Chapter Six
While Amelia sorts though clothes in her closet, I’m tasked with taking down her decorations.
There’s a little string of photographs spanning the wall above her bed, with the images she brought from home and put up on move-in day.
There’s one of her at an amusement park with her high school friends.
At her graduation with our grandparents.
Smiling with Mom and Dad on her birthday. The two of us at the lake.
Then, on the wooden wardrobe doors on the wall by this dorm room’s central mirror vanity, she’s collected a series of more updated images from her time in college so far, Camila being the friend that features most prominently in both group and solo shots.
I carefully remove the tape from the back of each image and stack the four-by-sixes into a neat little pile.
“I forgot I had this.” Amelia holds up a gold dress. “Why did I ever think I would need this on campus?”
“You didn’t have any formal events?” I ask, grabbing the spare set of sheets and fitting them onto her roommate’s vacant bed.
“I did, but none that I wanted to wear my old homecoming dress to.” She laughs and tosses it into her suitcase.
I lie down on my freshly made bed and pull out my phone under the guise of not wanting to get in her way until she needs my help packing, but also to text my friends, since there’s been messages piling up in the group chat for a while now.
Elizabeth: I got my roommate assignment. Aah, is this going to be terrible?
Peyton: What do you know about her??
Elizabeth: Just that she’s also majoring in music and is from New Jersey? Peyton, are people from NJ nice??
Peyton: I’m only going to school there—I can’t vouch for all the people
Elizabeth: Like, why does she want to be a Cornhusker?
Peyton: Sounds like a perfect first question to email her
Elizabeth: I have to be the one to email first??
Peyton: Do you have her info? Can we stalk her??
This continues for no fewer than four hundred messages, where my friends try to find out as much as they can about Elizabeth’s new roommate, Olivia Sullivan, a girl whose name is common enough to return several thousand search results for about a million different people.
I filled out my own roommate-match questionnaire a few weeks ago, and now I’m regretting how indecisive I was when answering it. Do I like to stay up late? Sometimes. Do I listen to music when I study? Sometimes. Do I like to have friends over? Sometimes.
I have no idea who they’re going to stick me with.
I’ve already spent most of my life living with a roommate, and I’m looking right at her.
Amelia has given up on carefully folding things into organized piles on her bed and is grabbing armfuls of clothing to dump on the bedspread and sort out later, triggering the memory of the one relief that came from Amelia leaving for college, which was not having to trip over my sister’s dirty laundry anymore.
She leaves piles for days, and it was tough to have to resort to a sniff test to determine if a shirt of hers I wanted to borrow was from a clean or dirty stack.
I give up trying to read through the backlog of my friends’ text messages, because there are more arriving every second.
Iris: I’m here!!! Did you find THE Olivia??
Elizabeth: No. I’m going to have to email her
Peyton: Just be like, “Hey I’m your roommate,” and then make her tell you about herself first. You don’t want to come on too strong
Elizabeth: I know right—like, are we going to be friends or is she going to hate me???
Peyton: You are the definition of nice. There’s no way anyone would hate you
Iris: You’re lucky you’re rooming with your friend from camp
Peyton: Yeah, I already know Alaiya is cool:)
For as long as I’ve known her, Peyton has spent a week every summer at a camp for epileptic kids. Pairing up with a college roommate you’re already friends with, and who’s in the same boat and won’t be uninformed and freaked out by the possibility of a seizure, makes a lot of sense.
I’m curious if I’ll have a disabled roommate, too, because I requested accommodations for the deaf fire alarm that has flashing strobe lights.
Apparently, campuses tend to only outfit a certain number of rooms as accessible dorms, so that seems to increase the odds exponentially that the disabled kids would room together.
Elizabeth: Iris, how’s college??
Iris: Weird, actually. Um, guess who I ran into?
Peyton: Ummmm, your sister
Elizabeth: Who?!
Iris: Declan
Peyton: Ha! He can start tallying all the places you’ve seen each other now
Elizabeth: Wait, this is scorekeeping guy??
I stifle a giggle. Peyton and I have been ragging on him a little bit, but in a somewhat endearing way mostly, which has made Elizabeth really curious what the situation here is. I’m equally inquisitive, to say the least.
