ARIELLE

Chapter8

Working part-time had a way of disrupting even the most consistent flow.

My alarm still went off at 6:30 am, even when I wasn’t on café duty. I’d become one of those people who seized the mornings because my evenings were starting to get packed.

I still showered while Star slept, or rather snored. Could you imagine sweet Star snoring? Definitely one for the books.

I added a new activity to my routine, brewing coffee with our $8 antique Mr. Coffee. Considering I was now a barista, it’d be a shame if I did not showcase my skills in the dorm. Besides, I needed the coffee rush to get through the day, and it was very cost-effective.

Next, I'd spend time hunched over my sketchbook, not because I had an assignment, but because drawing helped calm my mind before sunrise. It was me, a pencil, and the kind of focus that blocked out everything else.

Classes anchored the week: 9 am on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, while Tuesdays and Thursdays were mercifully lighter. I had just literature, plus a painting seminar with Dr. Cho, who everyone agreed could spot a sloppy brushstroke a hundred yards away. Work shifts shaped the rest. I had to race from class to the Café, clock in by 3 pm, and transform into an espresso machine operator. Three good hours of steaming milk, smiling, and memorizing orders like they were survival codes.

The regulars became characters in my personal sitcom. Dr. Pedro, clockwork at 9:15 a.m. on Saturdays, nursed his cappuccino as though it were his lifeline. Helen, with her cortado and rotating stack of poetry books, quoted lines between sips. Then there was Thomas, the grad student who claimed a corner table on Tuesdays, black coffee in hand. He stared at his laptop as though it held the secrets of the universe—or in this case, his thesis. I grew to anticipate their quirks—who needed their drink handed over at the speed of light, who wanted chit-chat, and who needed space.

Money, to be honest, was still an anxiety attack in disguise, but by Halloween, I’d cobbled together enough to cover rent through November. Grocery runs no longer require higher math and prayers. The constant dread of being broke had dulled to a manageable hum—it was still there, but not screaming in my ear every second.

Star became the dependable axis around which my days spun. We had breakfast together on Tuesdays and Thursdays, lunch every Monday when classes intersected, and dinner when the stars aligned (yes, pun intended). She transformed the dorm from a mere crash pad into a true home, one cozy meal at a time. She was the constant I never knew I needed.

And somewhere in all that, my art changed—or, more accurately, I changed. My first café-era painting was supposed to be a landscape, per Dr. Cho’s instructions to “paint without overthinking.” Instead, it came out raw. The proportions were wonky, colors fought each other for dominance, and my hand wavered. But for once, it was honest in a way my polished pieces weren’t.

I braced myself for critique during office hours. Dr. Cho’s silence as she examined it made me wish the ground would open up and have me for lunch.

“What were you thinking about when you made this?” she asked, breaking the silence.

“Displacement,” I blurted out. “Home. Moving. That weird feeling of starting over and not exactly fitting anywhere.”

She nodded, her eyes narrowing—not with disapproval, but with that scary, laser-focused Dr. Cho empathy. “Hmmm, you’re not chasing pretty pictures or trying to impress. You’re keeping it real. Keep it up.”

After that, my art stopped worrying about technical “perfection” and started digging up whatever lived rent-free in my head. I painted being watched without being seen, and the ache of words left unsaid. I painted my own reflection with an uncertain look. One time, I even painted Star sleeping, her red hair spread across her pillow, the dorm bathed in the afternoon sun.

It got so intense that word spread. In the studio, classmates always wanted to see my new sketches. Not sure how it got that far, but someone from the campus journal nudged me to submit something. Customers at the café noticed the little caricatures I left on the corkboard—people with their orders captioned in careful script. They started seeing me through my art.

Meanwhile, Dr. Ashton’s research gig solidified. Friday afternoons found us in his bookshelf-packed office. We'd catalog, debate origins, and trace the gritty paths art took to survive—auctions, wars, sheer stubborn luck. It changed my perception of art; I saw it less as a form of decoration and more as an act of persistence.

“You have a good eye for detail,” Dr. Ashton observed after I found a dating error on a faded label. “You spotted what was easy to miss. That, my dear, will come in handy.”

Uh, that’s not weird at all.

I also later found out that not everything ran on a clock. Star had her own orbit, and sometimes she’d get pulled off course. A phone call she’d take outside, voice hushed. It was an ongoing stream of “family stuff”—her dad looking for something, or her mom battling with paperwork. The type of vague emergencies that never quite got resolved. Once, I found her in the dorm on a Thursday when she should have been in class, staring at her laptop as if it might bite.

“You, okay?” I’d asked.

She had flashed a quicksilver grin—not quite convincing. “Family stuff. No big deal.”

I didn’t push, even though I was tempted to. Star showed up when it counted, and if she had private storms, I could let her weather them her way.

Looking back now, I realized I was worried for nothing. I’d been prepared for Star’s enthusiasm to c***k, the inevitable moment when all that warmth became ice-cold. Instead, she remained steady—genuinely and relentlessly steady. She stuck. If that was her secret, it was a decent one.

“You’re different from how you were weeks ago,” Star pointed out a few nights before Halloween, our homework spread around us, abandoned. “You look less like you’re expecting the ground to open up at any second.”

“I’d call it being less terrified,” I said, already smiling.

“Same difference. Fear and happiness are heads and tails, you know? Can’t have one without risking the other.”

Sometimes I’ve noticed Star spinning out these observations that belonged on a motivational poster, and somehow—possibly because it was Star—they made sense.

“When did you become a philosopher?”

“I’ve always been one, but camouflage it with a lot of jokes and enthusiasm.”

For Halloween, Star and I treated ourselves to ice cream from the vending machine in East Hall—cake batter for her, cookie dough for me. We sat cross-legged on our beds, campus noise fading outside.

“To surviving our first month in college,” Star toasted, raising her plastic cup.

“To surviving at all,” I replied.

Silence stretched out, easy and companionable. I found myself sifting through everything since arriving: first-day panic, meeting Star, and small victories that built on each other until I stopped running from something and started running toward something.

A part of me still measured absence—mom, whom I only texted now and then, and my old house that felt like someone else’s memory. But the other part was stronger now: surviving on my own terms, with no one’s permission but my own.

“Whatchya thinking about?” Star asked with a smile.

“I have a friend,” I said—and felt it, somewhere deep down, that I couldn't blame the sugar rush. “And that maybe my leaving home was the right move.”

She smiled again, as if she’d known all along and was waiting for me to catch up. “Of course, you have a friend. You’re the kind of person good things happen to—once you stop dodging them.”

My first response would have been to protest, stating a million and one reasons why I didn’t believe that. But for once, I let it be. I needed to stop thinking kindness was a trap just this time.

So instead, I ate my ice cream, letting Star’s presence fill the room as the campus slipped deeper into its autumn hush.