by Alison Grey
Oh, Wendi.
“Anyway, I’m pretty tired,” I said, scooting by her and the other girls, all friends of Wendi. “I’ll be thinking of you.”
“I met your new roommate,” Wendi added as she stabbed the camel colored stub of her cigarette against the gray ashtray stand next to her. “She’s cute. I bet Hollis is going to hate her guts.”
God shut the fuck up, Wendi I thought in my head, but I just smiled, the closed-mouth kind.
“Well, that’s the Hollis way,” I said as I dragged myself through the glass doors of Hutchinson, happy to leave Wendi and her coven behind me.
* * *
When I got to my room no one was there, though there was an enormous pile of stuff in the corner where Olivia’s empty twin bed sat, the stained mattress still naked.
I could hear voices in Sheridan and Brooke’s room. I assumed that’s where Olivia was.
I threw my heavy suitcase on top of my own bed and flipped it open to start unpacking. I tried to be as quiet as possible, wanting to enjoy the peace of being still and being by myself just a little longer.
I swear Sheridan had a preternatural sense when it came to knowing the perfect time to interrupt me.
“Amanda’s here!”
Sheridan floated into the room in a long turquoise skirt that I could see the shadow of her legs through and a velour shirt that didn’t match. I could tell she was drunk. Sheridan’s cheeks always got very red when she’d been drinking.
“I am indeed,” I replied as I place my folded t-shirts inside the plastic drawers next to my bed, the same drawers that acted as a make-shift night stand where I kept my alarm clock.
“I want you to meet Olivia!” she loud-whispered. “She’s in my room, we’re drinking shitty vodka and downloading Garbage songs on Napster.”
“You’re going to fuck up your computer.”
“Oh blah blah, don’t lecture me, Miss Computer Science genius. Just come over and say hello! She’s really wonderful, honestly.”
Sheridan grabbed me by the shoulders and turned me to face her.
“You’re drunk,” I noted.
“I am.” Sheridan’s smile could end wars. It was already wearing down my resolve to be an anti-social bitch. “I really think you’re going to like her.”
I sighed and then laughed as she wrapped a muscled forearm around my neck. Sheridan was lean, but strong. Must have been the yoga. She was one of the first people to have joined that particular fitness train.
“I missed you,” she whispered in my ear and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “Glad to be back?”
“God, you know it,” I replied as we strolled through the bathroom that separated my room from hers and Brooke’s. It smelled of bleach and powdered bathroom cleanser. Sheridan had hung new shower curtains as she’d promised she would when we’d thrown away the mildewed ones from first semester.
“Did you like the new girlfriend?” she asked, hiccupping at the word girlfriend.
“No.”
We were in Sheridan’s room now which looked like Ann Taylor Loft had vomited all over it. Clothes were thrown everywhere over every chair and every inch of the bed and floor. I could see Brooke sitting cross legged on the floor. She looked groggy, like she’d just woken up.
I could see the back of Olivia’s head, her back to me. She was sitting in front of Brooke, animatedly retelling a story, her tiny hands flailing, her voice reaching across the room.
I heard her before I ever saw her.
“Olivia!” Sheridan called to her now. “Your roomie is here! Well, one of them anyway.”
Her head turned and I imagined the face that would match that raspy voice.
What I imagined wasn’t even close to what I got.
Eleven
HOLLIS
The Cobbs liked private planes before they became what people only did for Instagram clout. My family was doing that shit long before the Kardashians.
My mother hated to rub elbows with the unclean masses. I do not say that with reverence; I’m all too aware how terrible that sounds.
For example, the day I moved in to my room at Martha Jefferson and my mother discovered I would be rooming with a black girl, she couldn’t be bothered to hide her disdain, even in front of poor Amanda. She’d immediately gone to the Dean and demanded a room change. I was mortified.
Nothing like starting off your freshman year branded as the racist bitch debutante from Atlanta. I was an ugly stereotype come to life.
It was all sorted out after she left, and I assured Amanda that I was not a fan of my mother or her racist perceptions. It took a while for Amanda to trust me and I have my mother to thank for that.
Flying private was her way of segregating herself from the people she didn’t approve of. Whether they were black, poor, Jewish, or Democrat. She made sure there was always a separation between herself and the things that made her “uncomfortable.”
I would be lying if I didn’t admit that a lot of her bullshit rubbed off on me. You spend your entire life trying to unlearn the stuff you took in as a kid. I am not an exception.
I am the rule.
Anyway, we’d flown private to St Bart’s. This meant my family insisted that we stay in the islands until the last possible second, despite my desire to get back to school earlier than midnight.
“I have an 8 am class,” I’d pointed out as my mother bronzed her leathered limbs in a cabana that my father had paid entirely too much for. “I’m going to be a zombie on the first day of the semester.”
“It’s not like the first day is important,” my mother sighed. “You’ll just get a bunch of syllabi and rules. Certainly, you can handle that. Take a nap in the afternoon.”
