UI 101

by M. K. Claeys

  “I won’t have you disrespecting my friends like that, Mitzy. That was just rude.”

  “Me?!” I cried. “Disrespecting your friends? Tasha, you were the one that brought them in here at three a.m. to talk about laundry! When you knew I was sleeping! If anything, I would say that was being disrespectful.”

  “I don’t wanna talk to you about it, Mitzy, until you apologize.”

  I blanched at that. I thought about everything that had happened. Was Tasha right? Had I been rude? Did I owe her, Tanya, and CiCi an apology?

  No, said a stout little voice inside me that sounded strangely a lot like Rae, you don’t owe her anything. With this thought for internal encouragement, I took the first step up into my bunk.

  “Well, I’m sorry you feel that way, Tasha, but I won’t apologize because I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  Her nose scrunched up into what was starting to look suspiciously like her angry face, but I soldiered on.

  “I have rights, Tasha,” I said stoutly, trying to assert myself.

  Her jaw dropped, and she looked at me incredulously. “Rights? You fucking kidding me right now?”

  I cringed. “Okay, poor choice of words, and I am sorry for that. However, what I mean is that it’s in the university policy that the two things you cannot interfere with when it comes to your roommate is their sleeping time and their studying time. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to bed because one of those policies already been hampered with enough this evening, and if I don’t get back to sleep soon, then this whole ordeal is going to interfere with another one tomorrow. Good night.”

  And with that, I climbed the final steps into my evil bed, shut my eyes, and went back to sleep.

  Given that my sleep was so screwed up, I slept late and didn’t make it to the library as early as I had planned. Friday afternoon was spent in the library doing research for my final paper in my introductory history class. I walked there with Ryn, since the library was on her way to class, and she promised to stop by when her lecture was over so I could help her with her English paper. We’d originally planned on heading back to the dorms for supper, but I convinced Ryn to try out the new little bistro downtown with me, so we called Rae and asked her to join us.

  We spent the evening wandering around downtown looking in all the shops until they closed. I actually bought a matching scarf, hat, and glove set because Ryn told me I would definitely use them for more than two months out of the year here. I’d never had much selection for cute winter things like that in Tennessee, so I felt like a little kid in a candy store, trying on all the different winter apparel. Rae bought a set, too, and we spent over an hour modeling them for Ryn before she told us which ones suited us best. Mine were bright pink and Rae’s were neon green, and in the end we convinced Ryn to buy a set, too—electric blue. As we were on our way out, I saw their clearance shoe rack completely stocked with last season’s fluorescent galoshes. Ryn would swear up and down they were boots, but I still said they were galoshes.

  They were on red-line clearance for only seven dollars a pair and were positively silly, but I adored them on the level that I worshiped my gorilla slippers, so I bought us each a pair to match our new hats. Ryn had to buy a size larger, though, because apparently the one pair of size five-and-a-halfs had been sold the day before. I figured they would come in handy in that pre-snow rainy season I’d heard so much about, and they wouldn’t be bad in the snow, either, with wool socks underneath. We gallivanted our way home the long way through the university gardens, since Rae had never really seen a true autumn, and put on our new galoshes so we could trample through the leaves. It was the most fun I’d had in a long time. I’d waited my whole life to have friends like these, and I felt complete now that I’d found them.

  We finally made it home after ten o’clock, and we each went our separate ways. I went back to my empty room to read a book—for pleasure!—Ryn went to her room to talk to her boyfriend, who had called her five times since we left the library at five o’clock, and Rae went to Brad’s room. It was presumably to review that day’s math seminar, but Ryn and I both knew it was really so they could make out while Paul was at his IT study group.

  It might have been a Friday night, but after movie night the evening before and jumping into leaf piles tonight, I really didn’t feel much like doing anything. It didn’t hurt that I knew Tasha was on a double date with Tanya and I would have the room to myself. I was planning on cracking open one of my favorite books that I would be reading for the umpteenth time, but I didn’t care. I was happy to just relax, light some candles, and spend a quiet evening with me, myself, and I. The only problem was that when I opened my door, it didn’t look like that would be happening anytime soon. Tasha certainly had gone on her double date, and it looked as though she and Tanya had gotten ready here, as they had planned last night—or should I say this morning, since the planning took place at three a.m.—while I was at the library.

