Attleboro University

Part 2

Sinead was still unpacking when Amy walked in the door.

Somehow, this surprised her, but it really shouldn't have. After all, it had taken Amy nearly as long to unpack her things, and she had less than a quarter of what Sinead had.

"Um- hi?" Amy realized how weird she looked, hovering awkwardly in the doorway. A great first impression she was making; a terrible first impression Sinead was making.

"H-h-hi."

"Is that, like, a disorder or something?"

Amy, who had spent most of her childhood putting up with similar- if not harsher- comments from her peers, was immediately on the defensive. "N-n-no!"

Sinead didn't seem convinced, but she also didn't seem to care. "Whatever."

Somehow, Amy sat down on her bed even less inclined to speak to her roommate than she had been before meeting her. She just couldn't understand how someone could be so rude to someone they'd just met! Especially someone they were meant to be rooming with for a whole year. Was Sinead just that mean, or did everybody assume they could treat Amy that way the second they saw her? It was true- she wasn't going to fight back or say anything, because she would rather simply pass away- but was it really that obvious?

To her horror, she felt tears spring to her eyes, and her face turned even redder- two very physical reactions that had been made fun of relentlessly all the way through the public school system. If she started sobbing in front of her new roommate, her life was probably over.

Amy glanced frantically around the room, and her eyes landed on the bottom shelf of the shared bookcase, where her pile of beloved novels lay. As unobtrusively as possible, she grabbed one and laid back on the bed. Books always helped her take her mind off of even her most extreme emotions, and so she turned to reading when she got upset- another fact which had gotten her bullied, come to think of it. Sinead, who was now unfurling a giant Taylor Swift poster- oh, no- would probably judge her for it too.

But Sinead ignored her completely in favor of unpacking for the next half hour, and by the time she was done, Amy had calmed down and lost herself in the world of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace. Still without a word, Sinead straightened from where she'd been lining up CDs, dusted off her hands, and walked out the door.

Amy stared at her book for a few more minutes before she couldn't take the silence anymore and set it aside. Normally, she could sit for hours by herself and it wouldn't bother her at all- she preferred quiet, empty spaces more than loud and crowded ones. But right now, when it was orientation weekend and Sinead was probably going to a party or something, it was a little stifling.

She considered calling Nellie, but that felt like a cheap way out; and then she and Dan would both know that she was already failing to make friends, and they hadn't even been gone a full hour yet. She spent a bit of time looking around at Sinead's side of the room, but gave up when she saw that the aforementioned Taylor Swift poster had multiplied; she even scrolled through her phone, which she rarely did on principle and by design, since she didn't have any social media apps downloaded.

Maybe she could go check out the library. That was what she'd been most excited about in her dorm, right? And nothing could ever go wrong for her in a library.

It was miraculously empty when she got there, and it was every bit as beautiful as it had been in the pictures- even more so when accompanied by the old-book smell. And it was stocked with books that she couldn't wait to explore. She wondered how many of them she'd read before.

She made a beeline for the history section, grabbed a book she didn't recognize, and settled herself in a comfy armchair, ready to block out the world for the rest of the evening.