I closed the door and leaned against it, looking around.
Just three more months until Christmas break, and perhaps I could convince my parents that I was more than capable of living on my own instead of being with roommates.
That was the only reason my mom reluctantly agreed to let me go to school an hour away from home, and why she had agreed to let me move out.
But this living situation was taking its toll on me with each day that passed, and I didn’t know how much more I could handle being so uncomfortable in my own home.
It was hard enough living with three strange girls that I didn’t know at the start of the semester. It was worse when they had known each other since high school and were close friends.
Most of the time, I felt like an outcast in my own home, and it wasn’t like I was out making friends left and right.
I found it hard to make friends since the incident, when all my friends I had made since middle school gave up on me and moved on with their life due to my extended hospital stay.
Then, when I was given the all-clear to return to school, everything and everyone felt different.
Or perhaps it was me who felt different.
If there had been one person I would feel comfortable connecting with, it was Brent Ledger, the man who had been considered a part of my family since I was little.
But he had moved to Chicago for a job some years ago.
He was ten years older than me, so it wasn’t like that would have helped any when I was in school, and I doubted he had wanted to hang out with a high school girl while she was recovering from her trauma.
It was just as well, though I knew it would have made things bearable, a little less lonely, had I had someone in my corner who wasn’t my overbearing parents.
Perhaps things changed, and I didn’t know how to connect to any of my old friends again, and what was more, they didn’t want to connect with me.
So I became an outcast at the start of my high school year, and that didn’t change throughout the four years.
I had been at college for three semesters now.
Things didn’t change in college like everyone said they would.
I took off the towel and hung it up on the hook on the wall to dry as I looked in my closet for clothes for the day.
I settled on jeans shorts and a white t-shirt.
California was warm on a good day, but we were starting into the Fall. I would have thought the weather would get better. I thought wrong.
The forecast today was hot and humid.
Since I woke up so early, I still had time before I actually had to get to campus, but it was better to go to a coffee shop than be around my roommates and watch as they talked in hushed whispers, only to quiet once they noticed me passing.
It always made me feel like I was intruding in the space whenever they did that, even if the living room was supposed to be a shared communal space.
I looked at myself in the body-length mirror hanging by my door.
My hair was still damp, and my skin was pale from the lack of sleep, but I figured this was as good as it would get.
I grabbed my school bag and walked out the door.
And sure enough, as soon as I got out to the living room, all of my roommates were there, still in their pajamas.
I looked at Angelica.
I thought she needed the bathroom, and that she was in a rush.
It didn’t seem like it, considering she was sitting on the couch with her hair rollers in, putting on makeup.