Vᴀɴᴅᴇʀʙɪʟᴛ Aᴄᴀᴅᴇᴍʏ Fᴏʀ Tʜᴇ Eʟɪᴛᴇ © discussion

Margaret wrinkled her nose delicately. "Hygiene? Young men are simply horrendous." She got up on a rolling ladder. "Here is Basic Hygiene For Gentlemen, dated 18th century."

"I suppose that will do." she nods, "And I agree. The young men should take better care of their selves."

"Honestly. I would fully support a charm school for young men." She nodded vigorously.

"Right? It's ignorant people only think of it as a thing for women. Who are ladies to marry if gentleman are extinct?"

"Precisely the fact why I'm never getting married." The 20-something declared.

She chuckles,"I'm unmarried too. I haven't the time."

"But you're so pretty and charming!" Margaret enthused.

"Oh you're too kind." She blushes

Where was that book? Adelaide had been in the library a mere hour before and had placed it back in its spot. Nobody else in her class could have checked it out, she didn't think that anyone else tried that hard. This whole place looked like it could be from a movie; the library was large, with very high ceilings and books towering from corner to corner. There were floor-to-ceiling windows in the corners of the room that the books did not reach, rimmed with beautiful red velvet curtains. It was the one calm in the storm of silly Vanderbilt girls' drama, only because they would never think to come here.
Back to her book. She noticed there was a slot in the back of the bookshelves, just big enough for a good sized book to slip through. Getting to her knees to make it easier to get to the book, she slid her hand through the books and felt her book. She made her way back to her desk and opened it, finding the extensive page of notes she had left inside still there. She placed the notes in her binder, but headed to check out the book. The Vanderbilt School librarian was kind and helpful, but not very old, unlike the common librarian. Adelaide checked the book out and thanked her before heading back to her desk.

Karine was done with school, all of the drama that came with it, and all of the much too unnecessary drama. The cliques were everywhere, the Glam Clan, and what was the other one led by that Chloe girl? Oh, she didn't know, and she didn't care, either. All of the cliques were stupid, and she couldn't help but roll her eyes whenever others came around in their stupid groups, looking like a bunch of stupid barbies like normal. She chose not to associate herself with any of the people in the cliques, and no, she wasn't antisocial, she was just trying to keep herself sane.

She decided to go to the library, so she could escape everyone else. After all, the barbies didn't want to study or go in the library. Really, they wouldn't go in there even to do, well, she didn't know. She was just glad her odds of getting trapped into the drama were much slimmer. Karine entered the library, eyeing the book she wanted and quickly sitting down at a desk with an oddly comfortable chair. It felt nice just to have a book and a nice chair, and she was glad to be out of the other drama. Looking up, she realized there was another girl across from her. "Oh, hello," Karine said with a small smile, "How's your book? I'm Karine, Karine Beauchene."

Adelaide's mind was already going astray from the detailed descriptions of everything barely stated in her book. There was barely any storyline- just symbols, imagery, themes, and the author making himself look smart. Why did she have to choose AP French Literature? She was sure the non-AP class didn't have to read Les Miserables. She looked up, looking at the girl sitting across from her. "Les Mis. Or Les Miserables. I prefer the play much more than the book, but it's required to read the book for my French Literature class. Plus we have to read it in French, not that it makes much difference, but it's still difficult." Adelaide could probably memorize the whole play in the time it was taking her to read this book, but then again she already knew most of the songs.

The girl sitting across from her Karine vaguely recognized, though she couldn't identify her name. Was she a part of the Glam Clan? Was that why she knew her? Hopefully not - after all, this girl was in the library, and reading a seemingly thick book; the Glam Clan didn't like girls like that, did they? She couldn't see the title, though, so she supposed she would just wait until an answer to hear. "Oh, really?" She smiled. "I'm from France, actually, a small town, and I've read that many times, it's quite good, is it? Oh, what's your name, I feel like I've seen you around many times, though we've never properly met."

Everyone at Vanderbilt, of course, had to be born outside of the United States. It was almost as if it was a rule: no students allowed to be born inside the United States. They should put it in bold at the very top of the extensive rulebook: Vanderbilt School Conduct and Behavior Handbook. Adelaide found no trouble with this mock rule; she was born in Germany.

"Oh, I was born in Germany. We're neighbors," she joked. "My name's Adelaide Norwood, by the way. I'm a sophomore this year. What year are you in?"

It was strange how nice Adelaide could sometimes be while talking to someone and how un-nice she could sometimes be. She was rude to most people, so it seemed the only people she was nice to while talking were teachers, her parents, and this girl. What was her name? Adelaide had only just heard it and she'd already forgot it. Classic. She'd maybe hear it in conversation later before she would have to call her by name again.

