My over-packed messenger bag slipped, pulling me to one side. Stumbling backward, my arms flailed like a cracked-out crossing guard. Racing up the wide staircase, I barreled through the double doors and smacked right into a brick wall. Maybe because the idea of sitting through another biology class made me want to hurl? Yep. And, why in the hell did I choose astronomy? Instead, I tapped into my well-earned blood money and leased a two-bedroom apartment next to campus.īut now I was sort of regretting my little act of rebellion, because as I hurried out of the humid heat of a late August morning and into the air-conditioned brick building, it was already eleven minutes past nine and my astronomy class was on the second floor. Of course I hadn’t chosen to stay in a dorm, because I knew at some point, my parents would randomly show up and they would start judging and start talking and I’d rather punt-kick myself in the face before subjecting an innocent bystander to that. They do have dorms there, don’t they?” My mom’s voice filtered through my thoughts as I stopped in front of the Robert Byrd Science Building, out of breath from racing up the steepest, most inconvenient hill in history. “If you insist on moving halfway across the country, at least stay in one of the dorms. I had to park at the train station adjacent to the campus, wasting precious time digging up quarters for the meter. What I didn’t plan for was the mile long traffic back-up at the stop sign, because God forbid there was an actual light in the historical town, or the fact there was absolutely no parking left on campus. I even left fifteen minutes early so I would arrive ten minutes before my nine-ten class began. And I actually drove it twice on Sunday to make sure Google wasn’t leading me astray. That was why I had obsessively plotted the distance between my apartment in University Heights and the designated parking lot for commuter students over the weekend on Google. I hated for people to turn and stare, which they always did when you entered a classroom a minute after class started. The second thing was walking into a crowded classroom late.

Not likely to occur, but still pretty damn freaky to think about. Waking up in the middle of the night and discovering a ghost with its transparent face shoved in mine was one of them. There were two things in life that scared the ever-loving crap out of me.

Wait for You by Jennifer L. Armentrout