The Perfect Roommate

by Minka Kent

  “That’s all I need.”

  Caldwell leads me down a series of hallways until we reach a small room with a two-way window. Scanning his badge, the lock on the door gives a clunky release and he escorts me in.

  Lauren, in all her former perfection, is seated at a table, dressed in orange. Her ankles secured together and her hands cuffed. Blonde hair hangs in her face and her shoulders slump. It takes her a second to realize it’s me standing before her.

  “Meadow,” she says, eyes wide.

  Half of me wants to scream in her face.

  The other half of me wants to thank her.

  I hate that she’s put me in this position … I hate that she’s lowered me to the point of feeling guilt over the way I feel about the very person who put my life in danger.

  “I just have one question.” My arms tighten across my chest, my head cocks to the side. I wait for her bloodshot eyes to find mine. “Was it ever real for you?”

  She licks her lips, glancing down at her cuffed, manicured hands, their warm, creamy color a stark clash against the cool metal. Lauren knows exactly what I’m asking.

  I want to know if we were ever friends.

  Maybe it’s a moot point. Maybe it’s one of those questions that are better left unanswered, but I have to know. The question burns inside of me, intense and nagging. It will not be ignored.

  “Almost,” she says after a moment, exhaling.

  I was hoping for a “yes.” I would’ve been okay with a “no.” I wasn’t prepared for an “almost.”

  My eyes burn, but I blink away the tears before anyone notices.

  We were almost friends—almost.

  “You’re a shitty human being,” I say.

  Caldwell clears his throat.

  “I know.” Lauren’s voice is barely audible, slightly strained.

  “But thank you for saving me,” I say.

  She says nothing, as if the simple formality of “you’re welcome” feels inappropriate in this moment.

  And it is.

  Lauren Wiedenfeld may have saved the day, but she’s no hero.

  I turn to Caldwell. “Get me out of here.”

  If I never see my roommate again, it will be too soon.

  Forty-Six

  My mom won’t stop staring from across her kitchen table. Caldwell called her to come get me tonight and for the first time in history, she dropped everything and came to my rescue. It probably helped that he told her I was nearly shot and killed …

  “I never want to get a call like that again,” she breaks her silence, and for a moment, it sounds like she’s blaming me for this. I’ve only been home for an hour and already we’re going there? “If anyone ever tries to hurt you again, Meadow, so help me …”

  Oh.

  She’s … defending me?

  This …

  This is new.

  Her bleach blonde hair is pulled into a tight ponytail, the dark roots greasy. She looks as if she just finished working a double, her eyes baggy and bloodshot. I’m positive she’d rather be in bed, in the room with the tinfoil-covered windows and the noisy box fan perched on her dresser.

  The corner by the fridge, where Bug used to keep an open bag of store brand dog food for his Doberman … is empty. Swept out. And come to think of it, the place smells a little less … musty.

  “Where’s Bug?” I ask.

  “Kicked him out a few weeks ago.” She shakes her head. “He met some other woman online, some gamer. Son of a bitch wanted his cake and thought he could eat it too.”

  Mom may have below ground standards when it comes to men, but she’s always drawn the line at cheating.

  Good riddance.

  “I stole some coins from him.” I pick at a hangnail on my right thumb, tearing at it until it bleeds, but I don’t feel a thing. If there’s ever going to be an opportune moment to share this, it’s now, while she’s calling him a “son of a bitch.”

  “I know.”

  I glance up. “You do?”

  She nods. “I’d been tapping into that myself from time to time. The dumbass had no idea they were worth anything. Thought they were just some stupid pennies his grandpa had been collecting for years. Anyway, I knew you’d taken them after the last time you stopped by. Didn’t want to make it into a thing because, well, you know … Bug and his temper. Idiot didn’t even notice the box missing when he was loading up his shit. I’m not worried.”

  Exhaling, I lean back in my chair. I’m not proud of what I did, and I justified it six ways from Sunday at the time, but I take comfort for the time being, knowing the pot-bellied dipshit won’t be coming after me with a loaded shotgun.

