"There's no way," my brother, Jacob grunts, trying to fit the last box into the bed of his truck like a Tetris block. We've been carrying stuff out of my dorm room for almost half an hour, and this is the last box finally. "It's just not possible that you brought this much stuff when you moved in."
"It accumulated over the year," I say, climbing up into the bed to shift some stuff to make room. Neither of us are particularly design minded, and our rooms are never perfectly clean with a place for everything and everything in its place. In fact, you could consider us as walking disasters and you wouldn't be wrong. "I didn't bring this much in the fall, but I also forgot half of my shit."
"I don't like it."
I laughs and take the box from him to fit it between a tote and a duffle bag. I stand back at the edge to consider the layout in front of me, and shrug.
"Yeah, that'll have to do."
I hop down, and together we pull the cover the best we can over the bed of the truck.
"Works for me. Fuck, now I want some food. You down for pizza?" he ask.
"Yes, yes, yes, the pizza on campus is subpar and I want something good, Jacob. I want the good pizza."
"Got a specific place in mind in town?"
"Yeah, Frankie's, it's on the way to the highway."
"Neat. Do you need to sign out of your room, or something?"
"Yeah, I'll be back in a couple minutes."
I jog back into my dorm to check out for the year and give back my keys.
"Hey Campbell," my RA, Bradley says as I walk up to the resident assignment office at the top of the stairs leading into the community floor of the building. He is a tall upperclassman who lives at the end of the hall in the biggest room on the floor; he always has his door open like a constant babysitter peering into the hall. He's nice, and his emails are cheery. It helped, I realized sometime in November, to have a kind, smiling face when you felt so far from home. It also helps that he was handsome, complete with chiseled features and piercing blue eyes, matched with tousled soft brown hair. Most of the girls on the floor are at least a little in love with him, and I can not blame them. "Heading out for the summer already?"
"Yeah, I had all of my finals yesterday morning, and turned in all of my essays last night. I had it pretty easy for this semester, finishing up my gen eds."
"Already?"
"I overloaded my schedule this year, part of the master's in five years program," I explain.
"Ambitious."
He shuffles some papers around until he finds what he's looking for, a clipboard full of forms and envelopes for keys.
"Okay, fill the top half of this out for me really quick, and then we can go check out your room."
I take the form from him and fill it out while we talk.
"My roommate is still in the room, is that a problem?"
"Nope, I just have to check out your half, like your desk and dresser, to make sure you didn't destroy it. I suspect that you didn't, but I still have to check."
"That makes sense, actually. I promise I didn't destroy a single thing."
He laughs, and it's a nice sound.
"Most people don't, but we still have to check in case someone wasn't smart enough to cover up what they damaged. It's not even that hard. Toothpaste works great, for future reference, to cover tack holes ā actually, I shouldn't be telling you that. Don't put tacks in the walls."
I raise my hand holding the pen to salute him and give him a sincere, "aye, aye, captain!"
He grins at me as I finish up my form and pass it back to him.
"Alright, 716, Campbell, Joanne, let's get this party on the road!"
"Show," I correct as we exit the office and head for the elevator bank that sits in the center of the building.
"What?"
"Show on the road, party started," I say with a shrug. "You're mixing metaphors."
"Well, considering I get to ride the elevator up and down about one thousand times a day for the rest of the week, I've started mixing more than metaphors."
I can't help the small chuckle that slipped from my, because I have seen Bradley drunk exactly once. He is a sloppy drunk, in that he destroyed his own community board because, in his own words, "it was a trash disaster garbage mess that was an eye-sore to everyone." He hadn't been on duty so he could do anything he really wanted, and while the building is considered dry, all that meant was that he couldn't drink in the building. That didn't stop the newly 21-year-old from going to the bar with his friends and getting absolutely plastered.
He woke up the next morning, apparently, and stumbled to the bathroom without any recollection of what he'd done. He stopped in front of the board, stared at it for a few moments, before moving on with a nod but without a word. Someone later, I wasn't sure who, had informed him that that was his handiwork. He had never come back that drunk ever again.
He presses the call button for the elevator and goes back to examining my form.
"716, huh. Who's your roommate again?" he asks, looking at the clipboard where I tried to neatly print my information. My brother and I have the same handwriting and receive the same marks from almost every teacher we'd ever had: "please print neater next time." We give doctors a run for their money, honestly.
