Feeding Ground

Nicole

Dedicated to: @NikkiLeeTaylor1   @jordanjadie90  @Zidhi_the_Zebra

Monday evening

"Hello?" Nicole Castillo asked into the phone, but only heard a dial tone in reply. It sounded like someone had picked up, and immediately disconnected. She dialed a couple more times, getting a busy signal each time.

"She isn't answering the phone, and she hasn't called in a couple of days," Nicole said, when she called her boyfriend Kevin. "This isn't like her." she was talking to him on the phone in her dorm room.

"Has she called her parents?" Kevin asked.

"I don't know, good question, I will call them next to ask them if they have heard from her."

There was a quiet knock on the half open door. Nicole looked up to see a girl with long brown hair and glasses standing in the doorway with a couple of suitcases. "Hi, I'm Becky," the girl said, waving. "I guess i am your new roommate."

Nicole's heart sank. "I'll call you back when I hear from her, apparently i have a new roommate."

"OOh," Kevin said. "Does that mean Molly isn't coming back to school?"

"I don't know, I hope she comes back. I talk to you later, I love you, babe." Nicole hung up the phone.

Tuesday

"Hey Becky, there is a party going on tonight, want to go with?" Nicole asked her new roommate.

The other girl looked up from the books spread over the desk on her side of the room. "It's Rebeccah, and no thank you, I have to study." She turned her sharp nose back to her textbook.

"Girl! There is more to the college experience than studying; I see I'll have to pull you out of your books the way I did with Molly."

"Don't you have to study to get good grades?"

"I do study, but I balance it by having fun, my boyfriend and I go to a Jazz club in the Village, they have a tasty Sunday brunch and show. I would be glad to show you around. My boyfriend Kevin goes to John Jay, but he still has friends here at NYU and he still gets invited to parties."

"My family are Jehovah Witnesses, they don't want me to go to parties, or date outside the church."

Nicole's mouth fell open for a second, then she closed it. "That..sounds a little cultish."

Rebeccah scowled. "We aren't a cult! We believe in God."

She rambled on, explaining the finer points of Jehovah Witnessry, but Nicole tuned her out while she let her mind wander, nodding every so often to pretend she was listening.

"Well, that all sounds great, Becky. So, your parents don't like music, maybe you can come to the Comedy Cellar with us sometime; Jerry Seinfeld shows up there occasionally, unannounced of course."

"Who is Jerry Seinfeld?" Becky asked, looking puzzled.

Nicole just stared at her in shock for a couple seconds, then blinked rapidly and shook her head.

"Um, I have to be...somewhere. Talk to you later." Nicole grabbed her walkman and headphones and hurried out the door. 'I gotta talk Molly into coming back!' she thought as she slid her headphones over her head.

Wednesday

"She is so boring!" Nicole complained to her boyfriend Kevin as they were eating dinner at Constantini's. Kevin's family were good friends with the owner, Luigi, and man rumored to have cosa nostra connections, so Kevin was always able to get a table, even on the most crowded evenings. Their dates usually involved food, they both loved to eat, and they both liked exercise, which kept them fit. They met at an ice cream parlor. They kept making eye contact, but they were too far apart in the line to have a conversation. A few days later, they ran into each other at NYU's gym, and they had been almost inseparable ever since. Kevin had admitted he liked how she looked in her cut off shorts, so much that he had asked around to find her, and he knew she would be at the gym when they met there that day.