Mistakenly Fallen

9. D as in Delta not as in Dog

Standing in front of the wall to floor mirror, Camila, attached clothes to her body, one by one, trying to see what would be a perfect outfit that would make a good impression on not just her peers but her professors as well.

Her eyes landed on a self printed organza shirt, that fluffed around her sleeves and tightened around the cuffs and the neck, creating a beautiful whirlwind design of pink, orange and yellow, looking extremely elegant and casual at the same time.

Pairing the shirt with a baggy jeans and a pair of sandals, Camila finally got ready and pulled her hair up in a high ponytail, applying only a minimalistic amount of makeup, giving herself a natural glow.

Of course on thing that she was always privileged about was the fact that because of her family’s influential status, she always owned the best clothes, makeup and bags.

Still like the LV bag that she threw across her body and paired it beautifully along with her Gucci belt and Tory Burch sandals.

“Hmm, having rich parents, does pay off.”

She shrugged at her own self and walking out of the room, remembering well enough to lock it behind her, as Charlie had specifically instructed her.

She grabbed her laptop in her hands and made sure to be ready for whatever assignments or tasks her professors would hand her down, even on the first day.

Walking down the stairs, she noticed the time on her phone and there was still fifteen minutes left until the breakfast time ended.

As she entered inside the hall, many heads turned towards her, rendering a lot of girls speechless, including the ones who were standing outside her room last night and trash talking about her.

Jessica stood along those girls and Camila could tell right off that she had formed a group of her own and was already leeching on their brain cells and transferring the unsaid hate that Jessi had in her brain against Camila, in to the minds of her peers.

Camila simply made her way towards Charlie, who was definitely impressed by Camila’s clothes.

“Hey! Someone’s looking a little chic.”

Charlie complimented Camila, who smiled at her and grabbed herself an apple.

“Is that, a Louis Vuitton?”

A girl sitting next to Charlie questioned, looking very keenly at Camila’s bag.

“Yeah!”

Camila nodded at her and suddenly everyone in the room went silence.

Jessica looked down at her clothes. She also belonged to a rich family but she could never reach the sense of clothing and style that Camila possessed. In fact, a lot of people complimented her style statement, when she used to be friends with Camila and ever since her break up with her, she had never seen anyone getting impressed by her clothing sense the way that she still saw people getting influenced by Camila’s clothes and it was another factor that irritated Jessica, who decided to use another opportunity to turn everyone against Camila.

“See, I told you she is very arrogant about her parent’s money. Look how she is showing it off.”

She whispered to Veronica, who was the same girl that Charlie had previously yelled on and Camila obviously did hear the slurring poison that Jessica was filling everyone’s mind with.

“Hey Charlie, can I ask you ask you something?”

Charlie hummed in reply, enthusiastic to answer anything that Camila had to ask.

“So, you gave me a separate cubicle room, when I didn’t ask for it and neither did my parents put in a special request…”

“Oh! Actually Miss Betty had kept that room for Jessica.” Charlie pointed out towards her, making everyone in the room, including Veronica turned towards her.

“But Jessica said that she wanted to a room on sharing and a cubicle usually costs more and also you came in late, as all the other rooms were filled, so I thought maybe you wouldn’t mind.”

“Of course I don’t. thank you for the cubicle, Charlie!”

Camila smiled at Charlie and turned back, throwing a grin at Jessica’s way, as Camila threw her under the bus.

She was pretty sure that Jessica’s mother would’ve definitely tried to put her influence on the sorority, something that she remembered Jessica’s parents always did. Therefore, she took a shot in the dark and voila! Hit the bull’s eye.

She walked out of the room, earning daggering looks from Jessica but Camila could be less bothered, as she was already off to a good start of the day and things were going pretty good for her so far.

Getting out of the house, Camila grabbed her bicycle that she had placed along some other bikes, unlocked the wheels and freed them from the tough black bicycle lock, by using a combination code, that was obviously her mother’s birthday and made her way towards her college, passing by the black SUV standing right across the house.

