Well, at least he knows, at least on some level, that she's bad news. Still. He has the perfect opportunity here to get better and see what he can really do, and she doesn't want him to blow it. "I'd be careful around her," she tells him. "I think she's bad news, and she keeps glaring at me." Sean's phone gives a single buzz in his pocket. "I... I would be very careful around her. Okay?"

"I'll be all right," he promises.

"If, if you're sure, ok? Just, if she's a jerk to you, or tries to manipulate you, or something, you don't have to listen to her." Sean's phone buzzes again. "And you can always talk to me if you need to." Sean's phone buzzes a third time.

"Aww, thanks. Seriously, though, I'll be okay."

Well, it's not like she can do any more. Not without being much too overbearing. Well, hopefully she'll be able to keep an eye on him. She feels a little awkward asking for his number, or anything like it -- she doesn't want to give him the wrong impression. She can probably just find his student email in the student directory and email him later. Or ask him for it later when it's not quite so awkward. She turns back to the conversation with her new friends (it's amazing how much easier it was once the other nerds realized she was smarter than them. They still keep glancing at her chest, and some of them are being a little awkward, but well... it's a lot better than it was in high school. Thank goodness). She turns herself to try and include him in the conversation with the rest -- they're talking about their class schedules seeing if they have any classes together, and when the classes are, or what electives they're going to take next semester when the college lets them start to pick classes.

Sean doesn't have his class schedule on hand and so can't super participate in this, so he takes the opportunity to find out who the hell was texting him just now.

It's Valerie.

The first text is "This is (heart emoji)Valerie(heart emoji)! You can come pick me up at 6 PM this evening!". The message is followed by her address, and several more emoji hearts.

The next one is "We're gonna have sooooooo much fun! Hope you're looking forward to it! (winkyface emoji)".

And the last is "XXXOOO(heart)(heart)(heart) (winkyface) (winkyface)".

...okay. So. Kinda jealous, huh.

Well, at 6PM tonight that will hopefully stop mattering one way or another.

He texts her back sounds good, I'll see you then!, and can't quite bring himself to add a heart emoji. Wow this is painful.

If he can see Valerie at the moment, or looks around for her, he'll see her look up at him and give him a wink while standing next to yet another attractive boy (she's scoping this one out for more fun and games later, but she doesn't have the kind of plans for him as she does for Sean. This boy's just a one time fling, Sean is going to be wrung dry before she's done with him. Plus it might make him jealous if he looks over at them).

If he's not looking in her direction, she's going to glare pointedly at the back of his head for a few seconds or so before turning back to her current target and continuing to flirt with him.

He does in fact glance over at Valerie, and spots her with the other boy, and smiles, because pretending to be into her is already painful enough and pretending to be jealous on top of that would just be way too much.

Nothing further interesting happens while they're in line; the conversation moves from school to math and computer science to various other more nerdy topics. Sean is welcome to contribute but may not have too much to say, if this sort of thing isn't in his interest. Karen is having a great time though.

Eventually, they manage to get their food, with about a half-hour to spare. The four of them head off towards an empty table, Karen included, with their trays of food. There's enough room for Sean to follow if he wants, or he can go try and talk to other people if he desires. Valerie is chatting up the same boy from before at a table, Elliot is sitting by himself all small again at the corner of a table, still looking small and nervous, Zoe has a sandwich and is alternating taking bites of it and typing on her phone, still acting standoffish, and Rachel is in a small knot of people, all of them wearing Orientation 2019 shirts, having a conversation about something.

There are also a number of people he hasn't met yet in the cafeteria if he wants to look around at those.

He does glance around halfheartedly, but no one really catches his eye, probably because dealing with Valerie is stressful enough that right now he would have a hard time getting excited about even the literal most attractive person on Earth.

As fun as it is to watch Karen have a great time, he doesn't really understand what anyone's talking about and there's a lot of them and it's a bit much. He hangs back and looks for somewhere isolated to sit. Elliot looks to have taken the most isolated available spot. Well, maybe he can sit near there and just ignore everyone. Yes. Good plan.

Elliot shrinks back a little when he sits there, and makes no attempt to communicate. If Sean doesn't say or do anything he'll relax a bit after a dozen seconds or so and go back to picking at his Chinese food with his chopsticks.

This is exactly what Sean was after and now he can happily eat his burger in peace.

The burger is decent, but not great, the fries are, well, normal crinkle cut fries. It is a pretty bog-standard burger with fixings and fries. There's ketchup and mustard and mayo and things in various stations around the food court/cafeteria, along with napkins and straws and such, if he wants any.

Once it gets to be about 1:15, people start tossing their trash and putting their trays and silverware and glasses in the relevant depositories for such things, before gathering in various locations. Each of those locations has an Orientation-shirted person standing in the middle. If Sean looks around he can spot Rachel pretty easily (since she is rather tall).

It's convenient how she's so findable. And everything feels much less terrible now that he has eaten something and not had to talk to anyone for a while. Over to Rachel he goes.

There are, once again, people in groups of ones and twos and threes and fours, conversing happily with each other or keeping to themselves. By now, the conversations are much less awkward than they were this morning. Karen is happily explaining something to her new friends, Elliot also looks somewhat better for having food inside him, and Zoe is as standoffish as ever. Valerie is nowhere to be seen.

