Chapter 21
Lennon
I pick up the phone and pin it to my ear with my shoulder. “Student services, housing department, how may I help you?” I say, taking care to drag the words out in an overly polite tone my mom often uses when she answers the phone.
Blake shoots me a death stare. Anna tilts her head and looks at him as though he’s endearing, not homicidal at all.
I check my calendar to try to see if I can find a good time to resign.
I manage to get off the call easily enough because it’s a simple maintenance request, thank God. As I hang up, Bev turns her I’m here to help sign to Back in five minutes and snaps the blind at her station shut. She leans back in her chair and unwraps a candy bar.
Unfortunately, as she does it, a student approaches. With Bev out of commission, the student takes the seat in front of my station because I’m the next closest person.
She’s wearing baggy jeans, a baggy top, and an expression that can only be described as aggrieved.
I smile wanly. “How can I help?”
“I’m here to make an official complaint about my roommate,” she says, getting straight to business.
I’m on the fence about how I feel about dealing with in-person complaints.
On the one hand, we have an app designed specifically for raising tickets and lodging complaints, and students are supposed to use that as their first port of call.
On the other hand, talking to them and hearing firsthand accounts of nightmare roommates can be a welcome respite from the intense boredom of working here.
Technically, I should ask for her ticket number so I can investigate the trail of previous complaints she’s made.
But if the time I’ve been here has taught me anything, it’s that students get more riled up, not less, when reminded that they’ve complained about their situations repeatedly and nothing has changed.
I ask for her student number and pull up her details. Her name is Sophie, she’s a first-year student, and she lives in a nearby dorm.
“What can I do to improve your day?” I ask, parroting the question I’ve heard Bev ask more times than I can count.
Sophie sweeps the back of her hand across her forehead and lets her eyes flutter shut. “It’s my roommate,” she says with regret. She takes a small notebook out of her bag and flicks it open to a page with bullet points and a lot of blue-ink writing on it.
I bob my head supportively as she reads through her notes.
“Basically”—she snaps the notebook shut abruptly, changing her mind and opting to go it alone—“she’s just there, you know?
Like always. She’s in my room all the time.
When I wake up, she’s there. When I go to sleep, she’s there.
Literally the only time she isn’t there is when she’s at lectures, or with friends, or at meals. ”
I study her face intently, as I try to piece together what she’s just said.
Best I can tell, this girl is here to formally complain about the fact that her roommate lives in the room they share.
“Is there anything else that seems to be the problem?” I prompt.
“A personality clash, hygiene and cleanliness issues, drug use, problematic behavior? Anything like that?”
“No, no,” she trills. “It’s not like that. She’s fine. It’s just that she’s always there. I really mean it. It’s driving me crazy. I—” She starts tearing up. “I can’t take it.”
Before I have time to respond, Bev scribbles something on a Post-it and sticks it on my computer screen. Her writing is barely legible, but I make out the words frequent flyer.
Ah.
That’s what we call our regulars here in the housing department. We have a special process for them, designed to get them out of our hair as soon as humanly possible.
“Okay. Here’s what I’m going to do for you, Sophie. I’m going to put you on the waitlist for a single room.” I tap my keyboard furiously, updating a shared document called Make Them Feel Like We Are Doing Something and hit save.
As I enter her details, I can’t help noticing that they’ve already been added to the document three times. “Now, I’m going to level with you, there aren’t a lot of single rooms on campus, and generally, by order of the Dean, we have to keep them for the really horrific cases.”
I tell her a tale—possibly an urban legend—about a girl named Emily who got a single room years ago after her roommate kept chicken carcasses in the bathroom and drew a mural on the wall in her own blood when Emily threw them out.
Sophie looks suitably placated, though not as horrified by the chicken carcass-blood mural story as I’d hoped. Perhaps it’s not the first time she’s heard it.
“But not to worry,” I say, “you’re on the waitlist now, and that’s the main thing.”
After that, the day drones on without event until around four in the afternoon, when my phone pings. It’s Connor.
I’ve got it.
Got what?
A plan.
My guts clench. God. What a fucking nightmare. I should have known he was serious about this crap this morning.
Do I even want to know what it is?
Sure you do.
Old movies. We’re gonna watch them to distract you.
Oh Jesus.
He hits that with a laughing emoji.
I look down at my screen, confused. For some reason, I’m smiling inanely.