She has a few days to herself to get used to campus life, and she spends most of that time hidden away in the impressive, three story library off the center square. The Albert J. Inhoff Library, as it is formally called, smells overwhelmingly of books, both new and old. A pungent, musky odor percolates in the air, laden with sweet traces of wood polish, and sometimes, the faintest sour notes of musty decay. She knows within seconds of her first visit that the common study area is the most beautiful space she has ever seen, a long stone chamber, at least twice as tall as it is high, designed to resemble the nave of a great, gothic cathedral. Narrow stained glass windows, encased in ornate frames of grey stone, stretch up toward the arched, barrel-vaulted ceiling. Dozens of pentagonal, brass chandeliers, constructed in a classically Byzantine style hang from chains in two neat rows above the room, and the rays of sunlight that shine in from the eastern windows illuminate a field of golden dust, wafting, floating, and swirling over rows of old wooden desks. On the first day, she does little else except sit in the study hall and stare at her surroundings. By the end of her second visit she has begun to memorize the fluid curve of stone in the arched windows, and the swirling patterns carved into the wooden bookshelves that line the walls.
The library is quiet for the most part those first few days. She shares the building with just a few other souls, grad students and TAs, she guesses, silent and waif-like hunched over their books. The quiet rustle of turning pages punctures the thick silence every few minutes, and Elsa feels like she has finally found her church. No space, blessed or otherwise, has ever felt so holy to her. She prays between the stacks, letting her fingers brush the spines of encyclopedias and academic journals, novels, plays, and philosophical treatises, historical texts that promise to illuminate humanity's turbulent past. The silence isn't oppressive here. It wraps itself around her like a cloak on a cold winter's day, soft insulation against the needles of uncertainty that seem to prod her everywhere else. The solace is unexpected. It is needed.
Elsa will never admit to Jenny or Olaf, or even her mother, that she is scared. She won't tell them that her future looks like a cliff, a sheer drop shrouded in black mist, and that she wonders, every night before she falls asleep, when all of this will come crashing down around her. She wants to believe Olaf when he says that she deserves this, but her heart still constricts when she catches her reflection in the mirror, and she can't quite bring herself to throw away her little box of horrors. College is an opportunity that she never thought she would have, and now that she's here, she is terrified that she will lose it.
But she doesn't think about that in the library. She finds a well-worn collection of Flannery O'Connor's short stories and hides away in a dark corner at one of the long desks.
She reads until her eyes begin to burn.
/-/-/-/-/
After four days alone in her dorm, Elsa has lulled herself into a false sense of peace and security. She hasn't wondered much who will share the space with her for the semester. She's been so lost in her head and in her books that she's forgotten, even, to feed herself regularly. The empty bed on the other side of the room has already begun to feel like a permanent fixture.
This all changes abruptly on the morning of day five, the last day of move-ins.
Her new roommate is a human hurricane named Anna Sorensen. Anna is a disaster, figuratively and literally. She is everything that Elsa is not, warm, vibrant, open, affectionate, loud, clumsy messy, forgetful.
She is rich.
Or, well, her parents are. That much is obvious. They roll up to campus in a green Land Rover and burst into the room unannounced, breaking away from some animated argument that everyone seems to be embroiled in just long enough to introduce themselves.
"Oh, hello!" Mrs. Sorensen exclaims brightly, knocking her trendy, horn-rimmed glasses askew against the box she's carrying. "You must be Elsa!"
Elsa confirms this, warily, and the whole family sounds off like a military unit of rambunctious golden retrievers: Mark, Kathy, Anna, Madison, Ben, and Lea. They're all dressed like eccentric Brooklyn hipsters, wearing clothes that Elsa has only seen in iPhone commercials and band magazines. There's four siblings all together, and Anna is the oldest daughter, a slight, freckled thing with wide azure eyes and a mane of the most vibrant strawberry colored hair Elsa has ever seen. She is laughing with delight as she seizes Elsa's hand and gives it a vigorous shake.
"Howdy, new roommate! Gosh, you're absolutely gorgeous! They didn't tell me that I was going to have such a gorgeous roommate!"
