Matt was out of his dorm and halfway across campus before it occurred to him to ask himself: Where the hell am I going?  Getting no answer from inside his own head, he looked down at his feet and said out loud, “Where the hell are we going?”  This gained him nothing but a strange look from a group of students passing in the opposite direction.  Despite the lack of answers, the urge remained as strong as ever, not a rational thought but an instinct, deep in the subconscious, like the one that makes your eyelids snap shut.  With a shrug, Matt accepted this course of events.  He had wanted to go out, now he was going out.

                After ten minutes of walking, Matt was deep in what was commonly referred to as the “Student Ghetto,” a large neighborhood of apartment buildings and cheap houses where the majority of the upperclassmen lived.  He passed several groups of wandering students, and a dozen houses where raucous parties were going on.  Several times he thought about stopping, but the feeling in his head pulled him on.

                Surrendering himself to this pull on his mind, Matt turned suddenly in the middle of a block and ducked between two houses.  The one on his right was large and reverberated with the noise of loud, drunken conversation and even louder dance music.  Following his new instinct, Matt entered through a conveniently unlocked side door, and found himself in a kitchen.  He grabbed a red plastic cup from a stack on the table and went through the nearest door, which put him in the living room, right next to the keg.  The guy working the keg, whose shirt declared him a member of Sigma Phi Delta, gave him a suspicious look.

                “Had to find a bathroom,” Matt lied with uncharacteristic boldness.  “You know how it is.”  The frat brother seemed satisfied, and filled Matt’s cup with cheap beer.  Walking away, Matt felt a sudden wave of disorientation, and realized with a start that the urging in his head was now silent.  Guess I must be where I’m supposed to be, Matt thought.  He took a seat on a nearby sofa, sipped his beer, and watched those around him dance.

                “Nice Chucks.”  Matt looked up to see a girl of about Matt’s age standing over him.  She was average height, slim, with a mass of gold-brown curls surrounding a face that, while not classically beautiful, was undeniably cute.

                “Huh?”  Matt’s newfound eloquence seemed to have left him.

                “Your shoes.”

                “Oh.  Right.  Thanks.”  Matt noticed that she too was wearing a pair of high tops in the same style, except that hers were a dark, ruby red that almost perfectly matched her T-shirt, which featured and frighteningly cute picture of a three-headed puppy.  She was also wearing jeans and a pair of heavy, almost organic looking bracelets of folded copper.

                “I’m Allie.”                                                                                                                                                                         

                “Matt.”

                She sat on the couch next to him.  “I hate frat parties,” she said, leaning a bit closer to Matt, as if to tell him a secret.  “They’re just a ploy by a bunch of guys who can’t make their own friends to get drunk and laid.”

                Matt laughed, “Beats spending your Friday nights doing laundry, though.”

                “If you say so.”  She said it pityingly, but her eyes were laughing.  “I’m only here because my roommate thinks I need to get out more.”  She pointed to a girl who was in the middle of the largest group of dancers.

                “So—“ Matt was just starting his response when his new instinct crashed back into his head and directed his gaze back up to a group of guys near the door.  They were all obviously frat brothers, and talking animatedly while throwing angry glances Matt’s way.

                “What’s the matter?”  Allie asked.
                “Looks like they finally figured out I wasn’t actually invited.  Nice meeting you.”  Matt rose, and followed the pull towards the door, draining the last of his beer as he picked his way through the dance floor.  When he reached the group of frat boys, he walked right up to them.  Before any of them could say anything, he handed the cup to the largest of them and said, in his best polite-and-cheerful voice: “Thank you so much for having me by.  I had the loveliest time.”  He then slipped past his stunned hosts, out the door and into the night.

                As he started down the street, he heard a call from behind him: “Matt!  Wait up!”  It was Allie, pulling on a hooded sweatshirt as she exited the front door of the house.  She smiled at his questioning look.  “I was getting bored.  Where are we heading?”

                “You know I really have no idea.”