The Sky is a Surface (Cate Blanchett x Renée Rapp x OC)

September 3rd

The first time I met her, she was on top of him in our dorm room. 

"Yeah, baby..." she was riding him with her head thrown back, facing away from me.

They didn't even see me coming in at first, and I admitted that I watched them for 2 seconds too long before making my presence known.

"Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry," I whimpered as I pretended to turn my head away in a reflex, covering my eyes with my free hand. My other hand was dragging 100 pounds of luggage across the threshold of our new room. 

"Fuck! Don't you know how to knock?" Still straddling his crotch in a bra and panties, she turned around while pushing her flowing blond locks back from her face and stared daggers at me, more annoyed than embarrassed. 

"I'm so sorry," I repeated, as if saying it a second time would suddenly make everything better, "I thought the room was empty." 

I was not being unreasonable - it was move-in day, and the room was mostly unfurnished except for the twin bed with old wooden posts that bore the brunt of their passionate grinding just seconds ago. The guy, a pale, flimsy fella with chestnut hair, lay on his back in white boxers. They were so properly dressed for the unruly-sounding sex that they were having, as if expecting someone to walk in on them. 

"You must be Evangeline," she swung her legs away from either side of his pelvis and wrapped a blanket around herself as if nothing had happened, "My name is Renée, and this is my boyfriend Dash." 

"Hi Renée," I said, "I just go by Angie."

Dash sat up and snuck past me out of the room. "I'll leave you guys to it then, I'm right down the hall." He gave me a smirk before disappearing down the hallway, "Nice meeting you, Angie. And congratulations, you've won the roommate lottery."

I didn't know what he meant by then, but my small-town southern self was about to be shown the cosmopolitan east coast ways of college, and of course, its low-key elite student body. Except my roommate wasn't low-key at all, she was Renée Rapp, singer-songwriter on the rise and TV star fresh off of the HBO series Sex Lives of College Girls. 

Commanding a stout and dominant build, she radiated true queen bee energy. Her face was hard, her features delineated by sharp lines. Above her flashy grin were piercing eyes that always stared through me instead of at me, and cute, loose bangs that gave her a deceptive air of innocence. 

She was the type of girl who had zero problems in her life. And I had many. One of which was the lack of awareness that if I told someone like Renée Rapp how I really felt about her, it wouldn't make me look cool at all. It would make me look pathetic. 

"I think you're really cool," I blurted out two hours later as she watched me unpack. 

She rolled her eyes and didn't bother hiding her sneer, "I do plan on being Beyoncé one day." 

"Wow, that's...fucking impressive." Then I blushed, because I said fuck. 

"Not as fucking impressive as Dash though," she waved her finger at me, enclosed by a large studded ring that could slit someone's throat open, "his mom has two Oscars." 

I was going to ask what his mom's name was, but she interrupted me. 

"So, Angie, like...what are you?" 

"Oh," I didn't skip a beat, having been asked that question way too many times in my life, "well I've lived in the states all my life. But I'm German on my dad's side, and Filipina on my mom's side. A child of imperialism." 

"Haha, you're funny. And that explains why you're so pretty. So skinny, oh my god."

The blush deepened. "Thank you..."

"So you think you're pretty?" 

"Um, that's what I've been told a few times in my life, yes...but trust me, I don't always feel like it."

"You can literally pass as white." 

I smiled politely. 

Then she invited me to go down together to her shiny red Lamborghini, parked just right outside our dorm building. 

"Get in, loser," she said, "We're going to Chipotle, I wanna munch some tacos. Sex always makes me hungry."

-----

Later that night, I realized that her treating me to Chipotle was just so that she could "sexile" me for the night, the first new word that I learned upon arriving on campus (it means exiling one's roommate from the bedroom so one could have sex). 

As I lay on our cold common room couch with a crocheted blanket over me, I listened faintly to the noise on the other side of the wall. Renée and Dash were certainly finishing off what they started earlier in the day. And judging by their loud moans and crisp body noises, their underwear was most likely off by this point. 

It pissed me off. It wasn't the noise, the cold, or the fact that my nice, warm bed was only a few feet away from me and I couldn't sleep in it. This was only for a night. I was worried about the next four years. 

How could I live with someone that I was obsessed with, who barely acknowledged my existence? 

To my shock, Renée was gone the next morning. Not just for the day, but for several. No head's up, no note on the fridge, nothing. I wasn't sure if she was still going to class, and no one I knew saw her. 

Then she came back for several days, and was gone again. This went on for a few weeks, and I never asked her about it, because she always seemed exhausted when she came back, with circles under her eyes.  

One day, I received an unexpected guest while alone in my dorm room.

I heard two gentle knocks on the door, but didn't bother to get it, as I thought that it must've been Renée coming home from another one of her mysterious disappearances. But after a few seconds, I didn't hear her key turn in the lock, so I got up to get the door. A 50-something blonde woman was standing in the hallway.

"Hello, sorry to bother you...does Renée Rapp live here?"

"Yea, she does. How may I help you?"

"Do you know where she is?"

"Honestly, I don't. She's not...around a lot, these days."

"That's what I was afraid of. I received a call from the university yesterday that my son has been missing his exams...and I haven't been able to reach him since then."

Then it dawned on me who she was.

"Oh, you're Dash's mom." I extended my hand, "I'm Angie, Renée's roommate. Lovely to meet you."

"Likewise," she said with a weary smile, "I'm Cate."