Page 4 of Virgin Sacrifice

Not a single person had approached me to see if I was okay, but I preferred that in some ways.

Still, I couldn’t help but steal a last glance at the twins. I could have sworn I’d felt the one’s eyes on my back the whole time. But when I looked, I found them both once again observing the partying in front.

Which was absolutely for the best.

Pulling my backpack up on my shoulders, I continued my trek to the dining hall.

It was bad enough that the one had seen me wipeout. From what my gut was telling me, I didn’t want to catch any more of their attention than I already had.

Chapter two

Luz

Breakfast in the main dining hall and my first class were both mercifully uneventful.

As a scholarship student, it was in my best interest to stretch out my credits by eating at one of the university’s dining halls. While most of the cute cafés and some of the national chains sprinkled throughout the campus would happily take my student card, their premium prices would also burn through my funds well before the semester was over.

Fraser Hall was one of the many collegiate Gothic-style buildings on campus, and it housed the university’s largest dining hall. For all the pomp of Hollow Oak, its food services were remarkably like any other college. Hot food was available from 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. Monday to Friday, with later hours on the weekend. There were also prepackaged foods and vending machines available twenty-four hours a day.

I took my chance with the hot meal for the day and was neither disappointed nor impressed by the scrambled eggs, sausages, and pancakes. The fruit salad, although bland, was relatively fresh and chock-full of pineapple and watermelon today. I never turned my nose up at fresh fruit, especially pineapple. It was one of my favorites, and I had done enough grocery shopping on a budget that I appreciated its abundance here.

My first university class was, well, just that, a class. Despite not being as popular as Spanish or French, Introduction to Japanese attracted enough students for a small but decent-sized class of about twenty-five students. Given that most one-hundred-level classes were huge, I was happy to take advantage of the more intimate setting.

However, despite the exorbitant sum students paid to attend Hollow Oak, the class was taught by a passionate but overextended PhD student. With dark hair and eyes, Michael Schultz cleaned up nicely. Wearing a classic good-guy combo of dark jeans and a V-neck sweater, he was a decent-looking guy. And his zeal for Japanese was clear in the way his eyes sparkled when he explained why he chose to study the language.

But that was the extent of his teaching abilities.

As an instructor, he was prone to launching into monotone speech, overrehearsed and underdelivered. Some parts of the lecture were so rote it was clear he could have taught the class in his sleep, and not in a good way. Worse, he was one of those teachers who stringently insisted on holding all questions until the end, to the extent that he would brutally stare down any student who dared to pop their hand up in the middle of his lecture.

Still, I had some empathy for the guy. If the large purple bags under his eyes and overgrown haircut were any indication, Michael looked to be exhausted. I wouldn’t be nominating him for the professor of the year, but he did have a good grasp of what he was teaching, and his style was accessible if painfully dry.

Having successfully navigated my first university course, despite the inauspicious start to my day, I decided to reward myself with a sugary iced coffee from one of the many cafés around the campus. I should have made myself head back to Fraser Hall or one of the other dining halls for a proper lunch, but breakfast was still sitting heavy in my stomach, and I didn’t want to waste money on both coffee and lunch.

Sorry, lunch.

Once I had finagled a fancy iced latte (that cost the same amount as my breakfast), I decided to hunt around campus for the perfect study nook.

After checking out a couple of different libraries and study centers, I finally found it in the Hunter Fine Arts Library. The building was a breathtaking sandstone and terra-cotta Venetian Gothic monstrosity full of sun-soaked reading rooms. The whole building had that deliciously old-school academia feel to it, and the nerd in me nearly exploded with delight.

Settling in, I quickly reviewed my notes from Intro to Japanese before beginning to work through the exercises I needed to complete before the tutorial on Thursday. As underwhelming as the lecture had been, I loved languages, and it was too easy to lose myself in the work.

English was my first language, and I had been lucky enough to be able to study German independently throughout high school. Mami had insisted that I learn and speak Spanish at home with her, but it was French that gave me my love of languages.

Marianne had been my devoted childhood nanny and tutor. From the Loire Valley in France, she effectively raised me from ages three to eight years old. More often than not, she spoke to me in French, something my father and stepmother had been happy to encourage. As a small child, my love for her was fierce and all-encompassing, and it was natural for me to embrace and learn her language.

It was only now that I was able to fully appreciate the gift she had given me. Marianne not only opened up my world to the beauty of French language and culture, but she helped me build confidence and skills as a young child. I’d loved studying new languages ever since.

Lost in my Japanese studies and my memories of Marianne, time passed quickly. Before I knew it, it was ten minutes to two, and I was forced to sprint out of the library in a futile attempt to make it across campus in time for my economics lecture.

My only potential saving grace was that ECON200 was a required course for a very popular major and would likely be in a large lecture-style hall. Hopefully, I would be able to sneak in late without drawing too much attention to myself.

Despite my best efforts, I arrived outside the class at 2:04 p.m., where I took only the briefest of moments to catch my breath before attempting to quietly, if not stealthily, make my way into the room.

The good news was that the class was being held in a hall.

The bad news was that the doors I’d chosen were directly next to the already-lecturing professor, forcing me to slink past him to get to the seats.

Worse, my supposition about the class being large and popular was also true, and that meant that most of the seats were already full. With no empty spots left near the aisles, I needed to squeeze myself past the students already seated to get to one of the few remaining seats available.

---