Other Worlds - The Wilds

Chapter 45

One more chapter after this folks! Enjoy x
————

Shelby barely crossed her mind anymore.

Toni was glad for that, because when she did, it was accompanied by the heart wrenching feeling of loss, missing time, and injustice. Feelings that made her remember why things had ended and why their relationship was as tumultuous as it was.

Trauma. Fundamentally. Neither of them could escape their trauma. And it ruined one of the only good, solid things in their lives.

At least Toni's, she didn't know how Shelby felt. Not to this day, two months into college.

Toni hadn't gotten into the college of her choice. She remembered opening the letter at the dining room table with Martha, Russell and Bernice all watching her expectantly. She wished she could say that her disappointment was a joke, like she often saw in the romantic comedies that Martha and Fatin made her watch, but it wasn't. It was real. She cried silently in her room after graciously handling it in front of her family.

She had, however, gotten into Shelby's first choice.

They had applied together. Toni regretted that because every walk around campus, seeing the logo and mascot made her think about Shelby. Whether she was here, whether she was disappointed and sad at another school... Whether she had gotten into Toni's first choice instead of her own. That would be a cruel twist of fate if there ever was one.

Toni walked through the campus green towards her dorm, silently praying that her roommate was in class, or out with friends or literally anywhere but in Toni's vicinity.

The girl was... Toni couldn't even think of an accurate descriptor for how completely awful her roommate was. She was a different breed. Toni had never met anyone like her.

When they first met, after unlocking her door and walking into her dorm room for the first time, her first words to Toni were, "Oh my gosh! My boyfriend could have been in here, ever heard of knocking?"

Her boyfriend was not there, for future reference. He never was, in fact. But Toni heard so much about him in the subsequent few months that she actually felt as though she personally knew him.

Toni was so taken aback it took her a minute to respond. "I'm Toni... Your roommate."

"Well it's still the same. I need my privacy," Her whiny voice added, sending a shiver of intense irritation up Toni's spine.

She was completely puzzled. "We share a room?" She was trying for a statement but she was so baffled by the other girl's behaviour that every word leaving her mouth was a question within itself.

The other girl bristled. Visibly. Toni didn't even realise that was possible before then. The large purple bow embedded in a tangle of orange hair bobbled as though it was going to fall out as the girl huffed and got out of bed.

"I'm going to my boyfriend's house now. Don't wait up for me." With that, she stormed off, her long, 'little house on the prairie' style dress swishing as she exited. The door slammed shut. And then opened again so that the girl could yank some of her dress from under the door where it had been trapped.

Toni knew it was supposed to be some kind of scathing line, but all she could think was how bizarre it was that the girl thought she would wait up for her in the first place.