Page 18 of Stops Along the Way
Peyton:Sounds like a perfect first question to email her
Elizabeth:I have to be the one to email first??
Peyton:Do you have her info? Can we stalk her??
This continues for no fewer than four hundred messages, where my friends try to find out as much as they can about Elizabeth’s new roommate, Olivia Sullivan, a girl whose name is common enough to return several thousand search results for about a million different people.
I filled out my own roommate-match questionnaire a few weeks ago, and now I’m regretting how indecisive I was when answering it. Do I like to stay up late? Sometimes. Do I listen to music when I study? Sometimes. Do I like to have friends over? Sometimes.
I have no idea who they’re going to stick me with.
I’ve already spent most of my life living with a roommate, and I’m looking right at her. Amelia has given up on carefully folding things into organized piles on her bed and is grabbing armfuls of clothing to dump on the bedspread and sort out later, triggering the memory of the one relief that came from Amelia leaving for college, which was not having to trip over my sister’s dirty laundry anymore. She leaves piles for days, and it was tough to have to resort to a sniff test to determine if a shirt of hers I wanted to borrow was from a clean or dirty stack.
I give up trying to read through the backlog of my friends’ text messages, because there are more arriving every second.
Iris:I’m here!!! Did you find THE Olivia??
Elizabeth:No. I’m going to have to email her
Peyton:Just be like, “Hey I’m your roommate,” and then make her tell you about herself first. You don’t want to come on too strong
Elizabeth:I know right—like, are we going to be friends or is she going to hate me???
Peyton:You are the definition of nice. There’s no way anyone would hate you
Iris:You’re lucky you’re rooming with your friend from camp
Peyton:Yeah, I already know Alaiya is cool:)
For as long as I’ve known her, Peyton has spent a week every summer at a camp for epileptic kids. Pairing up with a college roommate you’re already friends with, and who’s in the same boat and won’t be uninformed and freaked out by the possibility of a seizure, makes a lot of sense.
I’m curious if I’ll have a disabled roommate, too, because I requested accommodations for the deaf fire alarm that has flashing strobe lights. Apparently, campuses tend to only outfit a certain number of rooms as accessible dorms, so that seems to increase the odds exponentially that the disabled kids would room together.
Elizabeth:Iris, how’s college??
Iris:Weird, actually. Um, guess who I ran into?
Peyton:Ummmm, your sister
Elizabeth:Who?!
Iris:Declan
Peyton:Ha! He can start tallying all the places you’ve seen each other now
Elizabeth:Wait, this is scorekeeping guy??
I stifle a giggle. Peyton and I have been ragging on him a little bit, but in a somewhat endearing way mostly, which has madeElizabeth really curious what the situation here is. I’m equally inquisitive, to say the least.
Iris:He’s going to major in statistics
Peyton:Sure
Elizabeth:What’s he doing there??
Iris:Oh yeah, he’s here for his brother and we’re now apparently driving all the way back home with them
Peyton:No offense, but that’s way more interesting than talking about his statistics major. You should’ve started with that.