Elsa retracts her hand quickly as if burned, but Anna doesn't even notice because she's already directing her brother and her father to dump a box of clothes on her bed.
"Just throw it there!" she calls. "I'll get to it later!"
They bury Elsa's neatly organized room in a mountain of stuff, and leave for dinner somewhere in town. She's cordially invited along by Mrs. Sorenson, almost as an afterthought in the midst of all the chaos (it turns out that there's also a young cousin with them who has gone missing), but she politely declines, citing a preexisting (and imaginary) appointment. She leaves and has a quiet dinner in the dorm cafeteria over a book. On the way back she takes a detour through the campus and mentally maps out a route to her classes in the morning.
When she returns, Anna is crashed out on her bed, fast asleep on a pile of clothes, surrounded by stacks of cardboard boxes like some kind of junkyard princess slumbering in her castle of trash. Elsa snorts in spite of herself, irate at the mess, amused at her disaster of a roommate. She's torn between amusement and annoyance. Anna sleeps like the dead, mouth ajar, hair wild. She looks like a tragically ridiculous work of art.
Elsa sits on her bed and observes. Her thoughts race around her head like dogs on a track. Her emotions ebb and flow like waves on the sand. She stays up half the night watching Anna Sorensen snore, legs crossed, back pressed against the wall, fingering her long blonde braid until it's frayed beyond repair. Her stomach begins to church sometime after midnight, and she knows it's only first-day nerves, but it still takes all of her concentration to calm down. She closes her eyes and lets her head tip back, breathing slowly in and out. Her body grows light as the minutes pass. She forgets about the piles of boxes and girl across the room. She sinks into the quiet and drifts off.
/-/-/-/-/
The next morning, she wakes up curled on the end of her bed like a cat. The sun is shining brightly through the blinds that she forgot to close, and something is pushing her shoulder gently, insistently.
"Elsa? Hey, Elsa wake up!"
Elsa blinks, and for a second she can't see anything at all, but then her vision clears and there are two blue orbs peering back at her. A wave of panic slams into her chest, squeezing the air from her lungs. Memories of blue eyes rush to the surface. Her body flinches away instinctively. It remembers what happens next.
"No-" she gasps and scrambles away, a groggy, uncoordinated mess. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!"
She tucks her head under her arms, because maybe if she's lucky she won't have to explain the bruises to her teachers again. She waits and she cowers, shivering lightly, but the strike never comes. Instead, the room is filled with high, tinkling laughter, like a ringing bell. Elsa freezes, and her eyes flick open.
"Wow! I'm sorry! I didn't realize you hated mornings that much!" the voice says, and now Elsa is really confused.
She sits up, tentatively, and flinches when she sees the redhead across from her, standing over her bed in a green sundress and cowboy boots. Her hair is neat and double-braided, still damp at the ends, and she's fixed her makeup. The sun shining in from the window behind her has created a halo of gold around her head. Elsa is momentarily transfixed.
"Anna?" she murmurs.
"That's my name! Don't wear it out!" Her roommate grins from ear to ear, freckles stretching across her cheeks. "It's still early, do you wanna get breakfast before class?"
Elsa blinks once, twice, three times. "I-I-I..." she swallows. "But I need to- I need to shower."
Her hands are shaking. What the hell? She glares at them, but they don't stop. She's really, really agitated, and Anna is just standing there, way too close, looking at her.
"Aww, no you don't, Elce." Anna flips a hand at her. "Your hair already looks amazing. You could just leave it like that if you wanted. Actually," she glances down at Elsa's jeans and wrinkled t-shirt, "it looks like you're already dressed, too. Late night?" She winks.
Elsa can feel her face flushing a bright, humiliating red. Her fingers curl into fists. Her breathing is becoming more labored. Her chest is tightening like a screw, twisting around and around, driving into a wall. Is she angry? Is she panicking? It's impossible to know. All she knows is that the sound in her ears is starting to buzz, and the edges of her vision are getting fuzzy. Suddenly, she's scared.
