One of Those Days

“Ah, what?!” he said to himself, glancing at the alarm clock by his bed. The annoying ringing woke him up. He was used to waking up late and finding that the alarm clock hadn’t gone off (that he’d gotten up, bashed the alarm till it was quiet, fallen asleep again and forgotten about it completely when he woke up a couple of hours later). After failing to find the huge button on top of the alarm clock, he decided it would be easier to throw it against the door. But the ringing only got louder.

“Com’on Luis, get the fuck up” said a voice from outside, followed by a banging on the door.

It was the fire alarm all along, not his alarm clock. Still half asleep he rolled out of bed, opened the door of his 3x3 metre university hall room (kicking the alarm clock as he did so), staggered down the corridor towards the front door and stepped through it into the freezing morning. There was a group of students outside, all complaining as they waited for the alarm to be turned off in order to get back inside. As soon as he walked out, a dozen heads turned towards him and sniggered. Luis was still in his underwear, which happened to be his funny teddy bear ones. He turned red in embarrassment, but acted as if he didn’t care. At least he hadn’t decided to sleep naked that night.

“Ah, fuck the fire alarm” he said to himself after waiting for a while, turned towards the front door and pushed it. It was firmly locked, and he’d forgotten to bring his keys with him. “Fuck”.

“Umm... has anyone got their keys with them?” he asked shyly, just as the fire alarm turned silent.

Showered, shaved, dressed, and packed for lectures, Luis marched out the door with a smile on his face. He’d been thinking about the talk he had with Cassie the day before, and how she’d giggled at all his jokes and tried hard to be interested in whatever he was saying. He really thought he had connected with her; he had bumped into her outside the halls, and started a chat. He felt they had really gotten to know each other during that conversation, and that he’d soon be able to ask her out. Even though it only lasted 2 minutes. “Maybe she’s thinking of me now” he thought, “just like I’m thinking of her”. Even though at that moment Cassie happened to be thinking about vanilla flavoured ice cream and not about Luis, he was allowed to dream all he wanted. He turned left, and strode towards the dining room.

The dining room was packed with different groups of students, all laughing, smiling and joking over breakfast. With his breakfast on a plate in his hand, he scanned the room for anyone he knew but gave up after a few seconds. Surrounded by a group of annoyingly loud girls, he put his iPod volume on high, and ate as fast as he could.

The next thing he knew he was sprinting after the bus, which was just leaving as he walked out the hall’s entrance. He noticed a lad looking at him through the back window, laughing at him.

“I’m gonna be late again... excellent...” he said to himself as he started to walk towards university, located about two miles away, in the city centre. After walking for five minutes, he glanced into the window of Half Moon Pub, where he and his friends love to go to mess around, chat about girls, the course, and whatever else they had in mind while drinking a pint and eating the best plate of sausages and mash they could imagine. In spite of all the fun nights out trying to pull, going to the cinema and going to Craig’s house to smoke weed and have a manly laugh with Craig’s friends, Luis knew that the best of his memories will be from his laughs and giggles with his best friends in that pub. Whenever they went in the pub his worries would disappear, and they’d all forget about their troubles.

He was right about being late. And just because he was having a lucky day, the lecturer was one of those humourless old men who hated late-comers. As Luis walked through the lecture door, the lecturer deliberately fell quiet and gave Luis his worse possible stare. Of course, everyone inside turned to look at Luis, who muttered “fucker” just loud enough so that those near him could hear it, but not the lecturer. Quickly seeing that his friends hadn’t saved him a seat, he walked towards the closest free seat, and knocked a handbag to the floor halfway there.

“Shit, sorry!”

“Owwww, just carry on!!” she said, in the bitchiest manner possible. Luis gave her a bad look for her attitude; he was still feeling quite encouraged thanks to the conversation he had had with Cassie, so this incident wasn’t going to get to him in the least. Life was OK at the moment, thanks to that 2 minute chat of the previous day. Little did Luis know that that chat had done nothing more than annoyed Cassie, as it had made her late for volleyball practice. She had quickly nodded and laughed at all of Luis’s jokes and remarks so she could rush off in the politest manner possible, but Luis didn’t know this. Luis sat down and pulled his note book out from his rucksack, when he realized that by missing the first half hour of the lecture he hadn’t the slightest clue of what the lecturer was talking about, so dozing off for the rest of it made perfect sense.

The doors suddenly burst open, and three armed men came charging in. Fully equipped with assault rifles and loads of ammo, they started to shoot the ceiling of the lecture theatre, and shouted in a foreign language. One of the three men ran to the front stage and kicked the old lecturer to his knees, aiming at his head with his rifle. Luis realized he had to do something, as everyone else was gob-smacked and paralyzed with surprise. He got up, ran towards the nearest armed man, quickly grabbed his rifle, turned it around and pulled the trigger, shooting the puzzled terrorist in the leg. Then he turned the rifle to the man on the stage and took an aimed shot. The last man gave up his weapon after seeing his boss lying dead on the stage, and Luis walked over to him and tied his hands behind his back, just in time for everyone to start cheering, especially Cassie, who happened to be watching the whole thing through the window.

Luis woke up, and found himself still in the middle of the boring lecture.

