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“Yeah?” She asked, but then she nodded her head, her curls bobbing with the movement. “Yeah, I guess we are. We did get the best residents on campus, after all.” She cracked a grin. We weren’t really at a super large campus—there were a dozen residence halls, and ours was one of the bigger ones, an all-girls dorm with multiple floors. We wouldn’t talk about what the girls sometimes nicknamed it around campus.
It was a lot of estrogen in one building, sure, and a lot of hormones, but she was right. We had gotten blissfully lucky these two years with good kids.
“I’m gonna get back,” I said, gesturing to the stack of papers in my lap. I was grateful for the covered patio and the space heaters outside, but it was still chilly out here, and I wanted to get back to the warmth of the dorm building before it started raining.
“Okay. I’ll see you tonight.” Hazel picked up her coffee cup. “Oh! And you’re still going to go to the staff and faculty mixer at the end of the week, right?”
I nodded. “Oh yeah. Of course, I’m going.” I remembered seeing something about it in my inbox, and I really didn’t have a good reason to not go.
“Good!” She exclaimed. “Maybe this time there will actually be someone exciting there.”
“What about Lucas?” I asked with an eyebrow raised. She had been obsessed with this guy who was the Hall Director of the all-guys dorm next to ours forever. I wasn’t positive he even really knew she existed. Hazel was all bubbly and outgoing until it came to liking someone, and then she was the quietest person I’d ever met. It was almost funny.
If Hazel could have turned red, I thought she might have. Unlike me, with her beautiful brown skin, the only telltale sign of her embarrassment was how sheepish she was acting. “Noelle!” Hazel cried. “I’m not… He’s… That’s not…” She bit her lip.
I gave her a mischievous little grin.
“No.” She shook her head vigorously.
I shrugged innocently. “Okay, okay. Sure. Whatever you say.”
But I knew how totally into the guy she was. He was in his mid-twenties, with thick brown hair and taller than average—he was nice to look at, sure. But he didn’t do anything for me. I made a mental note to try to push the two together if I saw him at the event. Hopefully, like the rest of us, he would be there.
As I walked back home in the cold, January weather, with my thick hooded pea coat bundled tightly around me to keep out the dampness of the Portland winter, I couldn’t help but think of what my mom had said to me when I had moved back home.
After a year of being gone, she looked me straight in the eye and said, “Noelle, honey, what are you going to do with your life now?”
I knew she didn’t mean it in a bad way—despite how she came across sometimes. A little overbearing, a touch too concerned with my wellbeing and how I was living my life.
Such was the curse of being an only child.
“Well, I still have a degree.” My mom gave a huff of agreement, and I continued. “Just because that wasn’t the job or place for me doesn’t mean there isn’t something else I can do with my degree here that I would enjoy.” I sounded much surer than I really was, which turned out to be the exact opposite of the truth.
With an English degree, my mom had always tried to push me toward teaching.
“You’d be a great high school teacher, sweetie,” she advised. I wrinkled my nose. Teach high school?
What were—perhaps—some of the worst years of my life? I shook my head. “No thanks,” I said to her, with as much determination as I could muster. “I’ll find something else.”
But even though I didn’t want to become a teacher, I had always loved academia, and my college years had been some of my best. So I reached out to some of my old professors and bosses on campus and they all encouraged me to apply for the Assistant Hall Director position that summer. I hadn’t been sure if I would get it—but they loved me, I guess. And after a year of that, I got the Hall Director position of Willow Hall. It was a little more responsibility and almost double the salary. Plus the free room and board, which really did sweeten the deal.
I couldn’t complain too much, except I still had absolutely no idea what path I wanted to take in life. Not one. Did I stay in academia? Did I try to get a job on campus after I finished my master’s degree? Or did I finally work on the project I had been fiddling with for the last three years?
Walking towards my dorm building, I had to pause as I entered the academic quad, my bag of papers slung over my shoulder. The sun was shining through the clouds, peeking out as if to say hello, and I had to appreciate the small sliver of sunlight and awe over the beauty of the campus. I had never gotten over it—not in my four years as an undergraduate here, nor in the time since, and even though it seemed a bit silly to love this place so much, I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. It was home.
And this little bit of sun after today’s drizzle, and before the sun started to set? It was magnificent. I felt a small smile spread across my face, and then hurried off to the dorm that had become my second home.
I couldn’t help but play back his words in my mind. Are you happy, Noelle? Because I’m not happy.
Was I happy here? It felt like home, sure, but I still felt like a part of me was missing. Maybe I’d figure out what that was as I finished my last semester of graduate school, even though I felt like it just left me with more questions. What did I want my life to be, to look like? I knew what I didn’t, sure, but…
I shook my head as I kicked a rock off of the path in front of me. I was happy. Yeah. I just needed to repeat it enough times that I would believe it. Absolutely.
~ ~ ~
I stirred the soup cooking on the stove as Charlotte, my best friend, looked at me inquisitively. “What?” I asked her, trying my best not to scowl at her. She had come over after teaching dance lessons for the evening, content to sit in my small dorm apartment as I made us dinner.
“Sometimes I’m still convinced that you’re going to disappear again,”she sighed.
