Free Here Comes Trouble by Andra Lake

Chapter
One
    I’d always felt unusual. It was as if I was
only pretending to fit into the world like everyone else. My
teachers called me a dreamer, while my mother said I had no fixed
identity. Maybe she just didn’t want to see who I was.
    I longed to work in the music industry. My
parents kept telling me how hard it was to get those kinds of jobs
and how poor I’d be. I kept telling them that I didn’t care
if I was poor. I didn’t need a lot to be happy—not the way they did
with their fancy cars and country club memberships. I’d been
looking forward to going away to school for the entire last year of
High School. University was where I was going to discover myself
and what I was meant to do in this world. I’d find likeminded
people and finally feel like I belonged.
    So, I’d saved up enough money and taken a
loan in order to attend school out of state and get a shared room
in a dorm. Then I’d enrolled in a Bachelor of Arts.
    Mr. and Mrs. Watson had hated that, so I
knew it was the right decision.
    I’d desperately wanted my own room, being an
introvert, but splurging for one would mean I couldn’t eat for the
rest of the year. As it was, I’d been barely able to afford the
plane ticket and had been restricted to bringing only one large
suitcase, my messenger bag with laptop and purse.
    On a warm day at the end of summer, I
arrived on campus with my measly possessions and found the building
that would be my home for the next eights months: a grey building
shaped like a block. The main floor of the building consisted of
the lounge and kitchen. Several guys were sitting in the lounge
watching something on TV, the volume cranked. Most of them were
holding beers. They turned their heads and waved hello to me as I
yanked my bag over the lip of the door but didn’t make a move to
help as I proceeded to lift and carry it up the next three
stories.
    I finally got to the fourth floor and
dropped my suitcase heavily. On the front of every room was a
whiteboard with the names of the occupants written in such neat
script, it almost looked like a computer had written it. I counted
the doors as I pulled my bag down the hall and calculated room 414
would be at the end of the hall. The door was open, the room empty.
The whiteboard read “Melissa and Alexis”, only it wasn’t written in
the beautiful script like the others. It was as if our names had
been erased and rewritten.
    As I stood there frowning at it, the
bathroom door opened behind me, and a tall brunette passed into our
room.
    “Your last name is Watson, but your name was
written first because it starts with an ‘A’. I just changed it to
be correct.”
    Okay then .
    I followed her into our room, which was
shaped oddly at best. My guess was that it had once been a large
single room but they were low on rooms and now they needed to cram
two people in here. Best way to describe it was a large rectangle
with a small rectangular jut out, which held a desk and a wardrobe.
It became apparent Melissa had already claimed these when she sat
down at the desk, swiveled her chair to face me. The larger
rectangle held my desk, a wardrobe and both of our beds...which sat
perpendicular head-to-foot. I really hoped her feet didn’t
smell.
    “I’m Alexis,” I said just to say something.
I’d been worried about sharing a room, and the fact we were going
to be squished together only made me feel worse.
    Melissa had black curly hair held up in a
messy bun and thick, black eyebrows. On most people they would beg
to be plucked, but on her they somehow worked. Her skin was pale,
her jaw quite square. She frowned at me with those dark eyebrows as
she took me in.
    “How old are you?” she asked. “You look like
you should still be in High School.”
    Yeah, I heard stuff like that a lot. I was a
tiny build—very tiny—with fine features and a line of freckles
across my nose. Oh, and small boobs. Nothing made you look younger
than that.
    “I’m Seventeen, but I turn