When it gets to be 1:25, a couple more stragglers show up, and Rachel says "Alright, that's everyone -- Valerie told me that she had something she needed to do, and won't be around for the rest of the day, in case anyone is worried." She does her best not to make a face, though Sean will notice if he's at all paying attention. If Sean manages to look at their reactions, several of the other students look disappointed, and another several (including Karen) look relieved. "We can get an early start on the tour! All of this is on your campus map, of course, but it'll be a lot easier to find your buildings and classrooms tomorrow if you've already been to them once, so keep an eye out for the rooms from your class schedule so you know where they are! For our first stop, we're going to be heading to the arts building, which is..." she points. "...thataway! We'll head out this exit." She leads, and the rest of the group follows. 

Well, Sean has only the vaguest idea which places he needs to be figuring out how to locate, but whatever, he'll just get to know the whole place and then wherever he needs to go he'll be able to find it.

Rachel is very happy to show them the whole place! And she will give additional mention of where certain kinds of classes tend to be held (architecture is mostly in a specific hallway in the arts building). And plus she adds random details that are useful to know about campus that are clearly not on the sanctioned tour, such as the fact that the library study room blinds are not actually opaque enough to hide everything going on inside them, which may not be immediately obvious since the inside of said rooms are so much brighter than the hallway outside. ("But," she adds, "you can always turn off the lights.")

There are various conversations that happen during the tour, of course, but Rachel has more than enough patter and additional facts and answers to whatever questions they have to keep their attention the entire time. They pass various other orientation groups going in various directions as they go through the buildings, clearly on the same tour in a different order.

Eventually, they come back to the main quad, which has several paved paths running through the large green field, the sides of which are peppered with various tables and posters advertising various clubs.

"And, this is our last stop!" Rachel says. "Telling you from experience, college is a lot easier and a lot more fun if you join a club or two. It's a lot easier to go to campus, especially when you live off-campus, if you have a fun activity to look forward to at the end of the day. You don't have to join right away, and not all of them are here today -- there will be a bigger fair in a week -- but feel free to peruse the various tables and talk to the people there, and sign up with your college email for whatever you're interested in. Signing up is not a commitment, you're just putting yourself on their mailing list, so feel free to sign up for a bunch now and pick which one or two or ten you want to do later."

She pauses for a moment. "Also, this is where I leave you all to your own devices -- I'll be over at that table" she points to a table full of Orientation folks "in case you need anything, so feel free to come over and ask me, or anyone else with a shirt like this if you're curious or need help with something. And if you want to follow up later, my school id is easy enough to remember -- it's just rquinn -- so my email will be rquinn@mtc.edu . Feel free to come to me with any questions or concerns you might have, no matter what -- I'll be glad to help out with anything, or direct you to the folks who can!" She gives them a small bow. " That's all for me for now! Hope you had a tolerable time, and hope you all have a great first semester here!" And then she stands and waits, in case anyone comes up to her for a few minutes as everyone disperses.

That tip about the study rooms is hilarious.

Okay, time to find all of the dancing clubs that he might be remotely tempted to join, and anything else that looks interesting, and he should've set up his email before now but he does at least know what it is and with any luck he can figure out how to check it later.

There are a number of dance clubs! Similarly-categoried things are clustered together on the quad, so once he finds one of the dance club tables, the others are nearby. There's a salsa dance club, a swing dance club, and yes, a ballroom dance club, along with several non-social dance clubs. Several other performance-based clubs are nearby as well (including a magicians club, of all things).

He gives his email to all the social dance clubs, although he probably won't end up joining literally all of them.

Magicians club makes him laugh a little, but he's not going to join it just for the amusement value of secretly having real magical powers, so he gives it a pass.

If he pays enough attention to the ballroom dance club signup he'll be able to see that Jenna has already signed up (and find out her last name and email).

There are various other clubs he can see if he wanders around some more, math and science and video gaming and tabletop gaming and orchestra and choir and student ethnic groups and social change groups, along with various others. But also a number of students are peeling off and heading back to their dorms at this point; it seems like nothing else is scheduled. He's perfectly free to leave if he wants.

Yeah, none of the rest of that looks interesting. He doesn't even bother looking through all the clubs, just heads back to his car and...

...well, at first he intends to go home, but then he's sitting in his car and realizes that he doesn't want to leave it, so he parks briefly within range of a building with free wifi and sets up his student email on his laptop, then spends the rest of the afternoon driving aimlessly around town. Somewhere in the middle of all that it also occurs to him to text Jenna and report that he successfully found the ballroom club.

Jenna is rather ecstatic to see that he's signed up. "Awesome! Can't wait to see you there!", she texts him. She refrains from doing anything more; after having thought through her experiences yesterday, and having been a little overwhelmed and everything by all of orientation, which had been really fun and let her meet a whole bunch of new people, she decided it might probably be best to take things a little slow. But not too slow -- if it turns out she can handle her classes fine she really wants to take more drives in his car and maybe do other fun things in his car. Eventually. With some calm consideration beforehand. Probably.

After driving around for a while, Sean gets a call on his cell phone. It's marked as "unknown number".