Chapter 8
Quill
Parasite
Rule number one: Find a lecture hall that is not particularly well attended.
Rule number two: Sit in the back row.
Rule number three: Do not make eye contact with the professor.
Rule number four: Definitely don't ask any questions.
All these steps were designed to prevent me from attracting attention too quickly. The fewer of my fellow students wondered who the strange girl with the blue knitted sweaters, black leather oxfords, and dark circles under her eyes was, the more time I would have to do my research properly.
Thomas was right. I should have chosen a university where the women's quota in the law department wasn't zero. But where would the fun be in that? I've always wanted to step on the toes of a few spoiled, sexist, rich mama's boys.
Dreams
The Cranberries
With my large leather briefcase slung over my shoulder, I strolled across the main campus, where the law school was located, looking for my friends.
Two- and three-story brick buildings in the Collegiate Gothic style, overgrown with ivy and vines, alternated with parkland dotted with oak and beech trees and red gravel paths.
In the center was a main park with open sandstone-colored Gothic stone pavilions to sit under, where large groups of students – most of them male – dressed in expensive luxury suits were chatting animatedly.
“Quill?” I wheeled around.
“Oh my God...” Lara's ice blue eyes widened, as they always did when we hadn't seen each other for a long time after summer break. “You're really here!”
The black skirt with matching tights, brown high-heeled leather boots, and dark brown blouse with peanut-brown dots, as well as the golden bracelets and rings, made her look more grown-up than usual.
She would probably never take off the gold necklace with the pumpkin that her father had given her for her sixteenth birthday.
Her full, wavy, chest-length ginger hair – decorated with the white strand on the left side that nature had blessed her with – swirled through the air as she rushed towards me and threw her arms around me, her cinnamon perfume immediately filling my lungs.
God, how I loved this girl for her bubbly, lively nature.
I wrapped my arms around her upper body, closed my eyes for a moment, and let the guilt wash over me.
The mere thought that she would have wasted her tears on me if I weren't here anymore sent my unusually good mood to hell.
Pulling away from me, she grinned.
Just like me, freckles adorned her heart-shaped face, except that her skin had a slight bronze tone and the many small brown dots were concentrated around her snub nose.
“I told you she'd do it.”
I looked past her to Thomas, dressed in an olive-green shirt and brown pleated pants, shouldering his backpack.
“God, what if your father sees you here?” Lara asked, looking worried as she shook her head.
“Maybe I'll sit in on one of his lectures sometime,” I replied with a devilish grin, enjoying the way her eyes widened.
“He'll tear you apart if he finds out you're using a fake ID.”
Thomas stepped closer to us, looking around as if he didn't feel comfortable in this new place.
I wondered if it had something to do with one of his thousands of allergies or with strangers.
We were both rather introverted and sensitive, except that I had been spared from all kinds of chronic illnesses.
First Day At School
Carlos Rafael Rivera
“You know he can't stop me,” I said, trying not to think about the fact that my father could walk past at any moment and end my little game before it had even begun.
I looked around again, but all I could see were other students deep in conversation or dragging suitcases along the paths toward the dorms. “Because if it comes out who I really am, he's ruined.” I looked at my friends, who were eyeing me with concern.
They knew I had lost a few marbles, and that it was only a matter of time before I did something so crazy that I'd be committed to a psychiatric ward. “Now tell me what lectures you have.”
My attempt to distract them failed because Lara was, as always, overly concerned.
“Quill. You can still go home.” How could she seem more nervous than I was? “I mean it.” She lowered her voice. “This is illegal.”
My provocative smile intensified.
“I've always wanted to write a book from the perspective of a criminal in prison.”
And again, her eyes widened.
“Quill!”
Thomas just laughed quietly.
“Well, I would read it.”
Lara looked at him indignantly.
I grinned triumphantly.
“Thanks.”
Lara punched him on the shoulder and he backed away, raising both hands defensively.
“Don't you dare encourage her!”
“Lara.” My sigh sounded exhausted, and perhaps it was precisely that feeling that had filled my life in recent months, until I had stopped noticing that the number of coffee cups had increased and the circles under my eyes had grown larger.
