Chapter Two: Room 304

The four-hour drive from Brookhaven to Ashcroft University was supposed to feel like a cinematic transition—the kind with a sun-drenched highway, a perfectly curated indie-pop playlist, and the wind catching my curls just right in the rearview mirror.

​Instead, it felt like being trapped inside a mobile storage unit that smelled aggressively of Talia's salt-and-vinegar chips and my mother's lavender fabric softener.

​My childhood sedan was packed so tightly that if I took a sharp left turn, a stray storage bin of makeup palettes would probably decapitate me from the backseat. Talia had her bare feet pressed flat against the dashboard, her toenails painted a blinding neon pink that matched the oversized graphic tee she'd thrown over a pair of biker shorts. She was currently thumbing through her phone, skipping every third song I played because she claimed the tempo "wasn't matching the spiritual vibe of the state line change."

​"We are exactly twenty-four miles away," Talia announced, squinting at her maps app like a general plotting a coup. "Which means you have precisely twenty-four miles to accept that I am claiming the bed by the window. I need the natural light for my skincare routine, Kelsey. It's a medical necessity."

​"You claimed the window bed in the eighth grade, T," I said, keeping my eyes on the highway as the flat, predictable farmland of our hometown slowly dissolved into the rolling, dense green hills of upper Ashcroft. "You don't need to renegotiate a treaty we signed five years ago."

​"Good. Glad we're on the same page." She rolled her shoulders back, her rhinestone headband catching the harsh midday sun. "Look at those trees. They look… old. Like they have secrets. Brookhaven trees just look like they're waiting to be cut down for a strip mall."

​I smiled, but my chest tightened with a sudden, sharp knot of nerves that I wasn't used to carrying.

​Here is the thing about being the girl everyone talks to: you spend so much time analyzing other people's emotional baselines that you forget you have one of your own. In Brookhaven, my baseline was simple. I was Malachi Vance's daughter. I was the girl who won prom queen on a technicality because the actual winner got suspended two days before the dance. I was the girl who knew exactly which lane of the local grocery store had the cashier who wouldn't check IDs for wine, and which high school ex was going to be at which party so I could dress accordingly.

​I was a big fish in a very predictable, very comfortable pond.

​But as we pulled off the exit ramp and the wrought-iron gates of Ashcroft University loomed into view, the sheer scale of the place hit me like a physical slap.

​It wasn't just a school. It was an empire of red brick, gothic arches, and towering ivy-covered facades that looked like they had been standing since the Revolutionary War. Thousands of students were swarming the lawns—a massive, undulating wave of moving boxes, laundry hampers, and expensive athleisure. Nobody was looking at my car. Nobody was waving. For the first time in nineteen years, I was completely invisible.

​Welcome to college, Kelsey, my brain whispered, utilizing that sharp, analytical psychology-major voice I'd been developing all summer. Diagnosis: Minor existential dread masked by an elite outfit choice.

​Thank God for the outfit. If you're going to feel small, you might as well look expensive doing it.

​Before we left the driveway, I had meticulously engineered my move-in look. I was wearing a cropped, ribbed knit top in a soft cream color that complemented the rich, golden-honey tone of my skin, paired with high-waisted, wide-leg utility pants in an olive green that hit right at my ankles. My hair—a massive, unruly mane of deep brown, tightly coiled curls that fell past my shoulders, very me like on a good day—was piled high into a loose, bouncy pineapple bun held together by a silk scarf. I had kept the makeup minimal—just a swipe of clear lip gloss and a touch of highlighter—letting my hazel eyes do most of the heavy lifting. Next to Talia's chaotic pop-star energy, I looked like a chic, off-duty model who just happened to be carrying her own mini-fridge.

​It took us three hours, two near-fistfights over a parking space, and a humiliating amount of sweating to haul our lives up to the third floor of Vance Hall.

​Room 304 was… tiny.

​When I turned the key in the lock, my heart sank about two inches. It was a sterile, clinical white box with two twin beds that looked like they belonged in a low-budget hospital, two scarred oak desks, and a window that overlooked a gravel parking lot instead of the historic quad we'd obsessed over on the website.

