Despite growing up together, Catherine Simmons and Mattis Reed were never close.
Cat was inseparable from Mattis' younger sister, Chloé, while he was busy running around on the football field.
But when Cat's new dream drags her across the country du...
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It takes me three and a half days to make the drive to New York. I spend the nights at motels and eat a whole lot of McDonald's. To keep me company while driving, I listen to the Harry Potter audiobooks again. When I cross the state line into New York, I've begun speaking back to Stephen Fry.
By the time I make it to Colombia, I'm ready to talk to actual real-life humans and not the recording of some British guy. I park the car and try to find my way to the admission office to get the key to my dorm room.
This place is huge. So is UCLA, but it never seemed that bad with Chloé by my side the whole time. Being here alone, I feel overwhelmed. Why did I think I could do this?
I grab a suitcase and pillow for my first trip from the car to the dorm. I have to ask someone for directions a few times before I finally get to the room. I stop outside the door, glancing down the hall to ensure I'm at the right one. Then I take a deep breath and push the door open. The first thing I see is the worn-out couch pushed against the far wall and the short blonde sitting on it, painting her fingernails. Her head snaps up when she hears the door, and her eyes widen a fraction as she takes me in.
I do the same, perusing over her short frame. She's probably a head shorter than me, at least. She has her legs folded underneath her, wearing a pair of leggings and a black tank top. Her blonde hair is braided on either side of her head, and around her neck is a black choker.
"Hi!" she greets me, her gray eyes finding mine. "Seeing how you come bearing luggage, I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that you're my new roommate?" she asks in a thick New Yorker accent.
I close the door behind me, hovering there awkwardly. "Impressive guess," I say with a smile, my heart hammering in my chest. It's not that I'm bad with new people, but this is the first time I've just randomly been assigned a stranger to live with. At UCLA, I shared a room with Chloé. I've read enough college-age books to know how annoying it can be if you don't get along with your roommate.
The girl puts the top back on the bright red nail polish and blows on her fingers, looking up at me thoughtfully and seemingly without any of the nervous energy I'm feeling. "I'm Ava," she says at last.
I fight the urge to fiddle with the zipper on my jacket. "Cat." I stopped introducing myself as Catherine a long time ago. I learned that if I didn't offer it up as an option, people are much more likely to use the nickname I almost exclusively go by, except legally.
"Cool." There's a slight pause while I glance around the room. We're clearly in the shared space of our dorm consisting of the grayish couch, a small kitchen, and a TV beside the door I just walked through. "You're in there," Ava says, pointing to the door on the left side of the room.
I send her a grateful smile and roll my suitcase to the small bedroom.
There's a queen-size bed against the wall under the window, a small desk, and a wardrobe. There are some shelves on the wall over the bed, and the window looks down at the grass outside the dorm. It's a lot smaller than my bedroom at my parents' house, but just the fact that I have the privacy of a closed door is a luxury I wasn't awarded at UCLA.
