Lauren drops her suitcase by the empty bed and does a slow circle of the tiny room in her muddy boots. The barren half of her side of the dorm is shouted down by the bright pastel pink and purple hues of her absent roommate's decorations. A fuzzy purple blanket sprawls across the duvet, and a hot pink fake fur…thing hangs on the wall above the bed. Silver and gold jewellery dangle from a hook on the wall and a glittery disco ball lamp rests on the bedside table.
Lauren's not sure what the décor choice her new roomate was going for is, but going on the bible on the bedside table, retired stripper chic wasn't it. Something clearly went wrong at the execution phase. She sits on the soft—too soft—mattress on her side and shudders at the pink neon sign beaming the words LIVE, LOVE at her from the opposite wall.
This is what mothers and daughters do, she supposes. Go dorm shopping together, buying the neon signs and purple bedspreads and the little desktop organisers and portable make-up dressers. They consult little lists they've made, filling carts with little packs of protein bars and shower caddies and everything else you'll ever need to show you're some grown up, unique being who care about where you sleep.
Lauren barely packed more than toiletries and clothes.
Her mother did mention a "little shopping trip" to kit out what was supposed to be a dorm room twelve blocks away at NYU, but of course that never happened. It never has. Ever. Every year it was Lauren who took Vanessa to the drugstore for new stationery. She'd let her pick out any of those dumb little animal pencil cases and coloured erasers that her kid sister always went crazy for and charge it to whoever's card came out of her wallet first. Every year, Lauren took her own booklist and marched down to the academic bookshop to fulfil it the day before classes started. Why would college be any different?
She waited until the airport in Chicago to text her mother.
Early this morning, in some fuzzy grey hour before dawn, she'd hovered at the door of her mother's room, wondering if she wake her and tell her. Wondering if she should at least say goodbye. It would be easier to tell her still-drunk mother than it would be to break it to Vanessa, she told herself. But she just stood there, frozen, the uber probably waiting downstairs, and breathed in that all too familiar, cloying scent of perfume covering booze, the same smell that hovered around her mother's skin like an aura. Then she turned and left.
Instead of texting, Lauren sat at the gate, picking at a stale turkey sandwich, and let her thumb hover over the keypad for a small forever. In the end, as the scramble of boarding happened all around her, she typed I've decided to go to college interstate. I'll call soon.
Hours later, as she de-boarded the plane at Seattle, she slipped her phone into the bathroom waste basket just so she didn't have to see the response. She can always buy a new phone with the shiny new credit card her father sent her for college. He won't even notice the dent. She'll have to buy bedding, too and those things she didn't think of to pack, like a towel and stationery.
And maybe she'll get herself a blindfold to block out that pink neon crime scene opposite her, too.
Later, she crosses the tree-scattered lawn, breathing in the wet-leaf smell of a September dusk, her arms full of bags containing her new bedding. Early fall has always been her favourite time of the year, walking back to the apartment with groceries for dinner, the dusk whisking in around her, her boots clattering against the wet city streets. She loved the smell of the cold, clean air, and the seeing the lights and movements inside people's windows as they prepared dinner and turned on TVs as the dark become complete outside. It made her feel alone, but not lonely. She felt more alone at home.
The smell is different here, without the congestion of the city. It's just fall, stripped back to leaf and dirt and woodsmoke from a chimney. It's a smell she could fall in love with. She watches other kids cross the damp paths, suitcases trundling behind them, free hands tucked deep into pockets and wonders if she'll know any of them in a week or a month. She can't imagine it. She's never felt so unanchored in her life.
Maybe she'll be able to become a whole person here—learn who she is in the world when she doesn't have to hide half her life. And maybe she can figure out what she's going to do with the rest of it while she's at it. Or, as her grandfather used to say, figure out how she'll be best "put to use" in this world. That always made her feel like some workhorse on a farm, but she's starting to realise what he meant. If she's not doing anything, what is she, really?
Maybe she'll have find some real friends, too, not just the company of people she selected because they were too interested in themselves and the next party to ask her about herself. Maybe she'll find something more, too. Someone who gets her and who she'll have the space and time to get. She draws in another lungful of breath at the quickening in her chest. Freedom. But just as quick, the guilt rushes in, curdling the feeling. She left Vanessa. Who is she kidding? Does Lauren really think she deserves any of that?
She shoves away the thoughts.
Back at the dorm, she pushes her way through the door and drops her bags onto the empty bed. The look that the small blonde girl on the pink bed opposite gives her hovers somewhere between dubious and suspicious before its covered by a bright smile.
Lauren returns something approximating a smile back. "I'm Lauren." She pulls out the deep green sheets and pillowcases she bought in town from the bag and starts pushing her new pillows into the crisp cases.
"Hi!" The girl turns around, so her short tanned legs are hanging over the edge of the bed, and watches Lauren work. "Shouldn't you wash those first?"
"Probably." That would take a level of effort Lauren doesn't have left in her after today. Not after fourteen hours of travel.
The girl takes in the equally dark duvet cover Lauren yanks out of the other bag, purses her lips slightly, and says, "I'm Steffi. Business major."
Lauren nods and spreads the fitted sheet over the narrow mattress. "Hey."
"You?"
"Lauren. Sorry, thought we covered that."
"No, your major."
"Oh. Undeclared." In almost every single way.
"Where are you from?"
"New York."
Steffi's eyes widen. "And you came here for college."
"Why not?" Lauren shrugs. "What can I say? I like trees."
"Well, I come from Dakota. I could use a little less tree and a little more beach." Steffi sighs and picks up her phone. "But I didn't get into UCLA."
"That's too bad," Lauren murmurs.
Steffi starts to say something else, but phone rings. Lauren lets out a sigh of relief.
"Mom!" Steffi squeals. "The room is even tinier than the photos, the dining halls is ages away and…" She dashes out of the room, still talking. Lauren wonders if she's going to tell her mom about her new surly roommate. Lauren probably should have tried harder, but she's tired. And she isn't sure she wants to.
Later, Lauren lies in her bed, inhaling the factory aroma of her new sheets. Steffi was right, she should have washed them. Despite the deep ache of tiredness, she can't sleep. It doesn't help that the last thing she kind-of ate was that sandwich at La Guardia this morning. By the time she'd covered her bed with new sheets, sloughed off the longest day in history in the cold bathroom at the end of the hall, she couldn't face the hunt for food. She couldn't face any more awkward exchanges with Steffi, either, so she changed into the track pants she'd remember to pack, and crawled under the covers, muttering goodnight, even though it is only nine o'clock.
At some point Steffi's light flicks off too, and the room is silent. But sleep is a stubborn beast tonight. If Lauren were at home, she'd be watching some tweeny show about high schoolers with Vanessa in her room, luring her to sleep before their mother stumbles out of her room, or into the apartment, full of tears or drama or outrage—whatever emoji she is planning to be a drunken replica of that night. She squeezes her eyes shut and hopes that her mother found the message before she started drinking tonight. At least Vanessa will know. That's got to be better than wondering, right?
She lies on her side, an arm over her face, blocking the loud neon glow of Steffi's Live, Love sign, and wills herself not to think of home. Think of anything but, she tells herself. But how can she when all she has thought about for the last year has been keeping things together at home and getting the high school grades to plot her escape, and now none of these things exist anymore? What is there that she can allow herself to think about?
Finally, she sits up, sighing, scrubbing her hands over her face. Steffi's flat on her back, arms across her chest like a corpse, her eyes covered with a purple satin mask, blocking out her own stupid lamp.
Lauren shoves the duvet back, creeps across the room and yanks the plug out of the wall. Live, Love fades to black. That might help.