The Purity of Blood: Volume I (2 page)

As I entered the
bustling dorm, I followed the signs for the registration desk in the first
floor lobby where I was handed my room assignment and keys.
   

Following the
directions I’d received from the girl at the desk, I climbed the stairs up to
the second floor.
 
Filled with students
quickly scurrying up and down the stairs yelling excited greetings back and
forth, I felt out of place, like the only one who had no idea what she was
doing here.
 
Not that this was a new
feeling for me; I guess I’d just hoped I would have left it behind in Wading
River along with the more unpleasant memories of my childhood.
 

When I reached
the second floor landing I found a long corridor with girls’ rooms down the
hallway to the right and boys’ off to the left.
 
A common room at the top of the stairs separated the two of them.
 
Judging by the number on my assignment paper,
my room was only a few doors down the girls’ hall, so I gathered my wits about
me and started in that direction.
 
Stopping in front of the door, I fumbled around for a few seconds
pulling the keys out of my pocket.
 
It
was only a dorm room and not my first house, but somehow, holding those keys, I
felt a sense of freedom and exhilaration I’d never experienced before.
 
Just as I was about to turn the key in the
lock the door quickly swung open.
 
When I
looked up in surprise, the brightly smiling pixie face of a tall blonde with
pink lipstick greeted me.
 

“Well, hello
roomy!” she said enthusiastically.
 
“I’m
Darcy,”

“Hi, I’m –”

“You’re Sara
Donnelly.”

I must have had
a look of shock on my face.
 
She laughed
as she pointed to a name tag sticker on my chest with her exquisitely manicured
finger.
 
The registration lady must have
slipped it on me when I wasn’t looking.
 
I thought she looked a little sneaky.

“Oh.
 
Yes I am,” I said almost absentmindedly as I
reached up to pull it off, still a little wary of her enthusiasm for my
arrival.

Dressed in a
pair of jeans and an NPU school shirt, she was a slender waif of a thing with a
head of wavy blonde hair that fell gracefully down her back.
 
The picture was only marred by the big smile
she wore.
 
Something about that smile
made me uncomfortable that I would be its cause.

“I’m glad to
meet you, roomy.
 
I was hoping I’d get a
good roommate this semester.
 
I had
Bernadette last year.
 
She was nice
enough, but a bit of a hypochondriac if you know what I mean.
  
She was always pestering me to feel her
forehead,” Darcy said as she winced. “Anyway, she dropped out last week and now
I have you!
 
Yeah!”
 
After a beat she hesitantly asked “So how do
you feel?”

“Good, I guess.”

“Wonderful!” she
replied as she flitted over to her bed and plopped down on the mattress.
 
“I’m a sophomore so if you have any questions
at all, just ask.
 
I know pretty much
everything about this place.”

I walked over
and peered out the large pair of windows.
 
Our room faced in on a large grassy quad with tall trees and picnic
tables scattered about.
 
Taking a deep
breath, I felt the tension start to leave my shoulders.

So far, so good.

Darcy was indeed an overflowing
font of all things New Paltz University, or NPU as everyone called it.
  
Over the course of my afternoon of unloading
and unpacking, I showed her my class schedule.
 
Closely examining it, she more than willingly gave me the dish on all my
professors and ways I could schedule better next semester.
 
I’m sure I’d like her once I got used to her
bubbly enthusiasm.
 
She seemed nice
enough, just a little over zealous in my opinion.
 
I think maybe I liked her because, deep down,
I knew I secretly wished I was more like her.
 
I was too guarded as a person and I knew it.
 
It was habit formed from years of unfortunate
life experiences gained through no fault of my own.
 
I couldn’t change who I was as a person, but
I didn’t want that to discourage me from trying anyway.

Perhaps that’s
why I’d finally left the security of home.
 
The more I thought about it, the more I began to consider that the real question
was how capable was I of that kind of change.
 
Maybe that’s what I was looking for here in New Paltz, an answer to that
question.
 

With classes
starting first thing in the morning, it was my intention to finish unpacking
and get to bed early so I would be ready to attack the day.
 
However, when the dinner hour rolled around,
Darcy, with a take no prisoners attitude, insisted I take a break and go to
dinner with her and her friends so I could get to know everybody.
 

“This is
college!” she said excitedly as she pulled on her jacket.
 
“Educational? Yes, but there’s so much more
to it.
 
You have to take advantage of
every minute.
 
This is a time in your
life you’ll never be able to recapture.
 
You’ll see, it’s going to be amazing.”
 

And with that she handed me my sweater and purse and gestured
towards the door.
 
It would be fair to
say that I liked her from the start, even if I was a little suspicious of what
I considered her unnecessary overly cheerleader-
esque
attitude.
 
As I followed her down the
back stairs, I found myself wondering what her friends were going to be
like.
 
Was I about to meet the rest of
the pep squad?
 
Lord, I hoped not.

It was less than a five minute
walk from Capen Hall over to the Hasbrouck dining hall.
 
The main campus, set just outside the small
town of New Paltz, was sizeable but felt somewhat isolated from the world at
large.
 
It was surrounded on three sides
by mostly forest, parklands and quaint rural neighborhoods.
 
With hints of the coming fall, the grounds of
the campus itself were awash in fading shades of green covering the many trees
and manicured grassy areas that spread out through the quads and open land
between buildings.
 
My good grades had
given me my pick of schools including some good ones in the city, but I didn’t
think I could be confined to a concrete jungle.
 
