Book #3 in the Medley Series
ZEKE MITCHELL:
With the World Championship in swimming approaching and our medley team in better condition than ever, nothing can stop us.
Expect, as the season starts, an old injury rears its ugly head again, potential...
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My phone rings just as I'm shouldering my dorm room door open, balancing my textbooks and a travel mug of tea in my other hand.
I accept the call, pressing the phone between my shoulder and ear.
"Hello?"
"Njeri," my mother's voice comes through the line. It is clear, warm, and so achingly familiar that I get instantly homesick—not for Florida or my parents' house, but for Sunday dinner and pouring over textbooks with Dad.
"Hi, Mama," I greet her as I smile at a guy entering his room down the hall. He looks flushed and disheveled in a way that spells walk-of-shame.
Getting used to all the other people living in this building has been an adjustment. For that first weekend, it was basically a ghost town, and now there are foreign noises around the clock because college students don't sleep.
At least most of the people on my floor seem to be in graduate school, which means I don't feel too much like a senior citizen. I've even chatted briefly with the woman in the room across from mine, Aizza, mainly about the closest laundromat or a shortcut across campus.
I'm warming to the idea of maybe even befriending some of the other inhabitants of the dorm building. Normally, I love meeting new people, but college students put me on edge - perhaps because I never thought I'd be one again.
"What are you doing?" Mom demands, a noise of something clanging in the background. I ordered a pair of wireless headphones for her at Christmas, and now she's constantly working on a project whenever she calls.
"On my way to class." I mouth a thank you to the person holding the door open for me as I hurry outside.
I haven't been to this particular building before, and I'm worried I might get lost, so I'm leaving ten minutes earlier than I usually would.
I'm still getting my bearings around campus. Classes started four days ago, and I'd forgotten how disorienting it can be to start somewhere new. The websites and lines of communication work differently, and professors might operate by a completely different set of unspoken rules.
"Ooh," Mom intones through the phone as I navigate through the throngs of people leisurely ambling about. "Is it good to be back in the classroom? We told you it would, didn't we?"
I try not to cringe at my mother's assumptions. I can't entirely fault her for jumping to conclusions. There was a time I thought the same.
When I decided to take a year off from college between my junior and senior years, I had every intention of coming back.
I thought a year of backpacking through Asia and Eastern Europe would be just the thing that made me begin missing it—learning, that is—instead of dreading it. When the books, assignments, and grades began feeling like dead weight dragging me down, I figured I just needed a change of scenery—a break, essentially.
