“At least let me make up your bed, then,” she said.
When it was time to say good-bye, I wasn’t ready. I thought I would be, but I wasn’t. My dad stood there, his hands on his hips. His hair looked really gray in the light. He said, “Well, we should get going if we want to beat rush-hour traffic.”
Irritably, my mother said, “We’ll be fine.”
Seeing them together like this, it was almost like they weren’t divorced, like we were still a family. I was overcome with this sudden rush of thankfulness. Not all divorces were like theirs. For Steven’s and my sake, they made it work and they were sincere about it. There was still genuine affection between them, but more than that: there was love for us. It was what made it possible for them to come together on days like this.
I hugged my dad, and I was surprised to see tears in his eyes. He never cried. My mother hugged me briskly, but I knew it was because she didn’t want to let go. “Make sure you wash your sheets at least twice a month,” she said.
“Okay,” I said.
“And try making your bed in the morning. It’ll make your room look nicer.”
“Okay,” I said again.
My mother looked over at the other side of the room. “I just wish we could have met your roommate.”
Jeremiah was sitting at my desk, his head down, scrolling on his phone while we said our good-byes.
All of a sudden, my dad said, “Jeremiah, are you going to leave now too?”
Startled, Jeremiah looked up. “Oh, I was going to take Belly to dinner.”
My mother shot me a look, and I knew what she was thinking. A couple of nights before, she’d given me this long speech about meeting new people and not spending all my time with Jere. Girls with boyfriends, she’d said, limit themselves to a certain kind of college experience. I’d promised her I wouldn’t be one of those kind of girls.
“Just don’t get her back too late,” my dad said in this really meaningful kind of way.
I could feel my cheeks get red, and this time my mother gave my dad a look, which made me feel even more awkward. But Jeremiah just said, “Oh, yeah, of course,” in his relaxed way.
I met my roommate, Jillian, later that night, after dinner. It was in the elevator, right after Jeremiah dropped me off in front of the dorm. I recognized her right away, from the pictures on her dresser. She had curly brown hair, and she was really little, shorter than she’d looked in the pictures.
I stood there, trying to figure out what to say. When the other girls in the elevator got off on the sixth floor, it was just the two of us. I cleared my throat and said, “Excuse me. Are you Jillian Capel?”
“Yeah,” she said, and I could tell she was a little weirded out.
“I’m Isabel Conklin,” I said. “Your roommate.”
I wondered if I should hug her or offer her my hand to shake. I did neither, because she was staring at me.
“Oh, hi. How are you?” Without waiting for me to answer, she said, “I’m just coming back from dinner with my parents.” Later, I would learn that she said “How are you” a lot, like it was more of a thing to say, not something she expected an answer to.
“I’m good,” I said. “I just had dinner too.”
We got off the elevator then. I felt this excited pitter-patter in my chest, like wow, this is my roommate. This was the person I was going to be living with for a whole year. I’d thought a lot about her since I got my housing letter. Jillian Capel from Washington, DC, nonsmoker. I’d imagined us talking all night, sharing secrets and shoes and microwave popcorn.
When we were in our room, Jillian sat down on her bed and said, “Do you have a boyfriend?”
“Yeah, he goes here too,” I said, sitting on my hands. I was eager to get right to the girl talk and the bonding. “His name is Jeremiah. He’s a sophomore.”
I jumped up and grabbed a photo of us from my desk. It was from graduation, and Jeremiah was wearing a tie and he looked handsome in it. Shyly, I handed it to her.
“He’s really cute,” she said.
“Thanks. Do you have a boyfriend?”
She nodded. “Back home.”
“Neat,” I said, because it was all I could think of. “What’s his name?”
