Roomies (32 page)
Authors: Sara Zarr,Tara Altebrando
There aren’t a whole lot of surfaces, and limited outlets. We try it on the floor near my closet, then on my bookcase, and finally settle for the corner of my desk.
“It’s gonna get in your way,” Keyon says.
“Maybe.”
Then it’s time for us to say good-bye.
Between when Keyon leaves and my family is supposed to come, I’ve got some time alone. Now that my stuff is in here and I’m getting used to it, it doesn’t seem as depressing. It could be something. We’ll make it into something.
I venture out in the hall to see if there’s a water fountain. A girl in cutoffs, Birks, and a Raiders sweatshirt walks by with an armload of books. “Hey.”
“Hi.”
A Raiders fan, right down the hall. I shudder a little. But the books seem promising. They aren’t textbooks, they are for-fun books. One drops. I pick it up—
Little House in the Big Woods
—and return it to her teetering pile.
“Thanks,” she says, taking it. “I probably don’t have space for these but when I was packing I… couldn’t leave them.”
“My mom read those to me when I was a kid. I’m Lauren, by the way.”
“Hi. Violet. Nice to meet you.”
I point behind me, indicating my door. “I’m right here. Waiting for my roommate and unpacking and…”
Doing what every single other person in this building is doing.
“Good luck. I’ll look for you guys tonight at that thing in the lobby!” She walks off and enters a room several doors down.
Thing in the lobby? I’ll check out the bulletin board later to see what that is. I know there’s a ton of Welcome Week stuff but I’ve been too overwhelmed to sort it out.
The bathrooms are mildly frightening. Even in a house with my five brothers and sisters, I could at least close the door.
Back in our room, I’m overwhelmed again at the sight of all the stuff I need to find a place for. Hopefully Ebb is good at organizing and maybe decorating. I close the door and lie down again on my bed, and smell the faintest whiff of Keyon. It would be easy to have a major cry right now, but that’s not the first impression I want to give my roommate, or the way I want my parents to find me.
I take a few pictures of the room with my new phone and zap them off to Zoe, then commence with the unpacking. In a laundry basket full of linens, I find something small and rigid wrapped in a hand towel.
Zoe texts:
I can’t believe you successfully messaged me pictures!! My little LoCo is all grown up. xoxox
The thing wrapped in the towel is a photo frame, the kind that holds two pictures with a hinge in the middle. One is of me and my mom and dad at my high school graduation, the three of us squinting into the sun. My dad’s mouth is sort of contorted because, as I remember it, he’s trying to explain to my grandma how to use the digital camera.
The other is a Sears portrait of all the kids, which my parents had taken at Christmas.
Jack and Marcus have gel in their hair, and P.J. and Gertie are wearing ribbons. Francis is just a bobble-headed newborn.
My mom must have done this for me, and packed it. I stand there and stare at the pictures for a while, smiling, then set the frame on the desk next to the microwave.
I can’t wait to see them again.
I can’t wait to meet EB.
To go to my first class.
To talk to Keyon after he goes to his.
Wake up tomorrow in this room.
I’m ready.
In the cab, I’m sort of giddy about, of all things, the trees. Palm. Eucalyptus. I-Don’t-Even-Know-What. I could seriously start laughing about how different the trees are from what I’m used to and for a second I consider telling the driver to redirect to Muir Woods, so I can see some redwoods, too, right out of the gate. But then he turns the radio on and the way the traffic and weather reports, and the DJs’ voices, sound so foreign, so new, distracts me from the trees. The day continues to feel like some kind of bizarre-o out-of-body experience. But the tears, at least, are gone.
I felt the first cry coming when Justine stopped by the house, super-early, to give me a hug and wish me good luck.
The next was when I went up to the beach, just me and my surfboard. Something about seeing the ocean—
my
ocean,
my
beach—for the for-real last time before leaving made me well up. And when I paddled out, there weren’t many breakers so I just sat there, straddling my board, taking it all in. I know California has an ocean; I know I’ll be back in a few short months for a visit. Still. I closed my eyes,
and bobbed and took some deep breaths and felt so very small and let a few of my tears slip into the vastness.
The third was when my mother squeezed my hand at the airport. We had stopped near where I had to get on line for the security check. It was time to say good-bye.
“I’m so proud of you,” she said. “For leaving me.”
“I’m not
leaving you
, Mom,” I said. “I’m just going away to college.”
“I know,” she said. “But still.”
