Desperate
The Emotional Guillotine
Three weeks earlier.
I walked through the heavy doors, heading for the Advanced Creative Writing Course. Double majoring in Photography and Writing was proving to kick my ass. Why hadn’t I picked one major like a normal human being? I guess this is what happens when you can’t decide on a career path. You just torture yourself. I could only pray that this course would actually live up to the expectations it’s name gave itself. The last time I took a creative writing class I wanted to pull my hair out and offer it as a peace offering to the professor. Not because the topics to write on were difficult, but the professor was so vague about assignments and refused to offer conceivable instructions. I heaved a sigh as I found the room number and paused for a millisecond to collect myself. I’m determined to make this a great course.
I arrived at the classroom ten minutes before class was to begin and dropped my bag on the floor, causing a loud thud to fill the room. Let’s get this over with. I placed my head in my hands and stared at the white board in front of me. I hadn’t bothered to check who was even teaching the course. If it is some snobby, ass professor who claims Hemmingway is overrated I’m going to do everyone a favor and just blow up the classroom. When no one is in it of course. God, I need therapy.
“Don’t look too excited, you might annoy your classmates,” a deep, raspy, and most definitely English accent, filled my ears. I looked up and it took everything inside me to not moan in admiration. Before me was a man of about 26 years. He was wearing a baby blue buttoned down shirt and the first four buttons were unclasped. The shirt was loosely tucked into a pair of black dress pants, although they were tight. Tighter than I think they needed to be. I could see several tattoos going up his arms underneath his shirt. His hair was slicked back into a messy bun. There was no way this dude was the professor, he looked way too young, but at the same time, I’d be surprised if he was a teacher assistant. Creative Writing classes don’t usually have a TA. I decided he was a student.
“I’m a little worried this course isn’t going to fulfill my expectations.” I stated. His eyes widened a bit, good lord, they were a deep green, and he smirked.
“And what do you expect from this kind of course?” He asked curiously as he took a step forward towards my desk.
“Not too much, just as long as the professor isn’t some ass wipe who believes he or she’s God’s gift to mankind because he or she got a book published. Also, my last creative professor didn’t believe in talking in coherent sentences.”
“Not used to difficult writing topics, huh?” He asked, smiling ever so slightly.
“Yes! No, I mean no! It had nothing to do with the topics. It was just the professor didn’t exactly know how to teach or be reasonable with his students. I can write, believe me, I can.” I felt myself getting defensive. I always did when it came to my writing.
“Well, I’ll believe it when I see it, but for now, class must begin.” He turned around and went to the front of the class room and stood by the professor’s desk who had yet to show up.
Wait, what? Believe it when he sees it?
“Good morning everyone.” His voice was louder and firmer than when it was when he spoke to me and my breath caught in my throat.
“My name is Harry Styles. I’m your Advanced Creative Writing professor and I’m warning you right now, I’m not some ass wipe who thinks because I’ve had a few things published that I can walk all over your writing,” I saw a small smile tugging at the corner of his lips as his eyes met mine for a millisecond then back to the class.
Oh, shit. No fucking way. You’re kidding me? He’s using my rant to humor me.
He continued, “that being said, I also do not expect mediocre work. This course has the word “advanced” in it for a reason. If you decide to be a wanker and slack off, you will not survive within the first week.”
I felt students around me straighten up immediately. It was actually a pretty significant threat. And judging by this guys’ demeanor and confidence, he was dead serious. He looked like he wouldn’t so much as sport a slight frown if he failed half the class in the first hour.
“Now, with that out of the way, I want you all to grab a pen and notebook. No pencil, a pen. Tear out a piece of paper and write five things you’d like me to know about you. And I don’t give a fuck if your favorite color is red or green. I want to know meaningful things. This is creative writing. Not fact writing. Turn it into my desk and then you are free to leave. I will email you the first assignment within the next hour. I suggest you take it seriously.”
