Is this real, or is it all in my head?

The first thing that I had the next day was a meeting with my adviser at 9:00, but for some reason, Patrick felt the need to wake up at five o'clock in the morning and blast an Elvis Costello song in my ears. I rolled over in bed to face him, worried that I had missed my meeting, but once I saw the time, I rolled back over and tried to muffle the sound with my pillow. "Patrick, go back to bed," I mumbled.

"Come on, Ryan," he said. "The sun is already up, so it's time to get ready. The dining hall opens in only half an hour!"

"Let me get some sleep," I said as I squeezed my eyes shut.

Patrick turned down his music slightly, but it was still too loud for me to get any meaningful sleep, so around seven o'clock, I crawled out of bed. Patrick was already gone, and everyone else in the residence hall was still asleep, so I got ready for my first full day at Kale. Once I was ready to go, I walked to the dining hall, which, like everything else at Kale, was a great distance away from Flack Hall.

I ate alone that day, though I was used to that. I almost always ate alone in high school, but I thought that things might be different in college. I thought that I might be able to find someone who would put up with my habit of building philosophies from pieces of broken memories. Alas, my loneliness seemed to have persisted into college, but it was still early. My luck could still change. At the very least, the dining hall's food was much better than the food at my high school.

After breakfast, I walked past the statue of M.C. Moneybags and headed into the Shufflebottom Center, where I was supposed to meet my adviser. I stood around for a few minutes, unsure of what to do, until a middle aged man in a suit approached me and asked, "Are you Ryan Ross?"

"Yes, I am," I said.

"Follow me," the man said. He led me into an office and said, "I'm Professor Romero, and I'll be your adviser for your first year here at Kale. First of all, let's try and pick a few classes for your first semester. Have you looked over the course catalog yet?"

"A little bit," I said. "I definitely want to take Metaphysics. I feel like I've been questioning my own existence a lot lately. You know, I fell down the stairs in Flack Hall yesterday, and last night, I was wondering if any of it happened at all, but my leg hurt like crazy, so it must have been real. It's like pinching yourself, but stronger. Sometimes you've got to bleed to know that you're alive and have a soul. Then again, all of this only confirms that I'm real. It doesn't say anything about me being alive or having a soul. Maybe I'm a soulless zombie or something and just can't tell..."

Professor Romero rolled his eyes and said, "You must another one of those overly whiny philosophical kids that this institution seems to attract. Anyways, you won't be able to take Metaphysics during your first semester. It requires Introduction to Philosophy as a prerequisite. Do you want me to put you down for that?"

"That's fine," I responded.

"I'll also need to put you in a Freshman Writing Seminar," Professor Romero said. "What else would you like to take? Remember, you should probably get your general education requirements done as quickly as possible."

I groaned, knowing that this meant that I would have to take a math course. "Do I have to take math?" I asked Professor Romero.

"Yes, but we have a number of options for courses that fulfill Kale's math requirement," Professor Romero said as he handed me a sheet of paper with a list of math courses.

I looked over the paper, and almost all of the courses seemed dull, but there was one that caught my eye. "What's Great People of Mathematics?" I asked.

"I don't know why that's on there," Professor Romero said. "It's not a real math course, but it does fulfill the math requirement."

"I'll take it," I said.

Professor Romero jotted something down and then asked, "What else would you like to take? I'd recommend taking one or two more courses."

"I'll take Advanced Piano Studies as my last course," I said.

"So you'd like to take Introduction to Philosophy, the Freshman Writing Seminar, Great People of Mathematics, and Advanced Piano Studies," Professor Romero said. "Is that correct?"

"Yes," I said.

"Excellent," Professor Romero said. "Ryan, you can go."

I left the office and attended a handful of required presentations on life as a freshman at Kale before returning to my residence hall. That evening, the upperclassmen arrived on campus and I watched everyone living in the Greek Friendship Society house move in from the window in my dorm room. Once everyone had moved in, I decided to go to bed, but obnoxiously loud music began pumping into Flack Hall from the Greek Friendship Society house. I tossed and turned, hoping that I could find a sleeping position that would keep all of the noise from reaching my ears, but it was in vain. I would just have to suffer through a sleepless night.

I had barely gotten any sleep by the time the clock struck 5 AM, and though the Greek Friendship Society had quieted down, Patrick jumped out of bed and turned on another Elvis Costello song. "Can you at least play the Beatles?" I muttered.

"What?" Patrick said. "You don't like Elvis Costello?"

