After I got back from pottery, I skipped the TA-led college financial-accounting tutoring group because I had a catering shift with Marianne. There was some sort of afternoon tea hosted by the dean with goats from a local farm in honor of Crumpets the goat, and she said it would be a simple event and a good time to train me. I picked up on it all quickly enough, and despite the tragic uniform of unflattering black pleated pants, matching vest, tux shirt, and bow tie, it was fine. I wanted to literally crush teacups with my bare hands, but it was fine. And the goats were smelly, but cute.
“You okay over there?” Marianne asked.
“No, but I can’t get into it without losing my temper and inadvertently fucking up something my first day on the job.”
I was already miserable enough from the required shoes. Thefemale waiters are forced to wear these hideous pumps that aren’t even comfortable, which violates every law of footwear. All shoes should ideally be comfortable, but they can’t be both ugly and painful. And yet… Oh! And as I left for the night, Marianne’s brother informed me that the cost of my uniform would be deducted from my first check. Pyramid scheme bullshit if you ask me.
After my shift, I ran back to the dorm and changed before stopping for a quick bowl of cereal in the dining hall and showing up for my shift at the library.
My feet were killing me and my irritability was off the charts, so when they asked for one student worker to volunteer to go home at eleven instead of one in the morning in order to rectify some sort of payroll overage, I jumped at the chance and would have probably stepped over a dead body if I had to. Financially, it was a bad decision, but that would have to be future Clover’s problem.
Now, at fifteen past eleven, I’m lying in my bed with my feet up against the headboard in the hopes that the blood will drain down my legs and I won’t be able to feel the throbbing in my toes.
There’s a sequence of knocks at my door that creates an almost sunny tune. “Sorry!” an upside-down Daisy calls as she lets herself in. “The door was cracked. But oh good! You’re here!”
“Physically, yes,” I tell her. “Got out of work early.”
“Perfect,” she says. “I need a wing woman.”
“I’m not really wing woman material,” I tell her in the hopes that she will see that my current form is comparable to a cicada exoskeleton.
Undeterred, she plops down on Bennett’s side of the bed so that she’s beside me. “You can’t be worse than Briar,” she says. “We went to a party last week and she left after an hour to go home and set up her black-market grilled cheese stand.”
“Wow. So that’s a real thing, huh? I saw her the other night and honestly thought I was hallucinating. I admire the hustle.”
She nods. “Very real. And she’s definitely using my iron. She said it was a business investment and that I would get my money back when her profit margins were—gosh, I don’t even know.” She waves her hand around. “I just ordered another one online.”
“Sounds like you really won the roommate lottery,” I tell her with obvious sarcasm.
Daisy smiles. “It could be way worse. Some girl on the third floor joined some group called Boxwatch. Apparently, like, sixty people get together every Wednesday at three in the morning and stare at a box in the quad. Now this girl won’t let anyone on her floor throw out or recycle boxes.”
“To watch a box?”
She shrugs. “Paul, the guy two doors down… his roommate has a scrapbook of his favorite autopsies. He’s majoring in forensic science, so I guess it’s not that weird, but next to his bed he keeps a mouse, which is also named Paul, in a jar full of formaldehyde. The roommate swears it’s a coincidence, but I don’t know.”
I laugh and silently decide that at this point I would take the creepy roommate over my own husband. “Okay, you win. So when do you need a wing woman?” I ask.
“Um… right about now?” Daisy says as though it’s an apology. “Honestly, an hour ago, but as soon as you can be ready will do just fine. I was invited to a party by a hockey player from my speech class. I hate to objectify someone, but he is what most women would refer to as pantie-dropping.”
“Oh god, I can’t tonight,” I tell her. “I’m exhausted and Bennett and I are—”
“In a fight,” she says. “I know. Most of the floor heard you screaming at him to get out.”
“Was I really screaming?” I ask.
“Loud enough for the reclusive Dylan to stick his head out of his door.”
“Christ,” I mutter.
“Don’t worry. He must have decided no one was in danger of being murdered, because he immediately retreated to his hidey-hole.” She yanks on my hand. “So come on. You need a drink and I’ll call us a car so we won’t even have to hoof it.”
I rub the heels of my palms into my eyes.
I should do this. I should go out and do college things. Daisy is nice. I have no friends and I do not want to be here if and when Bennett comes home. I’m a few weeks into the semester, and I have hardly had any experiences that could be classified as distinctly college.
“Fine, fine, fine,” I tell her. “But I can’t promise how late I’ll stay.”
True to her word, Daisy orders us a car, and we are caught in a minor traffic jam when we get stuck behind a herd of students walking to the football stadium for some late-night pep rally.
