“It’s not just the three of us most nights now. Again, the boys,” Jane said.
“That’s right, you all have pretty exclusive relationships,” I said. Again, socials.
“You know,” Lily said, “maybe the one piece of advice I’d give you is to make sure to have some fun this year. I don’t regret meeting Lucas for the world, and I’m really happy to be with him, but…”
“Same,” Jane said. “I’m happy with Stick. But in a way I wish I hadn’t met him until this year. I wasn’t thinking I’d get so serious freshman year, you know?”
Syd tentatively raised a hand. “Also same. I love Billy, and we didn’t get together until last spring, but I do feel a bit of, I don’t know, loss over what I thought would be a fun single-girl year.”
I nodded. I got it. Happy to be where they were, but a bit sorry it came so fast.
“No problem here. I have no intention of homing in on one boy. That is so not where my head’s at,” I said.
The girls nodded and murmured things like “of course,” “understandable,” and other platitudes that I’d heard in hushed tones whenever my mental health, and grief, would come up.
Syd checked her watch and said she had to get going, prompting our circle to break up with each of us heading down a different path.
Ha! How was that for a metaphor? My path led in the complete opposite direction.
“Hey, Megan,” Jane called, causing me to turn around. “If you want to reach out, text. Anytime.”
“Thanks,” I said back, loud enough for her to hear me, but not at yell level.
“And you’ve got it so right. Don’t let any one man sidetrack you from an awesome freshman year. You waited too long for it.”
“I won’t,” I said. We both did a final wave and then continued down our separate paths.
Metaphor or not, I intended to do things differently than my former roommates.
There would be no falling head over heels for one guy this year.
Playing the field was the plan. Hookups when I felt like it.
And fun.
I wasn’t sure if that last bit was my mother’s voice in my head, or my own. Whosever wise words they were, I was going to heed them.
Chapter2
I lookedmyself over in the mirror before leaving my room to join two of my new suitemates. Chloe, Abigail, and I had decided to do it up big and put on our short dresses, straighten our hair, and even put on fake lashes. And I hated those things.
Straightening my long mass of brownish-blond curls (more waves than curls, much to my chagrin) was nearly an hour-long task alone. Way too much hair to have to deal with.
Emily had opted out for the evening. I had also started to when Chloe first mentioned the party she’d heard was going to be “extraextra.” But then I thought about what Jane had said, and other voices chirping in my mind about the “college experience” and “finding my way” and all the other platitudes my father and aunt had dropped on me before I left Lincoln to come back to Bribury. Jane’s voice tipped the scale, and I dug my tight black dress with the skimpiest straps out of the bottom of the suitcase I hadn’t even bothered to unpack yet.
My party clothes.
Which hadn’t seen the light of day since my mother and I went shopping for them, and other, more suitable-for-classes stuff, before I left home the first time a year ago.
“Everybody needs a little black dress in their arsenal,” Mom had said.
“You sound like I’m bracing for war,” I’d said.
“Who says you’re not?”
Neither of us knew I’d be fighting a different battle—grief—only weeks later.
“Come on, Chloe, that’s like the eightieth selfie. One of them will work for whatever you’re posting,” I heard Abigail say from the other room of our suite. I crossed through the main room and entered Chloe and Abigail’s room to see Chloe taking shots of herself with her phone in front of the full-length mirror.
