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After class — my only one of the day, another blessing — I hurried home. Much to my extreme dismay, I hadn’t had time to shower after the early morning practice and other stuff, and there was a good to definite chance I smelled like shit. My poor classmates. They didn’t deserve that assault on their nostrils but there was nothing to be done about it.
That being said, the shower I finally took was so much more rewarding for how long I’d been deprived of it. I scrubbed my skin clean, paying special attention to my knees and shoulder blades, which had tracked the brunt of the dirt. My workout clothes immediately went in the hamper. On second thought, I took them out of the basket, looked them over, and realized I’d have to handwash them. A washing machine alone couldn’t handle that amount of grime.
As I was rinsing out my shampoo I made the mortifying discovery that there were still a few errant leaves in my hair. Why hadn’t anyone told me?! Had my classmates noticed? If so, what must they have thought, how had they justified my appearance? ULA was a small school, and one based on Greek life. As a sorority girl, I and my leafy hair would be on the main gossip channels within the hour. Damnit.
But I was too tired to think about any possible social fallout. I needed sleep, and stat. More for Grace’s comfort than my own, I threw on PJs so that she wouldn’t be startled by the sight of my naked body passed out in the middle of the afternoon. With that taken care of, I slipped under the sheets, pulled my duvet all the way up to my chin, and wriggled into the indent of the mattress.
I awoke to, “Catya Catya Catya Catya!”
Still tired, I rolled away from the noise and said, “Mm-mmphh?” That translates roughly to ‘the fuck you want?’
Grace had been my roommate since first year. They usually put athletes together. Then we decided to join DOU, and had been given a double. All that to say, she was familiar with my sleep-speak.
“Upsy-daisy!” she instructed. “Time for a partay.”
“A… ‘part-ay’?”
“Yeah, silly goose. A party!”
Oh, right. Those things. I pulled the comforters up past my head, until I was clothed in darkness.
Suddenly light flooded the room, piercing my eyelids. Of course. Grace had yanked the covers back. How rude.
“Get up,” she insisted.
“I’m tired.”
“No you’re not, you’ve been sleeping since like three in the afternoon, and it’s almost nine.”
Shit, really? Okay, she was right — I had no business being tired. I had slept away an entire day. Reluctant but compliant, I sat upright, the sheets falling down to my waist.
“Come on, you can do it,” she coaxed. “All the way, come on, that’s a good girl.”
At her plying, I’d dismounted from my lofted bed and landed with ease on our vaguely tribal-printed rug. Oh, that classic dorm room staple. Grace, when she wasn’t nagging me, had been busy getting ready — her hair was curled, her contouring makeup applied. She’d even thrown on a pair of skin-tight jeans and a blush pink crop top, along with a gold choker that she thought made her look like an Instagram influencer. I thought it looked like a shoelace, but don’t mind me.
“It’s a mixer!” she crowed. “And with Omega Gamma!”
I sighed. Remember what I mentioned earlier, about mixers being events we were required to go to, or else incur a fine? Yeah, this would be one of them. Crap. Not that I wanted to spend my Friday night in — I wasn’t a homebody — but it’d been a long day full of kind of life-changing discoveries, and hanging with drunk frat boys just didn’t sound like a good time. But whatever. Maybe some booze would cure what ailed me — the confusion over how, exactly, I would keep Simon in my life.
Grace, meanwhile, was grabbing articles of clothing out of my closet and throwing them on my bed.
“What exactly are you doing?” I asked.
“Helping you. The pre-game starts, like, now, and then the mixer is at party o’clock.”
Sorority girls. So vague on time. I’d learned in freshman year that “party o’clock” meant anywhere between ten-thirty and twelve-thirty, and if you asked for a more definite time, you definitely wouldn’t receive one.
Grace had thrown some pretty revealing things on my bed, and I looked them over with a critical eye.
“Why these?” I questioned.
“So you look hot, duh.”
“Girl, I’m barely dragging myself out of bed, I doubt I’m gonna be turning heads tonight.”
She rolled her eyes, and replied, “Nice try. Put ‘em on.”
Too out of it to complain, I shimmied into the two-piece crop top and skirt set she’d thrown me. It was a warm brown, the exact shade of my skin. In pictures, it looked like I was wearing nearly nothing. I wondered absentmindedly if Simon would approve of the get-up.