With that, he turned on his heal and walked behind the desk and sat down. As soon as his body hit the chair, his face relaxed. His eyes looked over all the students and when they met mine, he gave me a kind smile and a quick nod. I nodded back. Okay, he seemed like a hard ass, but he also seemed like he was reasonable and not a total dick. This could be alright. I’m still pretty damn embarrassed I didn’t realize he was the professor. Taking a deep breath, I dug into my bag and grabbed my notebook, pulled out a pen and wrote down five things, excuse me, five meaningful things, about myself.
1. I’m a double major with focuses in Writing and Photography. I know this is a fact but it sets the basis for who I am: an indecisive person. Given the fact I have one semester left to decide which career path I'm going to choose, I’m pretty fucking daunted right now and my indecisive personality doesn’t help me either.
The rest was just about my morals and values, beliefs, and I even through in a little bit about relationships. With that, I tore the piece of paper from the notebook, stood up and walked towards Professor Styles.
“Here you are Professor…?” I hesitated as I handed him my paper. His eyes shifted form my face, to the paper in my hands, and I swore he checked out my breasts ever so slightly. Maybe that was wishful thinking. Shut up, Charlotte. You’ve had hot professors before, this is nothing new.
“You can call me Harry. Or you can call me Professor Styles. Whatever makes you feel
more comfortable,” he said simply as he grabbed my paper and glanced at the top of the page.
“Miss….Charlotte Pursell? Pretty name.” He smiled again and this time, it was a wide one, revealing straight, white teeth.
“Thank you, it’s my mothers middle name.” I was trying to keep myself together but I was quickly becoming aware at how gorgeous this guy was. And his fashion sense was too damn suave for him to be a Creative Writing professor.
“I hope you enjoyed my little speech. I know I enjoyed your choice of words earlier,” he chuckled slightly. I blushed in embarrassment.
“With all due respect, I wasn’t expecting you to be the professor,” I replied. “You don’t exactly look the part.” He rolled his eyes.
“I’d be lying if I said I had never heard that before. But you don’t look like a typical student so I guess that makes us even?”
“What’s that suppose to me?” I asked, slightly offended. He gave me a big shit-eating grin.
“I’ll let you figure it out. Until next time, have a great rest of your day and I will see you Wednesday.” With that, he grabbed a pen from his desk and began reading the paper I gave him, ignoring my presence, acting almost as if that mind-fucking conversation had never happened. I bit my lip in confusion and decided it was best to just grab my things from my seat and head out before my classmates caught me looking like a lost deer.
Thanking God inwardly for only having one class on Mondays, I headed out of campus to the subway. I plugged my headphones in and went about my normal routine. Left, right, right, right, left, subway, sit down, ignore the homeless person sleeping on the floor, left left, Starbucks? Oh, yes please.
I stopped at the Starbucks that was about a two-minute walk from my apartment and found a secluded spot in the corner. It was 10am. The morning rush had deceased and the noon rush had yet to arise. I ordered my usual, opened my laptop, and waited for my Earl Grey to finish steeping. After spending an un-godly amount of time on Tumblr and Facebook, I decided to check my email to see if Professor Styles had sent the assignment. I scanned through the emails: Victoria’s Secret: The Barely There Bra!, Urban Outfitters: Hipster Shit, The Bottle Room: 50% off Select Wines, and finally, Advanced Creative Writing : First Assignment. There it was. I opened and read as I sipped on my tea.
From: Harry Edward Styles
For your first assignment, you are all to write a 10-page paper, double spaced, on the topic of, get ready, yourself. You are to talk about yourself in the third person. Consider yourself your own best friend who knows everything and anything there is to know about you. Dig deep and dig personal. Talk about weaknesses, strengths, traumas, vices, habits. Your conclusion should be a collection of absolutes you have discovered while conducting this analysis. These absolute statements need to be in depth. Like I said before, this is a creative writing class, not a fact writing class. You’ll need to think creatively about how you are going to properly express yourself in a third person narrative. This assignment is the first of a collection of assignments relating to a final portfolio, so don’t think you can slack off on this. If you fuck this one up, you fuck the rest up. Your assignment is due a week from this Wednesday. Good luck.
-HS
Well shit. I leaned back in my chair and rubbed my eyes, hoping that when I opened them, the assignment would be something like, write about a role model by describing them as an animal or pick a building and give it a personality, not this deep, personal, load of pigeon shit. Okay, it wasn’t pigeon shit, but it was as frustrating as pigeon shit. It’s there and you have to deal with it.
