Chapter 2
Tobin woke to the sound of her alarm going off. She quickly hopped into the shower before Kelley could. She let the cool water wake her up fully, before turning the water warmer. She let the warm water relax her muscles, which had tightened during the night for some reason. After her shower she got ready and dressed for breakfast.
When Kelley was done getting ready they had fifteen minutes to get to the student center so Ashlyn could buy them their breakfast. They ran into Christen on their way out of the dorm.
“Hope Ashlyn doesn’t bail on us. I don’t want to start using my meal plan this quickly.” Christen commented.
“Whatever, you guy’s will most definitely have to buy food at some point.” Ashlyn said as she fell in step with the others.
“Maybe, maybe not depends if you can actually win any bets.” Tobin joked.
Ashlyn glared at her before their talk turned to the events that were planned for today. When they got to the student center it was pretty much empty. True it was 10:30 and most people had probably already ate breakfast. Ashlyn paid for four meals and they went their separate ways to get food before meeting at a booth near the back of the dining area.
“Dude you have enough waffles to feed a small country.”
“Shut up Ashlyn I love waffles.” Tobin defended herself.
“I really don’t want to go to these meetings today.” Ashlyn complained.
“Yeah the dorm one is probably going to suck. But I think the meetings with other people in our majors should be pretty fun.” Christen responded.
“Yeah just means we all get to hang out some more. I mean we are all music majors right?” Kelley asked.
“Yep.”
*******
They arrived at the band rooms for their meeting. They were then divided into smaller groups based on the type of instrument they were majoring in. Ashlyn went off with all the percussionists, while Christen went off with the bass players. Tobin and Kelley stayed together and met with everyone who played guitar.
The professor who was leading their meeting talked about the course work that they would have to take over the next four years. He also talked about the different ensembles and groups that they would have an opportunity to take part in. They weren’t required but he strongly recommended they be a part of at least one. Tobin was soon bored out of her mind. The meeting was finally over and she walked back to her suite with Kelley. They grabbed their guitars and started playing. They were messing around in the key of A when there was a knock on their door.
Tobin got up and opened it to see Christen standing there, an acoustic bass in her hand.
“Mind if I get in on this?”
“Dude get in here!” Kelley yelled.
“Yeah come on in. We’re just messing around.” Tobin said.
They spent an hour or so just playing whatever came to their minds. They ran through some songs that they all knew and by the end of an hour they were trying to out do each other with licks or riffs that they had memorized.
Kelley found herself looking over at Christen as they played. She thought it was cute how Christen’s face scrunched up when she was concentrating or playing a particularly tricky bass line.
“How long have you been playing Christen?” Kelley asked.
“For like six years. I started kind of late, but I fell in love with it.”
“Cool.” Kelley smiled.
When it was nearing five they decided to go to supper. They stopped by Ashlyn’s room to get her for supper.
“Ashlyn, is your roommate ever at the suite?” Tobin asked.
“No she spends most of her time with the soccer chicas.”
“Dude she’s like all mysterious.” Kelley said.
“Yeah if by mysterious you mean shallow and vain, then you’d be spot on. I mean she has like three different shampoos and spends two hours in the bathroom doing make-up and her hair.” Ashlyn said.
“Dude that is insane.”
They made their way to the student center and grabbed what was becoming their normal spot near the back of the dining hall. They ate and then made their way back to the dorms for the meeting there. They made sure they got there a little early so they could snag one of the couches that were actually comfortable in the lounge of the dorm. The meeting was about trivial things like rules on having guests staying in their rooms and other things that would make everyone’s lives a little easier.
After the meeting they returned to Ashlyn’s room, her roommate was nowhere to be seen, and watched more Rules of Engagement. They stayed up pretty late because the next two days were free days before classes started. They made plans to all get together and jam the next day.
*******
They had been jamming for over three hours. Ashlyn had brought her practice pad to just play some beats on while the others did their thing. There were discarded pizza boxes stacked near the door to Ashlyn’s suite. Water bottles and pop cans littered the floor.
“We need to do this at least once a week or everyday.” Kelley said.
“Yeah its been a while since I’ve had people that I can play music with.” replied Tobin.
