The first week at Tisdale passed like a thunderstorm. Jacob had never gotten a chance to really see what 'business as usual' looked like at Tisdale, but it seemed like everybody tried to return to it as soon as possible. The curfew, the 1984-like presence of campus security, the frequent, autocratic announcements, even the terror of the lurking vampire, all faded to background noise as they whipped suddenly into motion in a flurry of classes, clubs, first-week activities and general campus shenanigans.

Jacob had never been so busy in his life.

The first day he'd been excited to not be in class 9:00-3:30 straight like high school. An hour and a half morning class followed by another one in the afternoon combining for a laughable total of three hours of class each day sounded like relative freedom to him. But the lectures were a totally different beast to what he was used to. Usually in school you could drift off for a couple classes, zone back in, and the teacher would still be going over the same part of cell biology or the same function in pre-calc. But Jacob distinctly remembered checking his phone in Intro to Magical History, writing a quick reminder note to message his mom after class, looking back up and seeing that the professor had moved on to an entirely new topic. For a brief moment panic assaulted him. When it became apparent that the professor wasn't going to retrace his steps, the panic slowly settled into the shock that Jacob would simply have to make up whatever he'd missed later. He'd always been a comfortable student in school, and the realization that that was simply not going to cut it at the next level slapped him like a bucket of ice water to the face. By the third day the constant, scrambling anxiety that he was behind or on the cusp of falling off the steadily chugging steam locomotive had made its home in the back of his mind.

And then there were the readings. They were assigned at least a chapter of reading that they had to finish before the next class. For five classes. And not some light, gripping chapter of a novel, oh no, these were dense passages of musty magical tomes. All that lovely spare time dwindled to cramped hours cramming in eons of information at the library or bent over his desk in his dorm room. Every single night that first week he'd gone to sleep with words on the backs of his eyelids.

The morning of the second day Blake and him had been ambushed in their dorm room at the crack of dawn by Laura, a crazed looking second-year who was their 'First Week Group Leader!!!' She dragged them down to where the rest of the group was huddled out on the quad in the crisp morning in spite of their protests. The whole week had been filled with weird little activities like Ultimate Split out on the quad outside Harrison Hall, or Golem Goofing, which involved trying to talk the fairly limited golems at the front desk into corners or zapping them with little bits of magic that scrambled their directives and sent them into robot-like rambles of information and broken-marionette movements. Every time they succeeded it reminded Jacob of the Arturos sacrificing themselves so that Camilla and him could escape the rogue mage, but he stuck it out anyway because he didn't want to look weird and leave the group while everyone else laughed and had fun. It was surprising how much the faculty let them get away with. Though, some revolutionary tested the upper limit of that by trying to mess with the diurnal cycle of the pocket dimension, resulting in a perplexing hour of midnight darkness at noon, before the day snapped back into place at 1:00pm. Rumour was the culprit was dragged off to rot in some medieval dungeon far below the surface, near the lower pole of the pocket dimension.

At first Jacob couldn't believe they expected them to pretend like nothing was wrong and there was no vampire on campus, but he slowly came to the realization that that was the whole point. Even though at first all the people in their group had made him nervous, he slowly warmed to them, to the frivolous little games, and found himself actually having fun. It helped that he'd been paired on the same Split team with Blake, who made even the best players on the opposing teams seem like clumsy toddlers and carried their team to win after win, and that there was so little to do in his dorm room that any distraction was a welcome distraction.

He'd expected it to be like a summer camp, maybe even like high school, but it wasn't quite either. It was as if someone had taken the best aspects of those two experiences and thrown in a dash of camaraderie that comes to a tightly-knit community. Jacob and the other students were studying together, playing games and goofing off together, but they were also living together, and the vampire on campus only brought them closer together through shared fear and an almost rite-of-passage sense of having gone through something awful together. But what he hadn't expected was to be enjoying himself this much and to have made as many friends as he had. Blake was quickly turning into the best friend he'd ever have. They'd done so much together over the past few days he felt like he'd known the guy for years.

All of this whirled through his head as he waited in line at Fireball Roast. Sharp coffee grind assaulted his nose. Even though it was in the middle of the afternoon, the coffee shop was packed. Every table was taken, either by clusters of students discussing school or the nuance of campus life, or lone studiers, headphones on, eyes glued to their sticker-covered laptops, ignoring the fact that they were taking up an entire table for themselves.

The line moved. Jacob shuffled forward. He glanced back at where Camilla and Grace and Blake sat around a tiny round table, talking about something. Camilla and Grace both wanted some egregiously detailed coffee blend that sounded more like a cake recipe, but hadn't wanted to wait in line. The deal was that if Jacob waited in line, he could get something he wanted to and Grace would pay for it.

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Seemed like a good deal at the time, but the moment he'd agreed, like eight people had rushed into line in front of him.

The line moved forward. Almost there. Jacob scanned the menu while the girl in front of him ordered. He'd been going to get a cookie, but for some reason that felt out of place here. No one else was ordering food.

