Chapter 19 The Roommate from Hell
Chapter nineteen
The Roommate from Hell
“One skeleton said to another - If I had any guts I'd get the hell out of here.” - Anonymous
As she raised the warped, wrought-iron skeleton key from her welcome kit to the lock, she straightened up and put on her friendly face. The lock clicked, and Hailey pushed open the door.
The room was larger than she’d expected, with a built-in desk, stretching almost the whole length of the left wall.
Two chairs were pushed against the desk at opposite ends and in the middle, the desk was divided by two sets of drawers.
The wall above the desk was mirrored from end to end.
On the wall opposite the door was a large window.
In the window hung a golden decoration, which resembled a dream-catcher and had a tiny motor, causing the thing to vibrate and twist back and forth.
There were two closets and two beds. Just inside the door and to the right was an empty, undressed bed— Hailey guessed that would be hers.
The other was in the far corner opposite the door and occupied by a girl who lounged with her legs outstretched, her feet crossed, and her face hidden behind a beauty magazine.
She didn’t stir when Hailey tentatively stepped into the room.
“Hello,” Hailey said, but the girl ignored her. “I’m Hailey,” she tried again, but the girl never acknowledged her.
Frowning, Hailey set her bag and backpack on her bare mattress. She opened her empty closet and sighed.
She should just shower and wait for Fin, she decided. Tomorrow morning, she would tour the campus and hit the bookstore, where she could hopefully find clothes, shoes, sheets, blankets, pillows, and towels. And somebody to talk to…
Giselle stirred in her bed and Hailey jerked her head around, but she still couldn’t see the girl’s face behind her magazine, which boasted “5 New Makeup Tricks to Make Him Notice You.”
Hailey rolled her eyes and unzipped her luggage. It took less than a minute to unpack, and as she gathered her hand towel, soap, and shampoo, there came a sharp knock.
“Hi!” Hailey said brightly as she opened the door to Fin.
“Here’s your handbook,” he said, holding it up before passing it to her.
“Thanks.” Hailey looked at his empty hands. “Where’s the dictionary?”
“Right here.” He held his arms out.
“You speak German?”
“Yeah,” he said stepping inside her room. “I grew up there once.”
Hailey cocked her head.
“What do you mean, you ‘grew up there once’?”
Fin answered with a half-smile. “What do you need translated?”
She grabbed a pen and tablet from her welcome bag and scribbled down her Tomas words.
“Khu isn’t German, at all, it’s…ancient…Egyptian, I think.” He shook his head. “Sort of means soul. Schatz is treasure; Gefahr is danger; bin entwichen is ‘I escaped’—Hailey…” With a concerned look he handed her the tablet. “What’s the context of all this?”
She tried to think of a quick way to sum things up. “How much time do you have?”
“None,” he told her, checking his watch. “I’ll swing by tomorrow morning for breakfast,” he said, and then he leaned over and pecked her on the cheek.
“Goodbye, raging bitch,” he called to Giselle, and without moving her magazine, she flipped him the bird as he walked out the door.
“Whoa,” Hailey breathed, clutching her stomach after the door closed. “That…was…”
“Gross,” her roommate finished for her, and Hailey looked up. Giselle had moved the magazine, stood up, and was scowling hatefully from beside her bed at Hailey, who smiled excitedly back.
This roommate was no monster. She was just the girl with the prematurely gray hair. Hailey blew a sigh of relief, and as she marveled, Giselle fell like a feather back onto her bed and lifted her magazine again.
She certainly was aptly named, moving with the grace of a ballerina. Though her eyes were a mesmerizing crystal blue—the rest of her seemed a bit horrible, with slightly frizzy gray hair reaching down to her hips and a couple of facial wrinkles that belonged to a crotchety, 80-year-old bat.
Otherwise, in the face, Giselle looked…at least in Hailey’s eyes…
somewhat similar to Holly. Were it not for her six-foot stature, corpse hair, and permanent look of disgust on her kisser, she could have been Holly’s doppelganger.
Maybe she just missed her sister. In any case, and despite her grumpiness, Hailey liked her immediately.
“Stop staring at me,” Giselle said from behind her magazine.
“I’m sorry.” Hailey averted her eyes. “You just remind me of my sister.”
“She must be ugly,” she said in a monotone, and Hailey shook her head.
“She was beautiful.” Hailey reached for her back pocket. “Oh,” she whispered. “Asher still has Holly’s picture, or else I’d show you.”