So they made plans to make Sunday’s a day where they could play music together. Of course they wanted to try and do that more than once a week, but when classes started they realized with homework and on-campus jobs that would probably be unlikely.
Suddenly Ashlyn’s phone started buzzing. She looked at it and instantly answered it.
“Hey. Oh really. Sweet my room number is 311.”
“Who was that?” Christen asked.
“Geez nosy aren’t we?” Ashlyn answered with a smile.
“I’m going to assume we will find out pretty quick. She did give whoever it was her room number.” Tobin laughed.
“Yeah you’ll get to meet the mystery person soon.” Ashlyn smiled.
They resumed their playing, but Ashlyn couldn’t stop moving. She bounced her legs and just kept fidgeting until ten minutes later there was a knock on the door. Ashlyn jumped up and opened the door. In the doorway their stood a girl with long dark hair. Ashlyn launched herself at the girl and gave her a bone crushing hug and a kiss.
“Woo Hoo! Get it Ashlyn!” Kelley yelled.
Ashlyn pulled away her face red. “Oh hey guys. This is my girlfriend Ali. She’s a sophomore here.”
“What up Ali?” Tobin asked.
“Uh not much,” Ali responded clearly overwhelmed.
“This is Kelley, Tobin and Christen.” Ashlyn introduced Ali to each girl individually.
“Pleased to meet you all.” Ali said once the initial shock of having three freshmen in your face at once wore off. “See I told you that you would meet some cool people right away. She was pretty nervous about not meeting anyone cool.”
Ashlyn flushed even redder than before. “You’re such a jerk Ali. But you should meet my roommate. She’s not cool.”
“Yeah the mysteriously uncool roommate that none of us have ever met. Apparently she doesn’t really spend much time in the room.” Tobin joked.
“Well she can’t be that bad if she’s never here.” Ali laughed.
“I guess so.” Ashlyn said.
Ali then sat down on the couch. Tobin made a move to get up so Ashlyn could sit next to her but Ali stopped her.
“You don’t have to move. I don’t really want to sit next to that loser anyway.”
Ashlyn pouted and flipped Ali off. “Jerk.”
Ali pretended to be offended. But she couldn’t hold up the act for very long before she pulled Ashlyn down next to her. “So I see you found some other people who are into music. Play for me?”
Ashlyn looked at the others before turning back to Ali. “Well we were just kind of screwing around. We weren’t really playing anything in particular.”
“That’s ok. I just wanna hear actually play with other people.”
They all grabbed their respective instruments and started playing what they were before Ashlyn had gotten Ali’s call. Ali began to tap her foot to the beat of the music and Tobin could tell she was very proud of Ashlyn. She had a goofy smile on her face while she looked at Ashlyn while she played. Of course Ashlyn was concentrating too hard to see the way Ali was looking at her.
After about ten minutes they stopped playing and looked at Ali for some feedback.
“It was really good. It flowed really well. But I have to go unpack so I’ll see you guys later? What are you doing for supper?”
“Probably eating at the student center again.” Ashlyn responded.
“Nope. We are going to go to a pizzeria or something. No way am I having student center food my first day back. I know a great place like three blocks from campus.”
“Sounds good! I love pizza.” Kelley exclaimed.
“I’m beginning to think that you just love eating in general.” Tobin muttered.
“I heard that and you’re just jealous.”
“Ok I’ll meet you guys back here in like an hour. Oh by the way, I’m the third floor RA so if you anything don’t hesitate to come and ask.” Ali told them before she walked out the door and to her room.
“Dang you’re dating the RA. We should be able to get away with anything.” Christen joked.
“Whatever. I’ll be able to get away with anything. You guys not so much.”
An hour later Ali took them all to the pizzeria. It was called Tony’s Pizza of all things, and it had a nice mom and pop diner kind of feel. They ordered two pepperoni pizzas and Tobin, Kelley, Christen and Ashlyn quickly decided that it was the best pizza they had ever tasted.
*******
The first week of classes was finally underway. Tobin was glad to find out that she had Intro to Music Theory with Kelley, Christen and Ashlyn. Kelley was in her Guitar Method class. She had Lit 101 with Ashlyn and Christen was in her History course she was taking. The only class she had without one of her friends was College Algebra. Which she was going to suck at. However she sat next to a girl with short hair who seemed pretty cool. They had talked for a bit before the class started and had exchanged phone numbers after the class was over.