She rolled her eyes and smiled to her own self, immediately recognizing it to be one of her father’s guards.

She knew that she would get to see such cars and her father’s guards around the campus a lot but she was simply going to ignore them and live just according to what she had planned to do.

On her way to the college she passed down other sororities and fraternities and noticed that many girls and boys were having their walk of shame, walking out of the fraternities and sororities with their shoes, jackets and shirts in their hands, respectively.

Many guys were eyeing Camila, wondering if the shiny girl would make it to one of their parties or not.

Camila kept on paddling and made her way towards the campus, parking her bike at once and grabbed her laptop and bag, looking ahead at the psychology building in front of her.

She smiled, determined at once and finally made her way inside, checking her schedule that she was gotten through the online student portal system.

All of her grades and transcript was going to be uploaded and upgraded online as well.

She couldn’t wait to start the new chapter of her life.

One by one, she went through her classes and her new professors as well.

So far, she was happy with all of her lecturers.

Dr. Elan Tipton was her favorite one so far. Her young age, added a huge factor to her sleek and elegant style, along with her casual sense of lecturing student and forming a level of friendship with the students as well, all had impressed Camila, who had been actively listening and answering Dr. Elan throughout her first lecture.

She was pretty sure that she had been to catch Dr. Elan’s attention as well.

On the contrary, another professor, whose lecture Camila had attended was Dr. Finley, a professor who was full of life and Camila noticed that he indulged the entire class in his lectures.

The classes were large hall rooms, filled chairs and tables, placing along the steps of the segregating stairs, spread all across the classrooms.

Everything so far, was just how Camila had dreamed it to be.

She made her way towards the medical department, where the health club was supposed to be, after attending all her lectures. She had received an email from the health club that had invited her to attend her orientation at the club.

Getting inside the medical department, she felt amazed to look at how clean, neat and mesmerizingly advanced and equipped the entire department was.

She couldn’t believe her own eyes, that in a few years, she will be serving as an intern in the psychology department of that same building.

She couldn’t help and resist the temptations that took her inside the hospital building, that had twenty floors and she roamed around the entire place, until she finally found the one department that she was desperately looking for.

The medical building and the psychology buildings were quite close to one another and it was going to be a long shot for Camila but she was going to do her very best to study and work on many subjects who were present inside the psychiatric ward, as she was looking at them through the glass doors of the ward.

She saw two doctors approach the department, wearing their casual clothes but had worn white coats over their bodies and swiped their access cards through the door that split open at once and the two doctors made their way inside the ward.

All Camila could do in that moment was to stand by and watch from a distance but soon, she was going to be a part of the clan to walk inside that ward as well.

It was a dream that she had worked hard for but she was going to give her very best to achieve it.

Making her way out, she took the wide swirling staircase and saw many of her seniors, walking in groups, being led by Dr. Elan, who was supervising their internship in the psychiatric ward and Camila couldn’t help it but think that in a matter of a few semesters, she would be amongst those very kids.

As she made her way down, she came across the neurology department.

She had seen her course outline for the upcoming semesters and Dr. Elan had already told them that they would be studying neurology under one of the best professors that Stanford had recently gotten their hands on in the previous year.

She didn’t tell the name of the doctor but Camila was curious to see, who it could be, because she was aware of many professors and lecturers before she came to study but there was no mention of the neurology professor on the website.

She had ran a background check on all of the professors, read through their history and qualifications, making sure to mold her personality to their likings as well.

But that neurology professor was going to be a tough nut to c***k and Camila was pretty sure about that.

As she craned her neck to look inside the department and see if she can spot anyone, who didn’t wear a pair of scrubs, looking like as if he had just come out from a lecture hall. But so far, she had no luck and as if she had actually run out of luck, she felt a tough voice calling her out.

“What are you doing here?”

Camila’s eyes bulged out of her sockets.

She couldn’t let anyone see her. The person asking her, had a heavy voice, presumably matching the tone of a man’s voice but Camila couldn’t risk being seen by anyone, even if the person holding her accountable for her unquestioned presence at the place which was highly most likely to get her in trouble, was or was not her future professor.

