Chapter 3: Sunday Night:

As part of a promotion for freshmen to meet each other, SRU rented a party boat. We were told to dress up. I don’t have a lot of formal clothes, I never really needed to dress up for many things, but I did bring a single red velvet dress and a pair of black heels.

 I had come to discover in the past two days that I had lived in the dorm with Grace that she was goth. It wasn’t very noticeable on move-in-day because apparently she wasn’t wearing her normal makeup. I vibed with the fact that Grace was goth. It soothed my worries that she was some sort of preppy Christian girl that wouldn’t be any fun to be around. She dressed in all black for the event. A black lace dress, fishnets, platform boots and her signature black eye shadow. We both thought we looked pretty good.

“It’s so beautiful in the city at night.” I looked around in amazement of all the lights on the Pittsburgh skyline. 

“Maybe for you,” She noted, “But I’ve been here my whole life. Sure it looks pretty, but it's just another crumbling city that hides its shame behind expensive shops and overpriced restaurants. I’m so glad SRU isn’t as close to the city.” 

Grace had grown up in a town on the outskirts of Pittsburgh and her family had been bringing her to the city her whole childhood. She tended to be a negative person, which was the complete opposite of my normal optimistic personality, but we balanced each other out nicely so far. 

“I'm not used to this and it’s going to be a big change for me, but I think I’m ready for it.” I smiled at her. 

When I was younger I always imagined that I would graduate college and get an important job in a big city. I still have to get used to city life, but I don’t imagine it can be that hard. I would soon learn the ins and outs of using public transportation, something I didn’t have to do before I left for school. I was going to be a modern girl in a modern world. 

“Would you want to go try to dance?” She asked with a look on her face that resembled confusion but also nervousness. 

“I’m not a great dancer, but yeah we can go see what's up on the dance floor.” I replied. 

I wasn’t the type of person to disagree when someone wanted to do something new. 

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We walked down the staircase from the top floor of the boat, where we had previously been, to the middle deck which served as a dance floor. 

In the summer, before school had even started, someone had created a Facebook page for all of the new SRU students to introduce themselves. I wasn’t the kind of person to post in groups, but I figured I would start my first year of college off on a confident note. My post included two pictures of me, a selfie and a picture of me cheering at a high school football game, and read: “Hi! I’m Casey! I will be starting at SRU in the fall of 2021 as a Psychology major. I like to read, go to concerts, hang out with my friends and I’m also a cheerleader.” I then included my Snapchat name underneath because I had seen the others do that as well. I thought that people would find me interesting and possibly want to get to know me before school started, but it wasn’t much luck. Eventually someone had made a group chat on Snapchat with all of the people that included their usernames on the Facebook page. It was a crazy group chat of people who all barely knew each other but acted like we were some sort of big family. I tried to be as active as possible in the group chat to make friends, but before I knew it people had already begun deciding their new friend groups, and I wasn’t included in any. I tried to stay confident during this because I knew I’d eventually meet people on campus in the fall. 

As we worked our way though the dance floor I realized that a lot of the people I recognized from the group chat were, in fact, already paired into their new friend groups and because neither Grace or I had been invited to any of them, we stood alone. 

I was never good at “white girl dancing.” Being a cheerleader for more than half of my life, I’d learned to do choreographed dances, but with stiff motions and no room for mistakes. This makes freestyle dancing hard for me because I feel awkward and stupid when I move around loosely. Grace did not feel this at all. She liked to dance. In the few days I’d known her I learned that she loved spontaneously breaking out into song and dance. She was great at both singing and dancing. 

I moved awkwardly to the songs I knew, which wasn’t many, but I did my best to still have a good time. 

At the end of the boat ride we made our way back to the top of the boat, we were back downtown. I looked overhead at the bridge we were passing and then turned to Grace. 

“I’d always known Pittsburgh was the City of Bridges, but I didn't realize there were this many.” 

“City of Bridges is such a boring title. Pittsburgh is the City of Colleges, there's like thirty. And you know what college students do?” She paused for a second, “They party, Casey. This is OUR CITY! We’re gonna own this town for the next four years.” 

“You’re right. This is our city.” 

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