The girl finished her order and Jacob moved to the front of the line.

The barista couldn't have been more than a year older than him. He wore a coffee coloured apron that read Roasted! on it and tapped his hands on the back of the little ordering machine.

"Hi," Jacob said.

"Hello!" The barista said in a faux-excited serving voice. "What can I get you today?"

"Um..." Jacob checked the details of Camilla and Grace's orders on his phone. He read them out to the barista, who tapped away on the machine.

"...and can I also get a... regular latte, too, I guess."

"Sure thing! Is that everything?"

"Yes."

"That'll be $18.75. Here you go." The barista turned the machine around.

Jacob wasn't sure how much tip to give so he just selected the middle option, and tapped Grace's card. That done he went and waited over by the side of the bar while they prepped his order. He should have gotten a cookie. Well, no, it would be good to finally try coffee and see what the hype was all about. Maybe he could start using it to wake up for his morning classes. He was no stranger to waking up early for public school, but the 8:30am start time of his first morning classes here at Tisdale combined with the lack of his mother to make sure he was actually getting ready for school had made it beyond arduous.

But at least it was Friday. They'd finished their last class a half hour ago. All he had left to do before Monday was one reading for Intro to Magical History and prep for the tournament ranking test. He wasn't exactly sure what he was going to do with the remainder of his weekend since they were confined to campus. Maybe sleep. Yeah, that would be nice.

Christ, he was starting to sound like an old geezer.

"Order for Jacob?" A different barista called.

Jacob went over and grabbed the three coffees from her.

"Hey, you're the white mage, aren't you?" She asked.

"Um, yeah, that's me." He said.

"Cool."

"Thanks," Jacob said.

He brought the coffees over to the table. He thought they'd been studying or talking about the tournament while he was in line but they were just talking about what they were going to get up to this weekend now that the first week was over. Supposedly there was some sort of party or celebration happening tonight. Jacob wondered if it was another one of these First Week activities.

"Finally!" Grace cried, snatching her blend from him. Jacob handed her card back to her.

"Thanks, Grace." He said.

"You're welcome."

Camilla eyed his drink. "I thought you said you didn't drink coffee."

Jacob looked down at his relatively simple coffee. "Figured I'd give it a try."

"Well, have a sip, then." Camilla prodded.

Jacob took a sip through the comically small opening in the lid of his cup. He shivered from the bitterness. "Yeugh."

The three of them laughed.

"Have another, you get used to it," Blake said.

Jacob did. It wasn't the worst thing in the world, but he supposed it wasn't really about the taste. He steeled himself and chugged the whole thing.

"Whoa! Attaboy!" Blake laughed. "Wait, you said you've never drank coffee before?"

"No."

"Have you ever had caffeine?"

"I don't think so."

"Like pre workout or an energy drink?"

"No."

For some reason the three of them thought this was hilarious.

Jacob blushed. He should have just gotten a stupid cookie.

"I'm curious to see what happens." Blake chuckled.

Jacob felt restless, so he said he was going to go read that final chapter he had to before class on Monday.

"Ah, I'd better go study too," Blake said.

"Aw, but it's the weekend!" Grace whined.

Blake shook his head. "Can't lose a step."

The girls decided to join them on the walk back to the residences. The sun was out and shining. While they were walking back Jacob couldn't help but want to just sprint back to the residence, open his textbook, and rifle through the pages like a Looney Tunes character. Why were they walking so slowly?

Grace kinda had a point, though. It was the weekend. And it wasn't like his parents were around to make sure he did his homework either. Sure there was faculty on campus, but they were a distant authority at best. In reality, it was entirely up to Jacob what he would do this weekend. He grinned. That had been the best part of the week. If you could ignore the lurking vampire and got past the swamp of studying, you could theoretically do anything you wanted. The possibilities were endless. A few times this week he'd just studied simply because there was no one telling him to do it. Other times he'd just lain on his bed, staring out the window, blissfully frozen by the sheer amount of things he could do. There were rules, but for the first time in Jacob's life it was almost like the rules had been created to be bent, or even broken. It was just him, Blake, the other students his age, and whatever they came up with. How could doing what he would once have considered as 'nothing' be so interesting? A couple nights they'd just sat around the lobby of the boys' dorm, talking about anything. Let's go to the cafeteria. Okay. Let's go for a walk. Okay. Let's go play video games in the lobby. Okay. Let's go over to Archie's room. Okay. If this was what living on his own would be like, Jacob was utterly baffled that he'd ever been afraid of it. Four months here on campus? Christ, he wasn't sure he ever wanted to go back to Vancouver.

They waved farewell to the girls, who broke off for Schumann Hall. Blake and Jacob went back to their dorm.

"You wanna study together?" Blake asked.

Jacob had been going to put some Brahms on and read through the chapter himself, but if there was one thing that had been the motto for the week so far it was: why not?