~ Orientation ~

There were people everywhere. Most looked the same: lost. Dalton University wasn't the largest campus around, but for most, it was the biggest thing they had seen. Others weren't so much intimidated by the size, but were perplexed by the hieroglyphic map they had been given.

Danny knew the campus fairly well from having visited his older sister a few times through her tenure here. She would be starting her last year here. But Danny had never been left to his own devices like this before. He was usually following his sister and her group of friends around. But everything was vaguely familiar. However, Christine, or Chris as everyone called her, and Blaine were hopelessly lost. Even Blaine's GPS system did little to alleviate the confusion.

The three of them wandered for a bit, in no real hurry, around the quad, just to get a feel for their new home for at least the next four years of their lives. It was still pretty hot out, though that wouldn't be the case in the next few weeks. It was very peaceful for the three of them.

Until, the peace was broken by a group of girls screaming "Danny!!" The three kids were suddenly enveloped by a swirling group of girls that Danny recognized as his sister's friends. After a brief introduction on both sides, it was decided that they should go ahead and get in line to register. Danny's sister's friends led them to the big gymnasium where registration was, and there was already a huge crowd there.

Danny's sister's friends started walking around the gym trying to figure out where they needed to be.

"So these are our classmates, eh?" Chris was the first one to speak. They were standing in the middle of the room, not in any of the several lines that had formed leading to different parts of the gym.

"Man, this is going to take forever..." Danny was complaining as his two friends eyes got big as they were looking behind him. "What is it?"

Danny turned around and his heart sank. "Oh great. They followed us here?"

What he saw was two guys and a girl, all wearing their high school letter jackets. Which happened to also be Danny and his friends high school. The two guys were about the same height, which was just above six feet tall. One was blond haired and blue eyed and the other had dark hair and dark eyes. And they both had very athletic builds. The girl was average height, but standing next to the tall guys, she looked really short.

"Four more years of them? I though we were through with the wedgies and swirlies... I gotta hide before they see us." Blaine said as he was diving behind Chris.

But it was too late as a loud "Ell-Eee-Ott!!" echoed through the gym.

"Oh great." Danny said. "They still remember that one." As the familiar razz on his last name still rung in his ears.

"Ugh. Danny, does this mean you're gonna spend four more years pining away for Jennifer but never actually approaching her?"

"No. I officially put her behind me this summer. After being rejected again and again, I gave up."

"This doesn't have anything to do with the fact that you caught her and Zane making out, does it?" Chris said, trying to get out from in front of Blaine, but he kept on hiding.

"Well, yeah, that too..."

"Maybe not" came a voice from through Chris' skirt.

"Huh?" Both Danny and Chris said looking down at their squatting friend.

"Look." Blaine said, still squatting and pointing. "She's holding Thiago's hand, not Zane's..."

"Did you drop one of your geek toys, Magic?" The blond boy asked.

"Probably... And we're in college now, can we drop the magic name, Zane? I'm really not David Blaine..."

"I dunno Magic, what would be the fun of that?" The other boy said.

Blaine just rolled his eyes and stood up straight joining the group.

"Now, my boy Ell eee ott here knows a great nickname when he hears one." The dark haired boy said, pulling Danny into a headlock.

"And Thi's got me in a headlock. Gee. This is familiar..."

"Thiago, let him go." Chris said.

"Aww... letting your girlfriend fight your battles for you again? That certainly is familiar..." Zane said as Thiago let Danny go.

"She's not my..." And Danny was cut off as the swarm of his sister's friends came back around. He was at first mortified until he saw the gaping jaws of Zane and Thiago. Then he got the biggest grin he'd had in a while. The girls started handing papers to Danny and Chris and Blaine telling them all the stuff that was going on in the lines. They had gone to the front of each line and collected the pertinent information about groups and clubs and all the other semi-useless information they have to hand out to all incoming students. All they had left to do was go register for classes and get their student i.d.'s.

"Well, I guess we're done here. You know, you three really should be in line, they look brutal..." Chris said in her typical way of saying things that were innocuous but in a very condescending tone. The other three just looked that them and realized that while it was mean, it was true. While they went to get in line, Danny and his friends, and the group of girls left the zoo in the gym.

Once outside, in the warm sun, the group of girls told them the directions to the registrar, which should be their next step. They followed the maze of campus to the other side to wait in line to register for classes. The line there wasn't nearly as long as it was in the gym. And this line was significantly quieter than the gym too. Plus, hot coffee, which all three of them partook and enjoyed it as much as office coffee can be enjoyed.