"Kelly," I answer.
"Huh," he says. The elevator doors open before us and we step onto the empty car. No one is up and about yet. It is extraordinarily early, the sun not even really all the way up yet, but Jacob wants to get back on the road around noon, since we'll be driving a solid three and a half hours back home. He occasionally makes the joke that I am trying to escape something, but it always falls flat when we both realize that I am. We both are.
"Guess I don't remember her," Bradley says, running a hand through his hair.
"She's," I pause, searching through all the adjectives that could describe Kelly, "reserved, doesn't leave the room much."
"Ahhh. I don't think she came to any floor meetings," Bradley says.
"She didn't. She also barely went to class, I swear. I mean, I wouldn't actually know because I had class all day, every day, but I swear, she was always in the room."
"My freshman roommate played Call of Duty all day," he commiserates.
"She," I pause again. "I actually don't know if I know what she does all day. She's very secretive, but I think she might just be fucking around on Tumblr all day."
"I mean, same, but at least I take it with me," Bradley says, shaking his phone at me.
"I never really saw the appeal," I admit, "but I do fuck around on Pinterest for hours, so I guess that's kind of the same thing."
"What kind of shit do you pin?" he asks.
"Pride stuff, mostly, recipes, crafts. I know how to sew and knit, so patterns for that."
"Pride stuff?"
"Yeah, I make flags and banners for our local pride parade every year. There's a surprising amount of people in the community at home."
"I didn't know you were a, you know -"
I laugh, because some people are just so awkward about having to say the word lesbian, even if it doesn't technically apply to me.
"Yeah, sorry. I thought the pride flags and stickers in my room covered that base. Guess not."
We make it to the seventh floor and then down the hall to room 16 without too much awkwardness after that. I don't really mind when people didn't know what to say after I had to come out to them. I've been coming out since I was thirteen, and sometimes it's awkward. People just can't wrap their minds around bisexuality, no matter how many metaphors I use. They can't fathom that I like a wider range of people.
You don't ever really stop coming out. Every person you meet is just a small comment away from having to explain that, no, you are not straight like they assumed, and yes, your family does still love you.
"Here we are," I say, unlocking the door with my keys for the last time.
Kelly is right where I left her, as usual, on her bed with her laptop glued to her thighs. It must get hot. Does she have any nerve endings in her thighs left to tell her that her computer was getting too hot? I like my computer set neatly on a desktop just for this reason; if there's a fire at thigh-level, I would like my thighs to tell me.
She doesn't look up as we entered, which is typical Kelly behavior. She is a quiet, mousy girl who always wears her hair up in a severe bun, rarely spoke, and the only tan she is ever going to get was by the backlit screen of her laptop. She introduced herself in August, and then spoke probably about ten words to me ever since. It's a nice relationship, I admit, even if it's a little lonely at times. I see my friends have great relationships with their roommates, and are choosing to room with them next year, but I can't imagine choosing Kelly in a million years. She's quiet, sure, but she also doesn't clean or do anything useful around the room. I'm the one always opening and closing the windows, taking out the trash, cleaning the floor, sorting out the recycling. All the time she spent in the room, and she never once decided to tidy anything.
It doesn't matter, though. It's unlikely that I'll see her again, even at the small liberal arts college where you run into everyone you know at least once a day. She'd have to leave her room in order for that to happen, and as I've experienced, she rarely does that.
"Okay, lemme do a quick check here," Bradley says, setting about to pull open the drawers in my dresser and desk. I lean against edge of the doorframe. He moves quickly and efficiently, marking down each item as he worked. "Good job not destroying anything, Campbell."
"Thank you," I reply, playing with my hair before ultimately leaving it down where I'd styled it earlier.
Bradley sets his clipboard down on the desk to pull an envelope from the back of the clipped papers. "I just need you to drop your keys into this envelope, and we'll be all set. Thanks for being a great resident for me this year, and I hope you have a great summer."
-&-
It's a three-hour drive home, and the pizza on top of all of the physical exertion has tired us out, so it's a quiet drive, filled only by Jacob's radio playing 2000's pop as we pass across the state on the major highway. We've always lived in the town of Harrington Park ever since I could remember. It's a quaint small town in central Massachusetts, the kind of town where everyone leaves on Friday nights in order to have fun, only staying when the American Legion is having karaoke nights or when it's Wing Night at the Stadium Bar and Grill. Most people drive to Boston to get their kicks anyway, and really, no one in Harrington Park really is going to argue with that. If you are feeling less ambitious and unwilling to brave Boston, you could drive to Worcester nearby or to any of the countless historic locations in Massachusetts.
