The Purity of Blood: Volume I (3 page)

“Hi, guys.
 
How was your summer?”
 

Sliding into the
seat beside me, he fell into easy conversation with my group of new friends.
 
Not having anything to contribute to their
discussion, I tried not to stare at him.
 
If I wasn’t mistaken, his brown eyes seemed to mask strange hidden
depths behind them.
 
They drew me in for
reasons I couldn’t begin to understand.
 
He also had a bizarrely healthy glow about him, as if he’d never been
sick a day in his life.
 
He was
attractively tall, something I really liked, with a rugged outdoorsy look about
him.
 
Like the kind of guy you’d like to
get lost in the woods with, maybe even on purpose.
 
Hard as I tried, I couldn’t help but stare at
him.

“Ben, this is my
new roommate, Sara.”

He turned and
looked directly into my eyes.
 
In my
experience, most people didn’t look you straight in the eye.
 
They kind of start there and then danced
around your face uncomfortably.
 
But he
held my gaze steadily for what must have been only a few moments, but seemed
like a small eternity.
 
Inside his gaze,
I’d forgotten we weren’t the only two people in the room.

“Hi, Sara,” he
smiled. “I hope living with Darcy doesn’t drive you crazy.”
 

Everyone
laughed.
 
But not me, I was still gazing
into those eyes.
 
There was a certain
aspect in the expression behind them that made me think he was deep in thought
about something he didn’t want to share.

“Ben
Pearce!
 
Now don’t you go giving her the
wrong impression about me,” I vaguely heard Darcy protest in the background.
  

“Hi, Ben,” I
said lamely as I reached out my hand.

“So where are
you from?” he asked.

“Wading
River.
 
It’s a small town out east on
Long Island.
 
On the sound.”
 

“Beach person
huh?
 
Well, welcome to mountain
country.
 
Must be a lot different from
home.
 
I hope you like the woods cause
there’s not much to do around here otherwise.”
 

As he shook my
hand with a firm grip, I shifted my gaze from my hand in his up to his
eyes.
 
They wore a peculiar expression I
couldn’t quite make out.
 
Confusion
maybe, but they were also looking deep into mine as if asking me questions
without words.
 
He finally released my
hand after an awkwardly long possession of it, causing me to break my own stare
to glance back at Tabitha.
 
I think she’d
just asked me what my plans were for the evening.
 

A minute or so
later I peered back over at Ben.
 
He was
still staring at me which was starting to make me a little uncomfortable.
 
He must have sensed it because at that exact
moment he looked away.
 

Wasn’t his food getting cold?
 

Thankfully, Mike turned the conversation to our upcoming
hiking trip, and hearing of our plans, Ben expressed his eagerness to join our
excursion into the woods.
  
Apparently he
was just as avid an outdoorsman as he appeared at first glance.
 
I felt my cheeks warm under his gaze and
looked away.
 
Who knows, maybe it was
just me being all female for the first time in my life, or it could have simply
been the old flannel shirt he wore, but suddenly it was feeling a little warm
in here.
 
I'd always had a thing for well-worn
flannel, and the man sitting next to me wearing it wasn’t helping any either.

On the way back to the dorm,
Darcy talked in a long steady stream without any need for me to answer.
 
I was more than happy that my participation
in her conversation wasn’t necessary as I had a lot to process from my first
evening as a free and independent college woman.
 

“Isn’t Ben
cute?
 
I’ve had a little crush on him
since last year.
 
I wish he’d ask me
out.
 
Personally I make it a rule not to
ask men out on dates.
 
It sets a
dangerous precedent and if a man is too stupid to realize he should ask me out,
do I really want to go out with him?
 
Ben’s gone out with a few girls since I’ve known him, but it never gets
too serious.
 
I think he has problems
with his family and that’s why he went to school so far away from home.
 
He’s from Montana I think, but he doesn’t
like to talk about home or his family much.
 
Do you think he likes me?
 
You’re
an unbiased observer.
 
Do you think he
was looking at me, you know,
that way
?
 
I always think so, but he’s a hard one to
read.
 
But oh, those eyes, dreamy aren’t
they?
 
Like melted chocolate.”
 

She sighed and paused for a minute, then continued without
waiting for any response from me.

In the morning, I woke in a
strange bed to the sounds of shuffling feet and murmured voices in the
hallway.
 
Dorm life.
 
I suppose it was going to take a little
getting used to.
 
I rolled my head over
to see Darcy still sound asleep, her foot hanging off the side of her bed
exposing her bright pink toe nail polish and perfectly shaped feet.
 
Her idea of getting a better schedule next
semester was making sure not to have any morning classes.
 

I threw my feet
off the side of the bed and peeked out the window.
 
It looked like a postcard, sunny and
inviting, just like the campus appeared in all the brochures I’d received in
the mail over the past year.

Deep down I was
happy, but I had the feeling I was going to miss my parents eventually.
 
It was good to truly be on my own for the
first time in my life.
 
It had been a
tough battle convincing Mom to let me go away, but my father and I had finally
won her over in the end.
 
And now here I
was on this beautiful fall day beginning a new chapter in the book of my
life.
  
Considering my previous chapters,
it all seemed too good to be true, like a dream somehow.
 
Whether I deserved it or not, I really wanted
my book to have a happy ending at some point.

I slowly
dressed, taking the time to put a bit more thought into what I wore than I
usually did.
 
