Freshman

August

This was it. The day Autumn had been looking forward to all summer. She was finally going to meet the girl she’d be sharing her dorm room with. The warm months behind her had been less than exciting, and she had high expectations for college. She had never shared a room with anyone, being that she was an only child. Her parents had moved her all over the cities of Minnesota until they settled on a house in the small town she grew up in. Every one of Autumn’s friends lived in Shelby, and her family was all near by. She had never known a life away from her modest house in the suburbs.
She and her roommate Amber had agreed that IKEA would be the most logical place to have their first encounter. How cute, Autumn remembered thinking when she got the letter with her room assignment, Amber and Autumn, it had a certain ring to it. Maybe they would become best friends and be inseparable. This was of course Hannah’s worst fear, seeing as since Autumn could remember, they’d been like sisters. Hannah had moved into Autumn’s neighborhood and after sledding together one day after school they’d been together everyday.
Autumn tapped her fingers on the table she was sharing with her grandma and her mother. Her nails were cut and polished with clear paint. She had planned out what to wear today very carefully. She wanted Amber to think she was put together, and not a hick like so many of her high school classmates. She had settled on ripped jeans, a plain black t-shirt and a long necklace wrapped around her neck twice. She had a cute figure, no muffin top and bigger boobs than the rest of her friends. Not something she was as proud of as they thought she should be. “Guys love big boobs,” they’d say. “Fuck guys”, would be Autumn’s response. She had not had good luck in that department, to the dismay of her family, who always asked why she didn’t have a boyfriend. There just weren’t any guys out there that were suitable.
Autumn looked down at her feet, wondering where the heck her future roommate was. She had worn her black flip-flops and painted her toenails pink, in case this girl would notice something like that. She had decided to straighten her hair, which wasn’t something she did often in the summer. It was shoulder length and had large chunks of red, dark brown and platinum blonde in it. That was the only way her hairstylist could hide the disaster she had created on her head with an at home dye-kit. She had flipped out the ends a little today in order to appear cutesier than she actually was. Maybe she had over thought her appearance, but first impressions were important, and she was determined to make Amber like her. Amber was from a rich town not too far from Shelby. It was hard to place what she would be like on the phone. She said “like” a lot, which made Autumn peg her for a valley girl, which was the stereotype for chicks from Edina. Bitchy girls that spent daddy’s money at The Galleria. But then Amber mentioned that she had broken her thumb skateboarding. All Autumn could picture was a Barbie-dollesque girl in a too short skirt trying to skateboard. This had made her and her coworkers laugh a bit between diaper changes. Autumn worked at a daycare, in the baby room, and she dreaded leaving it for school. The babies were the sunshine in her life, as cheesy as that sounded.
Autumn’s daydreaming was broken by the sound of Jason Mraz singing in her pocket. Amber was calling, she must be here, she thought.
“Hey, what’s up?” said the stranger on the other line.
“Oh nothing, just got here.” Lie. They had been waiting for at least 20 minutes. This was partly Autumn’s fault. She had insisted that she and her mom and grandma leave early. She wasn’t about to be the one to show up late.
“Okay well I’m coming up the escalator,” said Amber. Autumn looked over towards the escalator and sure enough, there was a girl holding her cell phone in one hand, and swinging around a green cast on the other. Bright green. Like lime skittles. She was nothing like Autumn had imagined. Her hair was down, but not groomed, maybe not even brushed. She had cotton shorts on, which upon further examination, had holes in them. Her outfit was completed with a blue Incubus shirt that did nothing for her figure, and big untied skating shoes. This girl was a tomboy. Yes! Autumn hated the girl she thought she would see, and was elated by this discovery. Not that Amber was ugly, because she was gorgeous. She was a dead ringer for an Olson twin. Big eyes, flawless skin, and if she cared to, she could make her hair look perfect as well. She was really tan. Something Autumn was instantly jealous of, because her skin was so fair it was almost impossible to get it as brown as she would like. Amber had some make-up on, but it was smudged around her eyes. She was one of those girls the guys were going to want to get on just because she was so opposite of most girls. She obviously wasn’t trying to impress anyone and Autumn blushed with embarrassment when she realized how long she had taken to get ready that morning. She must look like a bitch, with her painted toes and cute little purse under her arm.
Then came the mother. Amber’s mom was much more Edina than her daughter. She wore a very expensive looking suit, one of those suits an important businesswoman would wear to a high-power executive meeting. Diamond stud earrings adorned her lobes, of which Amber had an identical pair, something Autumn hadn’t noticed at first glance. Amber hid them well behind her hair, as if embarrassed by her family’s obvious wealth.
“Hi, I’m Peg,” said her mother to Autumn’s. She didn’t even acknowledge her grandmother, who sat abandoned at the red plastic table. Autumn’s grandma was insistent on buying the essentials for her dorm room. She had inherited money from her sister when she died earlier that year and was sure she would have wanted it to go to Autumn’s education. Which was also why she was also paying $5,000 of the tuition every year.
Autumn saw her mother’s shoulders droop at the sight of Peg. That woman sure did have an arrogance about her. Like she was better than every single person in the store. Autumn couldn’t stand people like that and decided it was going to be a long ass day.
Once the girls started shopping, the mood shifted. Everyone was getting along fine and Autumn and Amber took turns trying to convince their mothers to buy things for them, Amber having an obviously easier time, go figure.
Halfway through the trip, the girls were thumbing idly through the posters while the others searched for light bulbs. One in particular caught Autumn’s eye. It was a grossly enlarged photograph of a hand with the pointer finger extended toward the sky. This store sure did have a lot of useless crap, she thought to herself.
“So, what did you do today?” Autumn asked, trying to keep the conversation going.
“Oh, I went skating with my boyfriend. He’s really good. He’s trying to teach me a new trick right now”, Amber answered. Man, of course she’s got a boyfriend. That’s all Autumn needed to deal with, sex in the dorm room. She’d read the horror stories of roommates waking up to moaning and just turning up their I pod to drown it out. She was also a bit jealous. Autumn hadn’t had a boyfriend in ages. The closest she got to one over the summer was the star hockey player on her high school team. He hadn’t even known her name before they were seated next to each other at graduation. The fact that he was popular had a lot to do with why she even gave him the time of day. He was a hard core Republican, which pissed her off more than anything. All through high school he had stood up in class, yes, they had class together and he didn’t know her name, and given speeches about religion and abortions. Self-centered, right wing bastard. Everything had been fine and dandy for a couple weeks. She went to his place in the nicest neighborhood in town (his family was rolling in the dough and he lived with his brother in a huge house next to the casino) and they would talk for hours, or watch movies, or just lay together. Then one night she went over to see him and he was tripping on ecstasy and rubbing ice cubes all over his body. What a catch. Bastard.
Autumn shook off the thoughts of him and tried to come up with a relevant answer to what Amber had just said. She knew nothing about skateboarding, or tricks, or boyfriends, for that matter.