Page 10 of You Belong Here

BEFORE: THE ROOMMATE

I arrived on campus for freshman move-in with nothing but the large hiking bag strapped to my back, the key in my hand, and a healthy dose of confidence. There were no first-day jitters. No fears of what to expect.

I’d been in these halls many times before.

First when I was young, playing a game of hide-and-seek across campus with the other faculty kids.

And then when I was in high school, helping clean out the dorms after spring semester, when I volunteered to lug the items left behind to the donation center downtown.

As I walked through the open doors, I thought: This is my home.

I thought: No one belongs here more than I do.

But something happened in the lobby. Boxes were stacked along the walls, making the dimensions feel off. Families chatted in line for the elevator, giving the names of their prep schools instead of their towns. Like there was another thread that connected people here—something I hadn’t considered.

The door to my room was already propped open, a pair of black Chelsea boots haphazardly kicked off at the entrance.

A girl with long blond hair was standing on one of the beds, hanging a set of dream catchers against the cinder-block wall behind her. She hummed along to the Killers, music blaring from the speaker on her desk.

I felt the sudden urge to knock, but she was already turning around.

I didn’t know how she heard me over the noise. Maybe she just sensed me there, a disturbance to her world.

“Hello,” she said, eyes trailing over me quickly—the rugged sneakers, the single bag, the high ponytail cinched tight—like she was tallying off things about me, deciding whether I had anything to offer her.

“Hi.” I waved, then took a step inside.

She pursed her lips, like she was still thinking things over. “I’m Adalyn. From Maryland.” She pointed toward the ceiling, which could’ve meant either up north or someplace better than here.

She’d layered a strand of pearls with a graphic T-shirt and baggy jeans. The room already smelled like hair product and vanilla, as if there was a candle burning just out of sight.

“Beckett,” I answered. The window was open, but I felt only the humidity of the August stillness, a wave of sudden self-consciousness, and the realization that, for me, nothing at all had changed. “I’m from right here.”

Adalyn climbed down from the bed and smiled then, waiting for me to look at her. A precursor to a question. Something that seemed both practiced and disarming.

“Tell me, Beckett-from-right-here, what does one do around this place for fun?”

I soon learned that Adalyn was a legacy. That she was here not for the experience, or the ambiance, or even the education, but in a deal with her parents: a promise of their continued financial support as long as she made it through. And she intended to make the most of it.

We discovered the likeness in each other first, before the differences.

Neither of us had been truly given the choice to be here, and it bonded us together, swift and furious. She was a legacy, and I was a faculty kid, and we both arrived on campus with one leg up, knowing the secrets of the place.

How quickly I felt at ease after those first jarring moments.

How lucky we were, I thought, coming from two very different worlds, to meet.