Finally lunch break! All 300 students happily trotted towards the student union, where they’d all buy their sandwiches and cokes, read the papers, make more jokes and laugh even more than at breakfast. Luis found himself lonely again, as Andy and the rest were in the library doing some coursework which he hadn’t even heard about. He couldn’t be bothered to do it, so he thought he’d just go and get lunch.

“Ah, wait, there’s Craig” he told himself, spotting Craig Drummond sitting at a table with one of his friends in the middle of the room. They were both chatting about something manly; Luis could tell by the way they were laughing. Craig Drummond was the first friend Luis had made at university. They met the first day, and exchanged phone numbers once realizing that they were in the same course. He was tall, blond, good looking and great at sports. Craig loved dirty jokes, messing around in a lad-ish manner and making jerk remarks about his friends. But when it came to talking to girls he was a total gentleman: they all loved him. After hanging around with Luis for the first few weeks, Craig found a ‘cooler’ group of friends to hang out with, and from then on Luis only saw him during lectures. Luis knew that Craig didn’t think much of him, but Luis isn’t the type that worries about that sort of thing.

“Nice entrance you tit”, Craig said as a joke.

Luis laughed and said: “You’re only jealous ‘cuz I got the classes attention for a few seconds”. Craig laughed at this, but his friend just looked at Luis as if he was rubbish. It certainly made him feel that way.

After a few minutes of manly jokes and talking about girls they had pulled the previous week (with little contribution from Luis), Luis glanced around to see Cassie sitting at a table quite close to theirs. Luis started to hope that she had heard him make some of his jokes, and hoped that she was impressed. But then he noticed that she was sitting with some bloke, and laughing at something the he was telling her. Still talking with Craig and Craig’s friend, Luis glanced at her from time to time, just out of curiosity. And after a while what he was hoping for happened: the lad she was with got up, and picked up his bag to leave, while Cassie seemed to be making no attempt to leave at all.

“This is it!” he thought. His intentions were to walk over, sit with her and have another good conversation. Maybe this would lead him to asking her out! But to his horror, the bloke grabbed his bag, slowly leant towards Cassie, touched her chin with his other hand, and gave her a smooth kiss on the lips. Luis quickly looked away, and Craig glanced over and realized what was on Luis’s mind.

“Don’t worry Luis! You’ll pull someone closer to your league sooner or later” he said, loud enough so that Cassie and her boyfriend could hear. Luis turned red again, and acted as if he wasn’t listening.

A few hours later, Luis stepped out of the lecture theatre again, tired from the day of lectures but with nothing else planned for the day. He smiled again at the fact that he could get home, sit in front of his laptop and just relax for the rest of the day. He turned left and walked towards the bus stop, knowing that he was more than on time for the bus to take him back to halls.

He got on the bus, after waiting in an endless queue, and said “Student ticket please”. The grumpy bus driver mumbled something and pressed a button on a machine which printed out the ticket. Meanwhile Luis had been rumbling through his pockets: no money... bollocks!

Embarrassed to death, Luis turned from the even-grumpier-than-before bus driver, stepped out of the bus and turned towards university halls, about two miles from the city centre. At least he had his iPod, so he wouldn’t get bored during the long walk back.

Cars passed, busses passed, bikes passed, people chatting passed, and Luis walked along with his music and his thoughts, hands in his pockets and a tired expression on his face.

He then saw Cassie and two of her friends in the distance, and enthusiasm filled him. Taking his hands out of his pockets, pulling his headphones off his head and brushing his hair back were his preparations for his crossing with Cassie. He started to get a bit nervous about what he was going to say: ‘Hey, you ok?’... No, he always said that. ‘Doing alright Cass?’... Wow, that would sound much worse out loud. How about a casual wink? Maybe even a thumbs up? By then it was too late, she was just about to pass his path. He quickly lifted one hand and mumbled something, which none of the three girls understood. They just stared at him and carried on walking. “Smooth, you tit” he said to himself.

His tired expression turned into a sad one. Why did all the girls ignore him? What was he doing at university? He didn’t even like the course! Why can’t he be funny, witty and loved by the girls? Why does his father always make him feel pathetic? Millions of depressing questions passed through his mind. So he decided to put his headphones back on, and listen to a particularly sad Coldplay song.

After walking a while with his head down, he felt some loose change in his pocket, under his keys. One pound forty... just enough for the bus! This was annoying, as he could have gotten on the bus after all. He saw a bus stop in the distance and decided to take the bus the rest of the way, to try to cheer him up just a bit.

Sitting at the bus stop, listening to the sad song for the third time, his mind still rushing with all those depressing questions, he really started to feel bad. He then heard someone say something to him from behind, but couldn’t hear a word. He pulled his headphones off, turned around, and saw Andy’s grinning face looking at him through the bus stop’s plastic window.

“You alright, knob head?” said Andy.

Luis laughed. “Yeah mate, just one of those days, you know...”

Andy glanced to his left, and Luis looked too, to see all his friends there, messing around and waiting for him and Andy.

“Fancy a laugh in the Half Moon with us?” he said, still grinning away at Luis. Luis looked up, showing Andy a huge smile.

They all walked away down the road, Luis included, laughing at one of Chris’s impersonations, turned around a corner and walked out of sight.