  Either way, Tasha’s stuff had exploded over the twelve-by-twelve box that was our dorm room. There were clothes everywhere, not to mention the contents of her makeup case spread out all over the floor. It just wouldn’t do. I didn’t want to trip on anything if I had to get up during the night, and I especially didn’t want her eyebrow archer cutting my foot open. I’d seen the damage those things could do. Sighing, I picked up all her clothes and laid them out flat in a neat pile on one side of the futon and put her makeup in stacks on the floor next to it. I knew some people were very picky about the organization of their makeup cases, so I didn’t want to put anything back in the incorrect spot. At least now it was neatly out of my way and she wouldn’t hurt herself, either, if she came in and I was already asleep.

  I got myself ready for bed and pulled my pillow, monkey, and patchwork quilt off my bed so I could read on the futon till I was ready to go to sleep. I would have considered sleeping on the futon, the book a suitable enough guise to make it look like I had just fallen asleep reading, but I didn’t dare put Tasha’s clothes on her bed after how she had reacted about anyone going near it last time. So there was no room for me on the futon tonight. I read for a few hours, letting the new lavender-scented candle I had bought at the store fill up the room with a sleepy-time scent, hoping it would make me drowsy and I would fall into dreamland relatively easily when I was ready. When I climbed into bed, it seemed to have worked.

  I was dreaming about something pleasant when the door was thrown open and in stumbled Tasha, L’Avery, Tanya, and Richard.

  “Why the fuck did you touch my stuff, you crazy-ass bitch!?” Tasha yelled, ripping my blankets off me.

  I jumped about a mile high…and fell just as far. She had startled me right out of a sound sleep so fast that I fell directly out of my bunk and went crashing to the floor. When I finally realized what had happened, it took a moment to register just how much pain I was in. The second I did, my brain also comprehended another thing: Tasha and Tanya laughing at me.

  My eyes welled with tears at the pain in my hip, wrist, elbow, and head, and my face burned red with humiliation.

  “So?” Tasha demanded, putting her hands on her hips.

  I slowly picked myself up off the floor, wincing with pain. I glanced at the clock; it was four thirteen in the morning. “So, what?” I managed, my jaw clenched in an attempt to avoid letting out a loud, sobbing wail.

  “So why did you touch my stuff?”

  I stared at her perplexedly, my eyes welling with tears, and then started coaching myself.

  Don’t cry, Mitzy. Just don’t! Do. Not. Cry. Don’t—

  I was horribly unsuccessful. I burst into tears and, surprisingly, they fueled only one emotion: anger. “Because, LaTasha, I didn’t appreciate the fact that you left a huge mess for me to come home to! I didn’t want to trip over anything in the middle of the night if I needed to get up. So I laid out all your stuff neatly on the futon and stacked up all your makeup so none of it would get ruined if someone else stepped on it when y’all came home
!” I started ripping my blankets, pillows, and stuffed monkey off my bunk. “I wish now I hadn’t bothered—maybe all the clothes would have cushioned my fall!”

  “What the hell is your problem, Mitzy?”

  “My problem?” I repeated, my voice ending in a shriek. I paused in my wrestling with my patchwork quilt. “My problem is you! It is four in the morning, Tasha, and yet you seem to think it’s appropriate to bring people over. You seem to think it’s all right to bring people over at any time of night.”

  She stared blankly at me.

  “Don’t you even dare look at me like you don’t know what I’m talking about,” I screamed, tears streaming down my face as I growled in frustration that my quilt was stuck. I kept pulling and continued berating my roommate. “You’ve been doing it since we first got to Illington—you did it last night, for Pete’s sake! You don’t give a darn about me or my feelings and you certainly don’t respect my rights as a person who owns half this room!”

  I’d gathered my stuff, and so I turned around to face her head-on. I guess I must have looked pretty scary, with my eyes all bloodshot and my face all red from crying and my hair an absolute rat’s nest, because she, Tanya, L’Avery, and Richard all took a step back.

