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?
"We shared a room for eighteen years," Ville argued. He was sitting at the head of Louis' bed, wearing his infuriating I'm The Mature One face.
"And it worked out great," Louis said, waving his arms around their bedroom - atthe stacks of books and Simon Snow posters, at the closet where they shoved all their clothes, not worrying most of the time about what belonged to whom.
Louis was sitting at the foot of his bed, trying not to look like the Pathetic One Who Always Cries.
"This is college," Ville persisted. "The whole point of college is meeting new people."
"The whole point of having a twin brother," Louis said. "Is not to have to deal with about this sort of thing. Freaky strangers who steal your underwear and smell like salad dressing and take cell phone pictures of you while you're sleeping..."
Ville sighed. "What are you even talking about? Why would anyone smell like salad dressing?"
"Like vinegar," Louis said. "Remember when we went on the freshman tour, and that one girls room smelled like Italian dressing?"
"No."
"Well it was gross."
"It's college," Ville said, exasperated, covering his face with his hands. "It's supposed to be an adventure."
"It's already an adventure," Louis crawled up to his brother and pulled Ville's hands from his face. "The whole prospect is already terrifying."
"We're suposed to be meeting new people," Ville repeated.
"I don't need new people."
"That just shows how much you need new people..." Ville squeezed Louis' hands. "Lou, think about it. If we do this together, people will treat us like we're the same person. It'll be four years before anyone can tell us apart."
"All they have to do is pay attention." Louis touched the scar on Ville's chin. (Skiing accident. They were nine, and Ville was infront of Louis when he hit a tree, causing Louis to try and stop but only ending up falling face first into the snow.)
"You know I'm right," Ville said.
Louis shook his head. "I don't."
"Lou..."
"Please dont make me do this alone."
"You're never alone." Ville said, sighing again. "That's the whole fucking point of having a twin brother."
~
"This is really nice," their mum said, looking around Pound 913 and setting a laundry basket full of shoes and books on Louis' mattress.
"It's not nice, mum," Louis said standing stiffly by the door. "It's like a hospital room, but smaller. And without a TV."
"You've got a great view of the campus," sh said.
Ville wandered over to the window. "My room's facing the parking lot."
"How do you know?" Louis asked.
"Google Earth."
Ville couldn't wait for all of this college stuff to start. He and his roommate - Courtney - had been talking for weeks. Courtney was from Omaha, too. The two of them had already met and gone out to eat and shop for dorm-room stuff together. Louis had tagged along and tried not to pout while they picked out cooresponding blankets and matching lamps.
Louis' mum came back from the window and put an arm around his shoulders. "It's going to be okay," she said.
He nodded. "I know."
"Okay," she clapped. "Next stop, Schramm Hall. Second stop, pizza buffet. Third stop, my sad and empty nest."
"No pizza," Ville said. "Sorry mum, Courtney and I are going to the freshman barbeque tonight." He shot his eyes towards Louis. "Lou should go, too."
"Yes, pizza." Louis said defiantly.
His mum smiled. "Your brother's right, Lou. You should go. Meet new people."
"All I'm going to do for the next nine months is meet new people. Today I choose pizza buffet."
Ville rolled his eyes.
"Alright," their mum said, patting Louis on the shoulder. "Next stop Schramm Hall. Boys?" She opened the door.
Louis didn't move. "You can come back for me after you drop him off," he said watching his brother. "I want to start unpacking."
Ville didn't argue, just stepped out into the hall. "I'll talk to you tomorrow," he said, not quite turning to look at Louis.
"Sure," Louis said.
~
It did feel good, unpacking. Putting sheets on the bed and setting his new, ridiculously expensive textbooks on the shelves over his new desk.
When his mum came back, they walked together to Valentino's. Everyone they saw along the way was Louis' age. It was creepy.
"Why is everyone tall?" Louis asked. "And white?"
His mum laughed. "That's because you're used to living in the least-white neighborhood in Nebraska."
Their house in South Omaha was in a Mexican neighborhood. Louis' family was the only white, British family on the block.
"Oh, God," he said. "Do you think this town has a taco truck?"
"I think I saw a Chipotle--"
He groaned.
"Come on," she said. "You like Chipotle."
"Not the point."
