Well, this is awkward.
I had this whole plan, you know, for winning over my new roommate. It’s been dubbed Project Friendship® by my little sister and we worked on this plan all summer. After roughly 120 hours of hard work, Remy and I got the Project Friendship plan from a this is just embarrassing place to a this is so embarrassing it has circled around and is now totally endearing place with an (untested) guaranteed success rate. There’s even a whole choreographed dance number in the middle with expertly timed confetti poppers at the end, but the entire plan rests on my roommate entering our room alone, not surrounded by her entire extended family.
There’s, like, ten of them of varying ages, and they have either a thick Russian-sounding accent or a thick Boston-sounding accent and they’re all talking over one another in a competition for who can be the loudest relative ever. They squeeze through the doorway as a group, and each is carrying either a big box or a big bag or a big glass container full of food, so I have to hug the wall just to avoid getting trampled. They don’t see me standing there beside my bed, looking like a Popsicle stick with two googly eyes. I can’t even see my roommate yet, she’s gotta be somewhere in the middle of this mosh pit.
“Are you sure this is the right room?” An older relative asks. “This doesn’t look like the right room.”
“Lucy, honey, did you get enough to eat? Did anyone see if they had potatoes on the menu in the dining hall?”
“Where’s the furniture and her mini fridge? Ari, what did you do with the IKEA furniture? Did you bring it up?”
“Are you sure she’s rooming with a girl? Elliot doesn’t sound like a girl.”1
“Where’s the pahhhk? I thought this building overlooked the Boston Common?”
There are so many loud voices that those are the only sentences I can make out. I stay frozen against the white wall, absolutely still, hoping I’m pale enough to blend in and remain unnoticed, but a woman who looks in no way old enough to be an eighteen-year-old’s mother spots me in the corner.
“Look, there’s someone already here!” She points directly at me. “Are you Elliot, my daughter’s new roommate?”
Everyone turns and looks at me expectantly.
I look at them.
They look at me.
I look at them.
They look at me.
“Yes?” I say.
“ELLIOT!” They yell in unison and rush over, smothering me in one oversize group hug. I am completely swarmed by a tangle of limbs and voices and it’s strikingly similar to getting attacked by a horde of zombies but with 21 percent less carnage.2 At this point, it’s unclear if they are hugging me or hugging one another, but suddenly, from somewhere in the hall, I hear a girl’s voice come in hot above all the others.
“Okay, everybody out!” she orders them, and to my complete surprise, her family obeys. No McHugh has ever listened to any other McHugh and we’re only five people. This girl just said one sentence and all nine thousand listened. I haven’t even met this girl and already I am impressed. The family sets her stuff down on her mattress and files out of the room one by one, each taking turns to say goodbye to my roommate who still remains out of frame in the hall.
“Bye, honey,” one says.
“See yah latah, kid,” says another.
“Don’t forget, I put the tabouli in the fridge,” says the cute old lady who definitely has to be a grandma.
“I’ll swing by on Tuesday with your winter gear,” I hear Lucy’s mom say in the hall. And then . . . I hear a throat being cleared and footsteps as she comes around the corner and into our room, and I finally get to lay eyes on my new roommate, Lucy Garabedian. And now it’s just me, my new roommate—and the deafening awkward silence between us. She’s pretty—tall and curvy with light beige skin and long, silky brown hair with full bangs that stop at her thick eyebrows. Her makeup is minimal but bold, just mascara and a matte red lip. I look at her and smile and hope she’ll be the one to break the ice, but she just smiles back and fidgets with the rings on her fingers. I have no idea what to say to her since my original plan was ruined the moment her family barged through the door so . . . I panic and improvise. I rummage through the pile of snacks on my bed, grab the box of Cheez-Its, and hold it out to her.
“Cheez-Its in exchange for friendship?” I ask. I have no idea why I chose to go this route for our first introduction but it’s too late now. I’m going with it.
She looks confused. “What?”
I shake the box and repeat the question. “Would you care for a Cheez-It in exchange for friendship?”
She shoves her hands into the pockets of the oversize cardigan she’s wearing over her plaid dress and leans against the doorway. “Sure,” she says, hesitant at first, but then more confidently adds, “but before I can accept your offer, what are the terms of this friendship?”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Well, you just requested my hand in friendship without providing any sort of context. I cannot enter any agreements without knowing which level on the friendship scale we will be.”