Throwing a bunch of her hair on her face, Camila held her bag in front of her face and turned around only to see a man’s back, talking to a nurse.

She sighed in relief and immediately ran out of the place.

She ran as fast as she could, to save herself.

The man who was asking her previously, did turn around and called her out again, as he was distracted by the nurses.

“You! Hey! You… who are you?”

She could hear the man’s voice getting closer to her, as if he was chasing her but she didn’t stop.

She barely got a glimpse of the man’s height, hair or even his shoulders.

She was pretty sure that he wore scrubs and a white coat, designating him a doctor who was not a lecturer and working inside the hospital on regular basis.

She just sprinted out of the hospital, saving herself from any kind of embarrassment and made her way back inside the medical building, going in for the lecture halls.

Following the buildings map, to reach the designated location for the health club.

Passing down the new structures of the building, she finally made her way ahead in to the old parts of the building, going through the rustic walls, where the old chemistry and biology labs were settled and noticed that most of the parts of those classes and labs were declared monumental and had golden plaques drilled outside them, dating the time and date since which they were operational and were opened from time to time for people to visit them as a monumental mark mostly.

At that time, there was no one around those buildings, except for only a few guards, whom Camila simply flashed her college ID card and they didn’t say much to her and let her roam those buildings.

Finally getting up the tall structures stairs, Camila found her way towards the health club which was present in a old what looked like a storage room of the building.

The rusting brown doors of the room, surely showed that they were once either silver or some other color.

Knocking on the door, she heard a sound of approval coming from the inside.

Opening it up, she found herself being greeted by Aibileen, in what looked like an almost evacuated room.

Camila felt a sense of hope enlightened in her mind, that obviously the building and the room was old and her peers from the club were finally evacuating the room to move in to a better place.

“Are we shifting?”

Camila asked with excitement, picking up one of the boxes placed right next to the door.

She looked at Aibileen, who shook her head.

“No, we are closing down!”

As if that word was a trigger, the box that Camila had lifted up, opened up from the lower side of the box, spilling out everything that it had inside of it.

“What? Closing down? Why would a university or a college, close down its health club! Health is so important.”

Camila argued with Aibileen, as she helped her carry out her boxes down the building.

“Listen! Health club was made in the nineteenth century when the university was a small section and they needed health clubs because plague was a famous celebrity back then. There is literally dispensaries set up in each and every building of the university and there is a huge hospital, literally right next to our building, who do you think will come to our old rustic building to a room that is almost non existential to the world?” Aibileen argued back.

“But…”

Of course, Camila was left speechless.

“Listen, people are not desperate enough to walk three flights of stairs just to let some moronic man in a white coat experiment them to make vaccines and other medicines anymore. That room is filled with creepy vibes and history of medicine and developments and was concluded as a monument, almost two years ago and just like you, I was a freshman back then. I fought to keep that place up but I failed and I don’t want you to make the same mistakes as I did. You are still new, so go to any club or society, they will gladly accept you.”

“But I didn’t meet anyone yesterday and now all I can think about is, how much of an i***t I am for not doing that.” Camila admitted and Aibileen somehow felt responsible for creating a huge pile of problem for her.

“Fine, just go the debate club and meet with Gabriel, he is my twin brother and also the head of the debate club. I will talk to him and tell him to fix you a position in the club.”

Camila didn’t know what else option did she have if not agreeing to what Aibileen had just told her to do.

Sitting in front of what looked like a male xerox copy of Aibileen, Camila couldn’t help but find the two twins to be uncannily identical.

Evens he was a part of a triplet pair but she didn’t look anything like her brothers.

She guessed that it did work for two kids only.

“I know, I look a lot like my sister.” Gabriel, threw his hands in the air and shrugged, fixing his suspenders over his thin shoulders and looked down at the resume attached with some of Camila’s old certificates that she had earned as part of her extracurricular activities during her time in high school.

