It was nostalgic, going through his room and deciding what to pack up to take to his college dorm. As he picked through his closet, trying to decide what he wanted to pack, and what he didn't wear often enough to be worth bringing along, Link found his old journal from when he was a kid, a black composition book with a big yellow warning sticker on the front, right under the words: "This book belongs to: LINCOLN BRADLEY! DO NOT READ!"
He chuckled a bit and smiled softly as he opened it up to see what he had written.
Dear not diary becuz i'm not some lam girl with a lam diary,
Today was the first day of second grad and my teacher gav us all these dum books and told us we had to writ in them at leest wons a week, and she would grad them without reding them so everything we wrot could still be privat. Her name is Miss Dylans and she's pink, which usualy meens she's nis, but i dont want to writ in a book evry week, and i dont no how she plans to grad it without reding it anyway.
Link cringed visibly. His spelling was atrocious in second grade. It seemed like the concept of a silent E was completely foreign to his seven-year-old self. He flipped through a few more pages, skimming them. Slowly the spelling got better, and by about the fifth entry there were silent Es. He remembered Miss Dylans giving him special attention when it came to spelling. She really was nice.
About halfway through, Link found the entry he'd written the day he'd met his best friend.
Dear dumb book,
Today we got a new student in our class and he's the brightest yellow I've ever seen. He's almost white. His name is Helios Night which is the coolest name I've ever herd in my LIFE, but he just wants to be called Lio for some reeson. It took my eyes a while to ajust to him, but when they did, I saw that he was really sad. He was sadder than I've ever seen anybody be, and he was al hunched over and stared at the grownd a lot and didn't smile even one time the hole day. He was so sad that I didn't want to talk to him, but then I desided that if I was that sad I woudn't want to be lonely too, so I gave him half of my brownie at lunch and asked him why he was so sad. He told me that his mommy and daddy died and that's why he had to move and why he switched scools. I felt bad and I would have given him the other half of my brownie too, but I already ate it.
Link didn't know whether to smile or be sympathetic. It was a terrible time for his friend, but they both looked back on that meeting fondly. Lio's name was Helios Knight, not Night, and Link learned during a game of truth or dare in sixth grade that his middle name was literally Danger, which Lio thought was weird and embarrassing, but Link still thought it was the coolest name he'd ever heard. Realizing that he was just wasting time by reminiscing, Link put the journal down and went back to his clothes.
From the first day they met, Link and Lio had become fast friends, and they were best friends all though middle school and high school, and they promised each other that they would continue to be best friends through colleges, even though they were going to different schools. It would be good for them to get some time apart, maybe Link would finally be able to get rid of the crush he'd been harboring on Lio since eighth grade.
Lio was like, perfect protagonist material. He was the very picture of conventional attractiveness, blond hair, blue eyes, perfect body, and he was strong, hard-working, clever, had a powerful personal magnetism, and he was so bright. His aura was so bright.
That was what Link had taken to calling the colored bubbles he saw around everyone like second skins, auras. He had always been able to see them, as long as he could remember, but as soon as he realized no one else could see them, he decided he would never tell anyone about it. If he was crazy, it was best to keep that to himself so he didn't end up in a psych ward or something.
It had only been colors when he was younger, people with pink auras like Miss Dylans were usually compassionate and caring, people with grey auras were usually depressed or apathetic, red was passionate and emotional, and so on. As he got older, and payed more attention and learned to translate them better, the auras became more nuanced, with hints of other colors, and shapes, and sometimes even words. The brighter the aura, the stronger it was.
Lio's aura was still the brightest Link had seen, and it was so bright he sometimes thought that even normal people could see it. He thought for sure they could at least sense it somehow, because people were always drawn to Lio like moths to a flame, Link included. Despite seeing so many girlfriends come and go, Link couldn't shake the attraction he felt towards his best friend. He knew it was doomed, but Lio was just so easy to love, even without being loved back the same way.
Link sighed heavily as he folded his selected shirts into a cardboard box. It always came back to that crush. It had been going on for almost five years, and he knew for a fact that it wasn't going to go any further.
That was a big part of the reason he didn't want to go to the same university as Lio, even though they'd been best friends for over a decade. He thought that maybe if they didn't see each other every day, his feelings would fade, or transfer to someone else. It wasn't like he hadn't been attracted to anyone other than Lio since middle school, it was just that Lio was the only one he was ever serious about.
Link finished with his clothes and taped the cardboard box closed. Next up was to clean out his desk and make sure he wasn't forgetting anything important. He found a lot of old study guides and notes, which he could probably throw away, but there were a few books pertaining to his criminal law and police sciences major that he thought worth boxing. Ultimately he wanted to be a private investigator and run his own agency, but college was step one.
In a drawer of his desk, he found all the birthday cards his Aunt Harley had given him over the years. Every single one had a pressed flower in it, and she had told him the meaning of each one when she gave him the cards, but he never remembered. Aunt Harley was a florist, and an eccentric one at that. She came to visit her brother and his family at least twice a year since before Link was born, and she always brought flowers. Her aura was red with flecks of pink and blue and white, so she reminded Link of a colorful bouquet herself.
After hours that felt like longer hours, Link finally finished packing up, and it felt weird to have only three boxes of stuff after all that time, but he was too relieved about being done with it all to care. He left his room and headed down the hall for some water, and just as he was sitting down, he got a text from his sister.
[From: Rose]
Finally starting college soon Peasant! You HYPED?
Rose was four years his junior and already in college for chemical engineering. He might have been embarrassed about being so far behind her, but his sister was a genius, and a total beast when it came to academic stuff. Not many people could graduate high school in three semesters and get their first bachelors degree by the time they're fifteen. Rose was truly something else.
[To: Rose]
Hyped for sure I can't wait!
Link was going to the dorms that night for the welcoming party, but it was a long drive from Riverton to UC Berkeley, even if they were in the same state. He was excited to be going to UC Berkeley. Since their acceptance rate was only fifteen percent, he hadn't really expected to get in, especially since he wasn't exactly the model of a perfect student—his grades were good, but not perfect, try as he might. He had done very well of the SATs, but he suspected that his race may have been a factor as well. He'd read when he was applying that colleges to try to maintain a certain percentage of African-American students among their ranks every year. Whether or not that was what got him in the door, he still got accepted into his top choice school, and with a partial scholarship too, so he was plenty happy.
He texted back and forth with his little sister for a while, and she told him about getting her grades back for her summer courses and having straight As. She'd never gotten anything less, but she did love to brag.
Immediately after lunch, he loaded his boxes in the back of his second-hand Honda and hugged his parents goodbye. He had about a five hour drive ahead of him, and that was if traffic was good. He didn't want to miss the welcome party.
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