Penny walked to the driveway with her mom trailing her. She turned for a one-armed hug. Imagining herself as part of an animal control unit lassoing a python in a studio apartment, she held Celeste’s gaze with her own the whole time. Then—with no sudden movements—she deftly popped the car door open with her free hand and slid in.
Seat belt fastened, Penny eased out of the driveway and into freedom. Part of her dreaded going to college alone. In the Instagram Stories version, her dad would haul her boxed-up belongings in a big truck. They’d argue about what to play on the way there and he’d give up the aux cord, since he’d miss her so much. As he left, he’d get choked up, handing her fifty dollars while mumbling something about making good time, and Penny would know deep in her heart how much he loved her.
“I love you, baby!” wailed Celeste, jolting Penny from her thoughts.
Penny rolled down her window. “I love you too, Mommy. I’ll call you later. I promise.”
This time Penny did feel a pang. Her nose got that stinging, chlorine feeling you get right when you’re about to cry. She checked her rearview to see her already small mom getting smaller, waving big.
• • •
An hour and a half later, Penny pulled into the curved driveway at Kincaid.
“Jesus,” she whispered, clutching her steering wheel to gaze up at the building. Kincaid was among the oldest dorms at UT, and it was hideous. Penny wondered if you could feel the ugliness from the inside. Boasting eight floors painted in alternating blue and salmon layers, it resembled a Miami hotel from the 1970s more than a dorm. Eighty units of eyesore that were the tackiest part of the campus skyline. The lurid hues reminded Penny of kicky animal-print scrubs favored by pediatric oncologists. It was the upbeatness that made the whole thing depressing.
Throngs of anxious parents and freshmen huddled around SUVs carting enormous plastic bins, laundry baskets, and floor lamps. Just as Penny rolled down her window to scope the scene, a freckly brunette stuck her face into her car until they were nose-to-nose. Her eyes were bulbous, glinting with a helpfulness that bordered on menacing.
“Name?” yawped the girl. Penny smelled Fritos on her breath.
“Lee,” she supplied. “Penelope.”
“Hmm . . . Lee?” She drew her finger down her clipboard and then tapped it. “Ah,” she said triumphantly. “There you are, sweetie.”
Ugh. Sweetie. This chick was nineteen tops.
The girl’s eyes flickered over Penny’s red lipstick. Penny had found it with a note to “smile more!” in her backpack pocket. Celeste had a habit of tucking cosmetics or clipped-out articles about the effects of positive thinking among Penny’s things. Sneak-attack gifts that felt like criticism.
“Sweetie?” Penny sang back. “Can you back up a smidge? You’re practically inside of my face with your face?” She said it exactly how she imagined the girl would, with everything going up in a question.
There was no way Little Miss Texas Corn Chip was going to “sweetie” her into submission.
The girl swiftly withdrew her head.
“Oh my God?” she chirped, bleached teeth gleaming. “So many of the parents literally can’t hear me? I’ve been yelling for hours?” The girl inspected Penny’s lipstick again. “Wait. I’m obsessed with how matte that is. What is it?”
“Isn’t it fabulous?” Penny enthused, reaching for the tube in her bag. “Too Thot to Trot?” she read off the sticker on the bottom. Christ, she felt as if saying makeup names out loud set women’s rights back several decades.
“Ugh! I knew it! I love Staxx lip kits? You know T-T-T-T’s sold out everywhere, right? Why are the good reds always quickstrike?”
“Ugh, right?!” exclaimed Penny, who had no idea what she was talking about. “It’s the worst?” The girl rolled her eyes theatrically in agreement.
“Okay, so you’re in 4F,” she said, drumming her shellacked nails on her clipboard. “Elevators are toward the back. And you can unload anywhere you can see a blue sign. Buuuuuuuut . . .”
She placed a purple laminated pass on her dash. “This buys you parking for the rest of the day. Just return it to the front desk when you’re done.”
“Thank you?” said Penny brightly. “You’re a lifesaver?”
The girl beamed. “I know?”
Penny’s face strained from the false cheer. It was frankly impressive that Celeste’s addiction to trendy makeup and some doofus imprinting on her like a baby farm animal could land her parking privileges. More yakking and some thigh-slapping laughter at dad-jokes scored Penny a hand truck from her neighbor down the hall. Rules for friendliness were a racket. In no time, college Penny would be as adored as Celeste. Granted, she’d have to get a lobotomy to keep it up, but maybe the exchange rate was worth it.