"No!" she says, forcefully. "No, please. I just want to shower and be left alone."
She can't handle having another person in her space. She really can't, not after so long being alone. It's overwhelming. She's freaking out. She's breathing way too fast and her chest is heaving as her lungs struggle to keep up. God, why is she like this? Why is she such a spaz? Why can't she have normal relationships with people? Why does she always freak out like this? Of course, she knows the answer. She does.
She does.
She just doesn't want to think about him right now. His eyes, his hair, his teeth, and her hands on his gun. Her hands in the police station as they dust her for gunpowder residue. Her hands on the steering wheel while her mom cries in the passenger seat. A flare of hot anger shoots up her spine so suddenly that she almost loses control. How long has it been since she's felt this strongly? The thought terrifies her.
Conceal.
Don't feel.
Elsa's fingers twitch with a sudden, familiar need, an intoxicating craving. Pain. She needs pain. Pain ends the cycle. Pain breaks the loop. She shuts her eyes and digs her nails into the palm of her hand.
"Oh," Anna breathes. Her voice sounds strange, strangled, tight.
Elsa's eyes fly open as she remembers her roommate. Anna's cheeks are pink and her eyes have shifted to the side. She looks embarrassed.
"I-I'm sorry," she says. "I just thought - I mean, I didn't mean to- yeah, I'll just go. See you later!"
Elsa seethes quietly as Anna spins on her heel, grabs her bag, and all but sprints from their dorm room. She flinches as the door slams. Her skin is hot and cold, and she is definitely not okay. Her face falls into her hands. She wants to curl into a ball and pull the blanket over her head. It physically pains her that there isn't enough time to do that before class.
She drags herself into their tiny bathroom to take a scalding hot shower. Her hands find the slick tiles and she braces herself under the water as her throat constricts. She is such a bitch sometimes. She is so pathetic. Really, she couldn't just go to breakfast, or at least refuse nicely? What would Olaf say? Her mother would be so disappointed, which is a gut churning thought, considering how disappointed Elsa already is in herself. But it's the continuation of a pattern that she recognizes all too well. She was the Ice Queen in high school for a reason. Her classmates already knew not to get too close. They respected her boundaries. They left her alone. Already Anna seems not to recognize the subtle cues that Elsa is throwing her way. Anna is bright and cheerful and intrepid, the type to climb walls just because they are there and never wonder for what purpose they were erected, what they might be keeping at bay.
Elsa's shoulders sting under the harsh spray and she feels awful. It's only the first day of the semester, but already her body hurts. Her eyes hurt. Her head hurts. Her chest hurts. She thinks that if she can just make it to class, start the ball rolling, that everything will get better. She only needs momentum, like a toboggan on a snowy hill.
She repeats this to herself like a mantra as she trudges to class under a perfect blue sky, as the birds chirp cheerfully all around her. Autumn sunlight beams down through the tree boughs, lighting golden patterns on the sidewalk, but Elsa feels like a black hole, a shadow where the light cannot touch. She turns her eyes away from everyone she meets and keeps them focused on her feet.
It's a new beginning, but maybe nothing will actually change at all, because she's still the same old Elsa, and she's not sure if that will change.
/-/-/-/-/
Her first day of classes goes well, if uneventfully. She tries to pay attention as her professors pass out syllabi and talk about their plans for the semester. She highlights a few due dates for final papers, and circles a couple passages about attendance, but otherwise she is thinking about Jenny, grabbing her arm and pulling her in close on the sidewalk outside school.
Elsa doodles in the margins of her Lit Trad syllabus while Dr. Bourbon, a stubby man in baggy khakis and a threadbare sweater, goes over the list of required reading in a faint, melodic tone. There's no reason why Anna should be any different than Jenny. She's just her roommate. Jenny has gotten much closer to her on several occasions, and yet, Elsa's never felt quite like this, like she doesn't want Anna to come any closer, like she'll spontaneously combust if she does.
Is it maybe the color of her…
Elsa pauses mid-thought and lifts her pen away from the paper, realizing for the first time that she's spent the entire class period sketching a very detailed pair of eyes.