  “God, Mitzy,” she stuttered, holding her hands up in front of her. “Don’t be such a bitch. You don’t need to go acting all crazy, I didn’t do a damn thing to you.”

  “Didn’t do a thing?” I whispered disbelievingly. The waterworks of tears stopped instantaneously, my anger filling me completely and making my body devoid of room for any emotion other than pure, unfiltered rage. “Tasha, you are without a doubt the most uncivilized, uncaring person I have ever met! Didn’t do a thing? I just fell six feet out of a bunk bed because you came in here yelling your fool head off, and yet you didn’t even stop to ask if I was all right! Didn’t do a thing?”

  Tasha looked steamed. “You damn right I didn’t because I don’t—”

  “Because you don’t care,” I finished for her, my rage building once again. “Fine. Don’t care, then. Call me a hick, call me a supremacist, call me ignorant, call me a bigot, call me whatever you want because I don’t care anymore either!”

  “I called you a crazy-ass bitch,” Tasha said smugly, folding her arms across her chest.

  “Did you now?” I smiled sarcastically at her. “Good. Because here is what ‘Mitzy the bitch’ has to say to you: go fuck yourself.”

  Using my blankets as a battering ram, I shoved my way through the four of them and made my way out the door, pulling it shut with a satisfying slam. I walked down the hall, completely ignoring the curious faces that had popped out of their doors, stopping only when I came to room 510. Ryn opened the door.

  “Whoa. That was you screaming just now?”

  She ushered me quickly inside, taking my blankets and giving a quelling look to all the curious bystanders in the hallway. Rae sat up groggily in her bed.

  “Mitzy? That you? What happened? Are you all right?”

  I smiled grimly in the dim lighting. “Well, apart from the fact that I’m going to bruise rather horribly tomorrow from falling out of my bunk—”

  “You fell out of your bunk bed?” they cried.

  I nodded. “Mmm-hmm. Tasha came in screaming, and it done scared me so bad I fell right out.”

  “Are you all right?” they asked.

  I felt as if I was in surround sound.

  “I’m fine, really, but thanks for asking. It’s more than Tasha did.”

  “What did you do?” asked Rae. She checked me over for bumps and bruises while Ryn muttered to herself as she set up the futon for me.

  “I completely blew up at her.”

  “No more than she deserves,” huffed Rae, handing me some ice in a plastic baggie wrapped in a face towel.

  “Oh, no,” I said as I settled myself down gingerly on the futon, resting the homemade ice pack on the side of my head. “I said just about the worst possible thing I could think of to her.”

  “What?” breathed Ryn, turning away from her computer monitor halfway through the act of shutting it down for the night.

  “I told her to go fuck herself.”

  There was a sharp intake of breath from the both of them.

  “You didn’t!” cried Rae, sitting up again from where she had lain back down, and Ryn paused on her way up to her bunk.

  “Oh yes I did.” I snuggled under my blankets. “And it’s like you said before, Rae, it’s no more than she deserves. Guess what I’m going to do, first thing tomorrow?”

  “Beat her up?” asked Ryn enthusiastically. “We can take bets on how long she’ll last before you smash her to a pulp! I can teach you some of the self-defense moves I learned in class with my mom last summer.”

  “Yeah, and if you wear a white T-shirt and we wet it down beforehand, we can probably charge half the guys on the floor ten bucks to watch!” added Rae.

  I laughed. “No. I’m going straight down to the front desk and putting our futon up for dibs. Then I’m going to go over to Jamaal’s room and ask him if he’ll help me move it to storage and then we’re going to take down my bunk bed and move it to the floor. I’m not going to fall out of that evil bed again.”

  “Good for you, Mitzy!” Rae cheered. “We’ll help you if you’d like, unless you just want to be alone with Jamaal.”

  “I think I do, but thanks for the offer.” I grinned. “Well, goodnight, ladies, and if y’all don’t mind, I expect I might need to borrow some aspirin in the morning for my bruises.”