I tried to collect my thoughts so I could begin an internal brainstorming session but all I could think about was how Har-, Professor Styles, used the word “fuck” twice in the same sentence. How could he present himself so professional yet act so…normal? And why was he staring at my breasts? I tried to convince myself that I had imagined it due to my infatuation with his jawline, but it seemed way too real. Is he like a teenager trapped inside a grown man’s body? Trying to suppress the tendencies of a breast staring, 16-year old boy? I decided that I was going insane and clicked out of the email. I brought up a word document and stared at the blinking cursor. Outlines. They are such a brilliant pain in my ass but they always get the job done. I figured I should start out with first impressions of myself and give several examples. Then maybe mannerisms I’m unaware of…
After about an hour and a half I had a pretty decent outline of how this paper would go down. I thought about calling Mandy to interview her about how she saw me but as soon as I was about to press her contact name to give her a ring, an insane sinking feeling encompassed my entire being. No wonder he said it needed to be deep and personal. Mandy can’t give me the same personal and in depth description of myself as I can. She’ll be too kind, or too harsh. She won’t be me describing…me.
“Aw fuck.” I said aloud. Apparently a little too loud because as soon as the profanity slipped from my mouth, a middle-aged woman put her hand over her little boy’s ears and gave me the devil’s glare.
“Sorry, just you know, I’m a college student.” Wow. That was lamest excuse on the planet, and she seemed to think so too because she just stared at me like I was an idiot and quite frankly, I didn’t blame her.
But it really was dawning on me just how complicated and fragile this assignment was going to be, and it was hard to suppress the anguish I felt. Professor Styles really wanted something authentic and what better way to be authentic than to dig into your soul and grab out all the worms, whole frozen pizzas eaten during drunk weekends, and better yet, the heartbreaking high school sweethearts? He was going to be tough and I really needed to just suck it up and roll with it.
I sat up and stretched my arms, reaching for my empty cup. I grabbed it and threw it to the right of me, hoping it would somehow make it into the trash can. Clunk. That was unexpected. Maybe things would turn out alright with this class after all.
I made my way out of the café, and into the city, walking quickly to the apartment. When I arrived, I was hit with a robust smell filling the entire apartment. I peered around the corner to the left and saw Mandy humming, stirring a pot of what had to be spaghetti sauce. I smiled widely and ran into the kitchen.
“MANDY!” I yelled and grabbed her from behind, giving her a bear hug, and knowing I was annoying the shit out of her.
She yelped in surprise and dropped the spoon to the floor. She looked down and stared at it for a few good seconds before looking up at me with a glare.
“What the hell, Char? Can’t you see I’m in my cooking trance?” She picked up the spoon and threw it in the kitchen sink, making a tisking noise as if I was a child.
“Sorry,” I lamely responded, “I’m just eternally grateful for the fact that you are making us spaghetti tonight.” I dramatically added, hoping she’d loosen up. Mandy was always more uptight than I was. She was always more logical, more contained, just more…Mandy. She was the voice of reason more often than not, she rarely laughed at my jokes, and the only aspect of her life that she didn’t give much though too was her hair: dyed bright red and unashamed. Mandy considered herself to have a deep responsibility to her friends and I made sure that aspect of her never went unnoticed.
“Anyway,” Mandy said, her annoyance finally fading. “How was your day?” After grabbing a spoon that seen less days on the kitchen floor from the drawer, she went back to stirring the pot while I emptied my contents onto the kitchen table. Spreading out papers, pencils, highlighters.
“Honestly Mandy, I’ve never had more of a mind-fucking sort of day.” I replied. She stopped stirring the pot and quirked an eyebrow at me. I continued.
“So I have this Advanced Creative Writing Course. And after making a fool of myself in front of the professor, who at the time I thought was a student, I’ve realized that this course is going to be WAY more difficult than my last joke of a writing class. Our first assignment is pretty much a trip to the emotional guillotine and on top of that I’m pretty sure he was staring at my breasts. But he’s super hot so maybe it was wishful thinking but, he was all cryptic with me and I don’t know if that’s a style of flirting or what...” I trailed off, realizing I was babbling and let out a grunt. I was, well, disgruntled.