As I’d unpacked yesterday,
I couldn’t help but notice Darcy’s adverse reaction to my clothes.
 
She was way more into fashion than I
was.
 
I’d always viewed my wardrobe in a
bit more of a utilitarian way.
 
It
consisted mostly of old jeans and ratty tee-shirts with a few sweaters and
outfits for jogging.
 
Maybe she’d be a
good influence on me in that department.
 
I smiled and shook my head as I walked over to the mirror.
 

“Yeah, good luck
to her with that,” I mumbled.
 
I knew I
was a lost fashion cause.
 
If you had any
doubts about that, just ask my mother.

Now dressed in
jeans and a new tee-shirt, I began to run a brush through my hair.
 
My mass of red hair stuck out just as much here
as it did at home, a bright red beacon lost in a sea of blondes and
brunettes.
 
Secretly I’d hoped I might
make friends with another red head so I wouldn’t stick out quite so much.
 
No luck yet, but the semester was still
young.

Grabbing my backpack full of new text books and my laptop, I
headed out, Darcy quietly snoring as I closed the door behind me.
 
Her first class didn’t begin until after
lunch.

After
a quick breakfast over in Hasbrouck, I started off in the direction of the
lecture hall to meet up with Tabitha before class.
 
It was a beautiful morning, the air was still
full of hints of summer even though fall was obviously about to swoop down and
chase it away.
 
As I walked past a few
other dorms, I fell into step with an increasing number of students as they
began to file out of their beds.
 
All
things considered, I thought it had seemed a little too quiet in the dining
hall during breakfast.
 
I’m guessing not
many students thought enough of that particular meal to make the extra effort
to get out of bed for it.

From all the way across the quad
I could see Tabitha sitting on the concrete steps leading up to the lecture
hall building. She was eating a banana and thumbing through our thick Art
History text book.
 
She wasn’t hard to
spot.
 
Her distinctive sleek bob of jet
black hair easily set her apart from the crowd.
 
Plus she was really pretty; quietly beautiful I guess you’d say.
 
Way more than I was at any rate.
 
Lucky for her, she wasn’t saddled with a big
pair of boobs like I was.
 
Not terribly
curvaceous, clothes hung well on her.

I wasn’t in a
hurry to get to her.
 
Still soaking the
ambiance of my new surroundings, I was enjoying my morning stroll.
 
Most of the buildings on campus were modern
looking, made of glass or concrete, but a few had that classical old brick, Ivy
League look about them.
 
It was an
eclectic mix and stood as a visual timeline for the evolution of the
campus.
 
The most modern structure I’d
seen so far was just around the corner from Capen.
 
In the center of the Student Union Plaza sat
an enormous glass pyramid.
 
Perhaps a bit
too modern for this old fashioned girl, it was interesting, but I wasn’t sure I
liked it very much.

With a new
building under construction not that far from the lecture hall, the NPU campus
seemed to be in a continual state of change.
 
I guess that was a good thing.
 
I
couldn’t imagine it was particularly healthy for a place of higher learning to
be stagnant in any way.
 
The building my
class was in this morning was a modern minimalistic looking one with solid
glass and cement walls.
 
From the
outside, it gave the impression more of a museum than an academic building, but
I kind of liked that unexpected quality about it.

Walking across
the quad in the warm glow of the morning sun, the distinctive silhouette of
Mount Mohonk was visible on the horizon.
 
Easily seen from just about everywhere on campus, it loomed over NPU
like a protective parent, eternally watching the students as they went about
their daily routines.
 
It looked inviting
and as I walked across the quad, I hoped our hiking trip would take us up in
that direction.
 

Tabitha suddenly
looked up and waved.
 

“Morning,” she
said as she swallowed the last of her banana and smiled.
 
She was obviously more of a morning person
that I was.

“Good morning,”
I yawned, forcing my usual grumpy morning self to the side.

“Did Darcy keep
you up all night?”

“No, she dropped
off pretty quick, but I stayed up a little later than I’d intended to finish
unpacking.
 
I knew I’d feel better in the
morning if I didn’t see all the clutter.”

Seemingly eager
to get to class, she jumped to her feet and slung her back pack over her
shoulder.
 
When she turned and started up
the stairs, I fell into step behind her, following along with the crowd of
students shuffling their way to class.
 

After finding
our hall, we settled into a pair of seats in the center of the room about nine
or ten rows back.
  
I looked around the
hall and smiled to myself.
 
When I was in
high school, this was how I pictured college.
 
My high school was a small town school with small classes.
 
The cavernous lecture hall I now sat in had a
very collegiate feel about it that made me feel all grown up.
 
It was a large hall that probably held over
two or three hundred students, with stadium seating rows overlooking a podium
and projection screen down below.
  
To be
honest, with its florescent lighting it was a little on the dreary side, but I
was too excited too really notice.

In truth I was
older than my new friends realized.
 
I’d
taken a year off after graduating high school and stayed home in Wading
River.
 
Taking a few classes at the local
community college, I’d also gotten a job while I decided to give a think on
what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.
 
Not that I’d received any great revelations on the subject in the last
year.
 

After
graduation, my friends from high school had all gone away to school.
 
It had been a lonely year, but having no idea
what I wanted to do with my life, I didn’t want to waste my parents money by
just blindly going off to school and hoping some profession I’d want to pursue
would finally be revealed to me.