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quieted. She breathed a sigh of relief and set her bag on her desk.
    Grabbing the sweatshirt off the back of a chair, Taylor pulled it on and kicked off her shoes. Her phone rang and she reached into her bag to pull it out.
    “Hi, Mom,” she said.
    “Hey, honey, tell me all about your first week!”
    Taylor knew her mom wanted nothing more than for her to be excited about it. College was something she’d been looking forward to for years. Every high schooler dreams of the day they get to leave lockers and homerooms behind for something better.
    “It was good.” Taylor tried to infuse some kind of emotion into those words. For her mom, she decided it was time to start acting like she was happy. Then the questions and looks would stop. Then her mom wouldn’t be so worried all the time.
    “I need more than that,” her mom huffed. “Tell me about your classes. Have you made tons of new friends?”
    “School is fine. Stupid, boring freshman classes,” Taylor replied.
    “And?”
    “And I’m working on the friend thing.” It was a lie, but a lie with good intentions.
    It seemed to appease her mom and they talked for a few more minutes.
    “I forgot to tell you,” her mom said suddenly. “Your dad is out of town for a preseason game, but his opening night is next week and I know it’d mean a lot to him if you were there.”
    “No.”
    “But, honey, it’s his first game here in Columbus.”
    “I said no.” She flopped back on her bed. “I gotta go.” She hung up without a goodbye as her breath caught in her throat. She pushed it out and then lay there with her chest rising and falling rapidly until the door opened.
    Abigail came in, laughing and talking to two boys who were right on her heels.
    “Tay!” she squealed as if they were long-lost friends finally reuniting. “This is Colin and Anthony. Anthony really wanted to meet you.” She tried to wink, but it caused half her face to scrunch up awkwardly.
    “Hi, Taylor.” Anthony shuffled his feet nervously.
    “They’re sophomores,” Abigail said, as if that was a huge selling point.
    Colin sat on Abigail’s bed and pulled her into his lap as Anthony continued to stare at the ground. The color rose in his cheeks when she finally looked up.
    Taylor removed her glasses, cleaning them on her shirt before replacing them. Abigail’s giggling pierced the silence, and Taylor couldn’t take it anymore: the sound of Abigail’s southern voice, the expectation in Anthony’s eyes, the noise coming from the common room.
    Suddenly, the room felt suffocating and the massive school seemed way too small. Taylor grabbed her bag and slung it over her shoulder. Anthony watched her as she left. He was probably the only one of the three that noticed.
    Not for the first time, Taylor was grateful that her parents let her have her car on campus. It was an easy getaway. She threw her bag in the passenger seat of her old, boxy, eyesore and pulled out of the parking lot at the base of the tower.
    Taylor hadn’t done much exploring of her new city. She knew of very few places she could go, especially since she wanted to get off campus. There were only two routes she knew by heart: the way home to her parents and the way to the diner she met her dad at. That was as good a place as any.
    High Street took her from campus straight into the arena district. Taylor didn’t look up at the arena as she turned the corner. Luckily, it couldn’t be seen from the diner. That was probably why her dad chose it the first time.
    Cutting the engine, she got out and went inside, finding a booth in the back. She didn’t know why she came. These sudden urges to be alone weren’t anything new, but she wished she could understand them. She wished she could move past them.
    Pulling out her Kindle, she touched the screen where it showed an icon for the first book in the Outlander series, wanting to disappear into the eighteenth century Scottish highlands for a while.
     
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    “You’re