  “Why’d you take the gun, Meadow?” Mom asks. “He was pretty upset about that … just ‘cause he didn’t want anyone to get hurt.”

  Brows lifted, I smirk at the thought of Bug worrying about anyone’s safety. I’m guessing he cared more about the liability factor than anyone getting hurt.

  “I hate guns,” I say. “And I hate Bug. Just wanted to throw it into the lake.”

  “Anyway, you going to fill me in on everything?” she asks, leaving the table and heading for the cupboard by the sink. Mom retrieves two chipped mugs we’ve had since the beginning of time, and then she fills them with water from the tap before placing them in the little countertop microwave. She closes the door, presses a button, and a gentle hum fills the kitchen. “You were so quiet on the ride home. Thought maybe you needed some time to decompress, but I won’t be able to sleep tonight until I know why the hell someone would want to kill my daughter. You’ve never done a damn thing to anybody, Meadow. You’re a good kid, even if I can’t take credit for it. I don’t understand why someone would want to hurt you.”

  Gathering my thoughts, I take a deep breath as the microwave beeps a minute later. Mom pulls a tin of powdered cappuccino mix from a different cupboard before grabbing a tablespoon from the silverware drawer.

  It isn’t Earl Grey or organic green tea and it’s probably a couple of years old. And I feel like most mothers usually know if their daughters like coffee or not … but at least this is something.

  It’s a start.

  A baby step in the right direction.

  “So, tell me, Meadow,” Mom says, yawning. “Why’d these assholes do this to you?”

  I start from the beginning. The eviction. The want ad. 47 Magpie Drive. The clothes. The hair. The friends. The coins. The car. The attention. The special treatment. The secret affair. The lies upon lies upon lies. The murder. The forced suicide that almost happened.

  And then I tell her about the girl at the center of it all.

  Lauren. My perfect roommate, who at zero hour, grew a conscience and silently sent a text message to Caldwell whilst Thayer had his gun pointed at my head and Elisabeth was yelling for me to hurry up and write my “confession.”

  She also had the forethought to record the audio. The entire thing.

  Apparently, Elisabeth and Thayer were blackmailing her, threatening to anonymously disseminate the nude photos and videos she’d texted to Reed, posting them on adult websites and the dark web where they’d be reproduced and shared at warp speed, multiplying at an impossible rate. They’d be out there, forever, for anyone to see for the rest of her life. Lauren was terrified.

  From the sound of it, they used her as bait in their little scheme. And by the time they admitted they planned on actually killing Bristowe (as they first told her it was simply a kidnap-for-ransom deal and no one would get hurt), she was already in too deep. They could turn on her just as easy as she could turn on them … and they wouldn’t have hesitated. She did what she thought she had to do.

  Not that I’m defending her.

  Caldwell says he’ll keep me posted, and the local news affiliates are already on it, sending their field correspondents to Meyer State campus in search of sound bites. So far everyone’s in shock and disbelief. And one very stoned student called the whole thing “cray cray” on live TV.

  “You
look tired,” Mom says, placing my powdered cappuccino drink in front of me.

  “So do you.”

  “Your eyes twitch when you’re sleepy.” She smiles, drinking me in like she’s seeing me—really seeing me—for the first time in ages.

  “So do yours.” I take a sip of my coffee, a small sip, and try to ignore the cheap taste on my tongue.

  “Everything’s going to be okay, Meadow,” she says a moment later. “You know how I know that?”

  “How?”

  “Because you’re my daughter. And we’re strong,” she says. “We stand up for what we want and what we believe in and right or wrong, we don’t let anybody else control our compass.” She takes the seat beside me, overworked hands cupping her mug. I can’t remember the last time we sat, just the two of us, and talked about anything. This very well may be the first time. “We’re more alike than we’re different. And sooner or later we all turn into our mothers.”

  “But you’re nothing like Grandma.” I think of my grandmother’s overfilled porcelain doll curio cabinet, doily-covered coffee tables, immaculate 1980s-era kitchen, and her home cooked Sunday dinners.