I rolled my eyes. Of course, she didn’t care. My mother’s degree had been in art history and was simply for show so she could snag a rich husband, the kind of man who liked his wife pretty and educated, even if she never used the latter. It made everyone feel better about the sordid shallowness of their lives.
“Most girls would be delighted to be spending the last of their winter holiday in the Caribbean, but not my Hollis.” She laughed and turned her head to talk to the woman next to her, the one she’d met at the spa earlier that week. God the way she spoke about me in front of me; it just irked me that I was cursed to share DNA with her. “She’s eager to get back to… I don’t even know. You don’t have a boyfriend. No one is waiting for you, darling. Just enjoy your time and your youth. You turn twenty next year—your body will never look as good as it does right now.”
That last sentence still played in my mind as we landed in Charlottesville at a quarter to midnight the night before my second semester began at Martha Jefferson.
My mother valued everything that my generation didn’t. She still lived in the past, one where women didn’t worry about careers and ambition. My mother had been driven by the idea of finding someone who took care of things for you.
While the thought of allowing anyone to have control over my destiny made me sick.
Yes, I did take advantage of my parents’ connections. I won’t lie about that. But I still had no aspirations when it came to fulfilling the cycle of gold digging. I hadn’t gone to college to meet a husband.
I’d gone to college to figure out who the hell I was, outside of my position as a Cobb.
And the more time I spent away from my family, the harder it became to tolerate them when I was forced to be in their presence.
* * *
It was almost 1 am when I finally pulled into the small parking lot at Martha Jefferson. There was one space left and I was grateful to be the one to get to snag it. Even if it meant parking about as far away from my dorm as it got.
As I slammed the trunk of my Jetta, I shivered. It was crisp that night, cold and still, the quiet on the mountain raising the hairs on my arms, even under my pea coat.
I wrapped my cashmere scarf tightly around my neck and raised my coat collar to help warm my chapped ears.
The sound o
f my boots and the wheels of my Samsonite suitcase echoed across the parking lot. As I got closer to the buildings and dorms of the college, I could hear a rumbling of humanity and I smiled. No matter how late it was, someone was always up at Martha Jefferson.
It hit me that I’d be meeting my new roommate that night and my smile quickly disappeared.
Olivia Barron. Who the fuck are you anyway? I thought.
I was about to find out.
Twelve
BROOKE
We were still up when Hollis showed. Well, most of us. Sheridan drunk entirely too much cheap vodka and Hawaiian punch and passed out on her bed, which was the bottom bunk we shared. Her drunken snores were making us giggle when Hollis appeared out of nowhere.
Her cheeks were red from the cold; her eyes already narrowed. She was clearly intent on being in a bad mood.
Hollis has this thing I admire where her mood and her energy dictates everyone else’s. If she’s in a great mood, we are all in a great mood.
But if she’s in a bad mood? Well. You can guess how that goes.
Hollis Cobb is Mercury retrograde in human form.
“Hollis!” I yelped, jumping up from my sitting position on the threadbare rug of my dorm room floor. I held out my arms for a hug. When she didn’t return the gesture, I pulled her to me anyway, though her body stiffened when I did, making me wish I’d just stayed seated.
I always had to second-guess myself with Hollis.
“Hi.” Her voice was flat. “I was going to sleep, but I figured I might as well make my presence known.”
Her eyes flickered across the room. She’d noticed Amanda on the floor with Olivia, both girls giggling over a shared joke. They’d known each other barely two hours but seemed to be getting along very well.
Something I knew would displease Hollis.
She’d messaged me over break about her frustrations. She’d made me promise not to welcome Olivia, to be cold and aloof, to make her hate being our suitemate enough to request to be moved to another room. It wasn’t personal, but it was a strategy— bully the new girl so she gets lost.
But Hollis hadn’t predicted this.
She hadn’t counted on Amanda blowing the plan and actually liking Olivia.
“Amanda.” Hollis’s sharp tone made me jump and Sheridan turned over in her sleep, mumbling at us to quiet down.
“Hey,” Amanda replied, her expression showing her guilt. “I was just talking to Olivia. Our new roommate.”
Olivia, drunk and twittering from the cheap college cocktails, grinned her toothy smile and hopped up to greet the girl she didn’t realize hated her already.
“You’re finally here!” her raspy voice flew across the room and I could tell Hollis was as surprised by it as I had been. It didn’t match this tiny fairy of a girl.
Hollis opened her mouth to say something, but Olivia had already embraced her, and it was hard not to laugh at this tiny sprite of a girl hugging the 5’10 Hollis Cobb.
“Wow.” Hollis stepped back, but I could see her bitch wall was slowly coming down.
If Hollis was human PMS, Olivia was human heroin. Her energy eased you. She was the most likable and charismatic person I’d ever met other than Hollis.
And I wasn’t sure how that was going to work.
Thirteen
SHERIDAN
Despite our instructions to despise Olivia Barron, we all fell a bit in love with her.
Within a week of second semester it was as if she’d been one of us the whole time.
We’d go to classes in the morning and meet up for lunch in the dining hall, the five of us sitting at our favorite table near the window that overlooked the sloping hill of a lawn that spilled out down the mountain our small college called home.