"I don't find this version particularly interesting, although I've read the abridged version and found it interesting." she added, regarding her book, Les Miserables.

Karine smiled widely, "Well, I guess that does make us neighbors." Truly, she was finding more people here at Vanderbilt who were from Europe than she initially thought there would be. Really, students were from all over the world, and even though the school was in America, very few were actually born there. All the students had in common was the English language, whether it be their first, second or third one to learn; money, or a ridiculous amount of talent; and a quite snobby attitude, some worse than others.

Adelaide Norwood sounded like a familiar name, now that she thought about it. Whether they had the same classes, or she was famous for some reason, she didn't know. Karine, unlike most of the students, wasn't that famous. She had 63k followers on Twitter, and though that was many compared to normal people, Vanderbilt students were not normal. Most had hundreds of thousands, millions for some. She didn't care about Twitter followers since she would usually just post once or twice a week, and her Instagram, with 628k followers was much more active. Well, when she thought about it that way, she truly was famous. Only celebrities had that many followers, and she was one. Why? Sure, her father owned one of the largest businesses and France and the world. Sure, she appeared and a couple movies and shows as she pleaded since bribery worked and she had a bit of talent. She supposed she also was in quite a few pictures of celebrities with millions of followers and tagged with them. So it did make sense she had all those Instagram followers, and of course she was famous.

"I'm a junior this year," she stated. "And I agree, street gutters can get boring, the abridged is better."

"Where in France did you live?" Adelaide questioned. She had grown up quite close to the French border, and it would be interesting if they could share familiarities about the places they grew up. "I loved Germany, but I honestly like America more simply because of convenience."

She still loved visiting any other place other than America, mainly Europe, but living in America was just so much easier for her. She found it was much easier to be recruited for movies here, especially in New York, where her parents currently lived. Their house was beautiful and old, abnormally large for a house right in the heart of New York City.

"Were you at Vanderbilt last year?" she asked, "Sorry, I don't completely think I recognize you." Adelaide didn't seem to remember Karine from her one previous year, although she didn't recall many people's names from last year. One name she did definitely remember was Amber, only because she was so terrible. She would almost say that she was worse than Eva and Chloe, just because of how annoying she was. Especially with that Twitter fight.

Adelaide searched her binder for a bookmark, or even a piece of paper that would make do for the time being as a makeshift bookmark, and placed it in her book. It was getting entirely too boring to read, and she wanted to talk to Karine.

(boost)

Sam slid his books onto one of the tables in the study area, flopping down into a chair. The middle of term was a really inconvenient time for his prescription to run out — he couldn't exactly just fly home to see his usual doctor, and he didn't even want to think about telling the school staff. He'd been meaning to study today, but his plans had been completely derailed by the empty packet under his bed and the steadily growing pain in his abdomen. He could have sworn he still had one or two days left — but he had also almost forgotten what day of the week it was, so perhaps Sam should stop relying on his memory.

Nevertheless, he flipped open his book and tried to focus. Most people, when faced with the situation he was in, probably wouldn't have turned to algebra to cope — but Sam was not most people. He supposed that he should ask his dad to get his prescription for him — but right now, Sam didn't feel like talking to anyone: face-to-face or over text.

Alec had read all about the Vanderbilt library online. From the pictures it looked stunning, but in reality it was even more gorgeous and extravagant. He went to the study room— more like study hall, since it was so huge, and dropped his backpack next to a boy who looked engrossed in math, but prepared to introduce himself anyway.“Hello- my name is Alec! I’m new here, if you can’t tell.” he said, sitting down and pulling out his anatomy textbook.


(( sorry this is shrort but im super tired ))

Sam usually didn't like talking to people without reason. But he was too tired to deal with guilt, so he looked up and smiled at the other boy. “Nice to meet you, Alec. I'm Sam. What are you studying?” He gestured to the other's book. He seemed nice enough — as nice as anyone here could be — but Sam had already decided way back at the start of his first year that he wasn't going to trust anyone more than absolutely necessary. They might end up friends after this, but Sam could tell that he would end up knowing far more about Alec than Alec would about him. It wasn't that he thought the boy would intentionally tell others his secret, but he wouldn't put it past anyone to end up accidentally telling someone less considerate.

(( it's fine ))

"Anatomy, it's part of the Ace curriculum apparently." Alec explained, turning to make eye contact with Sam. "I'm new here, so I haven't met many people... do you happen to be in the Ace house as well?" Alec questioned, shutting his textbook for the moment. Alec felt the urge to babble coming on, but he tried to hold it in. This guy looked like a decent fellow, nothing like his grumpy roomate Orion.

Sam made a face. He knew the absolute basics of anatomy, the stuff everyone knew, but anything beyond that gave him a headache. “Anatomy sounds boring, from what I've heard of it. I'm in Diamond — physics and maths are more my thing.” The vast majority of people probably thought maths wasn't much of a step up from anatomy, but the vast majority of people weren't particularly good at maths. “How have you found it so far?”