I pop a single Cheez-It into my mouth as I think over my response. “Okay, how about this, you get to choose one of the following friendship types: 1) Will Hold the Elevator Door Open but Not Say Anything Once We’re Inside kind, 2) Goes Out in Groups but Never Just the Two of Us type, or 3) Holding Each Other’s Hair When We’re Puking level.”
“And what is the time limit on the friendship warranty?” she fires back and damn, this girl is quick.
“The options include first semester only, all of freshman year, or a lifetime-guarantee friendship.”
She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear as she thinks about it. “Okay,” she says. “I’ll take Holding Each Other’s Hair When We’re Puking level of friendship with a lifetime guarantee. Once you’re my friend, there’s no turning back.”
I hold the box out for her to take and she eyes it carefully, arching one of those thick, caterpillar eyebrows for a moment. And then, she stuffs her hand into the box of Cheez-Its and shoves a fistful of salty orange squares in her mouth, forever sealing our friendship fates together. I run to my dresser and grab the secret stash of confetti poppers I brought for the grand finale of my original plan and explode them in celebration.3
As the last piece of confetti falls to the ground, Lucy turns to leave. “Hey! Where are you going?” I call out to her. “I thought we were friends?”
“We are!” she says as she continues her way out the door. “I just have to get the rest of my stuff from the hall.”
“MORE STUFF?!?” I look around at the assortment of boxes, containers full of food, suitcases, and various pieces of furniture taking up nearly every inch of our tiny room, including a big thing on wheels in the back by our brick window. “Is—is that—did you bring a tea cart?” I call out to her.
“Yup! It’s a gift from my high school bestie!” She reenters the room, lugging two huge floral-print duffel bags behind her. “I firmly believe in afternoon tea and soon you will too.”
“I can’t believe how quickly your whole family goodbye went,” I say as I help her heave the duffel bags onto her mattress. “I thought for sure there would have been more tears.”
Lucy laughs but waves me off. “We live in Watertown, just outside Boston. My mom’s bed and breakfast is, like, fifteen minutes away. My whole family lives here.” Lucy rests her manicured hands on her hips and catches her breath as she looks around the room, taking in all its pathetic glory. There’s not much to look at, but that doesn’t appear to bother her.
“Should we set up the room? Make it look nice?” she asks.
“For sure, but fair warning, I am very unqualified to decorate. I do not live the tidy life. I live the slug life.”
“Don’t worry,” Lucy snorts. “I’ll take care of it! You can help by entertaining.”
“That I can do!”
I do offer to help her unpack, at least, because I am an extremely nice person who wants to get to know her new roommate.4 We spend the next hour arranging and rearranging the furniture, putting away her endless supply of floral dresses and brightly colored yoga wear, and organizing her eclectic collection of vintage mugs and loose leaf teas onto her tea cart—or I should say, Lucy spent the last hour doing all that. I was helpful for all of five minutes before I got distracted unpacking her fun jewelry collection, and now I’ve been lounging on my bed ever since, draped in all her jewels while I observe Lucy in her natural habitat, mesmerized at how someone can be so fastidious for so long. I watch as she meticulously decorates her side of the room: placing each object in a designated spot, moving a throw pillow here, hanging a framed photo there, making tiny, minuscule adjustments until everything is just to her liking. She tells me about how she has about ten thousand cousins, aunties, and uncles who all live within five minutes of one another, how she spent all summer splitting her time between working at her mom’s B&B and waitressing at her uncle’s restaurant.
And I tell her about my sisters. How my older sister, Izzy, a.k.a. The Golden Child, is a level-five pain in my ass and a second-year medical student at Columbia University in New York City and my little sister, Remy, is twelve and wants to be a pink jumping pony when she grows up. And after we’ve exchanged the SparkNotes version of each other’s familial and personal backstories, the conversation drifts to the reason why we’re here in the first place.
College.
Education.
School.
LEARNING.
“So what’s your major?” Lucy asks as we start in on her last two unopened boxes. I rip the tape off one and discover it is completely full of tangled strands of tiny white fairy string lights.
“I, uh, haven’t declared a major yet,” I tell her and brace for more questions about my lack of an academic focus.
“Do you at least have an idea of what you’d like to major in?”
“Nope,” I say. I turn over the box and dump the knotted mass onto the floor.
“That’s cool, I’m sure you’ll figure it out.” Her words say one thing but her eyes are screaming a different truth. I choose to ignore this and shift the focus back onto her.
