All Over Again - Chapter 4: Chapter 4

The first day of school was nothing new compared to what Ruth had already experienced years before.
Ruth's had exactly fourteen of them, and will have two more after that, so it should be no big deal to her. Wear something cute and yellow, braid some of her hair back with her metal carnation clip, and make sure she had her book bag of heavy school-books and purple notebooks. She wasn't the greatest when it came to school, perhaps a 'B' student at best, but she got by and still attempted to do her best every year. It never made her mom happy that she didn't strive to be an 'A' student and become valedictorian of her senior class, but what can she say? School was hard for Ruth, harder than it should be for most people, but she still tried her best.
Though her head pounded from the night she experienced, she still drove with a smile on her face and danced to "What a Feeling" by Irene Cara. Curling her freshly washed hair around her finger, she sang softly under her breath with the windows down and the warm sun beaming brightly into her car. It didn't take her long to get to campus, maybe ten minutes tops, and another five to get parking, and then she was back on campus for her last first day.
Clutching her bag closer to her body, she walked past a few scurrying students of all ages who were already late for their 8 am. Since she had time to kill before her first class of the day, she thought grabbing a tea at the school's on campus cafe wasn't a bad idea. So that was exactly where she walked to.
Her warm fingers reached out and wrapped around the door handle, but she was suddenly startled backwards as a body came barreling through on the other side. Ruth's fingers lost their clutch on the handle and she moved out of the way instantly with an automatic, "Oh!"
"Oh, shit! I'm so sorry," the person apologized, and Ruth looked up to take in the unknown girl who had run into her.
She was effortlessly pretty in an almost shockingly conventional way. With waves of light brown hair to her shoulders, and bright hazel-green eyes, something about the soft sprinkle of freckles across her rosy cheeks really brought out the beauty in this stranger's face. Decked out in dusty pink clothes and Kate Spade grey bag, she reminded Ruth of someone walking around Beverly Hills back home in California.
"No, I'm sorry. I wasn't paying attention," Ruth said, waving her off.
"Not at all! It was all me. I was trying to bolder pass people with my coffees," the other girl laughed, holding up her two cups as proof.
"Don't worry about it. The coffee was definitely more important."
They both laughed together again. "You aren't wrong about that. The person I'm getting a coffee for might literally strangle me without his daily dose of caffeine."
"Looks like you'll need to get going then," Ruth waved her off.
"Looks like it," she agreed, offering a brief salute. "Enjoy your first day!"
Ruth voiced her agreement, and the two went on their way in opposite directions. Walking up to the counter of Flint's Café, she ordered her favorite chai tea latte by the same blonde barista, Abigail, who was working there the last school year as well. She wasn't as cheery as she usually was, but she still found enough strength within her to smile at Ruth when she walked in.
The chai tea latte tasted like the familiarity of home. Each sip held a taste exploding with flavor and ignited a warm pep to her step. So far, being back in Oklahoma has been better than she expected, and the dull ache in her chest was a little looser. No judgment, no pain, just a breath of fresh air. And she couldn't get enough of it.
Checking the time on her phone, she realized she still had forty-five minutes to kill. She shouldn't have left her apartment so early when she was still nursing a headache and had a bit of jet-lag from her flight, but she had to get moving today. She needed to adapt to being back and adjust to whatever needed to be adjusted. Coming to school early had opened her eyes to a few new things that spiked her good nature attitude and left a swell taste in her mouth. Meeting a nice girl that she got to talk to for a minute, seeing Abigail behind the counter smiling tiredly at her, and catching sight of the writing contest that was plastered all around campus. She glanced over the prompts briefly, and it took everything in her to swallow down the itch to write for the contest.
You don't have time to write this semester, she kept repeating to herself. But if you did . . . what would you even write about?
But that thought was the most dangerous to her. Worlds literally bled out of her fingertips, drawing out whatever creative thought her mind conjured up in that moment. Her pen seemed to always know what to say to her spiral-bound notebook, especially in the middle of Organic Chemistry. There were dreams that still needed to be written. Dreams that laid to waste in the notes on her phone alongside important passwords and reminders of what she has to do to get ready for New York. Ideas wanted flushing, meanings behind the words wanted digesting, and . . . damn it, Ruth just wanted to write it all.
But with her future . . . she didn't know if she ever could. She didn't know if anyone will ever get to digest the words that she desperately wanted to sprawl across the pages in her notebook, if she would ever get to flush out writing ideas.
She just didn't know.
And that thought bothered her more than she'd ever care to admit aloud.