First Day Jitters

[Sammy]

There’s a loud bang on the door. I can’t remember when or how I made it back to bed. I turn my head from side to side and soon regret it as my eyesight goes red and my head starts to pound. How much did I have to drink?

“Yo, Sammy, are you alive in there?” Luis barks. “Don’t you have a class in like five minutes?”

I look down at the digital numbers on my alarm clock, which has somehow ended up on the floor. I can’t read it, so I search around for my glasses and as my tired, hung-over eyes struggle to regain focus, the digits on the face of the clock slowly become clear.

8:03. My first class starts in seventeen minutes.

Fuck.

Fuck-Fuckity-Fuck-Fuck-Fuck!

“Hey Bro, if you do manage to get up, we still got some chorizo and eggs downstairs. Help yourself! I’m off to work.”

I don’t bother to shower or shave, I don’t even bother to grab that chorizo, which smells amazing, as I head out the door. I barely give myself time to throw on a pair of still-clean jeans and a crumpled t-shirt from a pile. Grabbing my bag, I put on my deodorant as I stumble out the front door while hopping into my shoes and trying not to trip. Thankfully I live close to campus in a tiny apartment with three other guys above a Mexican restaurant and bar, which is how I got home safely last night despite having about three beers too many. All I had to do was stumble up a flight of stairs and find my bed in the dark.

In exchange for cheap rent, I make chips on Saturday afternoons. It has the added bonus of free food and discounted beer. Our friend and roommate P**e runs the bar, and his brother Alonzo, our other roommate, technically owns the place. When I found the listing online I couldn’t believe my luck. A place like this is irresistible to a college student like myself, a stranger in a strange new town.

Just three weeks ago I got the letter welcoming me to UC Santa Cruz. With it being so late in the summer, I assumed I had not gotten in anywhere, again, but then I received the large envelope. Everyone knows what the large envelope means--the small envelope means "Sorry no," and the big envelope means "Congratulations!"

Anyway, inside the envelope was a bigger surprise: Everything was already planned ahead for me. My transfer units had gone through, I was given financial aid with a small living allowance, all funded by a generous anonymous scholarship which also covered all of my books and tuition for up to 4 years of undergraduate study.

It is a dream come true, and here I am, fucking it up on day one of classes.

The fates must be shining down on me this morning because there is a bus waiting at the stop ahead. I pick up a little speed, waving my hands around, hoping the driver sees me. Just as I get close enough to board, the doors snap shut and the bus starts to drive away.

“WAIT!!” I pull out my student ID and race after the large vehicle, huffing and puffing uphill. In moments like these, I really wish I had a car.

When the bus reaches the next intersection, the door opens again, almost daring me to make it before the light changes. Head down, I pump my legs as I race, barely making it inside before the sliding doors slam shut behind me.

Panting, I flash my ID to the disinterested driver as I stumble in, my face red with a bit of green as I both try to regain my breath while not vomiting all over the floor in exhaustion. I’m tempted to just lie down on the floor, but the bus is too crowded, so I settle for finding a small bit of wall to lean against while I hold onto the handle dangling from the chrome bars above my head.

“First day?” somebody beneath me laughs. I look down scowling.

The girl who looks up is startlingly cute. Adorable even. Red hair cascades down her back in gentle curls, her violet-blue eyes laughing up at me. My mouth opens and closes and opens again.

“Hi,” she beams. “We met last night, remember.”

I’m trying to process in my mind where I might have seen such a cutie and not remember her at all when through the beer funk of my mind it comes to me. “You’re in that goth band?”

Her laughter sounds like wind chimes, both musical and sharp. “Yeah, that’s my crew. We’re the Psyreens.”

I stare at her for a few minutes, blinking, my brain unable to process. Eventually, my mouth remembers how to form words and I croak, “Samantha…?” I guess.

She snorts. “It’s Stacey, Stacey Monroe,” he corrects me.

My face begins to burn with embarrassment. I’ve become one of those dudes, the kind who can’t remember a girl’s name because he was either too drunk or too stupid to pay attention.

“Hi, Stacey,” I wave awkwardly but then regret it as the bus lurches forward. Grabbing the overhead handle again I smile weakly.

“I’m Sammy. Sammy Salazar.”

“Nice to meet you officially, Sammy Sammy Salazar.” She laughs at me. Reaching up she pulls the cord and the bus slows to a stop. “This is my stop. Maybe I’ll see you around.”

I watch as she exits the bus, pulling her navy blue backpack up onto her shoulders as she hikes toward the Marine Biology department. There is a gentle nature to her steps, almost as if she were swimming.

Still thinking about Stacy, I am distracted as the bus pulls away from my stop. By the time I realize, I'm more than 15 minutes late and halfway across campus.

This is how I ended up panting and sweating as I raced into the lecture hall. When I open the door, everyone turns my way, staring me down for disrupting Professor Davis, who has her back turned to the class. There are no seats and a line of potential students, so I stand, shamefaced, at the back of the room as I try to dig a notebook and pen from my bag.

“Student,” a commanding female vibrates through the lecture hall, her back still turned to us. “Next time you show up for my class, make sure to be on time.

She turns, rotating gracefully as if standing on a turntable. Standing in impossibly tall spiked heels, her leather and tweed pantsuit strains to cover her full, curvy figure. A bit of red peeks out of her collar in the form of a large bow, matching the color of her full, red lips. When our eyes meet, my pens clatter onto the floor, rolling away from me as my jaw drops open.

Those gray-green eyes.

I’d know those eyes anywhere, they've been haunting my dreams for the last three weeks.

“You!”

My mystery seductress, the one who took my virginity, is my professor.