My head starts to hurt. I down my drink and then focus on filling and refilling my glass with the bottle of sparkling water.
“How much do you actually know about these animals?” Simon interrupts my obsessive water consumption. “I’ve barely heard of them.”
It takes only a minute for me to pull up a picture on my phone, and I stick the screen out in front of me. “Teeth. That animal has mini spears for teeth.”
Simon casts a look of defeat. “Okay. You’re right. That’s an unpleasant animal. She might not have made the best roommate.”
I sit back with immense satisfaction, my headache now subsiding.
CHAPTER 2
WE GET ONE
At nine o’clock at night, I’m in bed, smoothing down the crisp sheets, ensuring that the perfect fold resting on my chest holds its form. A small desk fan circulates enough air to keep me from suffocating on this hot night. Something about the sounds of students whooping it up and celebrating their return to campus makes my stomach knot up, so I don’t open the small window. The whir from the fan doesn’t quash the revelers’ drunken partying much, but it at least helps.
A sudden pounding on my door startles me, and it takes me a second to squelch my panic before I tentatively open the door.
“Allison! How was your summer? You coming to the dorm party upstairs?” A petite girl with a plastic cup stands before me. Her bleached hair spikes in dramatic chunks from her head and then lands just on her shoulders. I recognize her from a few of my classes last year. Becky? Bella? Brooke? Some kind of B name. She catches herself when she notices my tank top and pajama bottoms. “Oh. I guess not,” she says.
I form a big smile. “Hey! It’s so good to see you. Oh my God! You look gorgeous! Check out that tan!” I manage to sound so overzealous that even I’m surprised at the squeal in my voice. “I’m seriously beat from all the end-of-summer parties.” I give a knowing look, trying to convey the idea that I’ve been engaged in such wild and scandalous activities over the past few weeks that I cannot possibly haul myself to one more social event. I pretend to yawn.
B-name girl raises her cup in understanding and nods her head so vigorously that a strand of her hair bounces into the liquid. “I hear you. Well, rest up. Next time, ’kay?”
The idea that I am going to have to spend another two years here, deflecting social interaction, is daunting. If I could throw an invisibility cloak over myself and attend college that way, I would.
“For sure . . .” I make the horrible mistake of pausing, letting her know that I cannot for the life of me remember her name.
“Carmen,” she says with a splash of annoyance. “Carmen. I lived next to you last year, and we had lit and British history together.”
“I know your name, silly!” I scramble to think of something else to say. While I don’t want to go to any parties, I also really don’t want to hurt her feelings. It’s moments like this that I so wish I could be less awkward and weird. In a scramble to be friendly, I blurt out, “I just . . . I was just noticing your cool earrings. They’re so unique.”
She touches a hand to her ear. “They’re plain silver hoops.”
“Er, I didn’t mean unique, really. I meant . . . that . . . they’re the perfect size. Not too big, not too small, you know?”
Carmen looks at me skeptically. “I guess so.”
“They’re really nice. I’ve been wanting a pair like that.”
“My mom got them for me. I can ask her where she bought them if you want.”
I smile. “That’s so cool of you. Thanks!” I’m too chipper, I realize, so I bring it down a notch and fake another yawn. “Anyway, I’m sorry I’m so lame tonight. But drink a beer for me, will you?”
“You got it! I’ll start now!” She takes a big drink from her cup and goes down the hall, turning back after a few paces. “Nice to see you, Allison.”
“You too, Carmen!”
I lock the door and turn off the light. The door to the empty second bedroom is open, and I stare at it. Leave it open, or shut the door? I can’t decide what to do. Closed will make it seem as though someone is in there. sleeping, studying, hooking up, wanting privacy . . . As though maybe I have a friend in there with whom I have an actual connection. Something. Open will remind me that there is no one in there.
Truly, I have no idea what to do. Minutes tick by.
Suddenly, I lurch forward, grab the handle, and slam it shut. That room does not exist.
I rush away and quickly close my own door. I cannot get back into bed fast enough.
I scramble to pull the bedding up to my chin in some kind of crazy fit. Why would Carmen come by my room? It’s inexplicable. My toes are wiggling wildly, and I clap my feet together to calm them down.
I fan my body with the sheets before again smoothing the fabric, making sure the top fold is exact. Simon insisted on getting me new sheets, even though I already had one set, and he washed and even ironed these for me before we left home. He looked terribly disappointed when I tried to turn down these new sheets. “You can’t have just one set of sheets! Please? For me? Just this one year, have a second set,” he’d pleaded. “The thread count is off the charts.” So, I’d thanked him and accepted the gift of high thread count.
The feel of the heavyweight cotton is less familiar than the inexpensive, scratchy sheets that I’d often slept on when growing up, and so I am moderately uncomfortable and tempted to pull the old ones from my closet and remake the bed, but in an effort to make Simon happy, I stick with these. He’s been trying for years to give me a new normal.
I wish I could let him, but my history is too tainted for him to fix.
I stopped hoping for stability when I was ten. It was a good, long run of optimism, if you ask me, but when I turned ten, it became obvious that I was unadoptable. No one would want a shy, uninteresting, skittish child who was well past the cute baby stage.
I close my eyes and stroke the sheets over and over, trying to manage the anxiety that always comes with revisiting the past.
I remember a very kind social worker who picked me up from a home placement when I was around eight. It was New Year’s Day, with sleeting rain stabbing at the mounds of snow, and she must have adjusted her pink wool scarf a dozen times a minute in her nervousness. What a depressing job she had. I can still see the smiling faces of the parents and their two biological children as they all hugged me good-bye and waved, wishing me well and thanking me for staying with them. Thanking me, as though I’d been an exchange student who’d just stopped in temporarily to experience the culture of an upper-class Massachusetts family. As though they’d been hosting me for fun. But at least I ate well, went to a good school, and got to take ballet for those six months. Ballet classes, however, were not worth the heartbreak that came with being told it was time to go.
My childhood was a constant exchange of new schools, new rooms, new houses, new neighborhoods, new families. I think about how many teachers and classmates I had to meet, how many times I had to start over.
Then there were birthdays. Either overly celebrated or entirely forgotten.
My breathing picks up, and I squeeze my fingers over the fabric, trying to remind myself that I have more now than I ever expected. I should be reassured. There is Simon. He promised he wasn’t going anywhere. He adopted me. He signed papers, for God’s sake. Legally, he can’t go anywhere.