — and found a spot near the back just as the coordinator wrapped up whatever he was saying.

"— and we're so thrilled to welcome each and every one of you to Hartwell." Applause. "Now before we get into the practical stuff we're going to start with something a little more fun." He smiled the smile of someone who had done this many times and still genuinely enjoyed it. "We're going to play two truths and a lie. Find yourself a group of four — people you don't know, that's the point — and introduce yourselves. You've got thirty seconds. Go."