Mandy turned around as she placed the lid on top of the sauce and turned the burner to low. She sat down at the table with me and grabbed the outline I had written up. She scrunched her nose as she read.
“A third person perspective of yourself, ten pages, needs to be emotional, in depth, conclude with absolute statements you discovered about yourself…” she hummed in thought as she placed the paper down and looked in the distance. After about 10 seconds she looked at me with a blank face and said,
“You’re fucked, Char.” I felt face turn beat red in anger.
“What the hell, Mandy?! You’re suppose to help me!” I nearly yelled. She lifted her hands up in defense, her eyes slightly worried I might jump over the table and shove her head in the spaghetti sauce. It’d be a loss, but I’m sure I’d be able to find some good recipes.
“Calm down, crazy. I’m kidding. I’m not going to lie though, this sounds really tough, and I want to help you out, but I’m sure you’ve realized that-“
“It would defeat the whole purpose of the assignment if you gave me too much help, yeah I know.” I Interrupted. She frowned.
“Hey, I know you’re stressed because this is our last semester. And I know you haven’t entirely figured out what you’re going to do once you graduate. But look,” she pointed at my outline, “you already have a great outline here. And maybe this emotional turmoil you’ve been feeling about graduating will help you dive into all the insecurities, dreams, and fears he wants you to talk about. Besides,” she leaned back in her chair, hands placed behind her head, “You’re hot, he’s hot, maybe you can woo him with your charm into getting a good grade.” She wiggled her eyebrows and I couldn’t help but laugh and feel just a slight chunk of the weight I had been carrying since this morning lift off of my shoulders.
“Yeah. You’re right.” I said, smiling and feeling a lot less insane. Mandy smiled too, clapped her hands and stood up.
“Now let’s eat our body weight in spaghetti, and you can tell me just how hot this professor is.” I rolled my eyes, but inside I was dying to tell her.
I walked through the heavy doors, heading for the Advanced Creative Writing Course. Double majoring in Photography and Writing was proving to kick my ass. Why hadn’t I picked one major like a normal human being? I guess this is what happens when you can’t decide on a career path. You just torture yourself. I could only pray that this course would actually live up to the expectations it’s name gave itself. The last time I took a creative writing class I wanted to pull my hair out and offer it as a peace offering to the professor. Not because the topics to write on were difficult, but the professor was so vague about assignments and refused to offer conceivable instructions. I heaved a sigh as I found the room number and paused for a millisecond to collect myself. I’m determined to make this a great course.
I arrived at the classroom ten minutes before class was to begin and dropped my bag on the floor, causing a loud thud to fill the room. Let’s get this over with. I placed my head in my hands and stared at the white board in front of me. I hadn’t bothered to check who was even teaching the course. If it is some snobby, ass professor who claims Hemmingway is overrated I’m going to do everyone a favor and just blow up the classroom. When no one is in it of course. God, I need therapy.
“Don’t look too excited, you might annoy your classmates,” a deep, raspy, and most definitely English accent, filled my ears. I looked up and it took everything inside me to not moan in admiration. Before me was a man of about 26 years. He was wearing a baby blue buttoned down shirt and the first four buttons were unclasped. The shirt was loosely tucked into a pair of black dress pants, although they were tight. Tighter than I think they needed to be. I could see several tattoos going up his arms underneath his shirt. His hair was slicked back into a messy bun. There was no way this dude was the professor, he looked way too young, but at the same time, I’d be surprised if he was a teacher assistant. Creative Writing classes don’t usually have a TA. I decided he was a student.
“I’m a little worried this course isn’t going to fulfill my expectations.” I stated. His eyes widened a bit, good lord, they were a deep green, and he smirked.
“And what do you expect from this kind of course?” He asked curiously as he took a step forward towards my desk.
“Not too much, just as long as the professor isn’t some ass wipe who believes he or she’s God’s gift to mankind because he or she got a book published. Also, my last creative professor didn’t believe in talking in coherent sentences.”
