Chapter 1: Uptown Girl

Marty Walker glanced around his dorm room at Yale, sinking into his desk chair in exhaustion. It took a lot of effort to make a house a home, and half of the room was still empty; his roommate had yet to arrive. Marty had always considered himself a light packer, relatively speaking, but then again his mother had helped him pack most of his stuff. Moving out nine months hence would take several trips up and down those flights of stairs, at least.

With nothing else to do, and with his first Orientation activity not starting for a couple of hours, Marty decided to explore a little of campus. He wandered off into the sunshine, keeping a tight hold on his campus map even as he let it hang limp by his side. He wanted to remain inconspicuous and not look like a nerd. The clear-cut signs of "freshman" would only work for so long, and was that really any better than looking like a nerd? Marty didn't think so.

Heading out the back way of his dorm, which was called Durfee, Marty circled the building, passing through a small quad that emerged into a brick thoroughfare. The electric atmosphere looked somewhere between a moving day and a party - in other words - the quintessential college scene. Somewhere close by, some student was blaring the radio out through a window:

"Uptown girl, she's been living in her uptown world. I bet she's never had a backstreet guy. I bet her mama never told her why..."

Marty spied a coffee cart just across the brick path from Durfee, with a clear line already forming. He leapt into it, figuring that a cappuccino might do him some good, calm his nerves. A pair of sorority sisters (if their hats were anything to go by) were ahead of him in line, their conversation cutting into the thumping of Billy Joel.

"And then I said, 'You're gorgeous'! And then he was, like, 'You wanna find out just how gorgeous, gorgeous?'"

"Who was this?"

"You know, the really gorgeous one!"

"Jesus, there are so many gorgeous ones, I can't keep them all straight!" Marty huffed. He didn't realize he had voiced that thought aloud until both girls glanced back at him, before falling into peals of laughter. Marty blushed beet red and glanced at his feet. So much for being inconspicuous. Those two probably thought he was a weirdo now.

Moving his feet robotically in line as the queue shortened, Marty happened to glance across the path to the front side of Durfee. A mother and daughter were hugging it out on the front stoop, and - for some reason he couldn't explain - he felt drawn to them.

The mother alone probably turned a lot of heads; she looked well-put together and amazingly youthful. Marty thought back to a book he had read in high school, Tuck Everlasting. If that mother had somehow found a mysterious spring, he wanted to know where it was. It seemed pretty remarkable that she could be dropping off an 18-year-old, if their fierce hug indicated that her daughter was a freshman. But it was the young girl she was hugging that made Marty almost freeze.

The resemblance she had with her mother was striking. But even more than this, she was... beautiful. In an unpretentious short of way. She appeared almost angelic, with a round, pretty face and doe, blue eyes. Her light, brown hair cascaded down to her shoulders.

"Uptown girl, she's been living in her white bread world. As long as anyone with hot blood can, and now she's looking for her downtown man. That's what I am..."

The music seemed to fade away, but still just float, just beyond consciousness, as time seemed to slow down. In all his life, Marty had never beheld a creature so beautiful. He thought back to a verse from Romeo and Juliet: "Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight! For I ne'er saw true beauty till this..." Well, it wasn't night, but the sentiment was apropos just the same.

Marty did not see the girl again until closer to evening, as he fell in line to have his picture taken for his Yale swipe card. Her face was so beautiful, it was almost jarring when it appeared, this time a few people ahead of him in line. It made Marty wish he had gotten here just a few minutes earlier. He watched, periodically glancing away so that she would not become aware of his staring and almost certainly get creeped out, as the girl reached the head of the queue and stood before the photographer. The snap of the flash was quick and blinding, and the girl jumped a little at it, blindly accepting the card that was spat out of the machine and handed to her. As she crossed past the line in the opposite direction, Marty saw her inspect her card. From the look of disappoint, even frustration, on her face, it was clear she felt that she had looked better. As the girl passed by where Marty was standing in line, he gazed after her and wanted to call out:

I still think you look beautiful.