The Fire In My Eyes (2 page)

“I took up that challenge and founded this university. Ripley is based on a trimester system and operates on accelerated principles. You are free to take four years to complete your undergraduate degree, but you are also free to accelerate at your own pace and finish in three years. Some have done it in less. Some have completed a graduate degree in four years.

“Our professors, one and all, are dedicated to helping you learn. They will not slow down their classes for the benefit of a handful. If you cannot keep up with a class, they will help guide you to tutors or extra work that can help you catch up, but you are young adults now, and this is your responsibility.

“Every freshman class is held to a strict limit of six hundred students. Never more, often less. Why? Quite simply, there are only so many professors capable of teaching to our school’s standards, and we cannot and will not overload our classes.”

He took a breath and folded his hands on top of his cane. “This year’s freshman class is quite impressive, perhaps our most impressive to date. Over half of the incoming class ranked in the top ten percent of their high school class. Sixty-seven of you earned a perfect score on either the SAT verbal or math, and eleven of those scored perfect on both. Fifty-one scored perfect on their ACT. An even dozen are accredited National Merit Scholars.”

Ripley banged his cane on the floor. I jumped. “Your accomplishments mean nothing. This is not to demean what you have done to this point, but contrary to what your guidance counselors, teachers, and parents may have told you, high school is meaningless. We simply don’t care about your transcripts, or what sports you played, or your extra-curricular activities. We care about one aspect of your high school career, my young friends, and that is your potential. You were chosen for your potential, your ability to learn, your special talents.” He looked up into the audience. I blinked as his gaze seemed to meet mine.

“Your talents,” he repeated quietly. “Your drive and your passion. Not all of you have realized your talents yet, but I assure you, every person in this room can bring something magnificent to this university. Each and every one of you has tremendous potential. Our staff is here to help you awaken that potential. It is our goal, our job, our sole and overriding ethic as educators, to assist you in recognizing and making use of your unique talents and abilities.”

He paused again for a long moment. He had emphasized the word “awaken”. I shivered. It had to be a coincidence. It was a common turn of phrase. Wasn’t it?

“I will not lie to you,” he continued. “It is difficult. It is meant to be difficult. Some of you will fail to realize your abilities. Some of you will be unable to keep up. Some of you will simply not reach your full potential. I regret to say that some of you will not graduate from this university. Perhaps as few as a tenth of the class. Perhaps as many as a third. Ripley University does not have a reputation as an easy school, and it never shall as long as I live. Even so, you will have learned something in your time here, maybe something about this world, maybe something about yourself. Your time will not be wasted.”

He smiled up at everyone. “As I said before, this year is special. Twenty years ago, the first class enrolled at this university, a freshman class of just over two hundred students. Four years later, we enrolled four hundred freshmen, reaching our capacity. Ten years after foundation, I authorized the capacity limit to increase to six hundred freshmen, where it has stayed since. This year, we have enrolled the full six hundred, our twentieth freshman class. Twenty years ago, they told me that Ripley University would not stand, that we would fail, that we could never fill the niche that we aimed for. Students were less interested in learning than we thought. Parents wouldn’t send their children to a school where they could fail. Every year, we hear similar complaints. Every year, we enroll hundreds of new students. Now, twenty years later, I stand vindicated!”

The room burst into applause. I joined in. “Thank you,” he said sharply, cutting across the applause. “I stand vindicated, as Ripley University continues to grow and thrive with each and every student that enters. It is my most sincere hope that each and every one of you will awaken the potential within you. Your dreams are what will make our future a reality.”

As he spoke those final words, he gazed across the audience again. His eyes locked onto mine and all of a sudden, as if I was looking through a pair of binoculars, I could see him up close. I could see the laugh lines radiating out from the corners of his eyes and mouth, but his expression was stern and cold. His ice-blue eyes bored into me. I felt a presence again, not like the hostile presence in my mind last night, but curious and pensive.

The world around me seemed to fade. All I could see was the face of Alistair Ripley as he took my measure. I could feel his uncertainty and concern. His head tilted and then he frowned, ever so slightly. He was reserving judgment. It was like reading someone’s intentions through their body language, but these weren’t cues that I should have been picking up. He nodded.