“Not used to difficult writing topics, huh?” He asked, smiling ever so slightly.
“Yes! No, I mean no! It had nothing to do with the topics. It was just the professor didn’t exactly know how to teach or be reasonable with his students. I can write, believe me, I can.” I felt myself getting defensive. I always did when it came to my writing.
“Well, I’ll believe it when I see it, but for now, class must begin.” He turned around and went to the front of the class room and stood by the professor’s desk who had yet to show up.
Wait, what? Believe it when he sees it?
“Good morning everyone.” His voice was louder and firmer than when it was when he spoke to me and my breath caught in my throat.
“My name is Harry Styles. I’m your Advanced Creative Writing professor and I’m warning you right now, I’m not some ass wipe who thinks because I’ve had a few things published that I can walk all over your writing,” I saw a small smile tugging at the corner of his lips as his eyes met mine for a millisecond then back to the class.
Oh, shit. No fucking way. You’re kidding me? He’s using my rant to humor me.
He continued, “that being said, I also do not expect mediocre work. This course has the word “advanced” in it for a reason. If you decide to be a wanker and slack off, you will not survive within the first week.”
I felt students around me straighten up immediately. It was actually a pretty significant threat. And judging by this guys’ demeanor and confidence, he was dead serious. He looked like he wouldn’t so much as sport a slight frown if he failed half the class in the first hour.
“Now, with that out of the way, I want you all to grab a pen and notebook. No pencil, a pen. Tear out a piece of paper and write five things you’d like me to know about you. And I don’t give a fuck if your favorite color is red or green. I want to know meaningful things. This is creative writing. Not fact writing. Turn it into my desk and then you are free to leave. I will email you the first assignment within the next hour. I suggest you take it seriously.”
With that, he turned on his heal and walked behind the desk and sat down. As soon as his body hit the chair, his face relaxed. His eyes looked over all the students and when they met mine, he gave me a kind smile and a quick nod. I nodded back. Okay, he seemed like a hard ass, but he also seemed like he was reasonable and not a total dick. This could be alright. I’m still pretty damn embarrassed I didn’t realize he was the professor. Taking a deep breath, I dug into my bag and grabbed my notebook, pulled out a pen and wrote down five things, excuse me, five meaningful things, about myself.
1. I’m a double major with focuses in Writing and Photography. I know this is a fact but it sets the basis for who I am: an indecisive person. Given the fact I have one semester left to decide which career path I'm going to choose, I’m pretty fucking daunted right now and my indecisive personality doesn’t help me either.
The rest was just about my morals and values, beliefs, and I even through in a little bit about relationships. With that, I tore the piece of paper from the notebook, stood up and walked towards Professor Styles.
“Here you are Professor…?” I hesitated as I handed him my paper. His eyes shifted form my face, to the paper in my hands, and I swore he checked out my breasts ever so slightly. Maybe that was wishful thinking. Shut up, Charlotte. You’ve had hot professors before, this is nothing new.
“You can call me Harry. Or you can call me Professor Styles. Whatever makes you feel
more comfortable,” he said simply as he grabbed my paper and glanced at the top of the page.
“Miss….Charlotte Pursell? Pretty name.” He smiled again and this time, it was a wide one, revealing straight, white teeth.
“Thank you, it’s my mothers middle name.” I was trying to keep myself together but I was quickly becoming aware at how gorgeous this guy was. And his fashion sense was too damn suave for him to be a Creative Writing professor.
“I hope you enjoyed my little speech. I know I enjoyed your choice of words earlier,” he chuckled slightly. I blushed in embarrassment.
“With all due respect, I wasn’t expecting you to be the professor,” I replied. “You don’t exactly look the part.” He rolled his eyes.
“I’d be lying if I said I had never heard that before. But you don’t look like a typical student so I guess that makes us even?”
“What’s that suppose to me?” I asked, slightly offended. He gave me a big shit-eating grin.
“I’ll let you figure it out. Until next time, have a great rest of your day and I will see you Wednesday.” With that, he grabbed a pen from his desk and began reading the paper I gave him, ignoring my presence, acting almost as if that mind-fucking conversation had never happened. I bit my lip in confusion and decided it was best to just grab my things from my seat and head out before my classmates caught me looking like a lost deer.
