RoomHates by Carmen Black (series like harry potter TXT) 📕

This time, I don’t punish that traitorous part of my brain. If I’m going to suffer these guys, I can at least have fun imagining them.

After the nightmare of locating the apartment yesterday, I basically memorized the route to the art department. It’s not exactly the nicest building on campus: it looks like it was built in the seventies and hasn’t seen much funding since then. Still, there’s something about that battered façade, the grey-beige walls, the walls buried in ivy, the strange statuary tucked up against its walls and the posters in the windows… it’s kind of romantic, in its own ‘faded glory’ kind of way.

There are things at the Aurora U art department that aren’t familiar: the sheer size of the place, room after room after room of kilns and darkrooms and studios. But there are things that are, like the hum of students arguing about proportions and reference use and whether Gentileschi was better than Sirani or not. More than anything, the smell grounds me in the place: the chemicals of the darkroom and the earthiness of the clay, the sharp stench of turpentine like it’s soaked into the walls. It all mixes together into that unchanging smell of ‘art department’.

It smells like home. I had no idea how much I needed something so familiar until it makes me well up a little. I have to pretend to yawn, so I can discreetly wipe my eyes without my fellow students staring at me weird. I can’t be seen crying on campus before I’ve even declared my major.

I shrug my bag onto my shoulders and move to find my class, winding through the tide of art students standing in clumps outside classrooms. I find Photography 101 in the far right hallway, passing a group of students dressed in black from the tips of their hair to their toes. They eye me up and down before continuing with their conversation. I guess the art community here is small. It makes absolute sense given the amount of jocks I passed to get to the art department.

I enter the small room, finding rows of available seats and contemplate for a moment whether I’m the sort of keen student to sit in the front, or lobby for the back. Sitting in the front I would be prompted to take notes and my notebooks wouldn’t dissolve into doodles of bored mini characters and hearts. Still, the back seat is calling my name and I answer it with one step after another until I plop my butt into the metal contraption and wait dutifully for my fellow art colleagues to enter.

A group of classmates enter, one boy and two girls, who stare at me curiously. They are your typical artsy group dressed impeccably in a combination of blacks, stripes, and spots. The boy, currently smiling at me shyly, has short black hair and black rimmed glasses. Unlike my jock roommates, he is thin and lean with hardly any muscle, high structured cheekbones, and pouty lips. His skin is like porcelain, as if he’s never seen sunlight, and his blue eyes continue to glance in my general direction. I look behind me, briefly wondering if someone is standing behind me, and quickly realizing they are indeed staring at me. Especially the boy who, I decide frankly, is very easy on the eyes. Maybe he isn’t a muscled God, but he can definitely stare at me whenever he wants.

He turns his attention to the two other girls hovering around him, a blonde with bobbed hair and perfect makeup dressed in a yellow and black polka dotted dress and a brunette wearing a long nineties looking overcoat and pinstriped pants. They nod to each other, before striding towards me, sitting down in the chairs surrounding me and staring at me with wide interested eyes.

“You’re obviously new,” the blonde says as she leans in conspiratorially towards me.

“Yeah,” I say, looking around nervously and wondering if I should have sat in the front seat instead. I really do not need more enemies at this school. I don’t think I could take hating my roommates and hating my classmates.

“We know because you’re sitting in our spot,” says the brunette, nodding to my seat.

“Oh.” I grab my bag and begin to stand. “I didn’t know we had assigned seats. Sorry.” “No, sit.” The blond takes my bag and puts it back next to my desk. “I’m Charlie.”

“And I’m Josh,” the boy adds quickly with a wink. My face heats and I quickly turn away, hoping he doesn’t notice my face becoming as red as a strawberry.

I turn to the brunette, who smiles and says, “I’m Lauren.”

“Oh, I’m Rachel.”

“Rachel,” Charlie holds out her hand and I shake it lightly with a dead fish grip that would shame my father. “You’re late in the game.”

I chuckle nervously. “Yeah, I was a late register. Aurora wasn’t-“

“Your first choice,” Lauren finishes and nods. “Yeah, same here. Sport colleges aren’t really the best for us artsy folk.”

“Which is why we need to stick together,” says Charlie. “It’s a good thing you found us, Rachel.”

“Good indeed,” adds Josh, nodding his approval.

“Who knows what other ruffians you could have met?”

“Possibly those weirdoes who sit in the front seat,” says Lauren, grimacing at the front row.

“I guess it’s a good thing I sat in the back, then,” I say, twiddling my fingers under the table. I’m never so nervous when it comes to meeting new people, however that was back in New York. This is Aurora, where everyone loves sports, goes running together, probably plays a daily game of tennis and holds hands while they puke their brains out after an intense drinking game all in the name of P-I-G. “So, how do you like it here so far?”

“Parties are great,” says Charlie while looking at her black fingernails. “But everyone here is a meat head. If you aren’t interested in intramural sports or weight training, then you’re pretty much doomed. Which is why us artsy peeps