Tobin had found out her name was Meghan and also lived in their dorm. Just on the second floor, same as Christen. Tobin was beginning to find out that most incoming freshman were put in the same dorm. She knew that college was going to a step up from high school, but she wasn't expecting this much homework the first week of school. It had thrown her off a little when the first class period of each class was spent covering the syllabus. She cursed herself for getting into the mind set that it wouldn’t be that hard, if they spent a whole hour covering a syllabus. Boy was she wrong, when at the end of pretty much every class the professor told them to have read the first chapter in their book by the next class period.
The biggest difference was how much more was expected out of them in the music classes. Tobin was excited about this, because music was why she was here. She had offers from many schools to come their to major in music. But the University of Oregon had just felt right. With all of her classes over for the day she walked back to her dorm room so she could start on homework.
*****
Kelley walked up to the the building that housed all of the choir rooms. She had decided on a whim to try out for the freshman choir. She had done some vocal stuff when she was in high school and even though she wasn’t majoring in voice, she thought it would be fun to get back into singing. She walked into the room where there was an informal meeting being held for anyone who was interested. She was surprised to see Christen sitting on one of the risers. She walked over to her.
“Fancy seeing you here.” Kelley said.
Christen turned around and punched Kelley lightly on the arm. She moved over so Kelley could sit down next to her. “I didn’t know you were interested in choir.”
Kelley laughed. “I was in my high school choir, I just thought it would be fun to at least get some information.”
Just then one of the voice professors walked into the room. He surveyed the room and the thirty or so freshman that were seated there.
“So this is the informal meeting for our freshman choir. I know that all of the vocal majors have already received this information so they were not required to attend. The good news is that since this is the freshman choir you are automatically accepted into it. There are no try outs and no one will be turned away.”
Kelley breathed a sigh of relief at hearing that. She knew she had an ok singing voice but the idea of having to try out had been weighing on her mind. The professor than passed around a piece of paper that they could sign up on. Kelley put down her name, phone number and school e-mail address. After the paper and gotten to everyone the professor then handed out a small blue binder to everyone there. Inside there was some sheet music.
He then went to the piano and started playing the first song in the binder. Everyone hesitated but got into the flow of the song and they started to sing. Kelley could tell that it was the first time they had sang together. It didn’t sound terrible, but she could tell that it needed some work. What she was most surprised by was how beautiful Christen’s voice was. She found herself listening specifically for her, to the point where she almost stopped singing herself.
After they were done with that song they were dismissed from the meeting. The professor told them that he would e-mail everyone with a schedule for their practices. Kelley and Christen walked back to their dorm.
“I’m glad we don’t have to try out, I doubt I would have made it if we did.” Christen suddenly said.
“Are you kidding, you have an amazing voice.” Kelley responded.
Christen blushed a little bit. “Thank you. You have a pretty good voice yourself.”
Kelley felt herself blush at the comment. She also knew that she would do anything to get Christen to compliment her again like that. She also was beginning to realize that Christen seemed to be a little nervous around her. She was acting almost exactly like Kelley did when she was around Christen. Kelley began to wonder if it was possible that Christen maybe felt the same way about her. She quickly pushed that line of thought out of her mind, not wanting to get her hopes up. They finally got back to their dorm. They stopped at the second floor landing and Christen pulled Kelley into a hug.
“I’ll see you tomorrow!” Christen said as she opened the door to her floor.
“See ya.”
Kelley walked up the flight of stairs to her floor, her skin still feeling like it was on fire from the hug. She walked into her room and flopped onto her bed. Her mind was racing a hundred miles per hour with thoughts about Christen.
“Crap, I’m in deep over this girl.” She said to no one in particular.
“What? Did you say something?” Tobin shouted from her room.
Crap, Kelley thought. I can’t say that stuff out loud. “Uh I hit my shin on my desk and it startled me.” Kelley lied.
“Klutz!” Tobin yelled back.
“Night Tobs.”
“Night Kelley.”
She shut her door and got ready for bed. She turned off the light and fell asleep with her thoughts still turned to Christen.