"It's not really my style," I said as I pulled the blankets back over my body. However, sleep still evaded me, even after Patrick left to ensure that he was the first one in the dining hall. I was still questioning reality, especially after that night had left my mind foggy. Were Patrick, Kale University, or the Greek Friendship Society real at all? There was no obvious test for that like there was to prove that I was real. Perhaps I would just need to accept that there was no way to tell whether anything in my life was real other than my own mind.

I couldn't fall back asleep, so I stared at the ceiling, wondering if there was some way to tell whether it was real or not. I crawled out of bed after Patrick left and reached up to touch it, but my eyes and nerves could be betraying me. Perhaps the ceiling wasn't there at all, and I was standing under the rising sun. There was just no way to tell, especially with my sleep-deprived brain.

My first class that day was Introduction to Philosophy at ten o'clock, followed by my Freshman Writing Seminar at noon. By one o'clock, I would be done with all of my classes for the day, which was a huge change from high school. I had so much time on my hands that I didn't know what to do with, but I had to get through my two classes first.

In the dining hall, I found Patrick finishing up his breakfast. "Hi Ryan," he said as he took a sip of his orange juice. "What do you think of the food here?"

"It's not bad," I said as I sliced up a pancake.

"I agree, but it's not the same as my mom's pumpkin squares," Patrick said. "She said that she'd send some to me next week. When's your first class?"

"I have Introduction to Philosophy at ten o'clock," I said. "How about you?"

"My Freshman Writing Seminar is at eight," Patrick said.

"Why would you take a class that's so early in the morning?" I asked.

Patrick shrugged. "I'm a morning person," he said.

"I don't understand you," I said.

Patrick looked at the clock and said, "I should head over to Danzig Hall. I'll see you later, Ryan."

"Bye Patrick," I said. I finished the rest of my breakfast and then walked around campus for a while, searching for some proof that this wasn't all just a dream. I was at Kale University, the school that I dreamed of for so long, but something felt off. I couldn't quite tell what.

At ten o'clock, I walked to the Hildebrant Building and attended my very first class at Kale. Professor Caldwell, the woman who had so helpfully shown me where to find Flack Hall, was my professor, and we went over the syllabus for the course. She also introduced the class to philosophical arguments, which I found to be quite fascinating. At last, I was beginning to see a glimpse of the philosophical paradise that I had imagined Kale to be.

After class, I went to the dining hall and ate my lunch. Sadly, Patrick was in biology class at the time, so I ate alone again. I nearly fell asleep during my lunch, and I had to drag my feet to make it to my freshman seminar. When I finally made it into the classroom, I had no idea where to sit. I had felt rather comfortable in my philosophy class, where the desks were arranged in a circle, but the writing class had opted for a more traditional arrangement. The circle was certainly more democratic, and I was less certain of whether I should sit in the front or back. After some contemplation, I picked a seat in the back of the classroom, and a few minutes later, someone sat next to me.

"Hey there," he said. "I'm Joe Trohman. What's your name?"

"Ryan Ross," I said. "Wait, you live in the dorm next to mine, right?"

"I think so," Joe said. "I didn't realize how loud the Greek Friendship Society was. I couldn't sleep at all last night."

"Me neither," I said.

The class started, and like in my philosophy class, the professor began class by welcoming us freshmen to Kale and going over the syllabus. "I don't get the point of this class," Joe commented. "I'm here to study physics, not writing a paper."

"Well, you're better off than me already," I joked. "I'm going to major in philosophy."

"Not really," Joe said. "I'm concentrating in theoretical physics, so I think we have equally horrible chances of getting jobs. Apparently employers don't like people whose main talent is thinking about things that don't exist."

"That's unfortunate, because I'm pretty sure that we can't tell if anything really exists," I said.

"You're right about that," Joe said. "According to the Copenhagen Interpretation, there's nothing to say that a particle should exist in any given state rather than another. Maybe all particles are actually in a state of nonexistence."

Joe and I continued on a long discussion about quantum mechanics and the nature of the universe that was occasionally interrupted by our professor. By the end of the class, I knew that I could at the very least say that I had one friend at Kale.

After that class, I had no idea what to do, so I wandered over to Alumni Hall to take a look at the bulletin board. Ads for just about every club at Kale were posted there, but one poster caught my eye. It featured a photo of a young man applying eyeliner along with the following text.

DO YOU THINK THAT MAKEUP IS GREAT FOR A GUY?

If you love guyliner as much as we do, join Kale University's one and only Guyliner Club! Our first meeting of the year is on Tuesday September 5th at 4:00 PM in the Pendragon Center. Questions? Contact Club President Gerard Way at [email protected].

Needless to say, the flyer excited my guyliner-loving soul. Already, I knew what I was going to be doing at 4:00 on September 5th, and I couldn't wait to see what the Guyliner Club was all about, whether they were real or not.