Such a Rush

Bill came from a small town in the heartland. He was his class valedictorian. He was the standout 3200 meter runner on the track team. He was a big fish in a small pond. But that was at home. Here? At State College? he was a nobody. One of about a million freshman.

That bothered Bill. A lot.

He wasn’t used to the anonymity. He used to bask in the limelight for breaking the school’s 1600 meter record. But that meant nothing here. He wasn’t fat or tall. So he didn’t stand out that way. No one would notice him for being “that spherical guy!” or “the guy that really needed a sandwich!” He had a runner’s body, lean, and he liked that. He wasn’t about to try to gain or lose weight, anyway. He wore his sandy brown hair in a man bun, but hair wasn’t a way to stand out. Shaving his head? Not unique. Flowing locks? Been done. There was even a subset of punks on campus, so dying it blue and shaving a mohawk would have elicited a yawn from the other students as his being,”just one of the punks.”

Anonymity was a bitter pill to swallow here. He was one of the “cool kids” in high school! The cheerleaders dated him! Even the nerds looked up to him!

Now? Nobody knew who he was. Nobody here on campus CARED who he was. That was the problem entirely. There were plenty of lean guys with man buns on campus. He didn’t stand out that way. He was one of a million freshman journalism students. Nothing special there. He was no longer anywhere close to being good enough for the track team. He found that making friends here was hard. So far, he hadn’t even seen any of his classmates that he knew were attending there. And he had yet to really start hanging out with anyone.

He had thought that if he had something about him to just make himself standout, he could be popular again. He briefly tried doing some internet stuff. His blog had zero followers. Posting on Insta took too much effort to get the pictures perfect and his eye for photography was blind, apparently

He then dabbled briefly in doing video stuff on YouTube and TikTok. At his peak, he had three followers. One of which was his mom.

He wracked his brain to come up with a breakout podcast idea. All he came up with was doing something with reviews of the dorm cafeteria food.

He could become “the political guy” on campus, the one who sits in the lounge and spews politics. But… as far as he knew, everyone hated those people And he still wanted to get laid, so that was out

He sat at his desk in his dorm room, pounding his head on it gently to try to come up with something….. ANYTHING… he could do to gain notoriety here on campus.

Sighing, he stopped pounding his head for a moment to gaze out his window at the quad, finally noticing that it was a nice fall day. It was early autumn, after all, and he’d only been at school for a few weeks. He decided to take a walk over to the library, just to try to shake his funk about being a nobody. Plus it was just too nice a day to sit inside and mope.

He grabbed his jacket and backpack, left his room, locked the door, and exited the dorm, walking across the quad over towards the library. He decided halfway across to detour and swing by the student center. Maybe there was a club or something forming up that he could join. Supposedly people were always posting things in the student center.

He pulled open the door to the student center and headed over to the old bulletin boards that had been used for about a thousand years to post photocopies of flyers on.

He scanned the first. Someone was looking for a lead singer for a band. A bunch of people in off campus apartments looking for roommates. Ultimate frisbee? Maybe? He tore off the contact stub and shoved it in his pocket.

The next bulletin board seemed to overrun by fraternity flyers. Fall party this! Rush event, that! He briefly considered seeing what Greek life was like, but again, there were a bazillion fraternities, with a million bazillion brothers. That would narrow his population to rise above the faceless masses here at State, but There were still so many fraternities and so many brothers in them that he’d still be unnoticeable. The question still came back to how? How to make his mark on campus?

The third bulletin board belonged to the sororities on campus. Flyers denoting pledge week were all over it he glanced at it, uncaring.

Dejectedly, he walked over to a table nearby and slumped into one of the many hard plastic chairs adorning the student center to mourn his fate, remaining forever unknown.

He was sitting there, zoned out, idly watching the other nameless students come and go, lost in his own thoughts when he realized that there was a fraternity brother stapling up yet another flyer.

There was a cute blonde…. One could describe her as perky… sorority sister stapling up a flyer next to him. The two were teasing each other. Bill assumed that the sister was stuck up and the guy just wanted to get laid.

Having nothing better to do, he listened in on their conversation.

“…it’s going to be a RAGER!” Bro said. At this point, Bill was waiting for Perky to shoot him down.

Perky laughed. “Oh, come on, according to you Pikas, every party is a rager.”

“That’s cause each one outdoes the last!” Bro said. He paused for a minute, and Bill could swear he heard the gears slowly grind in Bro’s head. “But, like, if you and other Tridelts show up, and… stiuff… ya know, happens, you wouldn’t do another diary would you?”

Perky laughed, and this one Bill felt was a real laugh, not a phony, “I’m flirting with you!” laugh.

“We only do that when we realize we’re being taken advantage of, Bruce.” Perky said, with a cold smile on her face. “And you’ d NEVER take advantage of a Tridelt, would you, Bruce?”

Bruce laughed it off, saying, “Nah. Never. We Pikas have too much respect for women!”

But the implied threat of a diary, either a new one, or more intriguingly, one that already already existed, and even may still exist, was… well, something to focus on. What was the story with this diary that put fear in the hearts of horny frat boys?

Bill’s journalistic senses were tingling now. He was a journalism major, after all. What was the story with the diary? And what sort of advantages were taken by the person or persons written about in it?