The Veracity

Destiny

With the morning sun, unhindered by cloud cover, beaming down from an almost completely clear blue sky, slowly slithering across his sweat soaked face, Craig scrubbed his forehead with his damp face towel that was already warm with sweat, for what he hopes would be the last time, as he finally walked through the automatic gates attached to the massive castle like carnation pink walls of the campus entrance. Like he always did when he had class, Craig had walked to campus which in itself only took about fifteen minutes the most because he lived so close, but on hot days like this one, fifteen minutes felt like thirty as the only thought he had once he got outside was to finally be inside again to retreat from the sun.

Dust clouds began to accumulate at Craig's feet that were being dragged over the gravely surface of the parking lot he had to cross before getting to the first of four sections of classroom blocks he had to pass before finally getting to the building in which his first class was to be held. Seeing that Craig had slowed his pace now that he was on campus, he began to feel his feet starting to ache. The pain hadn't come from the walking, mostly because he was used to it and walked where he needed to ever since he was old enough to leave the house by himself, but rather, it came from his choice of footwear. Today, instead of wearing his usual favorite pair of forest green and grey, sun-bleached, paint stained, tattered and scuffed, nylon Reebok Classics whose soles were nearly worn down to non-existence, he had decided he would trade comfort for style, and wear a pair of plain vanilla white Akademiks sneakers that were a half size too small but were too stylish to just get rid of. Most guys owned at least one pair of white Nikes, but not Craig. He just had his pair of vanilla coloured Akademiks. In fact, Craig had never owned a pair of Nike anything. It was not from a lack of wanting, however. Craig was always more of a $19.99 rack kind of guy; so much so that even his favorite pair of Reeboks, which is a moderately respected brand, he had picked up second hand from a thrift store nearly 5 years ago for twelve bucks. In any event, those shoes were clearly not made for walking, which is why he only wore them when he was attempting to dress up and deviate from his usual state of purposely dressing down.

You see, amid the miserable heatwave this morning, he had to rummage through his entire wardrobe to find something that wasn't wrinkled, stained or had holes at the armpits, then landed on the simple look of his only clean pair of acid washed straight legged distressed denim jeans matched with a mustard yellow fitted t-shirt that read "It's Better in the Bahamas" in royal blue retro lettering right across the front. After getting dressed, he thought it was only right to wear his too-tight off-white tennis shoes to complete the look.

Jamie? Since he met her that night, Craig couldn't get Jamie off of his mind. He thought about her for the rest of his time on campus waiting for his father to pick him up, for the entire duration of the short drive home, right up until it was time for him to sleep. It was only after he woke up that morning that his thoughts were dominated with the desire to take a shower and then once the cold stream of water from the showerhead crashed into his chest and sent him into a shock, he was reminded of Jamie once again. As a testament to the belief that most people do their best thinking while in the shower, while in there, the thought of running into her ran across Craig's mind. It suddenly started to feel ridiculous. What were the odds really? No! He had to run into her. Even if it wasn't likely to happen on it's own, he had to make it happen. As stalker-ish as that sounded, he could not let last night go to waste. Their paths had to cross, and he would see to it that it did, even if that meant he had to circle the entire campus for the whole day to do so. This also meant, if they were to meet for the first time – again, she'd be able to see him clearly in the light of day and that's where he got the idea that maybe he should try to dress at least a tad bit better than his usual 'educated-street urchin aesthetic' fashion sense.

Even though, if this was really about first impressions, his "I thought you were a raccoon" comments from the night before probably ruined that already, more than he knows.