Six o'clock in the morning was never going to happen again. That was Hitch’s first thought as she landed on the floor—gracelessly, of course. The sound of her alarm had startled her straight out of sleep and off of the couch in a tangle of blankets.
She felt around for the damnable phone, eyes still closed, and sighed when she swiped her finger over the screen enough times to make the sound finally stop.
Fifteen minutes later she jumped up again, elbow smacking back into the couch; stupidly, she’d closed her eyes for a half-second and had fallen asleep again.
Well, that was why she always set two alarms.
After shutting it off again, she dragged herself to the bathroom, contemplated the pluses and minuses of bothering with her appearance, decided that bothering with it was probably a good idea, and tried to make herself look at least fifty percent more presentable: a feat considering her messy hair, the imprint on her face from the weird texture of the couch, and the fact that she could barely keep her eyes open.
She usually didn’t bother with such things—sleep was way more important, after all—but it was the first day of class, and as stupid as it was, she did want to make a good impression, if only to be excused an absence or two if she happened to miss class for a perfectly legit reason: like accidentally sleeping in. A professor who remembered her was much more likely to cut her even just a sliver of slack.
She only had two classes: Sociological Analysis at eight o'clock, and then an hour’s break before some kind of Great Books thing.
She knew where the building and rooms were, and she didn’t have to carry any books because it was still the first day of class. It would all be introductory boring bullshit anyway. But she needed to make a good impression, so she tried to fix her hair. She’d washed it the night before, but it hadn’t dried before she’d fallen asleep; now one side was oddly flat and the other side quite the opposite.
Hair still looking messy (as she had given up on it ever looking great again) and dressed in nice jeans and a cute green blouse (to match her eyes, obviously), Hitch slung her bag over her shoulder and left her apartment, locking the door behind her.
Considering she had gotten up so early—in plenty of time to walk to class, surely, though it was a long walk—she should have managed to arrive in class on time.
It was obvious that she was late before she even made her way into the building; the campus was basically deserted except for the occasional student who looked lost and confused. She ignored them and found her first class.
The door was closed. Of course it was. Her luck was rotten. Why was she taking this stupid class, anyway? Why would she ever want to take the kind of class where the professor shut the door on the first day the second class started? Right—she’d waited way too long to register for classes and it was the only one left for a quantitive thinking class that wasn’t at eight o'clock in the evening.
She plastered a look of indifference on her face—because hopefully, if she looked like she didn’t care, nobody else would care, either—and opened the door.
It squealed way too loud (or maybe she only imagined that it did).
So much for making a good first impression on the professor!
At a glance, it was clear in the small classroom that only the front row had seats left. That meant it was also the sort of class nobody wanted to sit up front for. She was completely screwed.
Still, she took the first available seat and tried to look like it was definitely completely normal to show up late on the first day. Only five minutes late, she noted, trying not to cringe when she looked at the clock at the front of the room, but five minutes late was still late. She looked at the professor, resisting the urge to see who she’d chosen to sit down beside.