Iris: He’s going to major in statistics
Peyton: Sure
Elizabeth: What’s he doing there??
Iris: Oh yeah, he’s here for his brother and we’re now apparently driving all the way back home with them
Peyton: No offense, but that’s way more interesting than talking about his statistics major. You should’ve started with that.
Elizabeth: Send me a picture of this guy. I forget what he looks like!
Peyton starts spamming the chat with screenshots of a few pictures that have been uploaded to the store’s message board over the years. Lots of blurry photos of people hunched over tables playing board games. Nothing flattering of Declan…or me, for that matter.
Iris: At least find something from his social media
Peyton: Do you follow him??
Iris: Yeah, but he never really posts
I know. I’ve recently checked.
Amelia pulls out an ugly neon green sweatshirt from one of her drawers. It has a faded Kermit the Frog on the front and is so comfortable, and I love it, and it’s been missing from my life for too long.
“Hey! You stole that,” I say. “I’ve been wondering where it went.”
“Well, since it’s mine, it got packed and brought to college.” She holds her arm up high, out of reach, and dangles it in the air.
“You’re definitely misremembering something.”
She shakes her head and tosses the sweatshirt to me. “I didn’t end up wearing it, so it can be yours.”
I hug the fabric tight to my chest. “Like it always was…”
Iris: Hey, I gotta help pack now
Peyton: Keep us updated
Elizabeth: And send a better photo of him!!
Iris: No, I’m not going to take a random picture of this boy?
I slide my phone into my pocket and jump up to help Amelia, who is standing on her toes trying to inch another big suitcase out from overhead in the closet with just her fingertips.
I’m ever so slightly taller than her these days, but it doesn’t make much of a difference.
Nevertheless, we hoist it down to the ground, and she unzips it, frowning at the couple of sweaters that are already inside.
“Maybe I should’ve had you fly with an empty suitcase so I had more room to pack things.”
“Yeah, cause TSA would love that,” I say.
“It was pretty incredible going through the airport without any luggage other than my backpack.” I walk over to the counter where her roommate left behind extra cleaning supplies and grab a trash bag from the box.
“Good thing you can just throw everything in some of these and fill up the car trunk.”
“I guess so.”
Amelia tosses a few T-shirts in my direction. I put them into the bag and throw the entire thing back at her, but she’s already turned back to the closet, so it bounces off her butt and falls to the ground. Very helpful of me.
.....
It takes us a few more hours before Amelia’s entire college existence is consolidated into movable bags and boxes, aside from the pajamas and toiletries and things we’ll need for tonight and the drive home.
We crash together on the floor, sitting along the wall, feasting on the remnants of food from her snack box and rented mini fridge.
“At least your exam week was pretty short,” I say, grabbing a handful of pretzel sticks.
“Well, I was supposed to have a test on Thursday and another on Friday, but those professors both wanted to start summer early, so they gave us the tests during the final class period instead of the scheduled exam period.”
“I’d definitely prefer that.”
“It was a unanimous vote.” Amelia sniffs the yogurt before searching around for a plastic utensil.
“Talk about class solidarity.” I glance around the room. “I’m glad we had some time without your roommate.”
With the spoon in her mouth, Amelia widens her eyes and nods. “Me too.”
“She seemed nice enough yesterday, but you made her sound like the worst.”
“Yeah, as a person, she was mostly fine…but as a roommate, you don’t even know the half of it.
” I’m ready for more of the horror stories, even if they’re just a rehashing of the ones she told me throughout the year, particularly the moldy shower caddy one, because Amelia’s retelling would be so much more expressive now that we’re sitting here together.
“Ah well, I’ll probably never run into her again. ”
It’s strange to think about living with someone for an entire school year and then just never seeing them again. “Really?”
“Yeah, we’re different majors. Maybe we’ll nod hello as we cross on the quad, but I doubt I’ll see her intentionally. Just glad we made it through this year in one piece.”
“Elizabeth got her roommate assignment today. But I won’t find out about mine until later this summer.”
“You could get lucky and end up with your own room.”
I tilt my head, not following what she’s saying. “Why would I get my own room?”
“If they put you in one of those accommodations rooms but there’s an uneven number of students eligible for them.”