تسجيل الدخولSummer’s PovI could not stop thinking about what Crew had said.All day. Every lecture, every corridor walk, every time I tried to pay attention to something that actually mattered for my degree. The words just sat there in the back of my head refusing to move.Meet me there after lectures.I was going to have a very difficult semester if this was how it started.I was standing outside after the last session of the day, checking my phone, when someone tapped my shoulder.I turned around.A girl. Bright eyes, natural hair, the easy confidence of someone who introduced themselves to strangers without overthinking it.“Hi,” she said. “I’m Naomi.”“Summer,” I said.“I have been seeing you around today. We are in the same major.” She tilted her head. “I have been looking for someone to walk around campus with. Someone to just, you know, navigate all of this with. Would you want to be friends?”I looked at her for a second.She had an honest face. The kind that did not hide much.“Yeah,” I
Summer’s PovI was genuinely glad I had sent Tony away when I did.Because the look on Crew’s face when Tony had been standing there was the look of a person who was approximately four seconds from saying something that would have complicated our entire first day at college significantly. I knew that look. I had catalogued it over months of living in the same house as him.Crew left alone with a sentence was dangerous. Crew left alone with a sentence about me was catastrophic.Tony had no idea how well things had gone for him.“So you want to see him again,” Crew said. “See you around. That is what you said.”“It is a normal thing people say when a conversation ends.”“What was he even talking to you about?”“Classes. Schedules. Orientation stuff.”Crew looked at me. “There are hundreds of people at this orientation. He could not find a single other person to ask about classes. It had to be you specifically.”“Crew.”“I am asking a genuine question.”“He was just being friendly.”“He
Summer’s PovThe road trip had been Crew’s idea and it had been a good one.Hours of moving through changing landscapes, music rotating between all three of us, food from stops along the way, conversation that went nowhere important and everywhere comfortable. By the time the city we were heading to started appearing around us I felt like the journey itself had been its own kind of arrival.They dropped me first.The building came into view and I sat forward slightly in my seat and looked at it through the window the way you look at something you have been imagining for a while to check whether reality matches the version in your head.It did. Actually it was better.Crew leaned over from the other side to look. “We should come up. See the inside.”“No,” I said.“Just to make sure everything is in order.”“No.”“Summer, we are just being thorough.”“I know exactly what this is and the answer is no.” I picked up my bag. “Go to your apartments. You can come later.”Tyler put his hand ov
Summer’s PovThe road trip had been Crew’s idea and it had been a good one.Hours of moving through changing landscapes, music rotating between all three of us, food from stops along the way, conversation that went nowhere important and everywhere comfortable. By the time the city we were heading to started appearing around us I felt like the journey itself had been its own kind of arrival.They dropped me first.The building came into view and I sat forward slightly in my seat and looked at it through the window the way you look at something you have been imagining for a while to check whether reality matches the version in your head.It did. Actually it was better.Crew leaned over from the other side to look. “We should come up. See the inside.”“No,” I said.“Just to make sure everything is in order.”“No.”“Summer, we are just being thorough.”“I know exactly what this is and the answer is no.” I picked up my bag. “Go to your apartments. You can come later.”Tyler put his hand ov
Summer’s Pov(Three weeks later)The morning arrived faster than I was ready for it.I had known for weeks that it was coming. I had packed, prepared, made lists and checked them, had conversations about logistics and timelines and what to bring and what to leave. I had done everything a person does when they are preparing for something big.And still, when I came downstairs with my last bag and saw everyone gathered in the living room, something in my chest did a thing I had not planned for.Ruby and Kayla were upstairs. I had asked for this part to be family first. Just us, the five of us, one last morning in this house the way it had been all year.Richard stood up.He was not a man who made speeches often. When he spoke at length it meant something, and everyone in the room knew it, so everyone got quiet before he even started.“This is a new beginning,” he said. “For all of you. A new environment, new challenges, life on your own terms for the first time.” He looked around at each
Summer’s PovFour days of apartment hunting and Ruby had appointed herself creative director of the entire process.She had arrived with a bag large enough to suggest she was moving in permanently and had immediately taken over my iPad, my snack supply, and approximately seventy percent of the decision making.This particular afternoon we were both on the bed, tablets out, juice on the nightstand, going through listings with the focused energy of two people who had made this their full time job.I held up my screen. “What about this one?”Ruby looked at it. “Too nude.”“What does that mean?”“The walls, the floors, everything is beige. It looks like the inside of an envelope. No.”“I am going there to study, Ruby.”“You are going there to live. For years. Do you want to spend years inside an envelope?” She went back to her own screen. “The answer is no.”I scrolled further.Ruby’s phone buzzed on the pillow between us. She picked it up, looked at it, and made a sound that I had come t