  “You don’t know the woman I grew up with.” Eyes rolling, she cups her pointed chin in her hand. “God, we fought like cats and dogs. She kicked me out about half a dozen times and I ran away a half a dozen other times. But you know what? She always left the back door unlocked and I always came back.”

  Mom yawns again. I yawn again.

  I think this is her way of saying Grandma was always there for her and she’s always going to be there for me? But I’m not entirely sure. She’s never been good at apologies or expressing feelings that run deeper than surface level, and I suspect for the time being, this about as momentous as it’s going to get.

  “Your room is empty. We’ll need to get you a new bed, but you can have mine tonight. I’ll take the couch,” she says.

  “You don’t have to do that—” I have no intentions of staying here longer than a day or two. Not sure where I’m going next, but I can’t stay here and tread these same old waters.

  “Don’t argue with me.” She rises, one hand on her hip like she doesn’t have time for this shit.

  There’s the Misty Cupples I know.

  Obviously, I don’t know what it’s like to be a mother, but I imagine the threat of losing your only child might rearrange your priorities or gift you with the kind of perspective you didn’t have before.

  Only time will tell.

  “Goodnight, Meadow,” she says before shuffling away in the flattened and faded house slippers I gave her eight Christmases ago. “Get some sleep.”

  Forty-Seven

  Two Months Later …

  “Meadow.” Someone calls my name from a sea of graduates dressed in shiny purple robes. “Over here.”

  Scanning the crowd, my gaze settles a dark-haired girl offering a hesitant wave, her familiar round eyes trained on me.

  “Tessa.” I amble toward her, equally as reluctant, my heels sinking into the grass.

  I haven’t seen her since … before.

  “How have you been?” Her graduation tassel hangs in her face, and she moves it aside. “I’ve been meaning to get a hold of you …”

  Tessa’s explanation dwindles, but I don’t hold it against her. I could hardly expect her to know what to say in regards to a situation like this. And besides, I’m not sure we were ever really more than acquaintances sharing a common friend. Sure, we hung out from time to time, but we didn’t have the kind of strong bond I once thought I shared with Lauren.

  But we did have our moments.

  “It’s okay,” I say, offering an understated smile. “This last month has been … crazy.”

  She exhales, glancing down, nodding. “That’s putting it nicely.”

  Detective Caldwell informed me weeks ago that they’d brought Tessa in for questioning, that she knew nothing. And they were able to confirm everything down to the last detail, which was a relief. I’m not sure I could’ve handled one more betrayal.

  She also inadvertently offered a few missing pieces of the puzzle. That night my location data was cleared out of my phone? Tessa had seen Thayer going through it. She didn’t think anything of it at the time, assuming I’d given it to him to take a picture or fix a setting. When Caldwell questioned Lauren about it, she admitted Thayer drove us past the Bristowe’s on the way home from the bar that evening so their address would register on my app, trying to make it look like I was stalking them. That story about me going home with some guy? A complete fabrication. After she and Thayer carried me to my bed and he left, she meant to take a screenshot of my location history but accidentally deleted everything.

  That’s why everything prior to three AM was gone.

  Anyway, Thayer hasn’t admitted to any of this. He and Elisabeth can hardly afford a decent lawyer from what I hear. All the Bristowe assets are frozen. Their futures are in the hands of a fresh-out-of-law-school public defender.

  And that poor baby girl. Elisabeth will be giving birth in a prison hospital soon. I imagine if some next-of-kin doesn’t step up, she’ll be adopted out. Hopefully to a nice, normal family—if those even exist anymore.

  “I’m still trying to wrap my head around everything. Still doesn’t feel real,” Tessa says, chewing the inside of her lower lip. “You think you know people …”

  Licking my lips, I press them together, contemplating what I should say. It never occurred to me until just now that she’s feeling just as betrayed by all of this—maybe to a lesser extent—but still.

  They lied to us both.

  And in their own ways, they used us both.