“Hmm, so as I can tell, you have zero experience working with a debate club.”

“Yeah, I am not much of a speaker.” She laughed at Gabriel’s words, who threw a eerie look at Camila, making her immediately shut up.

He held his glasses over his wide nose and squinted his eyes, studying through Camila’s profile.

If Aibileen was a bit chubby, then Gabriel was her entire opposite. He did carry a mundane look, which his hair written off his head in to sharp buzzcut with a neatly drawn hairline resting over his forehead.

“You know, we do need someone to act as a moderator for our upcoming debates. You can do that work, right? It is simple.”

“A moderator?”

“I will teach you the work and you can get your debate moderation license from our club’s supervisor. He sits in the English department, Mr. Frazier. So, how about you join us in?”

Camila did exactly just as Gabriel had asked her to and got herself a moderator license. It wasn’t really tough, except for the past when she had to listen to Mr. Frazier, repeat her credentials and made her saw D as in Delta, each time, she said D as in Dog.

It wasn’t a job that Camila was seeking to enjoy but she was definitely looking forward to join the debate club for now.

Passing back towards the debate hall, which was located south of the campus, she passed through the media building, pausing down for a second and looked up at the building, realizing that the Stanford Daily, the everyday newspaper must be run down by someone in the department.

She weighed her options and realized that it was better than being lectures and forced to say D as in Delta, as it was more appropriate for someone at her age and position.

Making her way inside the building, she passed down some lecture halls and ended up in front of the editing room. She didn’t know why she made her way in to that direction but she was just looking for a better opportunity.

Knocking her way inside the room, she was greeted by a rush of students and editors, working together to postulate a few pieces of paper that would be read by people around campus and around Palo Alto. Everyone was intertwined and busy, indulged in to one another, as they discussed and debated over which headline they would put on top of the front page. Seeing how talkative everyone was in that room, already gave Camila anxiety.

“Can I help you?” she heard a male voice whisper in to her ear and she felt startled, turning around and finding a lean guy wearing glasses, looking at with concern.

“Oh Gosh! I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“No, it is fine.” She held her hand over her heart and the guy extended his hand forward.

“Jeremy.”

He extended his hand forward for Camila to shake and just as she did, he brought his camera forward and clicked a picture of her, catching her off guard.

She looked up at him and noticed that he was quite tall for his figure.

“Camila.” She replied back with her name.

“Seems like you are new on campus?”

“First year, psychology.”

“Whoa! Here to join the newspaper club?”

“Honestly! I don’t know. I was just looking for a way to save myself from the D for delta routine but looking at how everyone is talking to one another, I think I am better off, dictating number and words of my credentials, as people debate over if or not they should exist.”

Jeremy snorted a loud laughter, “A runaway of the debate club, I see.”

“Almost! Haven’t succeeded yet.”

“Man, that club is hungry for moderators, I swear. Hate covering up their debate contests, I heard one is coming up next month. Best of luck, in case you don’t decide to run away from there.”

With that Jeremy moved forward, running a hand through his thinly layered hair, that fell on to the sides of his face. he gave off that pure rugged contemporary indie artistic photographer vibes.

“Umm, wait!” Camila called him out and he turned towards her.

“Umm…” she fumbled with her words and Jeremy rolled his eyes.

“I don’t usually wait around that much to listen to someone talk.” He pointed out, urging Camila to speak up and she already felt enlightened in to the professional world.

“Is there a job in the newspaper that doesn’t require you to engage that much with people?”

Jeremy snorted, “Do you know anything about photography?”

She shook her head in a negative response.

“Gosh! I could teach you some but I really don’t want to. Do you write, like articles or anything?”

She shook her head again.

“Can you get news around the campus?”

“Like spread a news or collect some information?”

“Both! You know, you can be a news hunter.”

“A news hunter?”

“Yup! Grab some of the sauciest scandals around campus or a news worth making in to the pages and deliver it in to the newspaper room. Leave your email and phone number by the first desk and report any news you see around the campus. Or even if you know about any events going around the campus, let us know, we will cover them up.”

