And standing before all that mess is little excited me, a heavy bag hanging at my side, a massive case of luggage-on-wheels by my feet, and a phone pressed to my fast-reddening ear.
“What? I can’t hear you!” I shout again. “Mother?”
The call cuts off. I stow my phone away in a pocket. Besides, the whole reason I’m here is to get away from my nauseatingly arty, weird, fame-whoring family. “Please,” I begged my mother two months ago when she was between photo shoots. “All I want is a normal college experience. I don’t want the expensive schools and the private lessons and the pretentious crap.” To that, she hiccupped, raised her martini glass, and sweetly replied, “Doll, the Theatre world is pretention.” It was my father who caved and said he knew a person down in Texas who could pull a string or two to get me into a school this late in the summer.
And here I am—and excitedly so. This is it! I only have a battlefield of frat boys and Frisbees to wade through before I’m safe in the comfortable confines of my very own dorm room.
“What do you mean I don’t get my very own dorm room?” I ask half an hour later when I’ve finally made it to the front of the line at the reception desk.
The woman stares at me over the thick rims of her glasses. She’s clearly had a day.
“I’m supposed to have my own place,” I explain, all too aware of the line of anxiously waiting people behind me. “A condo, some upperclassmen suite, or … or my own dorm room at the very least. I spoke with a Betsy … or Bettie? Bridget? And she said I would get my own room. I’m sure it’s just a mistake.”
“Priority living arrangements are reserved for upperclassmen. Not for incoming freshmen.”
“But I’m not an incoming freshman, Donna,” I explain, trying my best to lean over the counter so that I don’t have to shout. These people should have offices; the whole line can hear every word of our little chat, I’m sure. “I’m a transferring sophomore.”
“It’s Diana. Are you new to Klangburg University? Then you’re a freshman in our eyes. Current students get priority. If you wanted solitude, you should have rented an apartment on Periwinkle Avenue.”
“In this neighborhood??” I hiss back. My bag has become so heavy, I let it drop to the germ-infested floor. “Listen, I … I really don’t mean to cause a big scene, but—”
“Of course you do. You’re an actress.” She slides a key and a slip of paper across the counter. “Theatre major, right? I could smell the drama a mile away. You’re in West Hall, room 202. Your roommate’s a Music major. Name, Samantha Hart. Go make yourself a best friend.”
A Music major? Great. I’ll have to contend with a roommate who gives blowjobs to an oboe all day long. Is the AC in here broken? I pull my hair over a shoulder and off of my neck as beads of sweat populate my forehead. First lesson: Texas weather is Hell’s weather. “She sounds lovely. Listen, Diana, I—”
“Oh! ‘Listen,’ you say. What a novel concept.” Diana the Desk Demon snorts. “You keep telling me to listen, but it’s you who doesn’t hear a damn thing I say. The rooms were assigned months ago. You even got your room assignment in the mail.”
“I didn’t. I haven’t gotten any…” But even as I say the words, I picture my controlling mother pulling the mail from the box and not giving a care in the world about anything addressed to me. I bet it’s even my mom’s email that’s in the school database, not mine, because she controls everything about my life. “I understand your desire to run away to a faraway ‘normal’ college,” mother told me this morning over cups of peppermint tea, just before I left for the airport. “You’re scared of New York, doll. You’re a guppy in a world full of sharks. Your sister—now she’s a shark.”
If there’s anything worse than being called a guppy, it’s being compared to my insufferably perfect sister Celia—or Cece, as she insists on being called. She gets cast in leading roles. She’s as beautiful as a princess and annoyingly well-read. She always has handsome, adorable, sexy boyfriends at her side. It’s not that I’m jealous; I love my sister. But sometimes I wish I was the one who scored a leading role now and then. I wish I was the one with a hot guy hooked to my arm at some gala my parents drag me to.
I’m not the one guys stare at. It’s always her.
Surprisingly, my sister has nothing to do with my current predicament. Maybe my roommate will turn out to be cool, or have parents who bring us home-cooked delicacies, sparing us the frights from the campus kitchens. What do normal college kids eat? Maybe we’ll have lots of Easy Mac and Ramen. On second thought, that sounds like a carb nightmare.