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Two Months Later
“Meyah!”
I rolled my eyes and giggled, pausing with a dramatic sigh as I waited for my roommate, who was quickly becoming a best friend, to catch up to me.
“If you’re ever going to make it to class on time, you really need to learn how to wake up earlier, Dakota,” I teased, knowing that wasn’t going to happen given that Dakota was never early for anything… ever.
Maybe it was the fact she stayed up late every night watching Netflix and making cups of tea.
Yes, she drank tea.
Not coffee.
Maybe that was the issue.
It’s like she had this really strange internal clock that was flipped the wrong way.
I really wasn’t kidding about the making it to class thing, though, she hadn’t been early for a single class since we started school. She barely made it in time to slip through the doorway and smile at the teacher like she actually wanted to be there.
The two of us were very different, but I found she actually pulled me from the shell I continually tried to hide within. Dakota talked a big game—for someone so short—and backed it up with sass and confidence. While she’d been a shock to begin with, I don’t know what I would have done the last couple months without her.
The door creaked open, and I peeked around it, praying in my mind that if I did have a roommate, they were open-minded.
While most classes didn’t start for another six weeks at least, it turns out I wasn’t the only one with the idea to come early and start summer school. Every second room on the floor was already open and had students inside. Some were already drinking and listening to loud music even though move in had only opened up yesterday.
The dorm room corridors were plastered with posters of positive school spirit and information for new students about how to get around campus and how to get involved.
For a moment, I passed by them all, the idea of being around people and having them all looking at me, whispering, muttering things behind their hands didn’t feel appealing. But then I remembered—I was in another state, I was in another school, and with my friends from high school not coming until after summer, not one person knew who I was here.
“Oh. My. God,” I muttered, pushing open the door to room number 209, my dorm room, with a huge grin plastered on my face. “Nobody knows who I am,” I whispered to myself, feeling a little giddy.
“That’s the attitude,” someone beamed back at me, and I dropped my suitcase, a petrified scream filling the small double room. Another scream echoed back at me, but it wasn’t mine, it was higher pitched, and it was followed by a fit of laughter. “Holy shit!” she giggled, falling back onto one of the beds, her silky blonde hair falling across her face.
“Holy shit, is right,” I gasped, closing the door with my back before bracing my body against it, my hand going to my heart to try and stop it from exploding out of my chest.
The young pixie-like girl with herself and her suitcase spread across one of the beds wouldn’t stop laughing, and while I was still wondering if I was about to have a stroke, the sound became contagious.
“You made me pee a little in my pants,” she accused.
“You almost killed me.” I slid down to the floor, fighting to breathe but strangely embracing the hilarity and ridiculousness of the situation. Pixie rolled off onto the floor, so we were a few feet from each other. The only thing between us, the old, worn smelt-like-the-last-girls-who-lived-here-ate-too-many-Doritos carpet.
“Don’t worry, you’re still breathing, drama queen,” she poked with a smile now that the laughter had subsided and the both of us were sitting eyeing each other.
I finally took a look around. “Wow! These rooms are kinda small,” I examined in awe—and not a good kind of awe. I was going to be stuck in this room, with this girl, for the next twelve months, and it was smaller than my bedroom at home. There was a window directly ahead with two dressers underneath it, about three drawers high which seemed to also double as bedside tables. On either side of the window, were two single beds, and at the foot of the beds were two desks with storage drawers and a rolling chair.
The space between the beds actually wasn’t too bad the more I examined it, and the beds were raised slightly to make room for more storage underneath.
It wasn’t horrible…
But just wasn’t home.
I made this choice, though. I needed to be more independent and stand by what I was saying—stop letting people dictate how I wanted to live my life—because so far, it’d been kind of crappy.
“Okay, let’s just get this out of the way,” the pixie girl said, leaping up to her feet. “My name’s Dakota, like the state, but without the north or south. Yes, I’m short. No, the weather isn’t great down here. No, I’m not some kind of baby genius. Yes, I can drive a car without a booster.”
I grinned across at her. Honestly, I didn’t think she was short, if I had to guess, I’d probably say around five-feet-two but I guess I didn’t exactly get the tall genes in my family at five-six.
“Those are just the normal comments. I’m also pretty awesome. I love adventures. Sometimes my mouth can get me in trouble. If we’re friends I will fight hard for you. Oh… and dancing is everything to me,” she rattled on, but her words weren’t bitchy, they were actually kind of warm.
