Harvard released its students for winter break. Those who wanted to leave, anyway. And after hour after endless hour of begging Emmett, your tutor-turned-best-friend, to let you take a vacation, he relented. You were off until next semester.

A haircut, that’s what you wanted. You had been growing your hair out for so long but now you were getting tired of it. It no longer felt like it fit you. So as soon as you left Harvard, you stopped by a salon.

A day or two before the spring semester began, you arrived to your school once more. Emmett was there awaiting your appearance, as he had never left. He was incredibly surprised by your haircut, but he loved it. He couldn’t stop touching it and messing around with the different ways of styling it. He was grinning like an idiot the whole time.

You only wish that everyone felt that way.

It was already a bold step for you to get rid of so much of your hair. You hadn’t had it this short in forever, and nobody you knew now would recognize you at first. They have only known you with your long hair. And when you showed up to Harvard a day or two before the spring semester began, you found that your classmates were not at all impressed.

In fact, they hated it.

People will say that bullying does not exist in colleges but they are wrong. Because once the right person caught a view of your new haircut, and snapped a photo, the entire school found out about it. It was less about the cut itself than the rumors surrounding it.

When you realized people were making fun of you and truly believing what had been spread about you, you couldn’t believe it. Harvard was a place of significant intellect; why had everyone suddenly become so stupid?

You bolted to Emmett’s dorm. Pounded on his door, nearly to tears, which never happens to you. Not over something so trivial.

Emmett was half-asleep at his desk, studying. Your knock jolts him awake and he stands up to answer the door.

“{{user}}?” He asks groggily. “What’s up?”