​"Oh, this is tragic," Talia said, dropping her duffel bag onto the mattress by the window with a heavy thud. "It smells like paint fumes and despair."

​"It's a blank slate," I corrected, my natural hype-girl energy kicking back in because I refused to let the sterile white walls win. "Give me two hours. We are turning this place into an editorial."

​We went to work like a military unit. We blasted an old-school Destiny's Child album from Talia's speaker, using the bass to drown out the sound of screaming parents and dragging furniture in the hallway. I hauled the boxes, my 5'9" frame giving me the leverage to stack storage bins all the way to the top of the built-in closets without needing the desk chair.

By five o'clock, Room 304 didn't look like a dorm anymore. It looked like a P*******t board come to life.

​We had pushed the beds against opposite walls, covering them in plush, oversized duvets—cream for me, a pale emerald for Talia. Warm fairy lights were draped in delicate loops along the ceiling, casting a soft, golden glow that completely erased the institutional glare of the overhead light. My side of the room was a mix of gold accents, stacks of psychology textbooks, and a small glass tray holding my favorite vanilla perfumes.

​Right between our desks, hung perfectly level, was the corkboard. The bold, black letters at the top still read: OUR PEOPLE. It was completely empty, a vast expanse of brown cork waiting for a life we hadn't started yet.

​"See?" I said, wiping a bead of sweat from my temple and looking at the transformation with a satisfied grin. "Unmatched."

"It's acceptable," Talia allowed, though she was already snapping a photo of her bed for her I*******m story, so I knew she loved it.

​I walked over to the open door, wanting to catch the breeze from the hallway, but before I could even take a breath, the door directly opposite ours swung open with a violent bang.

​A woman stood in the threshold of Room 303. She was tall, broad-shouldered, and massive, wearing a silk robe that looked like it had seen better decades and a pair of fuzzy slippers that had completely lost their structure. Her face was set into a permanent, aggressive scowl, and her short, bleached-blonde hair was sticking up in three different directions like a disgruntled cockatoo.

​In her right hand, she was holding a half-empty glass of what looked like very cheap, very dark red wine.

​"Can you turn that garbage down?" she barked, her voice a low, gravelly rasp that sounded like she chewed on gravel for breakfast. "Some of us are trying to decompress from the drive, and I don't need Beyonce rattling my skull."

​I blinked, my standard Brookhaven smile immediately snapping into place. Rule number one of human interaction: kill them with kindness. "Oh, my gosh, I'm so sorry! We didn't realize the walls were that thin. I'm Kelsey, by the way, and this is—"

​"I don't care," she snapped, stepping forward into the hallway. She looked down at her glass, then looked at my pristine cream knit top, and her eyes narrowed with a bizarre, unprovoked malice. "And stop smiling like that. It's obnoxious."

​Before I could even process the words, she made a sharp, jerky motion with her wrist.

​It happened in slow motion. A thick, dark splash of cheap cabernet flew out of her glass, arching through the air like a streak of blood, and landed with a wet, heavy splat directly across the front of my favorite cream top.

​The cold liquid soaked through the fabric instantly, staining the knit a violent, muddy purple.

​Talia stopped dead in the middle of the room, her phone dropping to her side. The hallway went completely, deathly silent.

​The woman didn't even flinch. She just looked at the stain, took a slow sip from her glass, and gave me a cold, dead-eyed smirk. "Oops. Turn it down."

​With that, she stepped back into Room 303 and slammed the door so hard the OUR PEOPLE corkboard rattled against our wall.

​I stood frozen in the doorway, my hand pressed against the wet, ruined fabric over my chest. My hazel eyes were wide, staring at the blank wood of her door, my brain completely short-circuiting. In Brookhaven, if you spilled a drink on someone, you spent twenty minutes apologizing and offering to pay for the dry cleaning. People liked me. People always liked me.

​"Kelsey," Talia's voice came from behind me, low and dangerously quiet—the tone she used right before she started a riot. "Tell me she did not just do that."

​I looked down at the stain, then looked back at the empty corkboard on our wall.

​Welcome to Ashcroft, indeed.