Fall Semester, 2011
There was a boy in his room.
Louis looked up at the number painted on the door, then down at the room assigned in his hand.
Pound Hall, 913.
This was definitely room 913, but maybe it wasn't Pound Hall - all the dormitories looked alike, like public housing towers for the elderly. Maybe Louis should try to catch his mum before she brought up the rest of his boxes.
"You must be Tomlinson," the boy said, grinning and holding out his hand.
"Louis." He said, feeling a panicky jump in his stomach. He ignored his hand. (He was holding a box, anyway, what did the boy expect from him?)
This was a mistake - this had to be a mistake.
The boy took the box out of his arms and set it on an empty bed. The other bed on the other side of the dorm was already covered in clothes and boxes.
"Do you have more stuff downstairs?" He asked. "We just finished. I think we're going to get a burger now; do you want to get a burger? Have you been to Pear's yet? Burgers the size of your fist." He picked up Louis' arm. He swallowed. "Make a fist," the boy said.
Louis did.
"Bigger than your fist," The boy said, dropping Louis' hand and picking up the backpack he had left outside the door. "Do you have more boxes? You've got to have more boxes. Are you hungry?"
He was tall and thin, and he looked like he had just taken off a stocking cap, brown curly hair flopping in every direction on his forehead. Louis looked down at his room assignment again. Was this Reagan?
"Reagan!" The boy said happily. "Look, your roommate's here."
A girl stepped around Louis in the doorway and glanced back cooly. She had smooth, electric blue hair and an unlit cigarette in her mouth. The boy grabbed it and put it in his own mouth. "Reagan, Tomlinson. Tomlinson, Reagan." He said.
"Louis," Louis said.
Reagan nodded and fished in her purse for another cigarette. "I took this side," she said, nodding to the pile of boxes on the right side of the room. "Buy it doesn't matter. If you've got feng shui issues, feel free to move my shit." She turned to the boy. "Ready?"
He turned to Louis. "Coming?"
Louis shook his head.
When the door shut behind them, he sat on the bare mattress that was apparently his - feng shui was the least of his issues - and laid his head against the cinder block wall.
He just needed to settle his nerves.
To take the anxiety he felt like black static behind his eyes and an extra heart in his throat, and shove it all back down to his stomach where it belonged - where he could at least tie it into a knot and work around it.
His mum and Ville would be up any minute, and Louis didn't want them to know he was about to melt down. If Louis melted down, her mum would melt down. And if either of them melted down, Ville would act like they were doing it on purpose just to ruin his perfect first day on campus. His new adventure.
You're going to thank me for this, Ville kept saying.
The first time he had said it was back in June.
Louis had already sent in his uni housing forms, and of course he put Ville down as his roommate - he hadn't thought twice about it. The two of them shared a room for eighteen yeras, why stop now?