  “Have you talked to Lauren at all?” I ask, purely out of curiosity.

  “Nope.” Tessa glances down, pausing. “Heard she was offered a plea deal and she took it. My guess is she’s holed up at her parents’ house in Albany. Hiding.”

  Coward.

  “So she won’t be going to jail?” My jaw is about to drop before Tessa starts shaking her head.

  “No, she will. Just not as long as the other two,” she says. “So, what are you doing after this?”

  For a moment, I’m positive she’s asking if I want to hang out. Tessa never really had a lot of close friends outside of Lauren, only a few girls she’d meet up with at the bar. No one she’d ever take the time to have lunch with or text when she’s bored.

  I shrug, eyeing my mom from across the open field. She’s standing by herself, nose buried in her phone. It means a lot that she even came. I honestly didn’t expect her to. But she’s been doing that lately—defying my expectations and surprising me. I think she’s trying.

  “Going home.” I lift a brow. “You?”

  Tessa laughs. “No, I mean. Did you find a job? Are you leaving Monarch Falls?”

  “Oh.” I chuckle. “Yeah. I found a job in Chicago. Moving in a couple weeks. What about you?”

  “Going back to South Dakota,” she says. “I miss my family.”

  Tessa points to an older man and woman standing, his arm around her shoulders. They’re chatting with two guys who appear to be around Tessa’s age. They all share the same russet hair and round, blue eyes. One of the guys laugh. The dad slugs his shoulder. Her mom glances up with this sweet, still-in-love-after-all-these-years kind of look on her face.

  There’s a tightness in my chest … somewhere between being happy for Tessa’s seemingly “normal” family and becoming hopelessly consumed by and irrational wave of stark raving jealousy.

  Pulling in a sharp breath, I remind myself there’s no such thing as normal.

  Or perfect.

  Especially not perfect.

  “Meadow, you ready?” Mom appears from behind me, checking the time on her phone. “Have to be to work by seven. Need to get going.”

  “Yep.” I say to Mom before giving Tessa a quick smile. “Good luck with everything.”

  “You too.” She lingers for a moment. “Keep in touch?”

&nb
sp; The idea of staying in touch with Tessa doesn’t fill me with warm fuzzies or preemptive nostalgia. In fact, leaving Monarch Falls and all of its inhabitants—past and present—is the only thing that remotely fills me with the kind of thing that puts a dopey little smile on my face.

  All I want to do is live. Truly live.

  And I can’t do that here. This place is marred and tainted and ugly, and it’s time to close this chapter of my life for good.

  “Bye, Tessa.” With that, I walk away, disappearing into the sea of purple, shedding my cap and gown and tossing them into a nearby trashcan.

  Epilogue

  Six Months Later

  “As soon as my towels are done, the dryer’s all yours.” Her name is Bethany Nielsen. “Do you want to get lunch in a bit?” And she’s my roommate. “I’m thinking sushi?”

  I give her a bug-eyed stare.

  “Kidding.” She laughs, tucking her silky, chocolate brown hair behind her ears. “I know you hate sushi. I don’t care where we go, I’m just starving.”

  When I left Monarch Falls on a Greyhound bus headed for Chicago, all my belongings in two giant suitcases, I promised myself no roommates.

  But living in Chicago isn’t cheap, and the “generous” salary I was offered doing insurance submissions for a private practice in the Lincoln Park neighborhood doesn’t stretch as far as I thought it would. Maybe it was naïve of me to take this job and make this impulsive move and not give it much thought, but at the time I was desperate to be anywhere but there. And now that I’m here, I can’t imagine being anywhere else.

  Chicago is the exact opposite of Monarch Falls, which means it’s hustle and bustle. Culture galore. Great shopping and even better food.

  Two-point-seven million people out here living their best lives. The excitement is contagious, powerful enough to pull my homebody self out of my ironclad shell.

  But I wasn’t here long before I found myself sitting up in my apartment most nights, eating ramen and cold cereal and binge-watching mediocre TV shows. The old me may have been content to live like that, but the new me refused.