I flinched back into my seat and the moment passed. People were standing up and applauding. My head throbbed. My vision blurred. I closed my eyes and rubbed at my temples as green sparks danced across the darkness. As soon as I heard the people to either side of me start to leave, I stood up and shuffled my way outside as quickly as I could.

The cold air brought tears to my eyes and I wiped my face. I pushed my way out of the foot traffic, leaned against a wall, and squeezed my eyes closed again. The throbbing in my head abruptly died away and the colors dancing around the edges of my vision faded. I sighed in relief. I really wanted to get back to my room and sleep. Two similar incidents within an hour of each other told me that I was far more tired than I realized.

“Hey, are you ok?” I looked to my left. A girl was leaning on the wall like me, just a few feet away. She hadn't been there when I closed my eyes. She squinted at me and stepped closer. “You're pale. Do you need to go to the infirmary?”

“You're the second person to ask me that today,” I said, forcing a smile. Her eyebrows drew together, just like the lady at the Caf. “No, really, I'm fine. I didn't sleep well, and then coming out from that hot cramped room into the cold? I'm just not used to the weather here.”

She smiled back, a cute smile, including dimples. “Oh, I agree. I'm not used to it either, but I've learned how to cope with it. Wear layers. Guess how many layers I have on.”

I checked her out at her invitation. She had a pretty face, but everything else was hidden by bulky clothing. Even her hair was hidden under a knit cap. I thought up a number of layers and added one. Too low a number and it would sound like I thought she was fat. That wasn't going to make her like me. “Four layers?”

“Close! Three. Coat, sweater, and a shirt. Well, I guess four is right if you count underwear.” Her smile turned a little warmer. I felt my face heat up a little.

“I guess it depends on how thick the underwear is,” I said. I was a little out of practice at flirting. It was tempting to ask if I could check, but she didn't seem like she’d appreciate something so blatant. There was also the problem of not having anywhere near the amount of guts needed to say that.

She laughed. “True! But, my point is you need to layer up more. See? I'm perfectly comfortable here.”

“You look warm,” I said. “I'll have to steal this idea of yours.”

She looked me up and down. “Let me think. You'd look better in darker colors. Try something dark blue, maybe charcoal. Yeah, that'd look good. Sky blue just doesn't look right on you.”

I pretended to write on an invisible piece of paper and wished it was real. I had no idea what colors looked good on me. “I'm taking notes here.”

She giggled. “Definitely darker colors. Use lighter colors as accents. Hey, I have to go, I'm having breakfast with my roommate. Nice talking to you! Say hi if you see me, ok?” She lifted a hand and disappeared into the crowd before I could get another word out.

I took a step after her, but had to wait as a group of meaty guys lumbered past, loudly discussing prospects of joining the football team. After they passed, a group of girls followed, discussing their prospects with the potential football players. By the time the third group passed, consisting of guys discussing the pretty girls, she was long gone. I sighed and cursed my stupidity. I hadn't gotten her name, and how would I even recognize her when I had only seen her face?

“So, was that as exciting as it looked?” I looked to my right. Max grinned at me around a cigarette. Unlike yesterday when we met, the cigarette was lit. It wasn't just for style after all.

“What, the orientation?” I asked.

“No, failing with that girl, dumbass.”

I glared at him. “Were you watching the entire time?”

“Yup.” Max's grin widened and he blew a stream of smoke into the air.

“Didn't you say it was too early for you to be up?” I asked.

“It is, but Drew kicked me out and told me to rescue you from orientation. You don't need to know anything from it. You register, go to classes, try not to screw up, and get your piece of fancy paper at the end. And you have as much fun as you can in between. Besides, I wanted to check out the new freshman chicks, and I'll tell you, I’m not disappointed. Come on, I'll show you another way out of here.” I followed him around the edge of the wall to a tiny stairwell that led up to a covered walkway “We're planning on introducing you to a few people today. How was it, anyways?”

“What, failing with the girl?”