“What about you?” I ask as I try to detangle a bundle of lights. “What’s your major?”
“I’m double majoring in public relations and marketing.”
I lower my light wad and look up at her. “For real? I haven’t decided on one major and you’re already going for two? Damn, lady.”
“I have to, I took out a ton of loans to be here! But we’ll see how long I last juggling two majors at once.”
“Are you one of those people that already knows what you want to do for the rest of your life?”
“Of course not, that’d be ridiculous,” she says, and I breathe out a little sigh of relief. But then she adds, “I do have my five- and ten-year plans mapped out—I want to go into business with my mom, expand her B&B business into a chain all throughout New England.”
“Well, shit. That’s so—ambitious,” I say, feeling a little inadequate, but, as I’ve learned from years of practice, if I ignore this feeling, it will eventually go away.
I manage to work two strands of lights free and hand them to her. She drags her desk chair over to our window and drapes the strands across the top, instantly improving our sorry excuse for a view. Then she steps off the chair and takes a few steps back, looking at her work like she’s analyzing a painting for AP Art History.
“Do you think that’s too many lights?” she asks.5
“I once read on the back of a Snapple cap that there is no such thing as too many fairy lights.”
Lucy clasps her hands together and beams. She drops down, reaches under her bed, and magically produces four more boxes of lights. She holds them up for me, her face lit up.
“What if we cover the entire ceiling with them too? Or would that be too much? Maybe that’s too much.”
I stop her before she can talk herself out of it. “No, no, I like it. It’ll be like we’re sleeping in a planetarium. It’ll be so Instagrammable.”
Lucy looks skeptical. “Are you on Instagram? I couldn’t find your account.”
“Ohhhh, I’m on Instagram, but I don’t post, I prefer to lurk.” I give her a wink and she makes a face at me.
“That is so creepy! Do you use any social media at all?”
“Nah, I’m old-school. I prefer to air my grievances out of a window instead of on Twitter.”
Together, Lucy and I finish untangling the rest of the lights and line our ceiling with rows and rows of the delicate, twinkling orbs. When we’re done, we stand in the corner of the room and assess our work. I don’t know how she did it. An hour ago our room looked like a panic room that ran out of funding, but now . . . now our room is what dreams are made of. At least, her side of the room is. Our ceiling and walls now glitter and sparkle, and every surface is color coordinated in soft pastels and creams. Her bed has more pillows than I have friends, and her floral down comforter is the kind you want to fall onto in slow motion. I pull out my phone and text a picture to my little sister.
And when she’s done surveying her side of the room, Lucy glances over and frowns at my bed, which is still just the blue vinyl mattress. “Where are your sheets?” she asks and ahhhhh shit, I completely forgot I left my sheets in the wash over an hour ago.
“Be right back!” I say as I moonwalk out the door. My ass starts vibrating and it’s my little sister calling me. “Hey, Remy, good timing, I’m about to do some laundry,” I say into the phone as I walk down the long hall toward the laundry room. This is something my little sister and I have been doing for years: laundry and sisterly bonding. “Did you get the pic I sent you?”
“OHMYGOD,” Remy screams so loud I have to hold the phone away from my ear. “YOUR ROOM LOOKS SO AWESOME!” And then, at a lower decibel, she adds, “It’s giving me tons of ideas for how I’m gonna redecorate your room at home.”
“What do you mean redecorate? I’ve only been gone for three days. What’d you do with all my Angelina Jolie collages?”
“Don’t worry, I put them all in the basement storage room.”
“So you’ve put my personal hero next to the cat’s shit box.”
“According to this show I saw on Netflix, you should get rid of anything that doesn’t spark joy,” she says firmly.
“Excuse me?” I scoff. “Late nineties and early aughts Angelina Jolie ab-so-lutely sparks joy. Have you ever seen her in Gia? Actually, no, you’re too young for that. Watch Tomb Raider or better yet, watch Maleficent.”6
“Don’t you ever watch movies from this decade? You know, everyone hates it when you make outdated references.” I can picture her now, standing in the laundry room in our house, her small hands on her hips, her blond curls shaking as she cuts me down like only a twelve-year-old can. “What are you doing right now, why is there so much noise?”
“Sorry, I’m trying to get to the laundry room to transfer my sheets to the dryer but to get there I have to pass through a gauntlet of people still moving in. There’s a lot of shit going on right now,” I say as I sidestep someone recording a dance routine on their phone.
