“Ali, you realize if you fail this semester, dad’s going to kill you. You will officially be the first Adamsen to be murdered by our father.” “Oh my god Tad please stop talking.” “I’m just trying to get you to realize the severity-“ “I get it ok, it’s been gotten. I’m not gonna fail, relax.” “Fine, if you need me-“ “Ta- can’t- you- going -tunnel- love you bye!” She snapped the phone shut and rolled her eyes as she reached into her bag for her earbuds. She plugged them into her phone and clicked onto a playlist at random and turned the volume up, watching the storm from the safety of the awning over the doors of her dorm, pulling her hood up and bracing herself to make a run for it. With a quick flick to an appropriate ‘run like hell’ song, she bolted from her dorm and ran for the library a few blocks from her dorm.
Reaching the doorway to the library and finally free of the rain, she pulled her hood down and her steps turned dancing as she entered the building, all thoughts of her nosy, bothersome, know-it-all eldest brother banished. She danced her way to an empty table (not exactly a difficult task since the library was practically abandoned) and plopped herself and her things down, and within seconds she had laid claim to a good fifty percent of the whole table with her various books, notebooks, pens, bag, and her iPod that had it’s own little cleared space right next to the main text right in front of her. She wasn’t conscious of how much she was hogging the table as her head bobbed and she lip-synched along to the music playing in her ears, she was just there, in the moment, focused- as much as she ever focused- on the studying in front of her. A rumble of thunder rolled through the library and though she looked up briefly, her only real reaction to the increasingly intense storm outside the window was to turn her music louder. She looked around the library, catching a few eyes and offering a bright, don’t-worry-we’re-all-in-this-together smile to each pair of eyes she caught briefly. None of them were probably leaving anytime soon, if they were caught here this late, they probably planned to be here until… well, until this damn storm was over.