“What else am I supposed to do? I have nothing to kill time with.” When I wasn't drowning in my fictional worlds and those of other wordsmiths...
“My father won't even let me look for a job.”
“You're of legal age, remember,” she snorted.
“If I look for a job, I'll get kicked out, and I don't want to disappoint Tony.” Lara raised both eyebrows, but I didn't give her a chance to speak. “He's the brother I didn't know I needed.”
Something in her expression softened and she gave me a little pity pout before tilting her head slightly and reaching for my elbow.
“Aww. Oh, man.” She stroked the underside of my forearms. “You should find a hobby. Besides writing.”
“There’s nothing in this world that gives me more purpose than writing.”
I had tried all sorts of things, enjoyed many of them. Oil painting, violin, chess, basketball, drawing... But ever since I had started writing, I could do all those things in the pages of my manuscripts and let fictional characters find fulfillment in them.
Nothing felt more stimulating or fulfilling, and at the same time, nothing calmed my chaotic mind like being in the moment by simply writing.
“You could come visit me in your free time,” Lara suggested, waggling her eyebrows with a smirk. “Get to know Streusel.”
I laughed softly. That was definitely on the list of things I absolutely had to do.
It was cute that she had named her puppy after the German baking ingredient she loved most ever since I had once baked her a streusel cake, despite my pathetic baking skills. The fact that she pronounced the name in her Southern accent made it even sweeter.
“Does it make you feel better that I'm going to meet your dad today?” I changed the subject to prepare myself mentally for my first lecture.
Mr. Rydell worked here as a professor of legal philosophy. At least, that was the name I had spotted on the list yesterday, and I had decided that it was time to finally get to know Lara's grumpy father.
As far as I knew, the module he mainly taught was one of the mandatory modules that law students at Maplecrest had to take for at least one semester.
But the fact that it was mostly upperclassmen who attended this lecture and that people would drop out of their studies every semester gave me hope that this lecture wasn't particularly well attended.
It was my last of three for today. First, I had to sit through two Fitzek lectures, including an introductory lecture.
“What?”
Lara stared at me as if I had told her I had run over a cat again during my illegal driving lessons.
“You told me he teaches here. And I thought his lecture would be one of the first ones I'd attend.” My grin returned. “Maybe I'll talk to him and tell him you said hi.”
I loved it when her eyes widened. One could drive her into a panic really quickly.
“God, how embarrassing,” she blurted out. “Don't you dare!”
Thomas grinned as well.
“I would love to be there when Professor Rydell meets the bad influence on his daughter in person.”
Actually, I had no intention of getting to know any professors personally, especially after I had learned what crazy men taught here.
I couldn't guess what kind of man Lara's father was. Whether he would participate in these legal competitions or whether he was just as bothered as Tony by the fact that the conservative professors treated the students like crops in a fruit basket.
“Does he still think I smoke and use you as my lookout when I sell drugs?” I asked, amused, because I knew Lara's dad always worried too much about her.
Whatever she had told him about me two years ago must have scared him into thinking I would turn his daughter into a petty criminal.
Yet I loathed the stench of cigarettes, which made my lungs scream every time I smelled it; I had never touched drugs because I didn't trust my weak-willed, dopamine-addicted brain; and I avoided alcohol like the plague.
“No,” Lara shook her head, her expression serious. “Otherwise, he would never have offered you a place to stay temporarily.”
She was good at rubbing it in that she was pretending to be mad at me for not moving in with her just because I didn't want to be a burden on her dad. Often, when we chatted or talked on the phone in the evenings, she told me about things we couldn't do together because I didn't live with her.
Thomas cleared his throat.
“I hate to leave you guys, but my introductory lecture starts in ten minutes and my campus is two streets away.”
We said goodbye to him and continued strolling through the main park, as Lara had to go in the same direction because the small journalism campus was right behind the law school.
“Quill.” She lowered her voice, sounding more serious than before, and I felt her intense gaze on my side profile. “I mean it. You know I only want what’s best for you.”
“This is a war between me and my father. You have nothing to do with it.”
Yes, I was here because of my research. But Lara also knew about the part of my plan that concerned my father.
Lara sighed. “Why do you always have to be so rebellious?”
There was only one answer that wouldn't turn into a lecture on depth psychology.