When they got to Valentino's, it was packed with students. A few, like Louis, came with their parents, but not many. "It's like a science fiction story," he said. " No little kids... Nobody over thirty... Where are all the old people?"
His mum held up her slice of pizza. "Soylent Green."
Louis laughed.
"I'm not old, you know." She was tapping the table with the two middle fingers of her left hand. "Forty-one. The other women my age at work are just now starting to have kids."
"That was good thinking," Louis said. "Get us out of the way early. You can start to bring home men now. The coast is clear."
"All my men..." she said, looking down at her plate. "You and your brother are the only men I'm worried about."
"Ugh, mum. Weird."
"You know what I mean. What's up with you and your brother? You've never fought like this before..."
"We're not fighting now," Louis replied, taking a bite of his bacon cheeburger pizza. "Oh, geez." He spit it out.
"What? Did you get an eyelid?"
"No. Pickle. It's okay, I just wasnt expecting it."
"You seem like you're fighting." She said.
Louis shrugged. He and Ville weren't even talking much, let along fighting. "Ville just wants more... independence."
"Sounds resonable." she said.
Of course it does, Cath thought. That's Ville's specialty. But he let it drop. He didn't want his mumto worry about this right now. He could tell by the way she kept tapping the table the she was already wearing thin. Way too many normal-mum hours in a row.
"Tired?" He asked,
She smiled at her, apologetically, and her hand in her lap. "Big day. Big, hard day - I mean, I knew it would be." She raised an eyebrow. "Both of you, same day. Whoosh. I still can't believe you're not coming home with me..."
"Don't get too comfortable. I'm not sure I can stick this out a whole semester." He was only slightly joking, and she knew it.
"You'll be fine, Louis." She said and put her hand, her less twitchy hand, over Louis' and squeezed. "And so will I. You know?"
Louis let himself look into her eyes for a moment. She looked tired - and yes, twitchy - but she was holding it together.
"I still wish you'd get a dog," he said.
"I'd never remember to feed it."
"Maybe we can train it to feed you."
~
When Louis got back to his dorm, his roommate - Reagan - was still gone. Or maybe she was gone again; her boxes looked untouched. Louis finished putting his clothes away, then opened the box of personal stuff he had brought from the house.
He took out a photo of himself and Ville, and pinned it to the corkboard behind his desk. It was from graduation. Both of them were wearing red robes and smiling. That was before Ville cut and died his hair.
Ville hadn't even told Louis that he was going to do that. Just came home from work at the end of the summer with a pixie hair cut and black hair. It looked awesome - which probably meant it would look good on Louis too. But Louis would never get his hair cut that short. He likes his hair the way it can go into a long fringe over his eyes way too much to ruin it.
Next Louis had got out a framed photo of their mum, the one that had always sat on their dresser back home. It was an especially beautiful photo, taken on her wedding day. She was young and smiling, and wearing a little flower pinned over her chest. Louis set it on the shelf above his desk.
Then he set out a picture from prom, of him and Eleanor. Louis was wearing a blue on blue tux with a black hankerchief and Eleanor had a matching summer dress. It was a good picture of Louis, even though his face looked naked and flat without his glasses. And it was a good picture of Eleanor, even though his face looked a bit bored.
She always looked kind of bored.
Louis probably should have texted El by now, just to tell her that he'd made it - but he wanted to wait until he felt more breezy and nonchalant. You can't take back texts. Ifyou come off all moody and melancholy in a text, it just sits there in your phone, reminding you of what a drag you are.
At the bottom of the box were Louis' Simon and Baz posters. He laid them out on his bed carefully - a few were originals, drawn or painted just for Louis. He'd have to choose his favorites; there wasn't enough room for them on the corkboard, and Louis has already made a decision not to pin any of them on the walls, out where God and everybody would notice them.
He picked out three...
Simon raising the sword of Mages. Baz lounging on a fanged black throne. The two of them walking together through whirling gold leaves, scarves whipping in the wind.
There were a few more things in the box - a dried corsage, a ribbon Ville had given him that said Clean Plate Club, commemorative bursts of Simon and Baz that he ordered from the Noble Collection....
Louis found a place for everything, then sat down in the beaten-up wooden desk chair. If he sat right here, with his back facing Reagan's bare walls and boxes, it almost felt like home.