Orientation Day Nightmare
Travis Ngwenya presses his forehead against the car window and watches East Indiana State University roll into view like something out of a movie trailer — the kind with swelling orchestral music and a slow-motion shot of a kid walking toward his future. Except there's no orchestra. There's just his dad's ancient minivan wheezing over a speed bump and the smell of the gas station burritos they ate forty-five minutes ago still lingering in the upholstery.
Still, Travis lets himself feel it: that little flutter of hope in his chest. New school. New state. New *him*.
Nobody here knows about the Cheese Incident.
Nobody here has ever called him "Sir Sneezes-a-Lot," a nickname he earned in seventh grade after a single unfortunate allergy attack during a school assembly, a nickname that somehow followed him through four years of high school like a curse nobody bothered to lift.
Nobody here has seen the yearbook photo where he's mid-sneeze, eyes squeezed shut, mouth open like he's about to swallow the camera.
For the first time in his life, Travis Ngwenya is going to be a mystery. A blank slate. Maybe even — and here his imagination really takes off — *cool*.
"You gonna get out, or…