“No, the orientation, dumbass.”

I sighed and refrained from smacking him. We came out of the walkway and turned onto the road that led back to the dorm. “Boring. I slept through most of it. The only interesting part was the president's address. He's a good speaker. Twentieth anniversary for the school. He seemed pretty excited about it. Kind of cool, it was founded the year I was born.”

“President Ripley’s interesting,” Max said. “I’ve heard some weird stories about orientation, though.”

“Yeah? Like what?”

“People feeling like he was speaking directly to them, making direct eye contact, things like that. I thought it was the mark of a good speaker, but I’ve run into a few people who mentioned something like that.” He breathed out another stream of smoke as we walked. “The weird part is that all of them insisted they had a headache afterwards.”

“You mean like the headache I have right now?” I asked.

Max glanced back at me, then flicked his cigarette into a snowbank. “Oh, more fuel for that rumor. At least you didn’t faint. I heard that someone did last year, but I didn’t see it. What was it like?”

I shrugged. I liked Max, but I didn’t know him all that well yet, and I wasn’t sure how far to trust either of my roommates with everything going on inside my head. “It was just like you said, it felt like he was making direct eye contact and speaking to me.”

“Maybe he thinks you’re cute.”

I stepped over to a nearby snowbank and flung a hasty snowball at him. “Like hell!”

Max ducked, but it didn’t even come close to hitting him. “At least the girl seemed to think you were. Are you disappointed? Come on, Drew’s got to be ready by now. You can work on your aim later.”

We reached the dorm a few minutes later. Carson Hall sat on top of a small hill on the northern side of the campus, an edifice that sloped down the hill like a modern day concrete castle. The pictures on the website showed it standing tall and bright and proud, but in reality, it looked like it was sagging and old. Still, it was home, at least for the next year.

Inside, it was gray and white and brown in equally dirty measure. For a school that was so dedicated to its students, they weren’t terribly dedicated to cleanliness. The layout of the dorm was strange. The floors didn’t match from front to back due to being built partially into the hill itself, having the second floor of the front half of the building be the first floor of the rear half. I had almost gotten lost when I arrived.

We reached our room, B215, and found Drew inside watching TV. His clothes were neater than what he had been wearing yesterday, and everything about him looked a little more groomed. Max cleared his throat. “Are you wearing cologne?”

“Maybe.” Drew grinned and clicked the TV off. “About time you got back. How was orientation? Run into any hot chicks?”

I didn't even get to open my mouth before Max started in on me. “He was talking to this girl when I found him, but he got no name, no phone number, no room number, nothing. Utter failure. I almost felt bad for him.”

“She seemed cute, too,” I added as I hung up my coat. “Max scared her off.”

“Tough luck, Kev, tough luck. Max does that. However, I have a fabulous consolation prize for you. We're going to introduce you to not just one, but two hot chicks. Once I remember what room they're in.” Drew rubbed his hands together.

“Andreas said they were in 229 yesterday. Hell, you remembered they were in 229 yesterday. You're way too excited about this.” Max turned back to the door. “Come on, they're right next to the stairwell. I'll hold your hand so you don't get lost.”

They left the room, laughing and needling each other all the way down the hall. I trailed behind. Introducing me to these girls was just an excuse to visit them. It wasn’t much of a choice for me. I could take a nap, or I could go with them. I also had the option of heading back to orientation. I shook my head and decided I would try to be sociable.

Something caught my eye from down the hall, past Max and Drew. The guy in the trench coat stood near the stairwell, sunglasses on, facing in my direction. I opened my mouth to say something, but he simply turned and walked away. Neither of my roommates showed any signs of noticing him. I shook my head and caught up with them. His appearance was not subtle. The fact that I was the only one who noticed him was crazy.

Drew knocked on the door. “Hey, anyone home?”

“Door's open!” called a girl's voice. Drew and Max led the way in and I pulled the door shut behind us. Inside, the room was cramped, noticeably smaller than ours. The only light came from a large monitor that was flashing with bright explosions. A girl was playing a game, fast-paced, colorful, and loud, but not one I recognized. It had to be brand new.