Sawyer walks out of our room and Cora comes to my side to finish transferring my clothing from my suitcase to the closet.
“There’s a movie showing tonight on the quad,” she says, slipping a gray, wool sweater onto a hanger. “Most of our floor is going. Wanna come?”
“I don’t think so,” I say as I fold my underwear and socks into the top drawer of my dresser. “I think I’ll hang low tonight.”
“Suit yourself.” Cora takes the now empty luggage from my bed and stands on toe to try to place it on the top shelf. “But there are supposed to be some mighty fine upperclassmen attending.” The suitcase wobbles into place, and Cora keeps a steady hand in front of it until she’s satisfied it’s not going anywhere. “Probably won’t be any guys hotter than Ran, anyway.”
“Probably not,” I reply, my eyes burrowing into the stained concrete floor underneath me. I chance a glance up at Cora, and her mouth is pulled into an ‘I told you so’ smile.
“Probably not,” she says once more.
***
When the bright light from the hallway slices into our room, I have to squint my eyes to fight the glare, even though they’re still closed.
“Cora?” I croak, lifting up slightly in my bed. “Cora, what time is it?”
Two giggles—one female and the other distinctly male—offer me the only answer I need. It’s late. Like middle-of-the-night-and-Cora’s-brought-someone-home-with-her kind of late.
“Seriously Cora?” I heave a spare pillow across the room toward the intertwined couple and one of them mutters, “Thanks.”
Ugh. This is so not how I wanted to spend my first night back at school. I’d take the muted sound of Mikey throwing up on the other side of our shared bedroom wall over Cora’s midnight romp. Not that she’d go too far. That’s the funny thing about Cora. She pretends to be this girl that’s been around the block and then some, but the reality of it is that she always stops things before they get to that point.
We had a conversation the first night we met about our experiences, and I was shocked to learn that Cora was a virgin, and that she intended on staying that way until her wedding night. Cora proved herself to be the perfect example of ‘you can’t judge a book by its cover.’ On the outside she looked experienced, overly confident, and well practiced, yet on the inside she was completely innocent.
I’d never been jealous of Cora over much, but that was one thing about her that gripped me with envy.
“Can’t you guys get a room?” I yank my pillow and blanket under my arm and push past them toward the door, snatching my cell phone on the way out.
“Yeah, we kinda just did,” the boy-of-the-week utters as they tumble onto Cora’s bed with a thump.
Though it’s the dead of night, you’d never know it based on the amount of noise and bustle on our fifth floor. The movie on the quad finished up hours ago, and my guess is that the following parties and keggers have also just recently wrapped up—or were broken up.
Foggy with sleep, I trudge to the student lounge at the end of the long hallway and toss my makeshift bedding onto a vacant loveseat. Fluffing up my pillowing, I lie down and stretch myself under the patchwork quilt, hoping to summon the deep sleep I was in just minutes before Cora and her boy-toy barged into our room.
There’s another student folded into a small armchair to my left, his glasses resting on the tip of his nose, about to slide right off, and a copy of Wuthering Heights held loosely between his fingers, hovering just inches over the ground. I’m tempted to go over and push the glasses back up to his bridge where they belong and pull the book from his grasp, but I stuff down my OCD tendencies and rotate over to face the wall.
I’ve tucked my cell in the top edge of my sports bra, knowing how loud our floor can get in the morning and how good I’ve become at tuning out the white noise. Keeping my phone close should help ensure that I’ll hear my alarm go off in just a few hours. I’ve only got the weekend to crank out Professor Long’s paper. I’m going to have to start early if I have any hope of making this quarter count for something.