by Rachel Rust
After hanging up with her, I changed into pajamas and brushed my teeth. Tomorrow was move-in day at Columbia. I climbed into bed and tried to sleep. But the anxiety of college kept me awake and the lit-up city out the window beckoned me. The city was old and weathered, yet beautiful. It had seen some serious shit and told its tale around every corner.
I clicked on the bedside lamp and dug through my backpack until I found the paperwork for my dorm room. Carman Hall. My roommate’s name was Mandy Torrance. Hopefully not a slob … or a snob.
I still had not chosen a major, but that didn’t bother me. I was comfortable with my academic future, despite my dad’s insistence that I needed to start making some decisions. I had listened to his lectures throughout the summer about how declaring a major early is beneficial in choosing general education classes. But nowadays, I felt less pressure to do as he demanded, and less desire to retort back anything snotty. My dad and I had actual conversations now. Like two grownups.
I read the dormitory paperwork for the millionth time before putting it back in my bag. I clicked off the lamp and snuggled deep into the blankets. But sleep didn’t come.
I wondered what neighborhood Eddie’s apartment was in. Was he there now? Was he possibly just blocks away at that very moment? I flipped onto my side, pulling the covers over my head. He could be anywhere. He could be standing outside my hotel door, ready to knock. Or he could be thousands of miles away.
I hadn’t seen Eddie since the cabin in late June. At work, Luke made me adhere to a rule: No asking about Eddie. Luke had told me that no news was good news. “If I don’t say anything to you about him, that means he’s fine.”
Not seeing Eddie or hearing anything about him was why time had moved so slowly throughout the summer. I constantly felt under the fog of the unknown. Lack of information weighed heavy on my mind and no amount of excitement for college or New York lifted it.
I finally fell asleep as the eastern sky out the window grew purple. I was awake less than three hours later. After a bacon and egg bagel, and a cup of coffee, my dad and I headed to the campus.
Moving into my dorm wasn’t too daunting a task. The room was furnished, so all I had brought was clothes, linens, and a few random décor items from my bedroom back home. It was a double room that shared an adjoining bathroom with the room next door. Sharing a bathroom with strangers wasn’t high on my thrill list, but it had to beat sharing a bathroom with Josh. The guy couldn’t aim if his life depended on it.
By the time I had my half of the room all set up, Mandy’s half was still empty. She hadn’t shown up yet.
My dad looked around, hands on hips. “Looks good, Nat. What do you say we get out of here and grab some dinner?”
“Sounds great,” I said, pressing my hand against my noisy stomach.
We dined at a small café just two stops down on the 1 Train. It had a small menu of Italian dishes and sandwiches. We ate spaghetti and laughed about Josh, who was now rooming at Central Dakota University with a born-again-Christian roommate. My brother, who had touched more boobs than bibles, was in for an amusing semester, and I couldn’t wait to give him face-to-face shit over it.
After dinner, my dad and I lingered at the edge of campus, neither wanting to say good-bye first. He didn’t cry, and I didn’t either, but my tears were on a knife’s edge. One wrong move, or one muttering of a cheesy word would spill them down my cheek—and, I assumed, his.
We hugged tight, and he promised to call me often—but not too much. And then I watched him walk away … down the block, disappearing into the crowd. And I was alone.
I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “You got this,” I whispered to myself. “You’re gonna be okay.” I never thought stepping out on my own—college, or in any other way, would be easy. But I wasn’t quite prepared for the vulnerability that came from feeling the apron strings fray.
I made my way back to my dorm. The light was on and the door was slightly ajar. Slowly, I pushed it open and peeked inside. A tall girl with long, brown hair stood next to the unclaimed bed, a large box in her hands.
“Hi,” I said, stepping inside. “Are you Mandy? I’m Natalie.”
She placed the box on her bare mattress, and then turned and smiled. “I am Remy.”
The purr of her Russian accent forced my feet to shuffle back.
“Oh, I, um, I was supposed to room with a girl named Mandy.”
Remy waved a hand. “Mandy is not your roommate anymore.”
I couldn’t stop staring at her face. She was beautiful with tanned skin, high cheek bones and light-brown eyes. “What—what’s your last name, Remy?”
She smiled again, her eyes twinkling as though she understood why I asked.
“Chenko. Remy Chenko.”
Chenko. My blood pressure plummeted. My head said run through the door and never come back, but my body had to sit before I passed out. She was related to Jack Chenko, which meant Sergei Romanov had not only followed me to New York—that much I had expected—but he was no longer watching me from afar. He had slithered his way into my dorm room.
Remy unloaded items onto her bed. Towels. Sheets. A blanket. She turned and placed a framed photo on the top of her dresser. A photo of her and Sergei, smiling for the camera.
“Who is that in the picture with you?” I asked in barely more than a whisper.
“My father.” She leaned against the dresser, staring me down from her tall height. “I think you and I are going to be very good friends, Natalie.”
My face fell. Oh shit.
I had been dragged right back into Sergei’s world. His daughter was my new roommate—sleeping right next to me. How the hell was I supposed to concentrate on school and my grades when my roommate might have been sent to kill me in my sleep?
Anger flared inside me. Sergei and his sick, evil world had messed with my life, and the lives of people I cared about, one too many times. Bad enough that he had been mysteriously watching me since I was a little girl. But now, here he was in my dorm room. Sergei’s flesh and blood, here to spy on me—or maybe worse.
My jaw clenched as Remy made herself at home, mere feet from my personal space. Sergei had stepped up his game. And now I needed to do the same. I could no longer sit around and wait for Eddie.
I needed to wipe out Sergei and take back my own life.
Remy gave me a sickly sweet smile.
And I was going to start with her.
The End
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