ᴀᴅ ᴍᴇʟɪᴏʀᴀ ~ ᴅᴘꜱ (ꜱᴛᴇᴠᴇɴ ᴍᴇᴇᴋꜱ)

24 - eye of the hurricane

Soft sunshine wakes me as it sprinkles through my frosty dorm window, casting an ethereal glow across the room. I rub the drowsiness out of my eyes and stretch. A glance across the room tells me Amy is already up and gone and a peek at my nightstand reveals why: it's already 10:00 am.

I get out of my bed and gather my clothes for the day: a pair of brown corduroy pants, black tights (for warmth), white socks, my yellow sweater from Woolworth's, and a pair of Mary Janes. I snag my toiletries on the way out and get ready in the communal bathroom.

On a normal day, I'd be hastier in my walk to the dining hall for breakfast, but I know from years of experience that the times for meals become more and more lenient as winter break goes on. Exams officially finished Friday and, by the number of open doors through the hallway revealing empty dorm rooms, I think most people left last night.

A frigid gust of wind greets me the moment I leave the building. If time restrictions won't put some pep in my step, Vermont's winter certainly will.

-

I was correct about breakfast. The dining hall was deserted apart from 3 students I'd never seen before, equally spaced between the vast tables, and the food displays were only slightly cold (despite being over an hour old). Amy's absence surprised me; I'd assumed I would find her here, considering she reassured me she would not be returning home for break.

The more the merrier, I'd told her.

Rather than intrude on the coincidentally perfect spacing of my straggling peers, I grab a yogurt parfait, a napkin, and a set of cutlery before heading to the library. Upon arrival I find the room locked and choose to resign to a bench in the hallway.

It's not often that I get a chance to sit back and enjoy the beauty of Constantine's architecture with my suffocating workload. Though the dorms and some dedicated class buildings are spread from each other, the heart of the school's campus resides around a central plaza. I've had a few pivotal moments in my time at Constantine on that cracked brick square: Tripping and losing my last baby tooth in 6th grade, defending a girl whose face I can barely remember in a fight over an issue I can't recall on the last day of 9th grade, and... well, and my final confrontation with Bee a few weeks back.

God, was it really only a few weeks? My mind tells me so, yet everything that's unfolded since feels like it could fill up a lifetime pretty contently. Chris's party, the rooftop, exams... I can't figure out where I even had time to breathe.

I'm getting off-track. The disjoined buildings vary in modernity, everywhere from "microwave ovens in every floor's kitchenette" to "still relying on candles for light past 6 pm". Maxine, thankfully, falls on the upper half of that spectrum, for the most part. The structures off-shooting from the plaza have more uniformity, considering they were specifically built for the school rather than being randomly acquired over the years. Each one consists mostly of pale crème bricks with similarly dull grout plastering them together. Cracks spring from every corner and nook, ranging from hairline fractures to concerning structural flaws. On the exterior, various species of vines and ivy creep along with the splits. Many of these vines blossom small white flowers in the spring, just in time to fill the air with a mild yet distinct aroma and replace some of the life sucked from the students during the second semester. They're very poisonous, though; a group of 3rd graders made that discovery a few years back. The school tried to keep it under-wraps, but I found out when the nurse had to turn me and another girl away after a certain... incident on the plaza due to lack of capacity.

The flooring leaves less to be said; it's dark, wood, and dulled from countless pairs of women's shoes scuffing across it. Most of the bathrooms adorn tile so dirty that its original color has been lost to time.