As soon as I walked out of my last class for the day, I saw Carol and ‘the dolls’. I was immediately reminded to called my dad to further discuss my new-found idea of living off campus, but I had to go get lunch first because my stomach was not having this new diet streak of having water for breakfast. I turned the other direction to avoid tea parties, talk, but unfortunately my feet weren’t fast enough.

“Hey, grace”. Carol hollered.

“Heyyy…..Carol” I replied, trying to seem like I didn’t see her while walking out of the class. 

“Where you going..” she playfully sang.

“Am just going to get lunch” I really didn’t want her hearing my conversation with my dad.

“Cool, i was going to eat too.”

“What about your friends.” I pointed to the girls talking behind her.

“I just meet them in my class, not really friends”

“Don’t you wanna get to know them. You know, make new friends.”

“No, they were being mean to the prof, and kept talking about shoes and stuff.”

“You talk about shoes too.”

“Yeah but not that much.”

“Whatever let’s go.” I guess she was tagging along.

We got to the cafeteria which I have to admit is really impressive. It has four stations; Heal; the healthy food section., Dill Strauser; the burger joint, Castrol; the fancy place where chef’s make the food, and Express; The any-kind-of-drink you want place. This is one of the many cafeterias in the school. We went to Heal to get some salad from the salad bar, and I choose a spot at the back so I could talk without being disturbed, or being the disturbance.

“You only had peppers in your salad, that’s weird” Carol observed.

“I got some cucumbers too”

“No cheese, tomatoes or eggs.”

“She refused to melt the cheese, so lemme alone.”

“Who eats salad with melted cheese?”

“I think you mean people should eat salad with melted cheese.” I smiled. We ate our launch, and just chatted about new people in our classes for a while.

“I need to talk to my dad about getting a room off campus.” I conversed.

“What! why do you want to leave the dorm? Is it because of me? ”

“What! No! I just don’t like it. The walls are thin, and I have loud nightmares.” I said with a matter-of-fact face without realizing what i was saying. I do that sometimes, i just blunt out the first thing that comes to mind without giving it more thought.

“Oh.” she said quietly as she looked at me weirdly. Good, I though to myself, now you can stop trying to be my friends…..am all kinds of weird.

“O ooh, we can go apartment shopping together!” she announced cheerfully. I exhaled heavily. I guess this one is sticking.

“Probably, I have to talk to my dad first though.”

“yeah, of cos!.

**NOTE**

Remember to always have headphone on, so you can pretend you don’t hear people calling.