/-/-/-/-/
She half expects Anna to hit her the next time she sees her, but Anna doesn't hit her. She is, apparently, way too busy to hit her.
"Gosh, do we have opposite schedules or what?" Anna laughs. "It's like we never see each other!"
And they don't, really. It's hard to say whether it's intentional or not on Anna's part. Elsa spends half her time studying around campus, so that's not a surprise. What is surprising is that Anna often returns to the room later than she does, and rises for class earlier, too. Elsa has absolutely no idea how she can keep up such a grueling pace. She gets a headache trying to work it out. Just watching Anna's chaotic life from afar is annoying enough.
At the end of their second week, during a strange overlap in their schedules, Anna invites Elsa to get dinner with her in the cafeteria, and this time, Elsa begrudgingly accepts. Anna's indomitable pile of dirty clothes is starting to piss her off, and she's becoming more and more irate that her roommate never has time for full conversations, but she was such an ass before that she really can't say no without making herself look worse, so she pulls on a sweater and grabs her keycard. Her roommate looks relieved already, shoulders loosened, shy smile blooming on her freckled face. Much as Elsa is dreading the meal, she immediately feels lighter.
They ascend the stairs to the dining hall and load their plastic trays with a hodgepodge of dishes: meatloaf, waffles, salad, tater tots, roasted butternut squash. Her roommate chatters about anything and everything as she makes her selections, remarking not once, not twice, but three times how glad she is that she doesn't have to deal with her parents' weird health food kicks.
"I'm pretty sure I'm gonna gain a hundred pounds," Anna confides in her triumphantly as they scan their cards at the register. "I mean, I looked it up. There's no way they have a gluten intolerance, because trust me, they would know, and god, I missed pancakes so much. Oh! Muffins!" Her eyes light up and then dim again just as fast. "Aw, I don't have any room."
Her tray is so crowded it's almost overflowing. She struggles to balance a drink on it as they make their way over to the seating area. Elsa bites her lip and tries to hold in a snicker, but she knows she isn't totally successful when her roommate's cheeks heat up.
"Thanks for coming down with me," Anna says, almost bashfully. "And sorry again, about this morning."
"It's fine." Elsa manages a fragile smile of her own. "You just startled me."
"I'll try to be more careful next time," the redhead says solemnly. "Promise."
"It's fine, really. I just overreacted."
"Friends?" Anna asks.
Elsa hesitates for just half a second. "Okay."
"Oh!" Anna squeals suddenly. "It's Hans!" She hip-checks Elsa, startling the blonde so badly that she nearly drops her tray, and leans in conspiratorially. "He's in my American history class. Gosh, he's just so...hngh. I mean, look at his hair!"
The boy in question is seated with someone against the far wall wearing loafers, and a polo. Elsa winces. He's handsome, and shiny, and he looks like money, and she does not want to look at his hair, even if it is perfectly coiffed, but then he catches sight of Anna and her fate is sealed. He gives the redhead a movie star smile and a little wave, inviting them over.
"Omg, he waved!" Anna gushes, turning to Elsa with puppy dog eyes. "Can we sit with him? Pretty please?"
Elsa would rather eat on the floor of a dirty closet, but Anna's shimmering blue eyes won't let her refuse. She's agreeing before she can stop herself.
"Oh, thank you! Thank you thank you thank you!"
She ducks her head and trudges after Anna, mentally reassuring herself that it's just one dinner, that it can only last so long, that, naturally, all things must end. All she has to do is last for 20, 30 minutes tops, and then she can retreat back to her room and bury herself in her books. Simple enough. Of course, nothing is ever easy.
Hans immediately rubs her the wrong way.
"Anna! Hey!" His voice is slick. "Who is your gorgeous roommate?"
Elsa cringes, but Anna just grins at him, face lighting up like the sun. "I know! Isn't Elsa amazing? Gosh, I'm so lucky! Maybe some of her beauty will rub off on me."
The other boy at the table, heretofore unnoticed by Elsa, snorts into his food.
