Girl for the Goths - part 1
Professor Jamison reached the end of his lecture early. Nobody was surprised. His style had been to parcel out a specific number of pages in the Journalism text and stop precisely when he finished the last bullet point on the last paragraph. He said it was a good discipline, both for them and for him.
Hannah was pretty certain that the discipline story was a cover for a tenured and burned-out prof doing the minimum he could to work through his last two years before retirement. She had nothing against Jamison personally. His credentials were solid and he had given her good advice early on about how to get past some structure problems she was having with her writing. Ultimately though, he was no more than a skilled technician. That was fine, in its place, but she was ambitious and eager to find a mentor who could teach her the ropes of her chosen field. And Jamison wasn't it.
As the students filed out of the mid-sized classroom, Hannah folded her notebook and dropped her pen into her bag. She was feeling anxious, excited, even slightly flushed. Today was Thursday and that was her night to go online. She felt a small charge of excitement while she pushed back the chair, then rose and started for the door.
"Did you get the name of the website he mentioned? The one that listed summer internships?" Hannah heard a voice behind her. She turned and saw Sharon, a 2nd year Sociology student who was sitting in on the Journalism class, probably looking at Hannah and the others as specimens in a laboratory.
Hannah disliked Sharon for a number of reasons, at least one of them being her sense that Hannah was her own private secretary. The biggest offense was that Sharon typically expressed an attitude of being above everyone else while also representing the sleaze factor on campus. Hannah had to admit the girl was gorgeous, though. She was one of the girls who many would describe as "Goths". She wore the required head-to-toe black gear, filmy and transparent in some places, leather tough in others. Her eyes were outlined with thick, black mascara, her hair was raven dark, and she always wore high-gloss jet-black lipstick.
She continued walking toward the door, responding to Sharon without turning her head. "No, Sharon, I didn't get that written down. I'm sorry, I'll try and pay more attention next time."
"Hey, I was just asking. You know, trying to be friendly?"
To Hannah, Sharon's level of pretense was both amazing and laughable. This woman was part of a small troupe of five, including an Amazon named Leslie who considered herself the leader. They had obviously been on the margins in high school and were trying to build some kind of life for themselves now that they were away from home.
"Well, be friendly somewhere else, I have to get home and study." Hannah saw the other four Goths in the hallway outside the classroom, obviously waiting for their friend so they could all head home and read depressing poetry to each other or listen to odd music or whatever it was they did besides drink blood and feel each other up. She walked past, making sure not to look anywhere near their direction.