“Don’t say shit,” Remy scolds. “Are you using the dryer sheets I gave you?”
“I’m about to, I left all my supplies in the laundry room.”
“Aren’t you worried about someone taking your stuff?” Remy asks.
“Nah, I wrote my name and room number on all my supplies so people will know it’s mine.” When she doesn’t acknowledge my innovative solution right away, I begin to worry. “Why? Should I have not left it all in there? Do you think someone’s going to steal my stuff?”
“How would I know?!? I’m only in sixth grade!” I pick up the pace because Remy’s got me all panicky and come to a skidding halt when I get to the laundry room. I peer in through the glass window in the door.
“Shit.”
“Don’t say shit!” Remy says again but I’ve stopped listening.
“Listen, Remy, I gotta go.” I try to sound as normal as possible. “Talk next week?”
“What? Why? What’s going on?” she asks eagerly. She’s so good at sensing the changes in my tone. I could never lie to her—she’d know instantly.
“You were right. Someone is in here,” I whisper into the phone. “And she’s using my detergent.”
“Oooooooooh! Go kick her butt, Elliot! You should totally—” I don’t hear the rest of what Remy says because I hang up on her and push open the door to the laundry room. I clear my throat to get the person’s attention. Whoever this person is, she is way too dressed up for laundry. She’s wearing a long, sheer, floral-print duster thing over white overalls and four-inch-heeled black combat boots.
“Hey! That’s my detergent,” I firmly announce to the thief’s back. She still hasn’t turned around, even now as I yell at her. I wave my arms in the air, trying to get her attention. “Excuse me? Hello? I’m talking to you! That’s my detergent you’re using. You can’t do that.”
“Anything left in public spaces is fair game,” she says over her shoulder. Who the fuck does she think she is? On any given day, I like to radiate calm, chill vibes, but if someone is openly rude to me, it’s the quickest way for me to go from zero to rage. I cross my arms in front of my chest, tilt my chin up, and rip into her.
“Hey. Asshole. My detergent is not fair game, okay? I wrote my name and room number on the box right there, see?”
“Oh, freshman,” she says with a sigh, and then she turns around and oh crap. That face. That is one beautiful face. Long voluminous curls with short, tousled bangs soften and frame her thin, angular face. There’s a smattering of freckles across her tan nose and cheeks but it’s her bright green eyes that stop me in my tracks. I drop my arms and run a hand through my greasy, unwashed hair, very aware that I had just called this woman an asshole—straight to her beautiful face.
She crosses her arms and lays into me. “Let me tell you right now that if you leave your stuff out, it’s public property, even if you write your name on it. No one cares here. If you leave your laptop out in the common room, step away to take a piss and come back to find it gone—no one will feel sorry for you.”
I want to keep yelling at her because I’ll be damned if I’ll let anyone steal detergent from me—it’s the good, expensive kind—but her stupid gorgeous face is making it very hard to maintain a consistent level of anger. So I just stand there and think of every possible comeback I could say that would put her in her place as well as make me seem clever and smart.
“Fuck you,” I finally say. Okay, so it wasn’t my finest comeback but cut me some slack, it’s my first day of college and she’s completely disarming me. It’s that face, and hair, and those cheekbones and that stupid hot mouth. Ahh fuck I wanna put my mouth on that mouth.
She turns back to the washer to swipe her Emerson ID card and turns it on. “You’re welcome,” she says. Aaaaannnnnnd now I’m back to being pissed.
“You’re welcome? Why would I thank you when you just fucking stole from me?”
She crosses her arms and looks down at me—not in the condescending way (well maybe) but the literal way because she has a couple of inches on me.
“I just gave you a valuable college life lesson that most freshmen don’t learn until the second semester. So yeah, you’re welcome.”
Oh, this smug asshole is about to get an earful. Just as I open my mouth to insult her, the fucker smiles and it’s the kind of panty-dropping smile that gives me full-on tender chicken.7 I hold firm. I refuse to budge. I know if I try to say something mean, there’s a 99 percent chance my mouth will betray me and I’ll end up hitting on her, so I just stand there and try to convince her I hate her with my eyes. We stand there in a stare-off in the laundry room until the buzzer on the dryer breaks the tension. She picks up her empty laundry bag from the floor and smiles as she brushes passed me on her way out the door.
