the Roommate Mistake

by Elizabeth Stevens

  “Luke’ll eat twice as much as both of them,” Birdman said to me quietly.

  “Cook’s twice the size of both of them,” Alex chuckled.

  “Yeah,” Birdman mused. “Unless there’s pizza.”

  Alex clicked his fingers at him over me. “True. Zac’s been known to eat his weight in pizza,” he told me.

  “His actual weight?” I asked.

  Birdman snorted. “No.”

  “His figurative weight,” Alex explained.

  “And how much is that?”

  Alex shrugged. “More than Cook anyway.”

  “That’s hardly fair. You know how Luke gets when he has too much gluten.”

  Alex chuckled. “Dude’s on the loo for hours!”

  I smiled despite myself. “I figured that one out. Thanks, though.”

  “You’re smarter than you look,” Alex quipped.

  “Which is impressive,” Birdman added.

  Alex nodded. “Because you look freaking smart.”

  “Thank you?” I wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or not.

  “Pizza!” we heard from up ahead.

  I looked over and saw Zac with his hands in the air.

  “Poor Luke,” I commented.

  Alex and Birdman laughed.

  We all lined up together and got our dinners. It wasn’t really poor Luke. There were multiple options for mains. I can’t say I was surprised when I saw Zac headed for their table with his tray piled up with pizza slices.

  Alex was behind me so, after I got my dinner, I smiled at him and said, “I’ll see you later.”

  “Still not sitting with us?” he asked, a rueful smile at his lips.

  “My book won’t finish itself.”

  He nodded. “All right then.”

  “See ya later, Lottie,” Birdman said.

  I gave him a nod and headed for my empty spot.

  It was difficult not to notice Zac’s overconsumption of pizza, nor Fret’s attempt to keep up with him. They both pretty much needed rolling back to their dorms. I want to say I dawdled over my food because I got lost in my book, but I’d be lying. I just wanted to see how their competition went.

  Later that night, I came out of my room to find Alex in nothing but a towel, once again.

  “Do you not own clothes?” I asked facetiously, clearly knowing he did own clothes.

  He smirked. “I thought you’d gone to bed.”

  “Unlike you, Grampa, I’ll be up for a few more hours yet.”

  “I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, you try…” He turned and something got dislodged as his towel tried making a break for it.

  “Dude!” I cried as I averted my eyes and closed them for good measure.

  But I’d not averted and he’d not salvaged the towel quick enough. The momentary flash of full-frontal had apparently been burned into my retinas.

  He laughed. “My bad.”

  “When I said I’d see you later…” I muttered, hand still firmly planted to my eyes.

  “I am decent.”

  I moved one finger to peek out of and saw he hand a firm hand on covering everything.

  “I’m not sure that word could ever apply to you.”

  He snorted. “It was an accident.”

  “I’m so glad you didn’t flash me on purpose! Talk about not being able to keep secrets in close quarters…”

  “Hey, that’s hardly fair. It’s just been me baring secrets here. You haven’t bared anything.”

  I looked him over. “And I don’t plan to.”

  He looked at a loss for words to say. Or maybe he’d come up with too many quips and couldn’t decide which one to use. So he just smiled at me, a deep warmth in his eyes. I couldn’t stop myself smiling back.

  “I’m not going to bed, but I am definitely going to hide in my room now,” I informed him with a firm nod.

  His grin widened. “Okay, then.”

  “Maybe you can invest in some clothes.”

  More widening. “I’ll try to remember to take a change of clothes to the bathroom with me.”

  “You could always just go straight to your room?”

  He nodded as he ran a hand over his chin. “Now, there’s an idea.”

  My eyes dropped involuntarily to his crotch. “I’ll leave you to it.”

  Humour played all across his face. “Okay, then.”

  “Good night, Alex.”

  “Good night, Lottie.”

  Chapter Seven

  Alex, thankfully, stopped wandering around our living room in nothing but a towel. I wanted to say he was just being gentlemanly, but I suspected he also was a little embarrassed about the towel slip.

  “‘Sup, Lottie,” Luke said with a smile as he walked by me in the hallway before recess and I nodded back in greeting.

  It was like that. Everywhere I went, whenever I saw them, they said hello. I was slowly getting used to my existence being so frequently acknowledged.

  I grabbed a muffin and dropped into my usual seat. Alone as usual. I watched the other students laughing and chatting with their friends. It made me think of my friends back home. My friends who, even for me, I hadn’t talked to properly in a while. I’d thought about them a lot, but I’d never been good at small talk with anyone other than Mum.

  I pulled up the chat thread for Flick, Leah and Marsh. Nothing. Nothing that pertained to me anyway. I looked back over the last few messages and realised that, over the last few weeks, we’d just been messaging less and less until it was all just shared posts one of us found amusing. I wondered if they had another thread going without me, or whether they’d just stopped using messages so much.

  Part of me felt a bit saddened by it, like I’d lost something good. Another part of me realised that I’d been surviving without it quite well. The benefit to being an introverted bookworm was that, as much as I cared about certain people, I could do without their physical – or, in this case, online – presence quite well.