My soul longed for some deeper connection to nature that the constant
sound of the pavement beneath my feet wouldn’t give.
 
No, as soon as I’d seen New Paltz for the
first time with Dad, he’d made his sale.

After going
through the cafeteria line we joined a table of her friends at the far end of
the airy dining hall.
 

“There’s Darcy!”
a raven haired girl with pretty blue eyes said as she looked up, smiling at our
approach.

“Hi, guys.
 
This is Sara, my new roommate.
 
Sara, this is Tabitha, Mike and Ryan.”

I smiled as best
I could, but I was always reserved around new people.
 
I never felt I got a good understanding of
someone from a first impression, and like a turtle tended to stay in my shell
until I thought it was safe to come out.

“Come sit next
to me, Sara” Ryan said with a flirtatious smile as he moved over to make room
for me on the bench.
 
He was nice looking
with chestnut hair that complemented his complexion.
 
After looking at the table arrangement, I
decided to join him as my only other option left me facing the wall.
 
I just felt more comfortable looking out on a
room where I had a better view of the movements of the people around me.

Mike and
Tabitha, I found out through the course of conversation, were a couple and had
been dating since last year.
 
Tabitha had
just decided to major in history while Mike was thinking of music education for
a major.
 

Tabitha was
sweet.
 
She had kind eyes and a short
cropped head of shiny, black hair that framed her face well.
 
Something in her friendly demeanor and quirky
sense of humor told me we’d hit it off well.
 
Not quite as bubbly as Darcy, she was open and friendly with what my
mother would have called soulful eyes.
 

Mike matched her
like a his and hers set.
 
With just about
the same color dark hair and height he had a stocky build, an infectious laugh
and pleasant brown eyes that perfectly matched the color of his tee shirt.

Tab, Mike and
Ryan all loved hiking and when I mentioned I wanted to go before it got too cold,
all three were excited at the prospect of taking me on my first trip into the
woods.
 
Darcy would not be joining
us.
 
In her own words, she wasn’t the
outdoorsy type.

“And besides I’m
pledging my sorority this semester, so you probably won’t be seeing much of
me.”

Since freshman
weren’t allowed to pledge, she’d been forced to wait impatiently all last year
for her chance to pledge Delta something or another.
 
I liked Darcy from the first, but wasn’t sure
how living with my own personal pep rally would wear on my nerves for a
protracted period of time.
 
That being
said, I was kind of relieved to find I’d not be seeing that much of her in the
coming months.
 

To my great
relief, Tabitha was in my Art History 101 class.
 
It was my very first class in the morning,
and knowing I’d have a friendly face next to me in my first class at NPU went a
great way in relieving my first day jitters.
 

“I took a class
with Professor Walker last year,” she said.
 
“He teaches history classes as well.
 
You’ll really like him.
 
He’s a wonderful teacher.
 
When he talks about history, he really makes
you feel like he’s experienced it all.
 
Some teachers are flat and boring, just reading out of a text book, but
not him.
 
He barely uses any books at
all.”

“You forgot to
mention how easy on the eyes he is,” Darcy added with a sly smile.
 

From the way the
boys all rolled their eyes, I got the impression they weren’t the biggest fans
of the professor.

“Yes, I suppose he’s
a very nice looking man as well,” Tabitha begrudgingly admitted, but I could
tell by the tone of her voice she didn’t think he was as attractive as Darcy
did.
 
“But it was his passion for the
subject that made me decide to major in history.
 
He just got me so excited about the subject.”

“I heard he
lives is some really cool glass house up on the mountain built into the side of
a cliff,” Ryan said in between bites of his burger.
 
“He owns a huge chunk of land up on the
mountain somewhere and had some swanky party for a bunch of the faculty when he
first arrived last year.
 
I overheard my
psych professor talking about it last semester.”

“Yeah, I heard
something like that too,” Mike agreed, as he slurped down the last of his
drink.

“As amazing as
the Professor is, it’s his teaching assistant who’s the real
hottie
.
 
Oh, what’s
his name …?”
 

“Daniel,”
Tabitha quickly, said finishing Darcy’s sentence.

“Daniel,” Darcy
echoed with a dreamy expression in her eyes.
 
“Yes, he’s about the best looking guy on campus, but I think he must be
gay or something.
 
One time last semester
I stood in line behind him at the book store and said hello to him.
 
You know, to be friendly and all.
 
In response all he did was give this odd kind
of scary look.”

“Oh, yeah, he
must be gay,” Ryan muttered under his breath with a smiling sarcasm while he
winked at me.
 

“Well, all I’m
saying is don’t get your hopes up, Sara.
  
Every girl on campus does at first, but he’s just not interested in NPU
girls I guess.”
 

“Have you ever
even had a class with Professor Walker?” Mike asked.

“No,” Darcy said
off handedly as she took another bite of her salad.

We all laughed.
 
Yes, I
was going to like them.
 

After we finished our meal, we
were about to get up to leave when I heard Ryan excitedly say “Hey, there’s
Ben.”

Darcy turned
with a big smile in the direction of a tall well-built guy with wavy brown hair
who had just walked up to a nearby table with his tray.
 
His hair, neatly trimmed at the back, was a
little long on the top and flopped over to one side when he tilted his head to
the side.

“Ben!” Ryan
called.
 

Ben turned at
the sound of his name and smiled in our direction.
 
Wow!
 
I
wasn’t sure I’d ever seen eyes light up like that before.
 
They were a deep warm brown, almost a
chocolate brown.
 
He left his tray with
his friends and came over to our table.