With that Jeremy got out of the room and Camila did just as he suggested, giving number and taking number of the front news reporter of the magazine.

Making her way back to the debate room, she submitted her newly formed licensed and was about to leave when she came face to face with Jessica, who c****d an eyebrow at her and wondered what Camila was doing there, who on the other hand was wondering what Jessica was up to.

“Are you following me now?”

Jessica rose the question and Camila snorted out loud.

“Even if you I am lost in the woods and you are the last compass needle on Earth and all the electro magnetic waves on Earth got together and pointed in to your direction, I still would never follow you. I hope my joke wasn’t too hard for you to understand.”

Gabriel snickered behind Camila and immediately looked away, not wanting to come in to an awkward altercation with either of the two girls, whom he was pretty sure were some sort of rivals.

“What are you doing here?”

Jessica crossed his arms across her chest.

“I am the new debate moderator. Junior moderator but whatever.” Camila pushed passed Jessica but she felt amused to learn that Camila was in the same club as her.

“Wait! You are the new moderator?”

She sprinted after Camila and once again crossed her path, stopping her from moving any forward.

“Yes! Now why would you…”

“I am the new junior representative of the debate club! I will be debating in the debates that you will be moderating.”

Jessica laughed out loud and moved away, joining the cluster of pesky debaters, who were full of themselves and began telling them that Camila was going to be their new moderator.

Camila couldn’t feel more mentally exhausted that her life was on the verge of forcing her to quit everything, pack her bags up and leave back for home.

She began wondering if Harvard was still an available option, because in that case, even if her life sucked she would have her brothers to blame.

Going back to her sorority, she entered in to the house and made her way towards the dining hall to grab some dinner but paused when she heard Veronica and the rest, discussing her.

“Hey! Where is that loser? Did anyone see her on campus today?” one of the girls laughed.

“Oh, she must be looking like a floating cotton candy.” Veronica stated back, making Camila gasp in shock and look down at her clothes.

She thought that she looked absolutely great and impressive.

“Don’t you guys have anything better to discuss?” Charlie sneered at them, “She looked absolutely stunning and her style statement is also amazing. You guys shouldn’t really be so jealous of someone. Just because she is a little different, doesn’t mean you guys are better than her.”

A small smile rested on Camila’s lips, as she realized that Charlie was indeed a true friend, who was there to always protect her and always had her back.

Sighing in relief, Camila decided to enter in to the dining hall and joined Charlie, discussing with her about her day and how she ended up, joining the debate club.

“Really? I am a senior representative at the club and we are having an inter college competition next month. You will be assisting Professor Frazier then! It is amazing.”

Charlie cheered with excitement and Camila only felt more and more nauseous, thinking that she would get to interact with a large number of students from not just her but other college as well.

Going inside her room, she picked up her dairy and opened up the Stanford chapter of her life.

Her eyes went through the list of the aims that she had written down for herself in order to achieve.

She found herself reading the line that stated; ‘Make the Health club as the best club in the entire university.’

Shaking her head, she struck through the line and laid back on the bed.

For the first time in her life, she had faced an unexpected situation.

She always had a very strong grip on her emotions and situations.

She was a very practical girl, who always looked ahead in to the future before making a decision but suddenly, everything seemed to be out of control and nothing seemed to be in order anymore.

She wanted to run back home and in to her comfort zone but at the same time, she realized that she couldn't run away at the slightest and the most minor inconvenience in her life.

She needed to get a grip of herself because life was going to give her a solid knock once in every while and she was ready to take it down no matter what came ahead of her.

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I don't know if you guys will find the build up of the story slow but I really want to show you guys how strong the female character is.

Usually romantic stories, miss out a huge chunk of the stories that don't explain the main character's especially the female protagonist's life.

I do not want to do this with my female characters and I want to give them a very nice edge.

But the next chapter is surely going to be an exciting one!

You guys are going to enjoy it for sure.

Thank you for always reading and supporting my work <3