This is the second part of a story I began years ago. I re-read it recently and realised I had left it hanging after a first part, so here, finally, is the continuation of that story. Hopefully I haven't forgotten in the last few years how to write these characters and what I was going to do with the story.
"Hello," Hannah Monroe called out as she walked into the lounge area of her dorm, "Anyone around?"
She was greeted by total silence. The room was dark as Hannah walked in and dropped her bag to the floor, feeling exhausted after her days classes. Nobody was around, it seemed, they'd probably gone out for the evening. That was ok with Hannah who just wanted to collapse on her bed with a good book. Normally, she liked to be the life and soul of the party, but a lonely winter away from her friends and family was changing her outlook on what constituted a good evening. She felt a sigh of relief flood over her at the thought that her room-mate wasn't going to be around.
Hannah felt that she was a people person and that she could get on with anyone. Her charm, enthusiasm and optimism were normally all it took for anyone to soften up to her and consider her a friend. This was not the case, however, with Annie Jackson, the room-mate she had been paired up with when first arriving here at the college a few months earlier. Spoilt and wealthy, Annie resented having to have a room-mate at all and nothing that Hannah could do would change this. Annie had been to an exclusive and expensive west coast private school and hated having to spend time with someone she thought beneath her, someone like Hannah who had come from a relatively ordinary background to be here. She was an only child who had no real concept of sharing anything and found Hannah's attempts to befriend her intrusive and irritating and tended to react by making Hannah's life hell, seeming to go out of her way to make Hannah miserable where before Hannah had gone out of her way to make Annie feel at home.
Before coming here, Hannah had felt sure that her room-mate would be her best friend at college and the hostile reaction that she had received from Annie had severely dented her confidence and self esteem. Where before, making friends had come as second nature to her, now it seemed to her that people had started to ignore her and that she felt ever more lonely. Sure, on the phone to her parents she was full of cheery stories of the fun she was having, but that was no reflection of how she truly felt. She knew that she could admit defeat and leave and go home, but that would be even more pathetic than the state she found herself in when she tried her hardest not to cry herself to sleep because her room-mate would hear and then things would not be so good for her.
Hannah walked into the dark room and banged her shins against the low coffee table, letting out a muffled swear word. She was alone but years of her parents' disapproval still had her swearing under her breath. Hopping in pain, she headed for the door of her own room, the one she shared with Annie, not even bothering with the light switch, wanting as soon as possible to just collapse on her bed and zone out into oblivion, trying to forget everything she hated about college life so far.
She didn't bother with the light inside the room either, simply dropping onto her front on the bed. That's when she realised that she wasn't really alone. From the other side of the room, Hannah could hear gradually increasing sounds of moaning and groaning. Initially, she put her head in the pillow and tried to smother out the sounds but the moans became more regular and louder until she knew she couldn't take it any more.
She got up and walked over to where the light switch was next to the door and flicked it on to see Annie lying on her back on her bed with her boyfriend, Josh, on top of her. Annie was very tall and thin, with long legs and a long neck, her facial features were sharp and her dark hair was cut into a short bob. Josh Stacy, her boyfriend, was a long limbed lacrosse player with floppy brown hair and thick, full lips that he was pressing against her thin, sneering ones.
Annie's black and white pleated skirt had ridden up around her waist while Josh's hand was exploring the inside of her thigh with her panties pushed aside, Hannah could see that her room-mate had invested in very expensive dark blue silk lingerie. Josh's other hand was on his girlfriend's breast which had fallen out of her tight pale blue sweater. Both of them, however, had turned their heads to where Hannah stood by the door with angry, accusatory expressions.
"Can't you see we're busy here," Annie said in a shrill, angry voice, obviously she didn't like to be interrupted in the middle of this.
Hannah was mortified, as she stood there, watching the writhing, semi-naked bodies of her room-mate and her boyfriend, she could not move, open mouthed with surprise and horror. Annie stared back at her, looking enraged, while Josh was turning away, seeming pretty embarrassed to be discovered. Annie, however, reacted as if Hannah was somehow deliberately interrupting, or as if Hannah really wanted to watch her room-mate having sex. She glared daggers and Hannah.
"Why don't you just get out of here, you freak?" she snarled.
This was all that Hannah needed. She turned her back and rushed from the room, slamming the door behind her. She continued to rush away, through the living area, not even stopping to grab her coat and scarf from where she had left them draped across a chair. She just had to get out of the dorm as quick as possible. Slamming another door behind her, she headed outside, still walking breathlessly fast, striding as if with great purpose but not heading anywhere in particular, just hurrying to shake the image out of her head, not just the image of her room-mate having sex, but of the look of unpleasant hate on Annie's face.
The snow had started to fall now, thick white blobs of it, beginning to cover the sidewalk as she strode through it. Although she had left her coat behind, she didn't feel the cold breeze flowing through her, her thoughts were too much on how miserable her friendless college life was. After a while of angrily pacing around, she finally found herself taking shelter from the increasingly heavy snowfall beneath a tree. There was a single bench that managed to provide a bit of shelter. Hannah slumped down on it and slumped her shoulders, huddling her body smaller to escape the cold that she now began to feel. She was breathing heavily and could see the gusts of her cold breath out before her.
Letting herself go at last, she let the tears flow down her reddened face. Her vision became blurred with her sobbing tears, while the thickness of the snow made the red brick campus buildings barely visible either. Hannah didn't care at all what was happening around her, she was so wrapped up in her own feelings. So much so that she failed to notice someone on the bench beside her.
"Are you ok?" came a soft, female voice, breaking Hannah from her slumped depression.
"Oh," Hannah said with surprise, wiping the tears from her eyes to get a better look at her companion, "I'm sorry. I didn't see you there."
"That's alright. I didn't mean to interrupt," replied the other girl, "What is it? What has brought you out here in the cold to cry your eyes out?"