Thanking God inwardly for only having one class on Mondays, I headed out of campus to the subway. I plugged my headphones in and went about my normal routine. Left, right, right, right, left, subway, sit down, ignore the homeless person sleeping on the floor, left left, Starbucks? Oh, yes please.
I stopped at the Starbucks that was about a two-minute walk from my apartment and found a secluded spot in the corner. It was 10am. The morning rush had deceased and the noon rush had yet to arise. I ordered my usual, opened my laptop, and waited for my Earl Grey to finish steeping. After spending an un-godly amount of time on Tumblr and Facebook, I decided to check my email to see if Professor Styles had sent the assignment. I scanned through the emails: Victoria’s Secret: The Barely There Bra!, Urban Outfitters: Hipster Shit, The Bottle Room: 50% off Select Wines, and finally, Advanced Creative Writing : First Assignment. There it was. I opened and read as I sipped on my tea.
From: Harry Edward Styles
For your first assignment, you are all to write a 10-page paper, double spaced, on the topic of, get ready, yourself. You are to talk about yourself in the third person. Consider yourself your own best friend who knows everything and anything there is to know about you. Dig deep and dig personal. Talk about weaknesses, strengths, traumas, vices, habits. Your conclusion should be a collection of absolutes you have discovered while conducting this analysis. These absolute statements need to be in depth. Like I said before, this is a creative writing class, not a fact writing class. You’ll need to think creatively about how you are going to properly express yourself in a third person narrative. This assignment is the first of a collection of assignments relating to a final portfolio, so don’t think you can slack off on this. If you fuck this one up, you fuck the rest up. Your assignment is due a week from this Wednesday. Good luck.
-HS
Well shit. I leaned back in my chair and rubbed my eyes, hoping that when I opened them, the assignment would be something like, write about a role model by describing them as an animal or pick a building and give it a personality, not this deep, personal, load of pigeon shit. Okay, it wasn’t pigeon shit, but it was as frustrating as pigeon shit. It’s there and you have to deal with it.
I tried to collect my thoughts so I could begin an internal brainstorming session but all I could think about was how Har-, Professor Styles, used the word “fuck” twice in the same sentence. How could he present himself so professional yet act so…normal? And why was he staring at my breasts? I tried to convince myself that I had imagined it due to my infatuation with his jawline, but it seemed way too real. Is he like a teenager trapped inside a grown man’s body? Trying to suppress the tendencies of a breast staring, 16-year old boy? I decided that I was going insane and clicked out of the email. I brought up a word document and stared at the blinking cursor. Outlines. They are such a brilliant pain in my ass but they always get the job done. I figured I should start out with first impressions of myself and give several examples. Then maybe mannerisms I’m unaware of…
After about an hour and a half I had a pretty decent outline of how this paper would go down. I thought about calling Mandy to interview her about how she saw me but as soon as I was about to press her contact name to give her a ring, an insane sinking feeling encompassed my entire being. No wonder he said it needed to be deep and personal. Mandy can’t give me the same personal and in depth description of myself as I can. She’ll be too kind, or too harsh. She won’t be me describing…me.
“Aw fuck.” I said aloud. Apparently a little too loud because as soon as the profanity slipped from my mouth, a middle-aged woman put her hand over her little boy’s ears and gave me the devil’s glare.
“Sorry, just you know, I’m a college student.” Wow. That was lamest excuse on the planet, and she seemed to think so too because she just stared at me like I was an idiot and quite frankly, I didn’t blame her.
But it really was dawning on me just how complicated and fragile this assignment was going to be, and it was hard to suppress the anguish I felt. Professor Styles really wanted something authentic and what better way to be authentic than to dig into your soul and grab out all the worms, whole frozen pizzas eaten during drunk weekends, and better yet, the heartbreaking high school sweethearts? He was going to be tough and I really needed to just suck it up and roll with it.
I sat up and stretched my arms, reaching for my empty cup. I grabbed it and threw it to the right of me, hoping it would somehow make it into the trash can. Clunk. That was unexpected. Maybe things would turn out alright with this class after all.