  It was putting into stark contrast why I constantly ate alone, why I sat by myself in classes, and why I walked the halls without a posse of people to laugh at my very witty jokes. On one hand, I cared. On the other, I didn’t care enough to be bothered doing anything about it.

  After Recess, as I was walking to class, I almost ran into Liz Spencer and her friends. As we did the ‘who’s going which way’ dance, I gave Liz an apologetic smile. The smile she returned was very definitely not friendly. But she said nothing. She clearly didn’t like me, but she and her friends just got around me and went on their way.

  “Lottie!” Fret and Zac cried when I passed them in the hallway later that day.

  As I had with Luke earlier, I nodded back in greeting.

  “How you going?” Zac asked.

  I gave them another nod. “Same old, same old.”

  “You coming to the swim meet on Saturday?” Fret asked.

  I frowned. “Why would I go to the swim meet? Besides, don’t you have your own sports to go to?”

  “Soccer’s terms two and three,” Fret said.

  “And baseball’s Sundays,” Zac said.

  Something hit me. “Who do you even play out here?”

  Zac grinned. “Local schools and teams mainly. Sometimes we do weekend tournaments with schools further away.”

  I shook my head. “All in the name of ‘excellence’, huh?”

  Fret nodded. “Yup.”

  As though by unspoken decision, we went our own ways. Me to class, them to whatever they had on then. As I walked to my usual seat in class, Birdman smiled at me and I, once again, nodded back in greeting.

  Why they all felt the need to say hello to me was beyond me. It was clear from the interactions they had with the larger student body that they were popular kids. They had kids giggling over them, others fawning, and still others hanging on their every word. People liked them. What for, I was yet to see. But maybe, just maybe it had something to do
with the fact they looked like stuck up wankers but didn’t act like it. Were they arrogant? Was life easy for them? Did they seem to get whatever they wanted? Yes. But I also didn’t see them torment anyone, speak down to anyone, or shove anyone in a locker.

  Something had to be wrong with them, though.

  Since when were popular kids ever nice?

  But then, for the most part, most of the kids at Acacia Academy seemed nice. Enough. Which wasn’t to say there wasn’t teasing or rumours or bullying to some degree. It was a couple of buildings full to bursting with teenagers after all, but it wasn’t overt, the whole school didn’t know about it, and there wasn’t any kind of West Side Story faction bollocks going on.

  Bad words about someone were whispered among groups and rumours were incredibly vague and more often about the exploits of past students than current students.

  Teasing seemed to be more a one-off play to the moment with some expert timing sort of thing, rather than on-going agony.

  Bullying, I hadn’t seen much of. There wasn’t like the kid who started fights with everyone. There was no bad boy who hustled kids for their lunch money, or equivalent. No one was pushed in the corridors. Cliques weren’t battling it out for supremacy. No one was crying in the toilets on a daily basis. The worst we had were people like Liz Spencer who thought she was better than everyone else; you could just see it on her face.

  The place was… It was disturbingly realistic and boringly normal.

  It was a typical Australian high school filled with typical Australian teenagers.

  Or maybe, as the new kid, I just didn’t see a lot of the nuances.

  Whichever it was, there wasn’t much to complain about. Which was unfortunate because I enjoyed complaining.

  Chapter Eight

  On Wednesday morning of Week 6, Alex wasn’t bugging me about being late for breakfast. Instead, he was wheeling a small suitcase out of his room.

  I looked him over. “Where are you going?”

  “City.”

  “What for?”

  “Swimming carnival.”

  “When is it?”

  “Tonight.”

  “And you’re only going now?”

  He nodded. “They try to restrict the number of days we miss for carnivals.”

  “Seems like an awful lot of trouble.”

  “Yeah, well that’s what happens when you’re an Acacia Angelshark.” The ‘hoorah’ harrumph was left unsaid, but I still heard it.

  “Will your parents be there at least?”

  “Unlikely. Eh. Maybe. I’m not going to hold my breath.”

  “Wouldn’t it be easier to go to a school closer to the carnivals?”

  “It would.”

  “But your parents sent you here?”

  “They were going to send me to the city to board, but why not be exceptional?” The question was clearly rhetoric, completed as it was by jazz-hands.

  “So, you just have to travel to the city every few weeks instead?”

  He nodded. “All five hours there and back. Usually on the day of comps.”

  “That sucks.”

  He flashed me a smile. “But it is. No use worrying over things I can’t change.”

  That seemed like a dangerously healthy outlook on life. I wanted no part of it.

  “You’ll be back tonight then?” I asked.

  “Why?” he teased. “You gonna miss me?”

  I might have maybe missed someone being close by, which made me realise that I appreciated his existence and proximity, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. “No. Just wondering if it’ll be safe to wander around naked or not.”

  He snorted. “It’ll be safe. Comp finishes at half nine, so we’re staying over.”

  “Oh, night in a big town. Mind you don’t get lost.”

  Alex laughed. “We can go together someday and you can show me around proper.”

  I looked down at my book. “I might just do that.”

  “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” I heard the smile in his voice. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  I nodded. “See you tomorrow. Good luck!” I called quickly as he headed out.

  His hand raised in a wave as he disappeared into the corridor.

