Begin Again(4)

“Sometimes two,” she confesses.

“In this place?” I ask, setting my bags down on the bare mattress of my bed.

She shrugs. “I don’t have a major yet, so. Things aren’t super intense for me.” She pulls off her shower cap, revealing her intricate pattern of zigzagged cornrows cinched in a ponytail, and plucks a book with a very steamy cover from her bedside table. “How about you? Picked your poison?”

“Psychology,” I say, hoping she doesn’t take one look at me and know that the only two books I own are celebrity-authored hybrid cook-and lifestyle books.

Shay looks up at me from the pages of her novel, wincing. “Well—good, I guess. Makes sense for you to be here, since the psychology program is so intense. Nearly knocked my older sister off her ass, but she’s in grad school now and glad for it.”

I try not to wince back, focusing on unpacking the backpack I put all of my essentials in.

“Yeah. Not looking forward to that.”

Shay shrugs. “If you managed to elbow your way in as a mid-freshman-year transfer, I’m guessing you’ll be fine. That’s basically unheard of.”

And this time I do wince, pivoting on my heel before she can see it and turning my attention to the overflowing snack-cake bag. It’s not basically unheard of. It technically is unheard of. According to the registrar, not only am I the only freshman transfer they took, but the first one in years.

It’s not that I didn’t get good grades. I worked my tail off in my first semester, wrote fifteen drafts of my application essay, and got glowing recommendations from my two most favorite teachers. But I can’t help suspecting that a huge part of why I got in is because—well. For lack of a better phrase, the “dead mom” card.

See, when you have the “dead mom” card in your playing deck, everything in your world is just a little bit tilted sideways. The kids you were close to growing up suddenly hesitate to talk about their own moms in front of you, or even the rest of their problems, like they’re worried to bother you with them when they think it doesn’t compare to yours. The adults in your small town are extra nice to you, sneaking you gumballs at the grocery store checkout line, showing up in full force whenever you host a car wash fundraiser. And eventually you get a little older and look around and realize that there’s a mark on you that’s followed you around, some shadow that’s colored everything that’s happened to you since. Marked you as an “other” with your friends, so you can never quite relate to them the same way you did. Given you little boosts with everyone else, like they could ever make up for the worst thing that ever happened to you.

It’s why I loved writing the anonymous advice column for our high school paper so much, and why I’ve kept doing it long after graduation. Nobody has ever known who I am. It was a way to help friends with their problems, once half of them felt too uncomfortable about my situation to keep coming to me with them. And I know the reputation I’ve built with it is all my own, and not because I’m Amy Rose’s daughter.

Blue Ridge State, on the other hand, I’m not so sure about. My mom was just as well-loved here as she was back at Little Fells. As happy as I am that it all worked out, there’s some part of me that’s wondered exactly whose merit I got in on—mine or hers.

“Got any friends here?” Shay asks.

I clear my throat, securing the smile back on my face. “Yeah. My boyfriend, Connor,” I say, a little more brightly than I meant to.

“Your boyfriend?” says Shay.

“Yeah. Of three years. But we’ve been friends for like, ever.” I put down the shirts I was pulling out of my suitcase and take a step closer to the edge of her bed. “Actually, my being here is kind of a surprise. I haven’t been able to tell him yet. Still brainstorming the most romantic place to go about it.”

Somewhat unhelpfully, my thoughts keep straying to the arboretum, a huge chunk of woods on the edge of campus full of trails to explore and hidden spots with bridges and gazebos and a whole tree grove full of birdhouses. There’s a lake smack-dab in the middle of it with a trail that goes all the way around, one just as picturesque as the big lake my parents used to take me on nature strolls to as a kid. On a whim I even unearthed my old hiking boots, only to abruptly realize upon seeing the Hello Kitty pattern on them that I no longer had ten-year-old feet and they wouldn’t do me any good here.

But Connor’s always been too restless for that kind of thing. If he’s outdoors, he wants to be competing in soccer matches or training, doing something “productive.” Considering all the times he dodged my attempts to take him hiking back in high school, I doubt he’d appreciate getting dragged all the way out there when I could have just as easily met up with him somewhere less muddy.

Shay watches me curiously. “Huh,” she says. “Well—as long as you don’t ditch me to join the cast of a reality show like the last roommate did.”

I flip my ponytail over my shoulder. “I’ll try to keep MTV’s casting directors at bay.”

Shay lets out a small snort and we share a cautious smile. We’ve messaged back and forth the past few weeks, but it was mostly about moving arrangements. But as nervous as I’ve been to make friends here, I can already tell that Shay and I are going to get along just fine.

“Zebra Cake?” I ask, pulling one out of Gammy Nell’s bag.