We’d talked about her maybe going on standby, but decided it was an awful lot of money to spend on a trip that would end the same way this moment would end, with good-bye. I can handle showing up on campus by myself. What I am having a harder time dealing with is the thought of her being alone when she goes home. I made her promise not to watch any more
Veronica Mars
until I’m back for Thanksgiving; then I made a wish about that three-million-dollar listing. Her commission would be huge, enough to get her to an Italian villa—or anywhere she wanted to go.
We hugged and I got on the line and she left and I felt a sort of dread but also relief that that part was done. Then Mark texted me—
I love you
—and I cried again.
And then the mind-body disconnect kicked in.
There’s me putting my bag on the belt.
There’s me putting my shoes in a bin.
There’s me walking through the metal detector.
There’s me putting my shoes back on, grabbing my bag, then using the restroom.
There’s me buying trail mix and a magazine.
There’s me finding a seat at the gate.
There’s me boarding, and falling asleep.
A text from Mark—
Miss u already!
—calls me back into myself, into the cab. I write back
Me too.
So very much.
I decide to put my phone away for a while. I said I’d call him later, and I will.
For a moment I let myself replay last night—
our
last night. For now, at least. Mark came over and watched some
Veronica Mars
with me and my mom, and then when she went to bed we stayed up and went out into the backyard and lay on a blanket in the grass and looked at stars. And kissed. And more. And it was so lovely and sad that, afterward, we both cried a little but laughed because it seemed silly to cry about being so happy, so lucky, so in love. Then he threw his hands up at the sky and said, “Why, God, why?”
I laughed and said, “What are you talking about?”
“Why did I have to meet you now and not like four years ago or something?”
I found the Big Dipper more easily than ever before right then, like it was lit specifically for me. “I don’t know,” I said. “I think maybe this all happened exactly the way it was supposed to.”
“Oh, you do, do you?” He turned and kissed me sweetly. “Well, here’s hoping you’re right.”
And I realized that I never answered Lauren’s question about whether it’s awkward when Mark and I talk about this stuff.
But that’s okay. I’ll tell her in person.
As the cab speeds along, I study billboards and street signs—all so unfamiliar—and feel even more certain that things are happening for a reason.
I try to picture what Lauren’s doing right now. Whether she’s in
the room waiting for me and whether she’s already picked a bed or desk or whatever it is we’ve got. Maybe she’s making soup or a Hot Pocket in the microwave and figuring out where we’ll put the mini-fridge once I get it. I hope her family is still there and that they’ll all welcome me with hugs and say they’ve heard so much about me and I’ll say “Me too. Me too.”
I climb out of the cab in front of the address I’ve written on a slip of paper in my pocket and I see a girl struggling with her suitcase at the front door, and I wonder if it’s Lauren. But then she disappears into the building before I can think to call out, and anyway I am pretty sure the hair color was wrong.
I pay the driver and look up at the building’s windows to see if there’s a face there, someone waiting for me. But I don’t see anything or anyone so I lug my suitcases over to the door and go in and take the elevator to the fourth floor. I consult my paper again, then go down the hall and find room 402. The door is closed, so I put my bags down and fix my sweater and push my bangs to the side in an attempt to look more presentable, though, really, it’s too late for that.
Lauren already knows me, flaws and all.
I’ve got a rock in my jeans pocket, and I take a second to reach in and run my thumb over it. It’s the surprisingly heavy one I took that day at Mark’s, and this morning I grabbed it off my bedroom windowsill at the last second on my way out the door. Whenever I look at it I know I’ll be reminded of him and Froggy and the letter telling me who my roomie would be and the Moonlight and Zumba—
all
of the surprises of this past summer, the one before everything changed.
I take a deep breath and knock and wait, and then I realize it was
stupid to knock. It’s my room, too. I hear footsteps inside as I reach for the doorknob and my breath catches as I grab on. I am not even sure who does the turning, but suddenly the knob is moving and the door is clicking open.
There we are.
From Tara:
I’d like to thank my agent, David Dunton, a most excellent resident career adviser; my husband, Nick, who continues to be an amazing bunkmate in life; my rambunctious housemates Ellie and Violet, even though they’re useless at picking up after themselves; and most of all Sara, whom I effectively tricked into writing this book with me.
From Sara:
Thanks to my agent, Michael Bourret, with whom I’ve shared a lot, if not a room; my one and only roomie, Gordon, who puts up with my loud music and never complains about the hair in the shower drain; and especially the intrepid Tara, who started this whole thing and made sure it got finished.
Together, we’d like to thank campus admin for seeing us through to freshman year: Julie Scheina, who led the way; her lovely assistant, Pam Garfinkel; and the whole Little, Brown Books for Young Readers team. We bestow a sorority pin on Varian Johnson for a valuable early read. And classified thanks to our favorite secret society, BOB.