  With Alex gone, I’d thought my day would be different.

  Without Alex, why would the other boys have bothered saying hello to me? Why would they feel obliged to wave or smile or talk to me?

  I certainly doubted it was my sunny disposition.

  And yet, they did.

  Clearly the reason they talked to me wasn’t just because I was Alex’s roommate and they were polite young men.

  When I registered someone close to my spot in the Dining Hall at lunch, I assumed it was one of the guys again. It wasn’t.

  “Hey,” came an unknown voice and I looked up.

  Standing over me was a guy. A guy I didn’t know. Which wasn’t hard. I basically knew five people in the whole school and actively shied away from connecting with anyone else.

  He was kinda cute. Non-descript in his green and grey Acacia uniform. His hair was almost black and, standing up, I bet he wouldn’t be much taller than me. He was smiling, his brown eyes shining brightly in welcome.

  “Hey…” I said slowly, unable to help wondering if this was some sort of trick or, at the very least, going to involve unwanted social interaction.

  “I’m Jake,” he said with a nod.

  “Lottie…” I said, still slowly, looking around surreptitiously like I was trying to work out who he belonged to and if they were going to come and collect him, lost puppy that he was.

  “Nice to meet you.”

  I nodded. “Same.” When he didn’t say anything more, I had to speak. “Did you… Can I help you with something?”

  He shook his head. “I’ve seen you around and just wanted to introduce myself.”

  I felt myself smile, although I didn’t really know why. “Oh, okay then. Hi.”

  His smile was kinda nice. “Hi.”

  I wasn’t quite so closed off from the world to not realise the guy was flirting with me. I just wasn’t sure why I might be flirting back. Because I was. I tucked my hair behind my ear, my tell for when I was getting a little flirty.

  “So…” Jake started slowly.

  “So?”

  “Can I message you sometime?”

  I was smiling like the five-year-old who’s just been set loose in Blackebys on her birthday. I didn’t know what was wrong with me.

  I nodded to Jake. “Sure. You can find me under room 605. Elliott Hopkins.”

  Jake’s easy charm stuttered for a moment with surprise, but he kept hold of it. “You’re Alex Landry’s roommate?”

  I let go a deep breath. “I tend to think of myself as Lottie, but that also works.”

  He gave me a lop-sided grin. “I didn’t mean… Just, your name’s done the rounds. Landry and his mates think it’s hilarious he got landed with a girl.”

  “Oh, I’m aware. The humour isn’t lost on me either, I just don’t feel the need to broadcast it to the world.”

  “It’s hardly the world. Someone asked Cook about it in the locker room.”

  Cook was Luke who played… Rugby Viking!

  “You play rugby, too?”

  He nodded. “Yep.”

  “Jakey!” someone called and he turned for a second.

  “I better go. I’ll message you…Lottie.”

  I nodded. “Sounds good…Jake.”

  He gave me another smile, then disappeared.

  Curious as to who this Jake was, I opened my Acacia App to do a search. Looking up Jakes was unhelpful. I knew this because it was at this point that I realised that it wasn’t just the librarians who’d see my ID photo. Everyone on the Acacia App had their ID photo as their profile picture. And I couldn’t rightly tell if any of the Jakes I found were the Jake who’d spoken to me.

  I was just going to ha
ve to wait and see if he messaged me.

  n

  On Saturday night, Alex came out to the living room, pausing at the mirror to pull his hair up.

  “I’m going to the rec room,” he said. “Wanna come?”

  I shook my head. “I have a date.”

  He whirled around and I couldn’t read the look on his face. “What?”

  I laughed and held up my book. “With my book. Jesus. What did you think I meant?”

  He started to shake his head, then switched to nodding. “No. Nothing. I knew what you meant.”

  “Have a good night, then,” I said to him.

  He looked at me once more, then nodded. “You, too.”

  And I planned to. Unlimited tea and books in the snuggly window seat. My idea of a good night in.

  It wasn’t all that long, however, until Alex wandered back in, followed by the boys.

  “I thought you were going to the rec room?” I accused him.

  He nodded. “I did go to the rec room. That’s where I found these guys.”

  “Hey, Lottie,” Birdman said.

  “‘Sup?” Nodded Fret.

  I inclined my head. “I was reading in peace. I’ll take it to my room and leave you boys to it.”

  A resounding, ‘No,’ chorused from the five of them in varying combinations as they all talked over each other.

  I couldn’t help but smile. “It’s fine. I don’t want to get in the way.”

  “You won’t be in the way,” Luke said.

  “Nah, hang out with us,” Alex agreed.

  I looked them over. “Forfeit a night of reading to hang out with you lot?”

  Alex’s grin was infectious. “Why not? I’d feel bad kicking you into your room.”

  I shrugged. “I guess I can stay. I can’t promise I’ll pay attention.”

  Alex nodded. “I’ll take it.”

  I curled myself up in the arm chair while Alex pulled a bag of popcorn and a bag of party mix out of the cupboard.

  “Okay,” he said as he chucked the bags to Birdman and Zac. “Do we introduce Lottie to Mario Kart Deluxe or the Fast franchise.”