They picked up the class catalog and was flipping through it to see which classes they could take, and in no time, they were called into the room. Blaine ended up on the far end of the room, but Chris and Danny ended up sitting right next to each other. Basically, the room was set up with several card tables with laptops set up, one on each table, all over a huge conference room, and an employee at each table. As each student sat down with the employee and were asked a series of questions: what's your major, what kinds of classes do you need to be taking, stuff like that. For most students, they have at least a clue of what direction they'd like to go. Danny, however, still had no clue. Luckily, his employee (whose name was Marjorie) was very friendly and patient and helped him out. She enrolled him in several core classes that everyone has to take to allow him to think about what he wants to do with his life. The problem arose when he was deciding on an elective. She handed him the same list of classes that the three of them had been looking at in the line.

"Oh man. This is almost as hard as choosing a major..."

Marjorie just smiled at sat patiently. Danny kept flipping between pages.

"I'm sorry... I know you have have other students to work with..."

"Oh, please. You're friendly. I'm tired of being talked down to by spoiled kids who think they can run the system. You are a breath of fresh air. You can sit there for the rest of the day, and I really wouldn't care."

Danny looked up at her and smiled. Then he became acutely aware of a head over his right shoulder. Without looking, he spoke, "So Chris, what do you think I should take as an elective?"

"Ooo! You should take my ceramics class with me! We can get dirty together! It'll be so much fun, I promise."

"You sure I can get in? I mean, I'm not an art major..."

At that, Marjorie started typing away at her laptop. She then smiled and turned and nodded at Danny. "You're in. Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. That should be fun and relaxing for you... Now, you're all set. Next thing you need to do is get your student i.d. cards. And don't forget about the student mixer in the quad at 7 this evening.

"Thanks for everything, Marjorie."

With that, Danny and Chris met back up with Blaine out in the hallway.

"Man, I have to take computational mathematics at 8 a.m. Monday mornings..." Blaine and Chris then tried to out do each other with who was having the worse semester. Danny just followed behind them and smiled.

They had finally arrived. No more stupid high school crap. No more family drama. It was good to be here. It was good to be here with his friends.

~ Prologue ~

A TV screen flickered on in a darkened room.  At first it was just white snow, but then, a small, white arrow appeared, but only if you knew to look for it.  Then the screen illuminates black on the lone occupant in the room.

Suddenly, a blurry image of a yard occupied by young people appears, followed immediately by an auto-tracking bar, adjusting itself, and then vanishes behind the newly clear image.

The person holding the camera moved over to a table with a white plastic table cloth on it and confetti that had been seemingly randomly scattered, but upon closer inspection, it would become apparent that someone had taken each word confetti and flipped it so every single piece could be easily read.

Sitting at the table were three kinds, high school age.   An African-American boy, who was wearing a baseball cap and glasses playing with some sort of hand-held electronic device, was not really paying attention.  To his left, in the middle, a boy with long-ish black hair and blue eyes was looking at the camera, mortified.  To his left was a girl with long, brown, curly hair that was pulled back using two butterfly clips that looked antique. She was throwing something at someone off screen and was laughing.

A woman’s voice came floating around from behind the camera.  “Hey kids! Enjoying your party?”

Two on the end both said yes and smiled while the one in the middle just rolled his eyes, but couldn’t keep from smiling.

“Now, y’all are all going to the same college in the fall, isn’t that right?”

Another round of “yes”.

“And Danny, you and Blaine are going to be roommates, right?”

“Yes, mom.” Finally, the boy in the middle spoke.

“Now, Christine, have you picked out a roommate yet?”

The girl on the end started talking, “Well, I did the lottery system, and I just got the assignment. We’ve already talked and everything.   She sounds nice, and we seem to have similar tastes. We both thought it best to meet and to get down there before really deciding on how to decorate our dorm room.”

"Oh now boys, since you're roommates, have you decided how you're going to be decorating your room?"

The two boys gave each other a funny look, and then started laughing.

“Mrs. E., we’re boys, we don’t decorate anything…”

“Yeah, if anything, it’s going to be band posters and geek junk all over the place.”

“As long as you keep it clean.   Now, what are y’all going to be studying while down there?”

The girl went first.  “I’m going for an art or graphic design degree.   I haven’t entirely decided which one, but they are very similar, so I have some time to work it out.”

Then the boy on the other end spoke.   “I’m going for a computer science and computer programming double major.”

“I’m…un-declaring!”  Said the boy in the middle

“Danny… your friends all have chosen majors, why haven’t you?”

“Mooom.  We’ve talked about this.  Chris has been an artist all of her life and Blaine won’t put down his techno-junk for ten minutes.  What else were they going to do with their lives?   And I don’t really want to talk about it on camera.   I promise I’ll have a better grasp of things when I come home for Christmas.”

“Alrighty. Well, I’ll let you three get back to your party… Any last words for us?”

Then all three in unison said “GO DALTON U!”

Then the camera turned off and the TV went back to snow, casting a strange shadow on the sole occupant of the room, who had started crying.

She was going to miss her boy…