“I don’t want to see it,” Giselle droned, and Hailey ignored her indifferent tone. So far, Giselle was the only student to talk to her, and even if that “talking” amounted to a string of grouchy insults, Hailey was delighted.
“So, where are you from?” she tried.
“Hell.”
“Oh, come on, Giselle, Cleveland’s not that bad,” Hailey laughed, trying to coax a smile, but Giselle flicked her magazine down to show Hailey her pointy teeth.
“It’s a village in the Alps,” she said through them. “The literal translation is Hell,” she sputtered, and then with a loud tsk, she pulled herself back behind her magazine.
Hailey rubbed her forehead. “I actually have a roommate from Hell,” she muttered. “What country would that be?”
Giselle didn’t answer.
“Well, I’m from Pittsburgh,” Hailey said as she arranged her things inside her closet—all on one shelf.
“I don’t care,” said Giselle with more than a little hostility, but that didn’t discourage Hailey. Since small talk wasn’t working, she tried flattery.
“I think your eyes are really pretty, and…” Hailey swallowed hard. “I saw you at the welcome dinner. You and I must be wearing the same student repellant,” she laughed, and a puff of steam literally rose out of Giselle’s head.
“Nobody will talk to you,” she snapped, ripping her magazine as she threw it down, “because Asher told us all to stay away from you.”
“What? When?”
“This summer. And he already killed one student as an example, and I’m not supposed to tell you that or anything else about him, but I’ll probably be dead in a couple months anyway, so who cares if he rips me apart?”
Hailey’s jaw fell. “That can’t be, Asher’s—”
“Asher can be terrifying, little girl.”
Hailey stared at Giselle, the horror of her words a great weight against her chest.
“Why are you telling me this?” Hailey murmured.
“Not because I want to be your friend. I’m telling you this so you’ll stop talking to me. I don’t want to know you, Hailey.”
“I had no idea,” she said quietly, her insides gone cold, and she didn’t bother Giselle again.
Lying on her bed in utter silence, much like Giselle, Hailey read her student handbook from cover to cover, struggling to focus on the strangest and most fascinating subject matter she’d ever seen.
Her guilt kept distracting her, gnawing at her insides like a White Forest Yeti or Man-Eating Tree, neither of which she ever wanted to happen upon.
Both of which had their own section in the Bear Towne Handbook’s glossary of lethal beasts.
The handbook divided White Forest hazards into two types—summer and winter.
Summer hazards included familiar things, like mosquitos and black bears, but the list ended with tips on avoiding carnivorous trees.
Apparently, they only ate during waking hours and had a taste for non-Alaskan humans.
The handbook advised anyone from Outside to travel through the White Forest only when escorted by a non-human.
Yetis were another hazard. According to the handbook, most of them hibernated until winter, though some seemed to enjoy warm weather, and all Yetis preferred human meat. The book recommended students carry Yeti spray and cross their fingers when venturing into the White Forest.
An asterisk next to the chapter on Bear Towne’s three active in-between zones noted a warning: small, unmarked in-betweens tend to appear and disappear here and there around campus during the spring months especially, but not exclusively.
Bewildered, Hailey closed her book and sulked. It was like reading another language.
Grabbing her shampoo, she hoped a hot shower would steam away her guilt and make things make sense.
But when she walked into the shower room, the three students inside, who were in mid-shower and still soapy, all finished suddenly and scattered like cockroaches.
The same thing happened in the hallway when she emerged from the showers, with the added happiness of slamming doors to punctuate her misery.
Hailey sighed and shuffled into the laundry room, wearing her other jeans—the clean ones—and a fresh t-shirt (she didn’t have pajamas). In she tossed her Luftzeug clothes and shoes for a spin, using a community bottle of detergent and a healthy dose of hope that Alaskan muskeg mud would wash out.
As she closed the laundry room door behind her, she turned her attention to the giggling coming up the stairwell. Walking up the stairs with his arm around the waist of a stunning brunette and his tongue in her ear was Fin.
Hailey stumbled backward inside the laundry room and peeked through a sliver in the door. Her heart plummeted into her stomach.
Fin fumbled with his room key as he passionately kissed this girl. She had her shirt nearly off by the time they swayed inside his room.
Hailey’s throat tightened.
Slowly, dejectedly, she slid down the door and sat on the floor of the laundry room, staring at her hands until the washer clicked, unsure why she should even care that Fin had a girlfriend. Of course he had a girlfriend—why wouldn’t he?
But he kissed my cheek...