Page 11 of Breakaway Goal

I turn to see Summer and Olivia walking up to me from another section of the pathways that wind through the center of campus.

They’re both dating hockey players who live with Rhys and Lane, so I’ve gotten to know them from spending so much time at their house. Summer is dating the goalie, Hudson Voss, and Olivia is dating one of the forwards, Tuck McCoy.

“Hi Summer, hi Olivia,” I answer them, smiling.

“You didn’t greet the third member of our little group,” Summer says. “She’ll be very offended.”

I pinch my brows. My eyeballs dart side to side, but unless I’m really losing it, there’s no third person with them. “Huh? Who?”

Summer flashes a grin before turning around. She’s wearing a pet carrier backpack, and her and Hudson’s adorable cat Salsa is traveling in it. She lets out a purr and paws at the mesh caging.

Hudson found the big, fluffy Norwegian Forest Cat last year and took her in as a stray. But Tuck was allergic, so he couldn’t keep her in their house. This somehow led to Hudson and Summer pretending to date in exchange for Salsa living at Summer’s place.

I don’t really know the whole story of how they ended up falling in love for real, but they’re a super cute couple despite Hudson’s grumpy tendencies, and their cat baby Salsa is the cherry on top.

“I don’t have class until later,” Summer explains, “so I’m taking her to the park to get some fresh air and sun. She can get cooped up at home.”

We chat a bit more until we come to Flesher Hall, the main art building on campus, a beautiful three-story building of green-tinted stone. I say goodbye to Summer and Olivia, and I wear an excited smile as I walk through the halls and take a seat at a desk for my very first college art class.

I enjoy my first class a lot, even though we don’t delve too deeply into the material since it’s just the first day.

One of the things I’ve been looking most forward to about changing my major is meeting fellow art students and finally making friends with people who share the same interests as me.

But when class is over, and lots of my classmates are talking to each other, introducing themselves, catching up after having gotten to know each other in art classes last year … I freeze.

Everyone here already seems so familiar with each other. This is an intermediate class, after all, so they probably took the beginning class together. My advisor signed off on me skipping some of the introductory art classes to make up for lost time since my portfolio demonstrated how many well-developed skills I already have.

All the other students seem so comfortable and familiar with each other while they casually chat like they’re already friends. A wave of intimidation and anxiety rolls over me.

Instead of finding someone to introduce myself to, I chicken out and end up the first person to leave the classroom.

No. I didn’tchicken out, I tell myself, trying to erase that negative self-talk from my inner vocabulary.

I just froze. Panicked a little. I have social anxiety, and it’s not a personal flaw; it’s just something I have to find healthy ways to overcome.

Replacing that negative self-talk with positive becomes harder when the exact same thing happens with my other two classes today.

Each time, I try to puff myself up with confidence, telling myself I’m going to introduce myself to someone and try to at least make one acquaintance in my next class—and each time, I find that I just … can’t.

I know all I need to do is introduce myself, talk about how I just switched to an Art major, make small-talk by asking one of my classmates what their favorite art class has been so far or something … but my social anxiety makes me seize up, and suddenly moving my tongue feels impossible.

I walk back home feeling disappointed in myself.

I try to tell myself that it’s just the first day, that I’ll have plenty of opportunities to make friends in the art department, that there are clubs I can join and events I can go to where breaking the ice might be easier for me.

But I still can’t shake the morose mood that settles over me. I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve let myself down.

I hoped to come back to my dorm this afternoon in an even better mood than I left it in. I imagined that the excitement would blossom into elation after a great first day, a day where Iloved my classes and took at least the first step toward making new friends.

I hoped I’d be excited to tell Jasmine all about it—maybe that we’d even giggle together as I’d tell her about a cute art guy I had a brief conversation with as we packed up after classes.

Instead, I’m glad she isn’t home, so I don’t have to answer any questions about how my first day was.

With my dorm room door closed behind me, I let my bookbag slink off my shoulders onto the floor. I’m just about to plop backward onto my bed and stare at the ceiling when something by the window catches my attention.

Underneath that window, in the space between our beds, we have a short bookshelf that my vinyl record player sits atop.

When I was in seventh grade, I got really into indie music, especially from the 2000s. There’s just something about the vibe of that style and era of music that made me fall in love. I was playing it around my house so much that I dragged Rhys into my obsession, too.

---