The table was a large circle, so no one ever felt like they were at the head of it. The shape was an equalizer of sorts.
We’d talk over chicken curry, pizza, and crumbly Cobb salads slathered in fat free Ranch. Olivia had made her place between me and Amanda. She’d chatter on and on about her passion for graphic design and computer science with Amanda and then turn to me and discuss all things art history.
Olivia could hold a conversation about anything.
She’d transferred to us from UVA, something that was odd to hear being that no one ever tended to transfer from UVA. More often people were desperate (especially if they were in-state) to transfer TO the University of Virginia. It was the best public university in the nation.
“It just wasn’t working out,” she explained, always cryptic. “My cousins went to Martha Jefferson, so it just sounded like a good place to start over. And of course, y’all know I have friends that are right down the road at SMI.”
Indeed, we did, and one thing I’d learned about Olivia was that she was extremely close to a lot of guys at SMI. In general, she seemed to have a lot of guy friends, sprinkled across the state.
“I get along better with guys I guess,” she’d said, something that would ordinarily make me roll my eyes. I’d never trusted the kind of girl who would ever say that.
SMI was a military institute which held the distinction of being a weird sort of brother school to Martha Jefferson, though any Sweet Briar girl would beg to differ if you asked them.
The women’s colleges in Virginia were very territorial when it came to these things. Sweet Briar was an unofficial rival of ours. Hollis called them a bunch of crazy horse fanatics, but any time I’d run into a Sweet Briar Vixen, I’d always found them to be really no different than a Martha Jefferson Badger.
Loyal to their end, but lovely just the same.
* * *
The biggest surprise with Olivia was who she ended up being closest to.
Hollis, who’d once been so determined to shut Olivia out, spent most nights up late with her. They were usually the last ones on our hall to go to sleep. They’d be up listening to songs on Hollis’s Gateway computer while Amanda studied with her earphones on to attempt to drown them out.
Olivia liked all the same things Hollis liked. But you could have said that about Olivia and each one of us. When she was with you, she made you feel like she was your soulmate, put on this earth to be your perfect counterpart.
With Hollis, Olivia could be wild and a bit crass. They’d drink and experiment with drugs, the kind only Hollis had the connections to obtain, up until Olivia showed up.
It seemed Olivia Barron was also the benefactor of some mysterious trust, though she’d never been gauche enough to discuss it. Suddenly where the coke had been a once-in-a-while vice, with Hollis and Olivia it became an every-other-night thing.
With me she was artsy and philosophical. She understood what it was like to grow up a southern woman in a family of heavy expectations. We’d sit on the roof at night and talk about our mothers. Our fathers. Our resentment of them and our undying love and desire to please them. Olivia understood me in a way no one else ever had before.
She made me feel seen.
I suppose that was her gift.
And ultimately, her curse.
Fourteen
AMANDA
I’d never been in love before.
Not even close. My hometown wasn’t exactly an aspirational place to find a life partner— unless you wanted to spend the rest of your life pacing the linoleum floor of a double-wide with a baby on your hip while you waited for your husband to come home from his job at the paper mill.
It wasn’t the life for me.
Not that there’s a damn thing wrong with living in a mobile home. That wasn’t the part that bothered me. It was the thought of marrying someone like my father or like the men he hung around with that was unappealing.
Not that any of the guys in my town would have married me anyway.
Olivia Barron was the first time I realized what love might feel like. What it might look like. It wasn’t a sexual attraction, not really. I enjoyed watching her move and exist, yes. She was beautiful in the way that Winona Ryder was in my favorite movi
e at the time, Reality Bites. It was a carefree beauty, an I-don’t-even-try pretty, with plenty of sheepish shrugs to prove she was clueless about her own charm.
That first night I’d met her in Sheridan and Brooke’s room, I’d been instantly drawn in by her energy and we’d been close ever since. Even Hollis hadn’t been able to keep her guard up long.
It was impossible to be anything but yourself with Olivia.
She tended to bring out who you really were.
* * *
That first month was the honeymoon.
Olivia was eager to be the perfect addition to our circle of friends. She began that first week profusely apologizing for her existence.
“I feel so bad intruding on your space,” she said as she tucked the corners of her fitted sheet around her egg crate foam mattress topper— a must to separate her body from the old stained mattress Martha Jefferson gave all of us to sleep on.
“Like you can even help it!” Hollis said, and I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at the irony. If only Olivia had known how aggressive Hollis had been behind the scenes trying to prevent her from moving in with us. “Better to be with us anyway. Some of the girls in this dorm are ridiculous.”
Olivia’s tastes mirrored our own. Within just a couple of days it was hard to remember what our room had even looked like before she was there.
Olivia was an art major, with a focus on photography. Her drawers were stuffed full of velour sweatpants, thongs, film, and sheets of photography paper. We’d get used to the vinegar smell that seemed to linger on her tiny frame from all the hours she spent in the Martha Jefferson darkroom, working on her projects.