The Last Girl on Campus

Chapter 2

I woke up the next morning and looked through the plastic drawers near my wardrobe to see what food I had left. Everything that would've gone bad I threw away the day before. All I had were packages of chicken ramen, so I heated that up. I sat at the table in the kitchen and looked out the window at the baseball field. A maintenance worker was mowing the desolate outfield.

When I was a freshman, I knew that there was something special about Steinman Hall. I snuck in with my old roommates and we were in total awe. Obviously, since it was seniors-only, it was a lot nicer than our triple in Vanderbilt Hall on the other side of campus. Steinman Hall consisted of "apartment style" dorms, which included a full kitchen, a living room, bathroom, and four single bedrooms. Our room was in a lot of disrepair when we moved in. Holes in the wall and ceiling, the kitchen table was held together by duct tape, and none of the faucets worked. Gum was stuck to my bedframe and there was garbage all over the place. Long story short: the people who lived here the previous year didn't treat the place right. We worked hard to put in all the work orders needed and get the place cleaned up. It was like a whole different room.

My roommates and I had three things in common: we all were seniors, marine-bio majors, and were "Hatters" since we were in Eta Alpha Tau together. Since the Geek letter Eta is shaped like the letter H, the letters spelled out HAT, hence the nickname. Our room just looked like our sorority went in and exploded. Lavender and orange, our colors, were everywhere. Nearly everything was ordered from Hatter Bazaar, our sorority's online store. Lavender curtains were on both sides of the kitchen window. Orange dish towels hung on the handle of the stove. Underneath the living room coffee table was a lavender and orange striped shag carpet. We even had the smaller bath mat version in the bathroom. Above the couch was a clownfish, our sorority animal, with glittered purple H-A-T wooden letters over it.

I wouldn't say that we were the crazy sorority girls. We were just...passionate. Each of us held a position on the executive board at one point or another. Kayla just finished her term as president last semester. I was our treasurer as a sophomore.

I turned around and looked at the doors of Rachel and Cheyanne's rooms. They left for home the day before I did. I thought about their rooms: empty and cold. My eyes wandered back to my now-empty bowl of ramen. If I was getting this emotional now, imagine how bad it was going to be at the end of next semester when I would be leaving for good. I walked over to the sink washed my bowl out, and put it in the drying rack.

"Now what?" I asked myself.

Back in my bedroom, I unpacked my suitcase and put everything back in its designated spot, then brushed my teeth. Kayla came back in while I was at the bathroom sink.

"How did you do?" I muttered, my mouth full of toothpaste.

"Good enough!" she said.

I finished up and went out into the living room. Kayla was back in her room, reaching for a suitcase under her bed. I walked over and stood in the doorway. Richard, the goldfish, was happily swimming in circles around his bowl.

"So, the fish?"

"Right, right." She threw the suitcase on top of her bed, unzipped it, then went over to her dresser where she grabbed an armful of clothes that she tossed into the hot pink suitcase. She kept repeating this process. "Okay, so it's pretty simple. You feed him some of these flakes here three times a day. I just changed the water in his bowl last night so he should be good until next week. Just don't kill him," she said, glaring.