Free The Secret Side of Empty by Maria E. Andreu Page A

be able to go. The buildings are even prettier up close, with gargoyles and architectural details in stone, statues that look a gazillion years old. We walk up to a building with ivy growing up its walls—ivy, of course—and Siobhan leads us inside.
    At least the inside looks like it’s seen better days. It gives me a flash of wicked satisfaction. The overhead fluorescents are awful, and the paint looks as bad as any apartment I’ve ever lived in. The industrial-strength carpet is worn through in the middle of the path, mysterious black stains spotting it. Siobhan leads us through the maze, left, then right, no views of the outside world, until I have no idea which direction I’m walking. Then she stops at a door that looks like every other door, covered with a message board with things stuck and drawn on it. Siobhan’s says: “Hi Cuz!!” and “Hello, Siobhan’s Cousin!” and “Study group changed to 11:00 tomorrow,” and “Tracy let me borrow your charger. Come snatch it back. B.” and “TB, your band blows.” This last one Siobhan rubs off with her index finger.
    “Home sweet home,” she says, swinging her door open and letting us in first.
    Inside, it’s like you’d expect Siobhan to live if she got sent to white-collar prison for starving her slaves or something. She’s got cinder-block walls, but she’s made them fashionable some-how. There’s a Monet and an inspirational quote. She’s got very clean-looking white curtains. Her desk is immaculate, with color-coordinated accessories, like Better College Dorms and Desktops is on its way for a photo shoot. It’s tight quarters, but everything is in matching Container Store so-chic plastic boxes of various sizes. You can see a mile away that she’s gotten Top Bunk, because her beige comforter with tiny pink roses is neatly spread over it.
    “Sorry about my roommate. She’s such a slob,” Siobhan says, kicking some shoes under the bottom bunk. The bottom bunk has a camouflage bedspread and a poster that says, “My karma ran over your dogma and your dogma had to be put to sleep.”
    I like the roommate already.
    “Where’s your other roommate, Siobhan?” asks Chelsea.
    “The other one went home for the weekend,” says Siobhan. Her ears flame red again in a flash and I remember the Spanish roommate from the Bronx. Her bed is covered in a plain blue comforter that looks too short. A chunk of bare sheet shows at the bottom.
    Siobhan and Chelsea are off and running talking about holidays, dinners, family stuff. I take a minute to look around the room. I get a wild urge to put my nose up against her walls and take a long sniff, to inhale them, to suck this place in, to make it live in my lungs when I get found out for the imposter I am and get escorted off the premises, out of the state, and out of the country.
    “So, do you, M.T.?” It’s the first time I’ve heard Siobhan say my name not-reluctantly.
    “Do I what?”
    “Do you need to take a shower before we go out?”
    “I . . . guess.”
    “I hope you brought flip-flops like I told you to. Those swim team girls are brutes with mushrooms growing between their toes.”
    I don’t own any flip-flops. Maybe not so much with the shower, then.
    “It’s okay, M, you can borrow mine,” says Chelsea.
    We shower and change into jeans and T-shirts with hoodies. We’re only a couple of hours north of the city, but it’s way colder, and the damp spot in my hair by the nape of my neck gets icy cold on the walk from Siobhan’s dorm, across the quad, down a path behind some buildings, around a bend, and into a building and a big, vaulted ceiling room. It looks like a church gone rogue, all the architecture but none of the statues designed to make you feel guilty. There is a fire burning in an enormous fireplace tall enough to walk into.
    There is a little wooden stage and a bunch of uncomfortable-looking wooden chairs arranged facing it. A cluster of guys is standing between the stage and the