When Penny swung her door open, she noticed the following: Her room smelled of Febreze with a top note of musty carpet. It was discouragingly small to be shared with another person. Plus, it was already inhabited by a dark-haired girl sitting on the bed by the window. A girl who was not her roommate. Penny and Jude Lange had Skyped twice over the summer, and this chick with indoor sunglasses and a wide-brim Coachella hat was not her. The girl neglected to glance up from her phone.
“Hello?” Penny began lugging her stuff in.
The girl silently continued typing.
Penny cleared her throat.
Finally, the girl removed her oversized bedazzled sunglasses to get a glimpse of Penny. She had famous-people eyebrows and wore a tan suede vest with foot-long tassels.
“Where’s Jude?” the girl asked in a manner that suggested Penny worked there.
“Uh, I don’t know.”
The girl rolled her eyes and returned to her phone.
Penny glared and once again wished her hostility could incinerate people.
Possible responses to a possible home invader who was possibly a maniac and possibly has a switchblade under her hat:
1. Fight her.
2. Start screaming and pull your own hair to signal that you’re even crazier and not to be trifled with.
3. Introduce yourself and find out more information.
4. Ignore her.
Unsurprisingly, Penny chose the path of least resistance. She grabbed her toiletry bag out of her suitcase and made a beeline for the bathroom. It was the size of a closet. You could’ve washed your hair while sitting on the toilet by leaning into the shower stall. Penny placed her bag on the toilet tank, figured it was perilously close to potential pee splash-back and set it on the side of the sink.
From another stash bag, she pulled out a roll of toilet paper, a microbe-free shower curtain, a toothbrush holder that didn’t have a well on the bottom where water could collect, a brand-new shower mat, and towels. Penny arranged everything exactly the way that made sense. TP was hung in the correct direction (“over” obviously; “under” was for murderers).
When she was done, she marched back out and went for option three. “Penelope Lee, Penny,” she said, extending her hand to the girl.
The girl stood up and considered Penny’s paw with distaste until Penny was forced to lower it. Penny’s eyeline was to her boob (option one would not have been cute). “Mallory Sloane Kidder,” she said, still typing on her phone. “Though I’m in the process of changing my name to Mallory Sloane. Professionally.”
Mallory had symmetrically winged eyeliner, thick hips, and pointy metallic nails. Penny didn’t know what “professionally” implied.
“Actor,” Mallory Sloane (formerly Kidder) said briskly. She sat back down and crossed her legs. Her nails tap-danced furiously as she texted. “I’ve done off-off-off-Broadway.”
Penny wondered about the jurisdiction of off-off-off-Broadway. It probably had nothing to do with actual Broadway in New York. With enough imagination, hyphens, and prepositions, the corner of East César Chávez and Chicon could probably qualify as off-Broadway.
“Uh, rad,” Penny said.
Mallory held up a finger to indicate for her to wait.
“It’s Jude,” she said, typing into her phone. “Your roommate.”
“Cool.”
“She’s my best friend, you know.”
Tappedy, tappedy tap.
“Since we were six.”
Penny rolled her eyes. Quickly so she wouldn’t get her ass beat by this giant.
“Is everything okay?”
Mallory held up her finger again. Penny wondered how much force it would require to break it in three places.
“She wants us to meet her at a coffee shop on the Drag.”
There had to be some rule against moving to a second location with a stranger. For all Penny knew, her new roommate and this obnoxious broad could be “best friends” from a fetish message board that specialized in cutting up Asian girls for hot dogs. It was all so typical. Penny was at college ten minutes and she was already the third wheel.
“Let’s go.” Mallory set about collecting her things and then looked at a dawdling Penny as if she were stupid.
“Look, they have donuts.”
Penny grabbed her backpack.
Mallory Sloane Kidder might have been an asshole, but her argument was airtight.
SAM.
Jude smiled at Sam.
Sam smiled at Jude.
Jude’s smile was better than Sam’s.
Sam remembered the first time she’d smiled at him. It was Christmas Day a decade ago and Sam was ornery when he opened the door. Bad enough he was forced to wear itchy pants that bunched at the crotch, but to add insult to injury, his mom, Brandi Rose, made him put on a tie.
“Put on a tie,” she’d said. Just like that. She had curlers in her hair and smelled of the perfume that had appeared mysteriously in a glass teardrop on the bathroom counter.
“Hurry up.” She swatted his arm as she squeezed past in their comically snug hall. Sam studied her as she shambled into the kitchen and tried to see her as a man would, as a woman. She looked haggard. The broken blood vessels around her nose had been covered with a thick powder that aged her.