Maybe I really could start a new life here, I thought. My father was right. It would feel good to be on my own and not have all the heavy emotional turmoil to wade through every day. It could drown someone, especially someone like me. I was lucky to escape.
“Ready?” my father asked.
I nodded, and we started for the front entrance. Just inside were two girls, both with light brown hair, the taller one wearing thick-lensed glasses, her hair short and curly, dressed in a dark blue jumpsuit with a keyhole neckline. The other was cuter, with bright green eyes and diminutive facial features. She wore a white polka-dot flared skirt and a black short-sleeved top. She stepped forward first. Her right cheek had a dimple that flashed on and off when she smiled.
“Welcome to Eleanor Cook,” she said. “I’m Marcy Ross, and this is Terri Stone. We’re sort of a welcoming committee.”
“We are the welcoming committee,” Terri said. “Marcy will escort you to your room, and I’ll show you the facilities.”
“Facilities,” Marcy mocked. “Toilets and stuff. You’re Kaylee Fitzgerald,” she said, as if she was assigning me my name.
I looked at my father, who was smiling widely.
“And I’m her father, Mason Fitzgerald.”
“Welcome to you, too, Mr. Fitzgerald,” Terri Stone said, again sounding more official.
“C’mon,” Marcy said, before I could say anything. She hooked my right arm and started marching me ahead, through the small lobby and down the hallway on our left. “I was going nuts waiting for you. Mrs. Rosewell assigned me to you. Terri is assigned to everyone. She’s the official facilities guide,” she added, her face beaming.
“Who’s Mrs. Rosewell?”
“Our house mother. Platypus,” she added, leaning in to whisper. “Only don’t call her that to her face or say it closely enough for her to hear.”
“Platypus?”
“She’s nice, but she’s built like one and has a way of pressing her lips out like a duck’s bill. She waddles when she walks, too.”
“Where is she?”
“She’s with two other newlyweds,” Marcy said.
“What?”
“That’s an in joke. We call new students newlyweds. You have to take so many oaths, follow rules that make it seem like you’re marrying the school. Don’t worry about it. Maybe we don’t break the rules, but we bend them.”
She stopped and turned me sharply to go down a short corridor on our left.
“I’m here, too, right across the hall with Facilities,” she said, pausing at an open door.
My father and Terri Stone caught up to us. Another girl came to the door. She was a buxom redhead about my height, wearing a Littlefield basketball team T-shirt and a pair of jeans, so I assumed she was not a newlywed and had probably been assigned to bring my roommate here. Her light complexion was peppered with freckles over the crests of her cheeks. She widened her eyes at Marcy and nodded to her right. We couldn’t see around the doorframe yet, but it was obvious someone was already in my room.
“Hi,” she said, offering her right hand. “I’m Toby Dickens, dorm president.”
“Kaylee Fitzgerald,” I said.
“She’s in here?” she asked Marcy.
“Good guess.”
“Good luck,” Toby muttered, and stepped past us.
When I looked back through the doorway, I saw the man who had carried in the tall dark-haired girl’s luggage standing there looking out at us. Marcy smiled at him and led me into the room. The man was studying me too hard, I thought. He looked like a research scientist peering through a microscope. What was he checking for, a sign of measles?
I couldn’t help being paranoid, of course. Maybe he knew who I was, knew everything, and wasn’t happy to have his daughter share a dorm room with me.
“You’re on the right side,” Marcy told me, nodding at the single bed with a gray blanket and a large white pillow. The bed looked like it had been made by a drill sergeant—tight, perfect. I saw the desk at the foot of the bed. To the immediate right of the door was a closet about a quarter of the size of mine at home, but Haylee’s and my rooms and closets were way bigger than the rooms and closets our classmates had. Mother had insisted on that.
Something had kept me from turning to my left too soon. It wasn’t that I realized my roommate was the girl I had seen in the parking lot, a girl who struck me as strange to start with. I was still trying to get used to the idea that I would share my intimate places with someone new.