CHAPTER ONE

I looked around my bedroom as all of the boxes that now held my stuff. It was scary to think that in just a few hours we would have all of this loaded in the car and I would be going to New Hampshire’s Westwick College. I had never been anywhere, and now I was leaving Kansas and living on my own at college in New Hampshire. I have never been good at making friends and at seventeen I only have one person who I would truly call a friend, and she is not coming with me. Honestly, if I had not gotten full scholarship to Westwick then I would be staying in Kansas and attending a local community college most likely.

My parents are convinced that this will be a good experience for me to come out of my shell and grow into an independent and intelligent young woman. They are so proud that I earned a scholarship to a good school, and they have told all of their friends. If I chose to back out and decide to stay home for school, it would break their hearts. So here I am, headed to a school in a place I don’t know with a lot of people I don’t know. I hoped to get a roommate like myself; quiet, here to learn and study. However, when I make it to my dorm and meet Cindy Page it is quite clear that will not be the case.

Cindy is everything I am not. She is beautiful with long blonde hair and curves that would make any boy beg to be her boyfriend. Cindy is loud and outgoing, and from the moment my parents left the room all she could talk about was all of the parties we would go to together and how much fun it would be. While she went on and on about all of the parties she has already heard about I avoided eye contact and silently unpacked my things. Cindy might be lively and love to party, but I had not been to a party since I was young enough that everyone was still having their birthday parties at Chuck E Cheese.

Apparently, Cindy takes my silence to mean something else because she gives up trying to get any responses out of me, and starts unpacking in silence after a while. If I really think about it she probably took me to be a snob; like I thought I was too good to talk to her or be seen attending campus parties with her. After a few minutes of enduring Cindy’s silent treatment, a thought occurred to me. If I did want to make any friends while I was here, then making a bad impression on my roommate within my first hour at college was probably not the way to go.

I laid the shirt I was about to put away down on my bed and turned around face Cindy. “Hey, Cindy. Look, I’m sorry. I’m not really good at this whole making new friends thing, and I haven’t really been to anything close to a college party before. I guess I was just a little overwhelmed by all of your enthusiasm so soon.”

Cindy looked at me for a moment like she was weighing the truth of my words. She finally smiled. “It’s okay, Hailey,” Cindy told me. “You can make it up to me tonight over drinks.”

“Oh, I’m not actually old enough to buy alcohol. I can’t even get into a bar; I’m only seventeen.”

Cindy laughed. “Girl, we are freshmen. None of us are old enough to buy alcohol unless we’ve got a fake ID. I wasn’t talking about buying drinks. There is a freshmen mixer party tonight and we are going.”

I looked at Cindy like she was crazy. Hadn’t I just told her that I had never been to a party, and now she wanted me to go to a college party with alcohol on my first night at a new school where I didn’t know anyone. “Cindy, I don’t think that is suck a good idea. I’ve got a lot to finish unpacking, and to get settled in before classes start.”

“Oh, whatever,” Cindy waved her hand at me brushing off my excuse. “We still have a couple days before classes start and you do not have that much stuff to unpack.” She glanced at the two small boxes which were the only ones I had yet to unpack.

“I’m really not good at parties, though. I’m sure I would just ruin all of your fun.”

Cindy walked over to me and sat down on my bed. “Listen to me Hailey. We are going to that party tonight, and you are going to have a good time. This is not up for discussion. It’s time for you to come out of your shell. We’re in collage, girl! Time to break loose and have fun. Forget what you did or didn’t do in high school because you’re in a whole new place now; time for a new start.”

It was pretty obvious that Cindy wasn’t going to give up. That I was going to go to this party. I decided not to argue with her anymore so I just nodded and gave in.

“Great!” Cindy jumped up from my bed and wrapped me in a tight hug nearly cutting off all of my oxygen. When she pulled back from the hug she ran her hands down my arms and took my hands into hers while she looked be over from head to toe. “Now, we just need to get you fixed up before tonight.”

Grabbing for one of the boxes I had not opened yet I began pulling clothes out looking for a specific outfit. “Here it is. I can wear this.” I held up a pair of dark blue jeans and a white ruffled shirt. They were the closest things I had that resembled what I had seen people wear to parties on TV.

Cindy scrunched up her face and stared at the clothes while I held them up. “Put it on. I need to see how it looks on your body.” I looked around the room and headed for the bathroom. “Where are you going?” Cindy asked.

“You said for me to go ahead and put on my outfit, so I was going to change.”

“Hailey, we are going to be roommates for a long time, so you might as well get used to changing in the room. You don’t have to run into the bathroom just to change your clothes. Besides, we are both girls so it isn’t like you have anything I haven’t seen before.”

I felt a slight panic rush through me. She had a good point but I had never changed in front of anyone other than my mother, and even that had been when I was much younger. I was one of the girls who always carried my clothes into one of the empty shower stalls to change for gym in high school. I walked back over to my bed and began undressing to change, but I made sure to keep my back to Cindy until I had my new outfit on. When I turned around I found Cindy standing in nothing but her bra and a thong while she rummaged through her things. When she turned around she had some clothes in her hand but she laid them out on her bed and walked back up to me to look me over.

“Alright, we can make this work. The outfit isn’t bad; we just need to enhance the rest of you a bit.”

Cindy leaned in closer to me and began undoing my braided pigtails. I could feel my cheeks flush with embarrassment. I had never been this close to anyone who was as close to being naked as Cindy was right then. She shook out my hair and stepped back to look me over again. “Now you just need a little makeup and you’ll be all set,” she told me. When she was done I barely recognized myself. My makeup was heavier than I would have ever worn it on my own. She had given me dark smoky eyes, and they were lined with black eyeliner. I had to admit, it looked good and really made my eyes pop.

“You’re ready!” Cindy declared. She threw on a little red dress and grabbed my hand and out the door we went.