When I walk out of the room, I find my father and Tristan discussing the biomedical stocks together. Tristan’s planning on majoring in Economics and has already invested a substantial amount of his grandparents’ birthday gifts into a few high performing and promising funds. My dad is always on the lookout for stock tips and never passes an opportunity to get one, even if it’s from the guy who broke his daughter’s heart. On the other hand, what the hell do I expect him to do? Ignore him like a child? It’s not like he cheated on me. Or hit me. Or anything unforgivable. He just broke up with me.

Definitely. Can’t. Stay. Here.

“Where are you going, Alice?” my dad asks as I try to sneak my way past them.

“Housing,” I say without turning around.

“Alice, c’mon. You don’t have to do this,” Tristan yells after me.

“Maybe I should go after her?” I hear him ask my dad.

“No, it’s better to just let her go, son.” My dad stops him, to my great relief. A knot forms in the back of my throat. Tears are about to start flowing. Luckily, the elevator doors close before anyone sees me crying.

“You’re going to be okay, Alice.” My mom holds me on the way downstairs. I try to wipe away some tears when the elevator stops at different floors and more people get in.

“Oh don’t worry, honey. It’s just first day jitters. You’re going to be just fine.” A helpful woman about my mom’s age pats me on the back of my head.

“I’m here dropping off my third one and it never gets any easier, does it?” she asks, turning to my mother.

Mom shakes her head.

“I’ve done this twice already, but this is the first one that went so far,” she says and goes on to talk about what it was like to take my older sisters to college.

Stephanie went to USC and Jacqueline went to UC Berkeley. I dry my tears and wait for the elevator to finally get downstairs. The process takes forever as kids are moving in and out and the elevator has to stop at practically every floor. On top of all that, my mom makes a new friend at every stop.

By the time we reach the ground floor, I can’t control the flow of tears any longer. It has only been two weeks since Tristan dumped me over an arduous six-hour conversation. I’m not anywhere close to getting over him. He has been my life for the last two years of high school. He has been my love for way longer than that. No, I can’t even think about this now. Not if I don’t want my eyes to puff up to the size of tomatoes and me to be walking around like some sorry homesick kid the rest of the day.

“It’s going to be fine,” I say to Mom as we exit the building. The humidity outside envelopes us in a thick blanket. It’s so thick that I can practically taste the water as we walk through it.

“Of course you are.” Mom takes my hand. Many kids are embarrassed of their parents, but I’ve never been. Until this moment, that is. I suddenly become keenly aware of the fact that I’m crying and holding my mom’s hand on the first day of school. I drop her hand immediately. She either doesn’t notice or doesn’t make a fuss.

The block is overflowing with humanity. There are wide-eyed college freshmen flooding both sidewalks and spilling out onto the streets. Their proud parents are double parked in their cars, helping their kids unpack their bags and thousands of other Bed, Bath, & Beyond products into large containers on wheels.

At the Housing office, a long line of eager and tired freshmen wraps the outside of the building. We wait in silence for close to an hour until it’s finally our turn.

A freckled, tired girl with a tight bun greets us with a lackluster enthusiasm.

“How can I help you?” she asks, barely looking up. Her nametag says Tina.

“Hi, Tina. My daughter has been assigned to a suite with her ex-boyfriend. The whole situation is very complicated and she can’t possibly stay there.”

“Okay, let me see what I can do.” Tina asks for my name and ID. I still don’t have my student ID, so I hand her my license. She types and scrolls and hums and then types again. Mom and I just wait.

“No, I’m sorry. We don’t have anywhere else to relocate you.”

“What?!” I don’t believe it. “How can that be? Are you sure?”

“Yes, every dorm is filled.” Tina shrugs. She clearly doesn’t understand the direness of this situation.

“But you don’t understand. I can’t live there! He’s my ex-boyfriend. It was a bad breakup. I can’t see him again. Not every day!”

Suddenly, something I said gets Tina’s attention. “Do you have a restraining order against him?”

“Restraining order? Why would I have a restraining order?”

“Was he abusive?” Tina clarifies. But she’s still talking in Sanskrit.

“Abusive? No, of course not.”

“Well, then there’s nothing we can do. You two were matched according to our compatibility algorithm. Those things are typically pretty accurate.”

“Well, of course they were compatible.” Mom steps in. “That’s why they dated for two years. But they’ve broken up. You can’t really expect my daughter to live with her ex-boyfriend for a whole year?”

“There’s no need to get an attitude, ma’am,” Tina says sternly. “And no, I don’t expect her to live there for a year. Just one semester. In November, you can apply again and get reassigned. So that will be only four months.”

“I can’t live with him for one semester!”

“Alice, there’s a lot of people waiting. That’s your only option. Unless your mom wants to rent you some crappy, bed-bug infested studio apartment on Amsterdam for $1500 a month.”

Before I can reply, the guy waiting behind me in line pushes his way past me to the counter and starts complaining to Tina about the size of his mattress.

I look at my mom. She shrugs. Defeated, we head toward the exit.

A big part of me wants to stomp my feet and insist on that studio on Amsterdam. Maybe if I make it a big enough deal then my parents would cave. But $1500 a month is way more than the dorm. And after casually looking around Craigslist the week before, I know that Tina’s not much off on that price or the quality of the possible places.

“So what do you want to do?” Mom asks.

“I want to get a latte and go to sleep. Then I want to wake up and find out this was all just some bad dream.”

She hugs me. I don’t pull away. She smells of Chanel No. 5, as always, her favorite perfume, and it reminds me of home.

“Daddy will be really happy if you suddenly decide to transfer to USC,” she whispers.

“I know. But I won’t be.” I smile. “Okay. Okay. Enough with the pity party.”

I pull away from her.

“It’s just one semester, right? One semester. I can do that. I think. How bad could it be?”