Chapter 1
6 years ago
“Shit!” I heard someone yell from one of the dorm rooms down the hall. A long string of curse words followed, most of which I wouldn’t even feel comfortable repeating. And to my horror, as I approached the room where the yelling was coming from, I realized that it was, in fact, my dorm room.
And that blonde cursing out an empty room, yeah that was my new roommate, Stacy.
“Um, excuse me? Are you Stacy?” I asked, my voice sounding a little more hesitant than I had intended, but I had to live with this girl for the next year so I figured I should approach her delicately. I didn’t want to end up on the receiving end of whatever had gotten her so angry.
“Yeah, who the hell wants to know?” she replied without even turning around to face me.
“I’m Adalyn, your new roommate.” I walked toward her, my hand outstretched in greeting and stood there for what felt like several minutes. As she finally turned around to face me, she just looked down at my hand and back up at me and without another word walked out of the room.
I quickly threw my bags on the empty bed, which I assumed was mine, and chased after her.
“Wait! Where are you going? I thought maybe we could get to know each other a little bit since we’re going to spend so much time together over the next year.”
She stopped so abruptly that I almost crashed into her.
“Look, Avery.”
“Um, it’s Adalyn.”
“Whatever…. Adalyn. I’m having a bad fucking day, okay? I don’t have time to sit around and braid your hair and play twenty questions or do whatever form of female bonding shit you thought was going to happen. If you hadn’t noticed, I spilled my entire latte all down the front of my shirt. See?” she said, gesturing at a big brown splotch on her white blouse - a splotch that was now dripping down onto her jeans.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t even notice. You had your back to me. Do you need help?”
“Do I need…” she sighed impatiently and muttered something under her breath that sounded a lot like “dumb bitches,” as she massaged her temples.
“No, I don’t need your help wiping off my shirt. I’m perfectly capable of using a towel. I also know how to use a spoon and put my own clothes on in the morning, so you won’t have to help with any of that shit, either. Just to clear that up for you before you offer.”
She turned around again and stormed off, still mumbling under her breath.
I walked back to our dorm room and sat on my empty bed trying to figure out what the hell had just happened. At first I ran through the events that led up to her leaving, trying to figure out if I had said or done something offensive in that exchange that would have caused her to act so rudely towards me. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I hadn’t done anything wrong. She was just being a bitch. And if I was going to be stuck in this room with someone as hateful as her, I needed to make sure she understood that I wasn’t going to put up with her treating me like shit all the time.
So, being the immature brat that I was, I completely stripped her bedding, wadded it up and threw it out the door into the hallway. That was quickly followed by an armful of her clothes. She returned to the room just as I was getting another armful of clothes and she yanked on my shoulder, causing me to stumble backwards and drop everything to the ground.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing!”, she screamed at me, getting entirely too close to my face. I did not like people in my personal space. So I pushed her with both hands as hard as I could and she tripped over the pile of clothes I had just dropped and landed hard on her ass.
I tried hard not to laugh. I really did. But I couldn’t help it. The shock and anger on her face was hysterical.
“What’s it look like I’m doing? I’m helping you move out.” Confusion joined the mix of emotions being displayed on her face, but I kept going before she could interrupt. “There is no way I’m putting up with being treated like crap all year, and because I’m a nice person, I decided to help you pack. So if you don’t mind, I’m going to finish getting all of your crap out of my dorm room,” I said as I made my way back to the closet to get more of her clothes.
I’d only made it a few steps when she reached out and grabbed me by the ankle, causing me to lunge forward. I regained my balance just in time, preventing myself from going all the way down. She didn’t give me much time to recover from almost falling though, because as soon as I stood upright, she tackled me.
We continued to struggle, rolling around on the ground, pulling each other’s hair and trying unsuccessfully to slap each other. At some point a crowd had gathered just outside our door and several girls were laughing while the boys were chanting “girl fight” over and over.
Just as I bit down on Stacy’s forearm, she got a good jab into my eye with her elbow. It was utterly ridiculous. Neither of us was really making any progress in hurting the other, we mostly just took turns rolling on top of each other, somersaulting all across the room.
Finally, when we were both so winded from fighting, the Resident Assistant showed up. She broke up the crowd and started yelling loudly, pulling us out of our rage-induced cat fight. We both paused at the same time, my right hand tangled in her hair with my left hand wrapped tightly around her wrist. She had both of her legs wrapped around my waist and she was pushing my face away with the palm of her free hand.
The look on the RA’s face was sheer terror. Stacy and I looked at each other and after a long pause, we broke into a hysterical fit of laughter. Our now irritated RA huffed out of the room, grumbling about us being immature children, and Stacy and I just continued to crack up over how ridiculous we must have looked in that moment. We untangled ourselves from each other and gripped hands, pulling one another up, then reintroduced ourselves.
“Do over?” I asked.
“You got it, whore.”
And that’s how I met my best friend.