When I get back to the room, I tell Lucy everything. “I can’t believe she did that!” Lucy exclaims as she neatly fans colorful packets of teas onto an antique floral plate and rests it atop her tea cart. I love that thing friends do when they get mad on your behalf at whatever unimportant thing you’re complaining about even though they secretly think you’re just overreacting. It’s cool that Lucy and I are already at this stage in our friendship.
“Yeah, well, now we know to never leave detergent in the laundry room,” I admit. My ass buzzes again with a text from Remy.
Remy: Did you get your detergent back?
Elliot: Sure did!
Remy: Coolio! gotta go school supply shopping with Mom. talk this weekend?
Elliot: Wouldn’t miss it!
Remy: Miss u, big sis!
Elliot: Miss u too, smol sis.
A pang of homesickness stabs me in the heart as I stare at Remy’s last text. Sure, I miss my parents, but they’re still parents, which means they sometimes suck—but little sisters? Little sisters are worth missing.
Lucy approaches with caution and sits next to me on the bed.
“You okay?” Her tone is sweet and gentle.
I throw on a big dumb smile for show. “Yep, I’m great, totally great.”
“I know we just met, but I’d really like to give you a hug,” she says, opening her arms wide, inviting me in. “If that’s okay with you,” she adds on. I don’t usually let strangers hug me, but I’ve known my roommate for two hours now and we ate friendship-binding Cheez-Its together, which technically means we are no longer strangers. I nod and let Lucy wrap her arms around me and I am now enveloped in the warmest hug I’ve ever been a part of in my entire life. This is what bathing in hot chocolate must feel like. This is what hugging clouds must feel like. I had no idea hugs could be so good.8
“Woo!” I say into Lucy’s honey-scented hair. “We completely bypassed that whole getting-to-know-you stage of our friendship and went right into the seeing-me-cry stage, didn’t we?” Lucy releases me and I’m already missing her warm embrace. I fan my eyes and shake myself out of it. “Where’d you learn to hug like that? That was some next-level hugging.”
“I have six aunties and twenty-two first cousins and they all like to hug. Not one of them knows how to mind their own business or respect personal boundaries and we meet every Sunday for family dinners.”
“I’m assuming I’m invited now that we are eternal soul mates?”
Lucy laughs and shakes her head. “Are you sure you want to be surrounded by twenty nosy Armenians as my aunties force-feed you borscht and my born-again Uncle Stan tries to quote you scripture as my grandma pokes your ribs and says you’re too skinny, all while my little cousins torment you until you sit and watch them play video games for two hours?”
“Lucy.” I take her soft hand in mine. “As painfully loud and uncomfortably intimate as that sounds, I will never turn down free food.” I take a deep breath—I feel better. Even though I’ve cried enough today to meet my usual yearly quota, I’m good. I feel good.
“What should we do now?” Lucy asks.
My face lights up the second I get an idea. “Wanna go spy on our neighbors?”
She looks at me and grins. “Hell yeah I do.”
Look, I have no data to back up this claim, but I’m pretty positive that I can state, with absolute certainty, that I have the best fucking roommate of all time.
1 Goddammit.
2 Again, I have no way of verifying this statistic.
3 You should always have a pack of these on you. You never know when you’re going to need a little spontaneous confetti in your life.
4 And because I kinda sorta love snooping through other people’s shit.
5 Lol, as if I have any clue about how to make a dorm room look pretty.
6 The first time I snuck onto my parents’ HBO Go account to watch that movie, Gia, was the first time I realized I was capable of experiencing intense sexual feelings for women. So you could say Angelina sparks joy . . . in my pants. (Sorry! I can never resist a good “in my pants” joke.)
7 Tender chicken is a McHugh-coined term that means a lady wood, a female hard-on, a girl boner. The origin of the term is this: Remy invented the phrase when she was eight years old. Izzy and I went down to the basement one day and saw Remy sitting on top of a pillow while watching a show. She said, “Whenever I see two people kissing on the TV, I get tender chicken and have to stick a pillow between my legs.” And in that moment, a legend was born.
8 You see, most of my family sucks at hugging, with my dad being the only exception. It’s like we’re allergic to it. High fives, pats on shoulders or back, meaningful looks with slow subtle nods we excel at, but hugging? Nope, hugging is something we’re genetically predisposed to suck at. I don’t think Izzy and I have ever hugged. I kind of grew up feeling apathetic toward hugs. So, I am delighted to discover that my new roommate is the world’s greatest hugger.