Page 15

Moscow, Idaho

Their freshman-year Bid Day, when the best friends were accepted by different sororities, feels like a distant dream. Here they are, in their senior year, finally getting to live together. The timing couldn’t be more perfect.

Maddie walks to the car and starts helping Kaylee unload boxes and boxes of her stuff. Everyone knows that Kaylee doesn’t travel light.

She hauls a bag through the sliding glass doors at the back and into her new room.

Everyone also knows which room is Maddie’s—she’s put the letters of her name in the window, and her signature pink cowboy boots sit on the sill. Maddie’s vanity is just behind. When it’s dark and her lights are on, anyone walking by can see her putting on her mascara.

Maddie took over the King Road lease from graduating Pi Phis, and she’s pulled together a great group, her family away from family.

Perfect for a year of transition, which is what it’s going to be.

Jake graduated and is back home in Boise, but their plan is to make it through this year together, long distance.

They speak every night at eight. Maddie has been meticulous about keeping the appointment, a source of amusement for her new roommates, who are now all moved in.

Xana has taken a room on the main level.

Of course Maddie invited Emily too, because Xana and Emily are almost as inseparable as Xana and Ethan, but Emily had already made plans to room with Josie, her childhood friend from Boise, next door at the Whites, the building where her boyfriend, Hunter Johnson, has also rented an apartment.

So 1122 King Road’s other two rooms went to two blond Pi Phi sophomores who finagled a way to move out of the sorority house: Dylan Mortensen, who is Emily’s Little, and Bethany Funke, Maddie’s Little.

Maddie bangs on each of their doors. “Xana, Dylan, Bethany!” she yells. “Photo time.”

They groan but accept their fate, and the five women in their skimpy, summery dresses gather on the King Road deck. Maddie hands Ethan the camera. They pose, squinting into the afternoon sun: Dylan, Xana, Bethany, Kaylee, Maddie.

Meet the Roommates , Maddie captions the photo, and she makes the post public, as she always does.

She doesn’t think of any risks associated with that. Why would she? The more followers you have, the better for your career in marketing.

Maddie’s life, in this moment, here and now, is pretty much perfect and going exactly where she wants it to.