Free One Pink Line by Dina Silver

my room after he left. “Can we talk?”
    There were so many questions spinning around in my head, first and foremost, when could I meet my real father. But I couldn’t muster the energy to talk about it any longer that evening. “Not now,” I said.
    “Are you sure?”
    I went to my closet and grabbed a pair of pajamas from the bottom drawer of my dresser. “I’m sure.”
    Mom placed a glass of ice water on the nightstand next to my bed. Then she walked over to me, leaned up and kissed my cheek. “I love you, sweetie, goodnight.” She squeezed my elbow and started to leave the room.
    “Mom,” I said.
    She turned around at the doorway. “Yeah?”
    “I want to talk to my dad, my real dad, and I want you to call him tomorrow.”

CHAPTER NINE

     
    Sydney
     
    M y college roommate was a girl named Louise Anderson. And like most people who went to Purdue, she was from a small town in Indiana, and was floored when I told her my high school graduating class had 1,200 people in it. Hers had 220.
    Louise was a nice, simple girl. She had long blond hair and wore glasses with no make-up. Very Jan Brady, the later years. She attended services at the campus church every Sunday and Wednesday mornings, bible study on Saturdays, and in her spare time, she read Christian novels. Pretty much we had nothing in common, other than we both had boyfriends we’d left behind in search of higher education. Louise had dated her boyfriend, Mark, since the sixth grade. He grew up on a dairy farm, and was set to take over his family’s business one day. She told me all about it in great detail, but all I wondered was if they’d had sex or not, and how offended she’d be if I asked.
    We hung out and ate meals together that first week because neither of us knew anyone else. But by week two, I was eager to find some other girls who were interested in sneaking liquor or weed into the dorm.
    One of the first girls I met was Jenna Fielding. She was in a room across the hall and two doors down from Louise and I. Jenna was also from Chicago, but not the suburbs like me, she’d grown up in the city and attended private schools her whole life. She’d wanted to go to NYU, but her parents were both Purdue Alumni, and said they wouldn’t pay for her to go anywhere else. I think I initially gravitated to her because she reminded me of Taylor. She was really pretty, had similar dark features, and after only one week of being on campus, she had loads of friends. Her roommate was a basic carbon copy of Louise, so we begged them to do a roomie swap with us, but since it was against the rules they both declined.
    I talked to Ethan all the time in the beginning. We had scheduled times each day so that we wouldn’t miss each other’s call, and if we did miss one, we had back-up call times. Sometimes when I hadn’t heard from him, my stomach would cramp up, and I couldn’t relax until I heard the sound of his voice. Jenna would make fun of me, and did her best to understand our relationship, but mostly she’d try and encourage me to go out and meet other guys.
    “Sigma Chi is having a toga party on Saturday, underwear optional, with thirty kegs,” she informed me. “And you and I are going.”
    I smiled. “I see, underwear is optional, but my attendance is not.”
    “Correct.”
    Most of our weekends consisted of much the same conversations. And unlike high school, weekends in college started on Thursday night. She and I, and some other girls we’d befriended at the dorm would flirt our way into frat parties and drink for free until one of us puked or passed out. Then I’d crawl into bed and call Ethan in the wee hours of the night, either waking him or not reaching him at all. If I did reach him, we’d talk on the phone for hours, oftentimes falling asleep with the receiver on my pillow. Behavior that would earn me two days of the silent treatment from Louise.
    By early October, Ethan and I had begun to talk of nothing but our Fall break, and