Dark Night

Cold war

"It's five minutes," Serafina said with really commendable patience. "It's her brother performing."

She looked between us and smiled. "Sorry, I'm watching my program."

"It's a rerun," Serafina said in exasperation, but Gail just shrugged and turned back to the screen.

"It's ok," I said, taking her arm. "Let her be petty. Jake will let me watch." She let me steer her out.

"Yeah, he's the sweetest guy on the floor," she said as we reached the door. "And one of the cutest. All three of those guys are adorable, and they like you. Course, you're a nice person, it helps," she said acidly. Gail scowled and turned the volume up.

Jake was fine with me interrupting the basketball game for a few minutes, and all three of them watched Stan's program with us. I focused intently as soon as he skated to center ice and Serafina asked some questions that I answered absently as I watched. His quad/quad was back and solid and his artistic expression had come a long way. it was a great program, and I relaxed when it was over. The guys and Serafina started to laugh; apparently I'd analyzed the whole thing and didn't realize it.

"It's cute," Jake said, rumpling my hair.

"It's pretty impressive, though," Kyle said. "You really know a lot. My sister is probably going to get a lacrosse scholarship and I've sat through hundreds of hours of her games and I couldn't begin to tell you that much about it." I smiled as Stan waved at the camera in the kiss and cry. "Hi, Delia, Mom, Dad, Grandpa," he said, taking something from Mikhal, who was smiling. It was a UCLA pennant, and he waved it at the camera. We all laughed.

"Your brother's ok," Rick said, chortling.

"I'm a fan," Kyle proclaimed, and we watched the final two men, me pointing out what went wrong or what they could do better, and then we all got back to studying. Serafina and I came back to the room in good spirits, where I showed her the picture of his medal that Stan sent in. Gail had turned off the TV and was reading. Serafina and I smirked at each other and she said, "so we're going to Disneyland for Spring Break, but one of the other days, I think we should get a party together and go to the beach. You could surf, we'll invite Jake and Kyle and Rick, some of the other fun people we know, our other friends."

"John's not going home," I said, feeling enthusiastic about this. "We had so much fun at the party during Zero Week." She smiled, her imagination caught and her desire to dig at Gail subsided as we chatted about it and started texting, asking people for the Thursday of break, and she trotted down to invite the three guys, spreading the word as she went. So I was pretty cheerful, all things considered, as I buckled down to study.

The first day of finals, Serafina and I took a break to attend a yoga class. When we got back, we caught Gail red-handed, popping a bag of popcorn from our stash and drinking one of our diet Cokes. She still had the post-its that we'd labeled our stuff with.

"So that's what's been going on," Serafina said grimly. "I just thought that you'd upped your consumption due to finals stress," she said to me. "Look, Gail, you were the one who insisted on keeping everything separate and---is that my blouse you're wearing?" Her voice rose to a shout.

"You let Delia borrow your clothes," she said with a toss of her head. "And you weren't around to ask. I can't understand why you'd begrudge me a soda occasionally or a bag of popcorn. You guys go through them by the gross, it seems like."

"Because, bitch, we pay for them," Serafina said, exploding. "You just sit on your fat ass and take. It's in the Roommate Contract that we all signed that you have to ask before you take." She shook off my hand and came back with the RA. Gail whined and tried to paint us as excluding her and ganging up on her, but we could spike that one. Both Serafina and I had asked him for guidance in dealing with a difficult roommate, so it could be proved that we'd tried, plus there wasn't anything that said we had to include her in our friendship. He told her that she had to abide by the terms of the contract, that she owed us restitution for the edibles she'd purloined (he actually said that, and I'd have laughed if there hadn't been all the upset) and that she should wash the blouse before returning it. Serafina refused this term, saying that she didn't trust Gail not to ruin it, it was dry clean. and insisted on making a formal complaint against Gail. She actually threw some money at us, took off the blouse right there, dropping it half on, half off Serafina's desk chair, jerked on a sweatshirt, and stomped out.