"Wow, you must be really smart then." Alec commented, looking at Samuel's studying materials-- it looked like super dense stuff. "I love Physics though-- which level are you taking?" Alec thought over his feeling for anatomy before responding. "Well, it's certainly useful, especially for an athlete." He reasoned. "You know, taking better care of your body and all that." He added. Alec was also taking a nutrition course and thinking of going vegan-- his teacher had pounded the fact that dairy and meat were practically the devil into his brain, it'd probably be good to try the diet.

Sam decided not to disagree, for now. Alec's question paused him for a moment — in all honesty, he didn't know. When presented with the options, he'd just said ‘whichever one's most interesting’, so he assumed it was the hardest one. "Uh, the highest one? I think? I dunno, I've never really understood the system for levels of subjects, back in Australia we just have one level of everything except Maths and English." He nodded at Alec's reasoning — he completely understood subjects being useful even if they weren't enjoyable, and he wasn't going to judge Alec for liking something he didn't.

Six million books. Six million! This library had more than six million books in its shelves - that's what the librarian had said when Elijah had asked, his eyes trying to take in all of the shelves at once. He could count on one hand the amount of times he'd visited this library over the course of his enrollment at Vanderbilt. He only visited in times of dire need - when a teacher forced him to get a specific book, or when there was an assignment he couldn't cajole someone into helping him with. Reading wasn't fun. Classes in general weren't fun, either. They were just necessary pieces of life that his parents made him participate in.

Eli had an assignment for world history that was technically due last class, but he hadn't started yet. When he asked a girl for help on where to find a book on history, she raised her eyebrow and showed him an entire section of many, many books on history. There might be hundreds, or even thousands. Eli's eyes traveled up to the top of the shelf and sighed. He started picking random books, all with different titles, until he had about twelve in his arms. He decided to go about this through process of elimination. He walked to a table in the study area where two boys seemed to be sitting with books of their own. One of them looked vaguely familiar - on a sports team of some kind? Track, maybe. He found an empty seat next to them and piled all of his books on the table. He took a seat and stared at the covers for a few moments, trying to figure out where to begin.

Alec looked up when he saw Eli. The guy looked familiar, and muscular too— probably in the Ace house as well. He didn’t bother to stand up to greet Eli, but gave him a wide grin. “Hey there!” Alec said amicably, pushing aside a couple of his textbooks to make room for Eli. “You’re here to study too? I mean, this place is enormous! The Vanderbilt website said the library had six million books. Six million!! Can you believe it?” Alec was word vomiting, as he was wont to do in the company of practically everybody. Flipping through his anatomy textbook, Alec stuck his feet on the chair in front of him.

Eli angled his head towards the familiar boy, who was now suddenly talking. It was nice of him to move his books out of the way, he supposed. "Study." he echoed, resting his cheek on his fist. He glanced at the other's textbook - Anatomy. That, at least, seemed familiar. Anatomy was one of those deceptively difficult classes - you went in thinking you knew the body, you work out all the time, it should be easy, but then you get slammed with vocabulary you couldn't even begin to understand. Eli glances at the other boy, who seemed to be reading a book. He returned his focus to the one talking, who now seemed to be mentioning the Vanderbilt website. "Are you new here?" he asked.

Sam looked up as another boy joined their table. He seemed to be ignoring him — which was fine by Sam, who continued staring aimlessly at his workbook. The waves of pain had gotten worse again, he noted idly, and he fought off the nausea that was beginning to creep up on him. "Hey, do either of you have any painkillers?" He doubted they would, but considering he'd been here for only a few minutes, he didn't particularly want to have to leave again — and exercise was rarely helpful in alleviating the pain, anyway. Another wave of pain, and he gave up on trying to focus, resting his head on the table and staring down at his hands, which shook ever so slightly.

psst

(( ah sorry!! will post asap!! ))

“Painkillers? Nah, sorry.” Alec replied to Sam. One of Alec’s fear was being addicted to any sort of drug— he didn’t even use ibuprofen if he had muscle cramps. He was terrified of the prospect of not being able to pass an Olympic drug test. Sure, maybe it made him aggressively straight edge, but the Olympics were his ultimate goal in life. Without the Olympics, there’d be no Alec. Turning to Eli, he nodded his head. “Yeah, I’m new here, arrived about a week ago.” Alec was obviously the new kid— nobody exvept him and some Diamond or scholarship students were excited about Vanderbilt as he was. “In Greece, I never had access to all these facilities in one place.” Alec fondly remembered Greece— playing violin with his mom, running down the sandy shores, weaving through marketplaces with his sister, or island hopping with the object of his flirtations.

(?)