Indifference or Disinterest

Chapter I

Ryan was sitting on his school provided mattress. The thing was as hard as a board and covered in a shiny plastic layer to prevent bedbugs, he assumed. At least that was one thing he wouldn't have to worry about. 

His boxes were piled up messily against the small wall of the dorm, and he sighed at the idea of unpacking all of them. Even if he got around to opening the boxes and organizing his belongings into rough categories, he had no idea where to put any of it. There were built-in drawers under the beds, and the desk on his side of the room also had a drawer, but bringing every book he owned halfway across the country seemed to have been a gross miscalculation. His dad had told him anything he left behind would be thrown out, so at least this way he got to keep them all. Even if his half of the room ended up looking like a rundown used bookstore. 

The college staggered the arrival days of the people living in dorms, so his roommate would likely arrive tomorrow. He'd been given the guy's name and school email when they'd been matched as roommates, but the guy hadn't reached out to him, and Ryan would rather jump out of a window than instigate social interaction. So he had no idea what to expect. The personality survey they were forced to take had been pretty extensive, and since Ryan had only lied a little bit to make himself seem less boring, he hoped they'd get along. 

He flopped down on his bed, producing a squeaking noise from the plastic mattress, and stared up at the white ceiling, the white walls, and the white window dressings. It was all very clinical. His room looked out on the quad, a large expanse of grass where people tended to play sports or lay around with books. He'd given it a cursory glance as he'd been bringing boxes into the room. 

He reached into the backpack laying on the bed next to him and powered on his laptop. He really didn't feel like unpacking just yet, so he used his school ID to log onto the wifi, which turned out to be painfully slow, and pulled up Netflix in the browser. He resumed the episode of the show he'd been binging, letting his mind wander as the various characters killed demons and other mythical creatures. 

After a few hours of not moving except to pee, he heard a knock on the door a few down from his. He didn't think too much of it, but his mind wouldn't let him not take note of the information. Then after about a minute he heard a knock slightly closer. He could just barely hear the sound of people talking as the door was answered, and then a knock came at his own door. His stomach tied itself in knots as he ran his fingers through his hair and tugged his tshirt down from where it had been riding up. 

He pulled open his door to see a very short boy with glasses and a silly hat, smiling at him expectantly. "Hello Ryan. Could you join us in the lounge in about ten minutes, please?" Ryan was too caught off guard by the cheery disposition and the fact that this guy knew his name to do anything other than nod. The guy smiled even bigger, if that was possible, and bounded down the hall to the next door, knocking and then swaying in place as he waited for the occupant to answer. 

Ryan frowned as he closed his own door and looked at his outfit in the mirror that was attached to the wall. He was pretty sure the mirror wasn't meant to come standard, but that the previous owners of the room had done too good a job double-sided taping it to the wall for it to be taken down. 

He felt gross and sweaty from moving everything in the Californian heat, but he didn't really care enough to go digging through boxes to find a cleaner shirt. He wandered down the hall to the communal bathrooms that his floor shared. In the few hours he'd been here he hadn't managed to bump into anyone using the toilet at the same time as him, but this time as he entered there was another guy standing at a urinal. Ryan went to the sink and rinsed his face before running a wet hand through his hair, trying to stick down the unruly bedhead he'd managed to form.