Beneath The Skin(110)

“Thank you,” I murmur to my new best friend, Diana the Desk Demon, and take the key.

“It’s been a pleasure,” she mutters back, sounding like it’s been anything but. “There’s a freshman mixer in the courtyard at seven. Good day.”

I’m not a freshman! But I keep the words to myself and lift my bag once again, heading for the door. The second I’m outside, three shirtless boys nearly topple me over in their effort to claim a rogue Frisbee, which I end up catching midair to prevent it from giving me an unintended nose job. I hand the disc to the nearest one, trying not to stare at his lean, sweaty torso. Pulling my luggage along, I cut through the noise to the West Hall, a slate-grey building in the shape of an L that forms one of the four corners of the Quad and seems to be the liveliest of them all. Its heavy door bursts open the moment I approach, releasing four loud freshmen and a worried set of parents. I wonder if they’re taking bets on which of their children will contract dorm room herpes first.

I step inside only to mourn an onslaught of stairs before me. Enlisting the strength and dexterity from my basic combat training in New York (or rather, stage combat training), I choreograph and execute a one-woman routine of dragging my suitcase up five steps, sliding it across the narrow landing, then up eleven more. Arriving at the second floor, I squeeze past a crowd of guys guffawing at a spilled box of soda cans two paces from my room, 202. They’re daring each other to open a can when I make it to my door, ready to reveal my college dorm room to my eager eyes.

The door swings open, revealing two beds, two dressers, and two desks. The smell is hundred-year-old musk and even older mildew. The bare walls, pocked with scratches and holes, are the color of a rash my sister got once that she made me swear never to tell anyone about. How adorable. The bathroom appears to be a small chamber of doom that connects to the neighboring dorm, suite-style.

I smile. No one in the world would recognize it as one, but it’s there. My college experience is going to have to include sharing a bathroom with three other girls I’ve never met. In a bleak room that’s just short of padded walls.

I fight a rare urge to call my mother and demand that she give me a bigger allowance and allow me the mercy of getting an apartment like any other twenty-two year old adult. Then, I gently remind myself that this is what I wanted. No privilege. No personal chefs. No driver who takes me around town. No ritz and glitz. No fancy cocktails. Just a fixed allowance and meal plan like every other student.

For once, a normal life among normal people doing normal, college-y things.

I have a sudden craving for this gourmet lobster bisque that only my mother’s chef Julian makes.

Focus, Dessie! Piece by piece, I unpack my suitcase and hang each article of clothing in the tiny closet, which is a quarter the size of mine at home, leaving one half of it empty for my mystery roommate. Then, I sit on the bed I’ve made up with my new sheets and feather pillow I brought from home. It creaks happily under my weight. I listen to the noise in the hallway of families moving their kids into their dorms, the sound of laughter and banter and shuffling furniture and boxes reaching my ears and vibrating the walls.

My parents told me to call them when I was all moved in. I prefer that they presume I’m lost or dead. So caught up in mother’s performance in London next month, I doubt they’ll even give me a thought until well into my father’s fourth glass of chardonnay when he finally looks up from his lighting design charts to ask, “Did we hear from Dessie yet?”

It’s already almost seven, so I push myself off the bed, freshen up in the bathroom mirror, and spritz myself with a light scent. I pray there’s more than just freshmen at this courtyard mixer. When I open my door, I’m greeted with the sight of the room across the hall, its door propped open. Scarves of varying shades of purple adorn the ceiling in bilious clouds of silk, giving the room the look of a 16th century gypsy’s tent. A lamp burns orange on the desk within my view, which is littered in glass trinkets that pick up the light. It is night and day from the starkness of my room to the glamour of hers. Beads line the closet door, and they rattle when the room’s occupant moves through them carrying a thin book pinched open in one hand and a bottle of lemon vitamin water in the other.

She turns, spotting me. “Hi,” all eighty-nothing pounds of her says lamely, her tight braids dancing with her every step as her needle eyes focus on me. She stands at her doorway. “You’re living in 202?”

“It seems to be my tragic situation,” I admit. She’s reading a play, I realize with a closer look. She’s a Theatre major, too. Befriend her, damn it! I give a subtle nod to her décor. “I like what you’ve done with your—”