Coffee Break (Part 1)

              Ceta sat at the top of the tiered classroom, overlooking the podium down below. Halfway through her first day of classes as a 1L, her nerves remained frazzled as she picked at her shirt buttons and ran her flats on the scratchy carpet beneath her. ​

         ​Around the room, she noticed fledgling cliques forming. She searched the crowd for familiar faces, but Clark was one of the best schools in the state, and she knew it was unlikely that they’d accepted many 1Ls from her undergrad. After some seconds, she finally set eyes on two of her old undergrad-mates, two clean cut blondes with pastel colored button-downs and cargo shorts with their toes exposed in their sandals. They’d never met, but she remembered them well. They were in Phi Delta Mu fraternity, and had gotten kicked off campus for a hazing incident resulting in battery charges against several frat members. Of all of the possible undergrads who she might run into at Clark, she was only slightly surprised to see them guffawing amongst themselves across the room. 
 
            Ceta fiddled with her short necklace, adjusting and readjusting its position over and under her collared blouse until she decided on its final position. She straightened her books and laptop neatly in front of her before opening her computer. Its loud fans roared in unison before resting to a hum. The cursor flashed on her empty Microsoft Word page. 
 
               The chair to the left clanked as someone drew its footed claws backward against the rug below, brown paper bags and plastics shuffled raucously. A brunette in her mid-twenties with long brown hair pulled into a neat ponytail, and loudly colored tennis shoes took the seat next to Ceta. The girl greeted Ceta in a crackling, raspy tone causing Ceta to scan the room for more available seating, but she stayed lest she offend. 
 
            “You ready?” the girl asked. 
            
            “I think it’ll be fine. It can only be so hard, right?” Ceta responded with a half-smile. 
 
            “Maybe,” the girl responded, cracking open a cloudy container housing a soggy roast beef sandwich. 
 
           “What type of practice do you want to go into?” Ceta asked casting her gaze to the girl’s colorful footwear and large earrings.   
 
             “I don’t know. I’m open to everything, I just want to be a lawyer,” the girl said taking a big bite of her greasy sandwich without breaking eye contact.
 
          “Good to stay open-minded, right?” Ceta asked, turning her body away from the girl hoping to signal the end of her interest. She took another moment to reconsider sitting closer to the podium.
 
            Unlike her classmate, Ceta knew exactly why she was at Clark, to become a white-collar defense attorney at one of the largest law firms in the city. Since her mock trial days in ninth grade, Ceta knew she’d be on the fast track to law school one day, an epiphany which her parents welcomed over her previous teaching ambitions. From that point, everything in her plans centered around getting into Clark, even if that meant attending the rather unremarkable state university nearby over one of the more prestigious universities closer to her hometown. It was better to be a big fish in a small pond, she thought, and they gave her nearly a full ride, something that the others failed to do. As planned, she graduated summa cum laude affording her a moderately sized scholarship from Clark. It wasn’t as much as she’d expected, but her stellar G.P.A. offset her somewhat mediocre LSAT score.  
 
           “Open your books to Simmons v. Arizona & Co., LLP on page 83, please. I am Professor Sutton, my info is on the board. Since you’re here, I trust that you can read, and you’ve reviewed the syllabus on your own time. Who can tell me what a contract is?”
 
            Ceta’s hand shot up. 
 
            “It’s an agreement between parties for goods or services,” she said proudly once called to speak.
 
          “Not quite,” he responded, moving on to the next three students who would also get the answer wrong, one of which being her former seat-mate. 
 
         The professor moved on to his fourth choice who finally gave him a partially correct answer, enough for him to move on with the lesson. His marker squeaked as he wrote sloppily on the whiteboard to diagram the student’s answer. 
 
         “To anyone who didn’t parse this from today’s reading, add rereading this section to tonight’s reading. This is foundational stuff, guys” he said addressing the room behind him. 
 
            Ceta spent the remainder of class frantically taking notes, finding herself a sentence or three behind the professor at all times. As class ended, she slowly gathered her belongings while the room cleared out. Before long, she was approached by one of the few other Black students she’d seen in her lecture hall. 
 
          “Hey, you should come,” he said smiling as he handed her a flyer that she barely skimmed. Ceta looked up at the man in front of her who seemed bursting at the seams with first-day enthusiasm, making him appear more youthful than his slight crow’s feet implied. Ceta finished filling her bag, leaving the flyer out of it, scanning it once more. 
 
           “We only meet once a month, there’s free pizza, and you get access to a ton of the 2L and 3L outlines,” he said with his voice dragging out his last word.
 
            Ceta paused briefly, “I’ll check it out, thanks,” she said beginning to turn her back to him, but perking up at the bit about outlines. 
 
            “Some of us are actually headed to grab a bite now if you wanna join,” he said placing his hands in his oversized, faded jeans leaning forward on his toes.
 
            “Sure,” Ceta said more enthusiastically, trying to more closely mirror his energy. 
 
          “Nice, we’re just going to McQuinn’s up the block.” Ceta nodded and smiled politely, hiding her disgust at the destination. She hadn’t planned on buying lunch, especially at a pseudo-Irish pub, but she knew that she needed to socialize. Networking was everything for the next few years, a simple truth she hated, but acknowledged. She followed her classmate into the hallway as he called out behind him, 
 
            “I’m Fred, by the way.”
 
            “Good to meet you, Fred,” Ceta responded absent any introduction of her own.