The Disaffected

CHAPTER II

"Okay I think this is you."

I blinked my eyes back into focus to see Seb gesturing towards a plain, dark blue door with a whiteboard on the front that read, "Welcome Freya and Morgan!"

"Thanks again for the help."

"No problem, maybe you can take me for a drive in that car one day," he said to me with a hopeful smile.

"Yea, maybe," I hoped the words came out matter of factly. I desperately needed to use the bathroom and felt like I had already talked to Seb for far longer than necessary.

Seb seemed to catch onto my hurriedness and while scratching the back of his neck, left me with a, "Yea okay, see you around Freya," before he turned and exited down the hallway.

I quickly ran the other direction and into a bathroom stall. In the stall next to mine, I noticed a pair of shoes. They were black combat boots, and I could quickly tell that the leather was fake and bits of the plastic material flaked up on the toes. They reminded me of when I spent too much time outside last summer and my sunburned skin peeled up on my shoulders in long, crepey strips.

I turned to face my shoes. I had conditioned them before my drive this morning, and the chocolate brown leather of my Celine loafers was supple and bright. I wondered if someone was standing on the outside of my and my neighbor's stalls, looking at both of our shoes, wondering about the contrast between them. I watched as the combat boots unlocked and shuffled out the stall. I waited until I heard the bathroom door slam shut before getting up and washing my hands. I walked back to my room and pushed on the door. It didn't move.

"Shit," I whispered to myself, was I supposed to check in somewhere to get my key?

While trying to locate my phone to check my email, I heard the door swing open and a high pitched voice ask, "Freya?"

I turned towards the door and in the doorway, spotted a pair of cheap, chipped, black combat boots.

Unremarkable - this was the only word that came to mind as I surveyed the red haired girl leaning against the door frame. We were the same height, about 5'6, but this where any semblance of similarity stopped.

During my sophomore year of high school, we dissected frogs. My lab partner had picked up our frog by it's armpits and wiggled it around in front of my face. I remember the frog's skinny arms flailing, while it's spindly knobby legs somehow supported a round, pudgy torso.

Morgan reminded me of this lab frog. Her thin, pale legs protruded out from under a blue and white striped, tight, skirt. The legs seemed almost disconnected, a lost part of some waif's body, when compared to her midriff. It was soft and wide and bloated. It spilled out from over the top of her skirt. She attempted to conceal this exposed white line of stomach with a cropped tan sweater and she kept pulling down the sweater while talking to me about her drive up here, but with every tug of the sweater's hem, a new mound of belly seemed to pop out of the other side.

"I don't even have anything to wear, I think I'm just going to go classic with a black dress you know?"

"What?" I had no idea what topic she was on now and hadn't even stepped foot through the doorway.

"The party tonight! Didn't you see it on Facebook?" She widened her pale blue eyes in earnest surprise.

"I don't have a Facebook," I muttered and tried to roll my suitcases under her arm that was pushed against the door frame.

Morgan shuffled out the way. It was the same shuffle I had seen leave the bathroom stalls earlier. It was as if she was incapable of lifting her whole foot off the ground. I cringed as the bottom of her worn out boots scraped against our room's linoleum tiles.

Finally inside, I looked around my new shared home. It was sunnier than I had expected and had a large bay window that took up the entire back wall. The walls were freshly painted a bright, clinical white and the ceiling was tall with oak beams running the full length of the room. There were two identical wooden twin beds, one on the left and one on the right. The beds were tall, requiring you to do a little jump to get on top of them, but there was some extra storage space underneath. The beds were separated in the middle with two wooden dressers pushed side by side underneath the window. We each had a desk at the foot of our beds and our own small closet next to each desk.

It was evident from the multiple black trash bags of belongings on the mattress that Morgan had claimed the bed on the left side of the room. I dragged my aluminum suitcases to the right of the room and knelt down on the floor with my back to Morgan.

"What are those?" the high pitched voice began, "Those look like some end-of-the-world-Mad-Max-shit trunks." Pleased with her joke, she let out a piercing nasally laugh which made my shoulder blades rise up.

"I got them in Germany," my voice was calmer than I expected, "they're designed to last a lifetime."

"Suit yourself," I heard her fling herself onto the bed and she began rustling through the trash bags, hunting for something. "This! This is what I'm wearing tonight. What do you think?"

I turned around and looked at what Morgan was holding up. It was a miniscule black dress, cut like a tank top on the top and tight all the way to bottom.

"Looks nice," I responded, hoping my voice feigned interest.

"Okay amazing! What are you wearing?"

"I don't know if I'm going out, I still need to unpack," I responded, turning back to my clothes, trying to go as slowly as I could until she left.

"You are definitely not staying in on your first night of college! Come on, let's see what you have." Before I could stop her, I could hear the familiar click of one of my suitcases unlatching, and I whirled around to Morgan rummaging through my clothes.

She started snickering when she lifted up a dark blue corset, holding it up with each strap hooked under a bony index finger. "Now what do we have here?"

I froze, terrified that somehow her touching the fabric would disintegrate it, or spark it into flames. I still remember how it felt to win the corset at auction, to hear my paddle number called out, to happily wire over the funds for something I was too protective of to wear out in public, but which I simply had to possess as the crown jewel in my clothing collection. "Please put that down."

"Aw come on what is it? I can't even tell how the hell you wear something like this."

"It's a vintage Vivienne Westwood corset, you wear it like a shirt, please just put it down, it's very delicate." Her eyes narrowed in suspicion as they raked over the iridescent navy panels, as if not believing that such a thing was truly clothing.

"Looks more like something you wear in the bedroom if you know what I mean," she gave me a wink and then seeing how serious I was, dropped it back into the suitcase. She continued through my clothes, making comments under her breath like, "hm" and "weird" and "Jesus", until finally something seemed to satisfy her, "Now we have something worthwhile. You have got to wear this."

I was stunned when she procured one of my favorite dresses. This wasn't something I expected her to appreciate, yet it seemed like this was the only article of clothing of mine that she approved of. She pinched the dress' thin straps and stood up to hold it out to me in full length. When worn, it hit me mid calf and was cut like a vintage slip. The sunset light through our bay window illuminated the dress' dark red silk body so the color was deep yet bright, as if made out of garnet.

"Ugh this dress!" she squealed, "you have to tell me where you got it!"

"I thrifted it last year. It's from some vintage store on Haight Street."

"Shut up!"

She said this so forcefully that I thought she meant it, again my shoulder blades tensed at the shrillness of her voice.

"You better wear this, because if you don't I will!" She said with a cackle.

I tried to imagine her wearing my most treasured thrifted find, to picture the delicate straps resting against her pale skin and the hem swirling around her frail, bruised calves, but the visual never came to me. Instead, I kept seeing a lab frog in the dress.