I had chosen to go to school in New York at a small liberal arts school in the mountains who have an excellent STEM program and a good neighbor discount on tuition for residents of New England. It's a ways away from home so I've only been home a handful of times during the school year, but it's a great place. They have everything I wanted in a school, including class size and major programs, and it's been an amazing first year. I' d almost dreaded moving three hours away from home to go to school, but I've found a little place of my own at Heritage College. It makes missing the familiarity of home just a little bit easier.
I watch the trees blur together in the window, oaks and maples mixed with pines and firs, creating an unintelligible green smudge to my right. We pass buildings of all different shapes and sizes, some belonging to this earth longer than our ancestors had been in the country. Sometimes, we pass nothing at all for long stretches, looking out over the fields and pastures of New England. It's my favorite sight, right after the Welcome to Harrington Park sign greeting you at the edge of town coupled with the Come Back Soon to Harrington Park sign bidding you farewell on the other side as you drove away.
It's a little weird when we pass the welcome sign, the feeling of cloying nostalgia settling over the car like a wet blanket.
"Maryann wants you to stop back into the bakery once you're settled in to set up shifts, by the way," Jacob says as we turn at the center intersection of town and drive past all of the shops on the square, including the bakery I've worked at since I was sixteen.
"She would," I laugh. Mary had hired me despite my obvious lack of experience or skill. She's always been nice and has taught me a lot over the past two years. I can now make all kinds of pastries, and I've been trying really hard to decorate a cake properly but that's never actually looked nice. She still lets me try, though, which is sweet. She also bakes me a cake every year for my birthday, whatever my favorite kind of cake is that year. This year, she made me a chocolate chip cake with a mocha crunch icing and decorated with Ferrero Rochers.
It was amazing, and I ate nearly the whole thing except one piece that I let Jacob have.
"Helo's gonna flip," Jacob says. "He's been so mopey since you left after spring break. You should take him on a hike this week, if you've got time."
"I'll put him on the schedule," I reply, watching the town square give way to the rural suburbia of our small town. Each house is different, personality built into the foundation. We've lived in the same house since we were kids, a modest two-story home with a fenced in backyard and a small one car garage and a long driveway. Our parents, distant business-types, keep the house taken care of, but never once tried to make it a home. The one thing they did, however, was buy us a dog when I was thirteen years old. He greets me fervently every time I walk in the door, without fail, without hesitation.
I unlock the side door to the house and Helo, our Australian shepherd, jumps at the door from the other side. His tail whips back and forth so quickly, it's a blur attached to his butt. He covers me in kisses as soon as I get inside, dragging his wet, frantic tongue over my skin and clothing.
"Oh, Helo, Heelie-boy, I missed you too. I did, I missed you so much. Were you good? Were you a good boy, Heels?"
I scratch right behind his ears and down his neck while he slobbers over me. It's welcome. Jacob's weekly updates of Helo just weren't enough; I wanted to cuddle the fur-ball.
"Oh, I bet you were. Yeah, I bet you were. Isn't that right?"
Jacob passes us, purposefully bumping me on the top of the head with a bag from the truck. Helo's tail thumps on the floor as he swipe Jacob's pant leg with his tongue as a passing hello, then turns his attention back to me.
"Are you gonna help carry stuff in?" Jacob asks.
"No, I'm gonna play with Helo."
"Helo will be here when we're done."
"My stuff will be here when I'm done with Helo."
He gives me an unamused face, and I mimic it back at him.
"Fine, I'll let Helo out and then I'll help," I say as I stand up from the kitchen floor. Helo bounces in place, his fur wobbling in the breeze. "Come on, boyyo, let's go potty."
Helo is well-trained, since Jacob had paid for behavior training when he was a puppy, and we've made sure to keep the same rules for Helo no matter who was home. When I let him out, he bounds off into the corners of the yard, sniffing at every flower and blade of grass before realizing he was outside to go to the bathroom. It didn't matter, he'd come paw at the backdoor when he was ready to come back inside.
"Okay," I say, heading for the truck to help unload it, "let's do this."