"She didn't mean it like that, perv," Hans chides, shooting a keen glance at Elsa. "At least I don't think so."
Anna just giggles and blushes again, rambling on some more about how awkward and clumsy she is, but Elsa's skin is already crawling. She sits down next to the mystery boy, across from Anna, and starts the mental countdown. It's already 8 o'clock. She can bail in twenty minutes. Her food sits in front of her like a challenge. She picks at her roasted chicken.
"Have you met my brother?" Hans asks. He smiles at Anna indulgently when she shakes her head. "Well, go on, dude. Introduce yourself."
"Aaron," the boy says gruffly. "Junior chem major."
He looks like Hans, only taller and broader, and where Hans has neatly trimmed auburn sideburns, Aaron has a thick brown beard. His expression is serious as he regards them both. Elsa immediately likes him better. He pushes his glasses up his nose, offers a brief, polite smile, and returns to his meatloaf.
"How do you like it here?" Anna asks him. "I mean- oh, wait, sorry!" She laughs." That must be a really dumb question. Obviously you must like it if you've gone here for three years."
Aaron shoots his brother a quizzical glance. "Sure, I like it."
"Then I'm sure I'll like it, too!" she asserts brightly.
Elsa smiles in spite of herself. It drops off her face when Hans' eyes slide her way.
"So, Emma? What's your story?"
"It's Elsa," she says cooly.
"I'm sorry, what?"
"Elsa," she repeats.
Hans laughs and her eyes narrow. "That's an interesting name."
"So's Hans."
"Touche," he laughs again, but it sounds just the slightest bit strained.
He turns away from her, moving on without an answer, and she immediately realizes how clever he is. He knows that she isn't going to bite and he's not about to push the issue. He'll take the path of least resistance. She stabs her food forcefully when he begins to question Anna about her schedule.
"I have four classes Monday-Wednesday-Friday, isn't that awful?" Her roommate sighs dramatically. "I mean, at least they're all stacked up, but seriously! I have class from nine until two in the afternoon."
"That means you only have one class Tuesday-Thursday, though right?" Hans smiles at her sympathetically.
He's always smiling at her. Elsa wonders bitterly if it's normal to smile so much at a person. Surely, Anna has noticed how weird it is that his teeth are so white, too white, and how he never really takes his eyes off her. He's watching her so earnestly, so eagerly. It's gross. Elsa chews angrily on a tater tot.
"You're right!" Anna exclaims, entirely too loudly and enthusiastically for the boring subject matter they are discussing. "And it's not until three in the afternoon."
"Oh, lucky!"
Hans makes the cheesiest 'aw shucks' face Elsa has ever seen. Anna looks like she's about two seconds away from literally swooning on the sticky cafeteria table, and Elsa wants to gag both of them with her spoon.
"If you're free Tuesday you should come to my house," Hans suggests smoothly. "We're having a welcome back movie night."
"You live in a house?" Anna's brows soar up behind her bangs. "No way!"
Elsa wants to be exasperated with her airheaded roommate, but Anna's confused expression is almost cute. It tickles somewhere low. She settles for rolling her eyes and taking another bite of chicken.
"He's a Delta Chi," Aaron says calmly, hardly glancing up from his food. "We all are."
Anna's eyes expand until she looks like some kind of absurd, ginger owl. "You're in a fraternity?"
It's uttered with holy reverence. Elsa rolls her eyes even harder, and this time Hans takes notice, sharp eyes briefly darting toward hers across the table.
"I am," he replies smugly.
Anna looks awestruck by this for some reason.
"We all are," Aaron repeats.
"What do you mean 'you all'?" Elsa asks suspiciously.
Aaron arches a brow. "All my brothers and I. There's twelve of us."
"Twelve!" Anna exclaims. "Holy cow! That's a lot!"
"Golly gee." Elsa snorts, and immediately flushes when all three sets of eyes at the table turn to look at her.
