Chapter 1:

Jose Perkins Stalked a Classmate Today

The Capricious Collection


Okay, so maybe the chapter title may have been a bit misleading. I'll start by saying that Jose Perkins didn't stalk a classmate. In fact, Jose Perkins has never committed any such or similar crimes in his entire life. However, he did feel as though someone could have mistaken him for a stalker today, though maybe it is simply his paranoia. I'll start from the beginning.

Jose had been commuting back to the student residential buildings throughout this first week of classes at his new school. Today, he had a fairly productive day in class. Sure, he zoned out here and there, but it wasn't anything he couldn't catch up with on his own time by reviewing the notes. The important thing was that he contributed some insightful points of discussion to the class conversation, and that demonstration of thought ought to have impressed his classmates. It may have also helped with participation points too, but that was not as important to Jose as coming off as intelligent in front of his peers, though he does worry he may come off as a bit ostentatious.

After the class, he headed out to the bus stop to catch the bus back to the student residential buildings. There at the bus stop were some of his classmates, all waiting for the same bus. Among those classmates was a girl who had sat next to Jose during their last class of the day, in which he had given some of the aforementioned insightful points of discussion both to the class and in pairs with the girl sitting next to him. They shared some eye contact but ultimately shared no conversation as they both had earphones in and were listening to music.

After all, there was no reason to strike up a conversation. Nobody just strikes up a friendly conversation for no good reason, right? Well, Jose's socially awkward ass certainly wouldn't, though, for a moment, he did imagine that when they got off the bus, they would have to walk back to the student residential buildings together. To walk back together in silence surely would've been more awkward than simply striking up a conversation for no good reason, or at least that's what Jose had thought as he entered the bus.

He had to quickly think of a conversation topic in preparation for the inevitable. He simply ought to. As the flow of people boarded the bus, and Jose climbed up to the upper deck of the bus looking for free seats, the cruel arrangement of the universe had just so happened to place the only available seat behind his classmate. He could've simply climbed back down the stairs to the lower deck of the bus, but that would've been too awkward after he had blocked people from climbing up to the upper deck of the bus when the water bottle attached to his backpack got stuck on the bus handrails as he tried to climb the stairs, not to mention not taking a seat when it was clearly available.

With that, he was simply forced to take the seat behind his classmate, and his classmate shared another brief moment of eye contact with him as he took his seat. It was at that moment, after the shared eye contact at the bus stop and on the bus and the paired interaction earlier in the classroom that the thought hit Jose that he might seem like a stalker to his classmate. Surely, that was a most absurd conclusion to jump to, but the fact that the song "Obsessed With You" by The Orion Experience was playing in his headphones didn't do much to reassure him. When the dreadfully timed song finally ended, another love song by Arctic Monkeys played next, and Jose cursed the Spotify randomization feature for feeding him the half of his playlist that weren't depression songs at that very moment.

Furthermore, when the bus finally arrived at the stop Jose would have usually gotten off to walk to the residential building, his classmate did not get up to exit the bus. While Jose was confident in his abilities to navigate his way back to the student residential building from the school after a week of following Google Maps, he was stunned. He did always feel that the walking portion of his commute back was a bit unnecessarily long. Did his classmate know of a better stop to get off at that would reduce the distance that would need to be walked? He could not let such a possibility elude him, and he could always simply walk a bit more today anyway if such a possibility ended up being wrong.

Instead of getting off at his usual bus stop, he simply stayed on the bus with his classmate, sitting directly behind her, looking off into a distant building outside the bus whenever she would turn around. Catching a glimpse at the map on his classmate's phone in the seat before him, he soon realized that while his classmate had boarded the same bus in the direction of the residential buildings, that was not actually her destination. He could only stare blankly out the window when he realized that he had stayed on the bus instead of getting off and continuing about his route back to his dorm simply because he wanted to know the route his classmate was taking.

Surely, simply wanting to know a more efficient way to get back to the residential buildings from school couldn't constitute a crime, right? While the paranoia of it potentially being a crime hanged in his mind, he held no ill will, so surely, he was in the clear, right? He feared such a petty excuse would not matter if he had truly been misconstrued as stalking, and he could only hope he would not soon hear from school authorities.

To make sure his classmate didn't think he was actually stalking her, he decided to stay on the bus until his classmate exited the bus, and then, he stayed on the bus for a few more stops as though he coincidentally had a different destination on that bus too. He hoped that this technique would clear up any misunderstanding, though the thought of employing a technique to make someone not think that you were stalking them made him feel even more like a stalker. Other typical, paranoid, anxiety-inducing thoughts such as the possibility that his classmate had shown him a fake map route on her phone on purpose as some sort of test or to throw him off crossed his mind, but he quickly wrote that off as ridiculously illogical and highly unlikely.

Now way too many stops overshot from his residential building, he had to take a bus of shame back to his residential building, arriving back 30 minutes later than he otherwise would've solely due to sheer social stupidity, awkwardness, and paranoia. At least he saw a cute weasel out on a walk, happily rubbing its back against the bark of a tree on his walk back to the residential building that he otherwise would've missed, so maybe it wasn't all bad.

He breathed a sigh of relief when he finally arrived back at his actual residential building from the bus stop when he turned the corner and saw the very same classmate entering the residential building. Thankfully, she didn't seem to notice him coincidentally returning at the same time, and he waited around the corner of his own residential building, feeling even creepier about himself before finally trying to head in himself.

When he reached into his pocket for the keys to the building, he realized that he had forgotten them in his dorm when he left in a hurry this morning. If only he hadn't nervously waited for his classmate to enter the building first, he could've entered the building with her and knocked on the door of his dorm instead of getting himself locked out and calling for his roommates to come downstairs to fetch him.