"Where were you last night?" Lance asked as Chloe walked into the common room. It was a Monday and all of her friends were gathered around in the same place they met between classes throughout the week, to talk of how they spent their weekends. A common beginning to this conversation was 'where were you last night', accompanied by a smile and wink.

Chloe thought of something intellegent to say. Something fun, something that could beat everyone else's. She had to search her mind for something that sounded best, because last night hadn't been a good night at all. She had sat in her dimly lit dormroom and played with a yo-yo, watching it go up and down as she listened to depressing music on an old radio. Her thoughts were as gloomy as the stormy sky outside of her open window, her heart as chilly as the late autumn wind that came through the screen. The muffled noise of her roommate and her boyfriend having fun in the bathroom made her want to leave, but she couldn't get herself to wear anything besides her pajamas and fuzzy slippers and her hair desperately needed to be washed. She definitely wasn't in a state to be seen by her friends or to make a first impression on someone new.

She had open books surrounding her. Books she should have been reading, studying for two midterm tests she had the next morning, bright and early. Her grades had already been slipping from her lack of focus and she couldn't afford to fail those exams. She looked around the room and saw that her side was a mess of old papers and a mix of dirty and clean clothes. It was a sad state that she had let herself slip into, but now she didn't have the willpower to pull herself back out.

So she had stared outside her window, past the sill that had a coating of thick grey dust on it and the chipping paint that looked like hell, even in this dump. Outside, a bare tree branch, naked of it's leaves, save for a few brown ones clinging to it's last hopes of life, scratched against the window pane. Beyond it, lights in one floor of a dorm floor were on and shadows of college kids dancing and drinking could be seen. At least someone had some fun on the weekend.

Chloe remembered when her yo-yo finally gave up it's struggle and let it's string be fully exposed before the force of gravity pulled it off her finger and rolled across the wood floor. The music began to shred her nerves and rain splattered down on her window, shielding her view of the outside, omitting all but occasional flashes of lightening. With nothing better to do, she had turned off the radio, pushed her books to the floor and laid down in her bed and fell asleep to the combination of noise of the branch clawing it's way to a dry, safe haven in the thunderous storm and her tiredless roommate just beyond the bathroom door.

"Oh, you know," Chloe said to Lance with a grin, "the usual. Went to a club downtown. Danced on a few tables, got a few guys to buy me drinks. I think I still have their numbers tucked inside yesterday's bra. I had such a good time, I forgot all about my midterms. Guess who's gonna be working her butt off for some last minute extra credit?"

The group cheered and asked her a few questions before someone else came in to tell of their tale of their weekend. Chloe broke away from the conversation and took out a notebook. Shirking off her studying and homework yet again, she carefully drew a picture of a face that she only ever saw now in her dreams and struggled to keep a smile on her face as she did so.