I made my way out of the café, and into the city, walking quickly to the apartment. When I arrived, I was hit with a robust smell filling the entire apartment. I peered around the corner to the left and saw Mandy humming, stirring a pot of what had to be spaghetti sauce. I smiled widely and ran into the kitchen.
“MANDY!” I yelled and grabbed her from behind, giving her a bear hug, and knowing I was annoying the shit out of her.
She yelped in surprise and dropped the spoon to the floor. She looked down and stared at it for a few good seconds before looking up at me with a glare.
“What the hell, Char? Can’t you see I’m in my cooking trance?” She picked up the spoon and threw it in the kitchen sink, making a tisking noise as if I was a child.
“Sorry,” I lamely responded, “I’m just eternally grateful for the fact that you are making us spaghetti tonight.” I dramatically added, hoping she’d loosen up. Mandy was always more uptight than I was. She was always more logical, more contained, just more…Mandy. She was the voice of reason more often than not, she rarely laughed at my jokes, and the only aspect of her life that she didn’t give much though too was her hair: dyed bright red and unashamed. Mandy considered herself to have a deep responsibility to her friends and I made sure that aspect of her never went unnoticed.
“Anyway,” Mandy said, her annoyance finally fading. “How was your day?” After grabbing a spoon that seen less days on the kitchen floor from the drawer, she went back to stirring the pot while I emptied my contents onto the kitchen table. Spreading out papers, pencils, highlighters.
“Honestly Mandy, I’ve never had more of a mind-fucking sort of day.” I replied. She stopped stirring the pot and quirked an eyebrow at me. I continued.
“So I have this Advanced Creative Writing Course. And after making a fool of myself in front of the professor, who at the time I thought was a student, I’ve realized that this course is going to be WAY more difficult than my last joke of a writing class. Our first assignment is pretty much a trip to the emotional guillotine and on top of that I’m pretty sure he was staring at my breasts. But he’s super hot so maybe it was wishful thinking but, he was all cryptic with me and I don’t know if that’s a style of flirting or what...” I trailed off, realizing I was babbling and let out a grunt. I was, well, disgruntled.
Mandy turned around as she placed the lid on top of the sauce and turned the burner to low. She sat down at the table with me and grabbed the outline I had written up. She scrunched her nose as she read.
“A third person perspective of yourself, ten pages, needs to be emotional, in depth, conclude with absolute statements you discovered about yourself…” she hummed in thought as she placed the paper down and looked in the distance. After about 10 seconds she looked at me with a blank face and said,
“You’re fucked, Char.” I felt face turn beat red in anger.
“What the hell, Mandy?! You’re suppose to help me!” I nearly yelled. She lifted her hands up in defense, her eyes slightly worried I might jump over the table and shove her head in the spaghetti sauce. It’d be a loss, but I’m sure I’d be able to find some good recipes.
“Calm down, crazy. I’m kidding. I’m not going to lie though, this sounds really tough, and I want to help you out, but I’m sure you’ve realized that-“
“It would defeat the whole purpose of the assignment if you gave me too much help, yeah I know.” I Interrupted. She frowned.
“Hey, I know you’re stressed because this is our last semester. And I know you haven’t entirely figured out what you’re going to do once you graduate. But look,” she pointed at my outline, “you already have a great outline here. And maybe this emotional turmoil you’ve been feeling about graduating will help you dive into all the insecurities, dreams, and fears he wants you to talk about. Besides,” she leaned back in her chair, hands placed behind her head, “You’re hot, he’s hot, maybe you can woo him with your charm into getting a good grade.” She wiggled her eyebrows and I couldn’t help but laugh and feel just a slight chunk of the weight I had been carrying since this morning lift off of my shoulders.
“Yeah. You’re right.” I said, smiling and feeling a lot less insane. Mandy smiled too, clapped her hands and stood up.
“Now let’s eat our body weight in spaghetti, and you can tell me just how hot this professor is.” I rolled my eyes, but inside I was dying to tell her.
Notes
As always, constructive criticism is appreciated! I am having a hard time with line spacing these days so...let me know if it's crazy :)
really like this story. excited for more
5/18/16