Oh, what a perfect time for her irritation to slip out into the open. Her roommate's cheeks are burning a little red like she's embarrassed, and Hans' glee is poorly concealed under his feigned indignation. She's not sure when the two of them entered a game of chess, but he's about to make a power move that she knows she isn't going to like.
"Wow, Elsa," he says, false concern dripping from his lips like poisoned honey, "that was kinda harsh."
Sure, now he remembers her name. Elsa's hand tightens around her fork.
"N-no, it's not- it's-" Anna glances at her roommate helplessly, cheeks flaring, but even she can't quite defend someone she doesn't know, someone she's never even had a normal interaction with. "It's fine," she finishes lamely, looking defeated.
Hans smiles like a cheshire cat and puts a comforting hand on Anna's shoulder. "Aw, you're a good roommate."
She returns his smile uncertainly, with all the insecurity of a young, naive girl looking for reassurance, looking for somewhere to invest her trust. She'll go to the movie night on Tuesday. She'll go with Hans wherever he wants to go, because he knows this game so well. He's played it before. He's a professional, and Anna wants to believe in him so much that she's falling right into it. Elsa suddenly feels her stomach lurch, like she's going to be sick if she sits there for another minute. She can feel her lips twisting and her eyes narrowing and her teeth grinding. A faint buzzing begins in her ears.
Hans is a snake in the grass, and all she wants to do is crush him under her heel, but she can't. Anna is looking at him like he's Jesus. Elsa has no power here. Suddenly, the fork clenched in her quivering hand seems like a very convenient weapon, and she realizes that if she stays for another moment she's going to do something stupid.
She stands from the table abruptly, and the chair legs scrape against the floor creating an awful, ear-splitting screech. Everyone looks at her. Elsa doesn't care. She's already grabbing her tray and moving away.
"Elsa?" Anna asks, and her voice sounds so innocent, so genuinely confused, that it literally hurts. "Are you leaving?"
"Yeah," Elsa glances briefly back at her roommate, but her eyes are cold, "I need to get back."
"Oh, um...okay."
Anna looks so uncertain, so disappointed. It's so different than the way she looks at Hans, like the sun shines out of his slimy, frat-boy ass.
"Is everything okay?" Hans' brow is furrowed at Elsa in a poor mockery of concern, and, somehow, his arm has made its way around Anna's back. "You haven't really eaten anything."
"Yeah!" Anna pipes up, desperate for something to latch onto, to break the tension. "Are you okay?"
Elsa feels suddenly very cruel. "I'm fine," she replies icily. "I'm just not enjoying the company much."
Anna's eyes widen. Aaron looks up from his food. Even Hans appears shocked. Elsa turns and leaves without another word, chucking her tray onto the conveyer belt by the door.
That should settle it, then.
Surely, her roommate won't be extending any more invites.
/-/-/-/-/
She makes a beeline for the bathroom when she reaches the dorm and locks the door behind her. Her back slides up against cool, laminated wood. Her fingers grip the hem of her sweater. Blue eyes glare back at her in the mirror, and Elsa's skin flushes red with angry heat. She wants to lash out and smash her reflection. She wants to break something. She wants to hurt someone. She wants to open Pandora's box and let the evil pour out of her in a violent storm of malice and spite, but she can't.
A flash of orange passes behind her eyes.
Elsa breathes in and out until the anger has abated and her head has cleared. It recedes like the ocean tide and leaves exposed a mess of rocks and broken shells, seaweed and bleached wood, the jagged, rotten bits and the guilt, the all-consuming, soul-devouring guilt.
Pushing off the door, Elsa reaches up and flings open the cabinet over the toilet, filled haphazardly with Anna's various soaps and scrubs and beauty products. She digs through the mess with shaking, but determined hands, searching for something useful. There's nothing sharp, but there's a hair straightener. It'll work. Elsa pulls it out and searches until she finds an electrical outlet, and while the ceramic plates heat up she smiles ruefully, wondering if Anna would forgive her for borrowing it without her permission.
Elsa peels down the top of her jeans, grabs the straightener, and presses the edges of the red hot plates into her milky thigh.
Something tells her she would.
/-/-/-/-/