  When I got back to my room the next afternoon, Tasha was gone, but her stuff was still scattered all over the floor. So, I did what I didn’t have the guts to do the night before—picked it all up and threw it in a heap on her bed. The fwump it made on the mattress was actually quite satisfying. After that, I walked down the hall and stepped into Jamaal’s room through the open door.

  “Hey, Jay, can you do me a favor?” I asked, by way of announcing my presence.

  “Hey! Mitzy? Whoa. I didn’t know it was you because you didn’t knock.”

  I smiled. “Yes. The new me realizes that when a door is open, it is not necessary to knock when one is in an intimate friendship with the person residing on the other side.”

  Jamaal smiled back at me. “About time you figured that out. So, what you need, girl? I’m happy to help.”

  “I need assistance moving my bed.”

  Jamaal quirked an eyebrow at me. “Your bed? Where you gonna put it? I’ve seen your room, and it’s the same size as mine.”

  “You’ll see.” I grabbed his hand and walked him down to my room. He noticed right away that the futon was gone.

  “Where’d it go?”

  “Turns out I didn’t even need to put it in storage,” I said happily. “There was a guy downstairs asking if there were any futons up for grabs when I went down to put mine up for dibs. So the desk clerk just let him take mine since it would save him the paperwork. He and his roomie came and got it right away. They live in 520.”

  “Nice. So you want to put your bed on the ground, then, where the futon was. Do you mind if I ask why? It’s going to seriously mess up the amount of living space in here.”

  “You? No, I don’t mind if you ask. I’m afraid of heights.”

  “You playin’?”

  “No. Serious as a heart attack.”

  “Wow. No wonder you start to look stressed by Wednesday. You’re not getting any sleep.”

  “Right. So, I imagine it just comes off then, right?” I mimed lifting the bunk off Tasha’s bed. I wanted to get down to business. “You grab that end, and I’ll grab this end.”

  Jamaal and I worked well together as a team, and we got my top bunk moved to the floor in a surprisingly short amount of time. He even helped me re-make it with my clean spare set of sheets as I told him everything that had happened the night before. Setting my monkey on the center of the pillow with extreme care, I patted the seat next to me, indicating Jamaal should si
t.

  “I never knew you and Tasha had so many problems,” he commented.

  “I usually just didn’t let it get to me,” I said, shrugging. “And I don’t like to bother the rest of y’all with what I should be able to handle myself. But next week being midterms and all, I think I just cracked.”

  “I probably would have too. And you know you can talk to me, Mitzy. I’ll listen any time. And Rae and Ryn will too, I’m sure.” He paused, looking around my empty room, most likely comparing my neat side to Tasha’s explosion. “So what you wanna do now?”

  “I don’t know. You want to play spades?”

  “No.”

  “Umm…what about that game you keep telling me about? The pirate one? You-Curr?”

  “Euchre?” Jamaal laughed. “We need four people.”

  The door opened, and Tasha walked in with L’Avery. She took one long look around the room, glanced toward Jamaal and me sitting on my bed, grabbed her toothbrush, and left.

  “She didn’t look too happy,” Jamaal commented.

  I shook my head sadly. “She doesn’t ever look happy when I’m in the room.” I picked up my stuffed monkey and absentmindedly twiddled him around in my hands. “But I won’t let it bother me. If she wants to be negative all the time, that’s her problem.”

  I was blabbering on, but I couldn’t help it. I didn’t know what to do with myself for some reason, so I just kept talking.

  “I keep to myself mostly, although it would be nice if she would just talk to me like a civilized person once in a while. It’d be a good change to have someone in my own room I could confide in, not that being able to talk to you and Rae and Ryn ain’t nice, and all. Well, and Paul too. But, whatever, honestly, she has her friends and I have—”

  I couldn’t say anything more because right then, Jamaal pressed his lips to mine. I’d been kissed by boys before, but I liked the way Jamaal kissed me. It was soft and strong and hard and submissive all at the same time. And, in my opinion, it ended all too soon.

  “Jay,” I said softly, not daring to open my eyes for fear he’d have disappeared, being only a figment of my imagination. “Why did you do that?”