I wrapped my arms around Kamaiyah's strong form the moment I saw her walking down the sidewalk on campus. The woman was nearly a whole foot taller than I was, and a year younger, and in the last year I had come to rely on her dry sense of humour and boisterous singing voice for any distraction from my third-year school troubles.

This was my final year. I'd be graduating, with a pretty simple BA in English Composition. Kammy was in her second year of chemistry. I'd lost a couple other friends to graduation, though we were keeping in touch online, so I was happy to see one of my besties was still around.

The first-generation Canadian was built like an athlete—she was an athlete! A baseball player. That's just not what she was in school for—and her solid hug was just what I needed after a summer of simmering background stress between me, my family, and my temporary job that managed somehow over four months not to explode into a public shouting match with anyone. I could almost feel the stress melting off me. I was back where I'd spent the best three years of my life, learning and doing and writing things I loved and making friends with good people. I was certain it was going to be a good year.

"Heya sister, how was the summer?" Kammy asked me after letting me go. She was a perfectly cheerful sort of person, and her voice reflected that.

"Don't wanna talk about it," I replied. "Not even a bit. I'm here now, and I'm gonna try to be anywhere but there for the next eight months."

Kammy nodded sympathetically. "I don't think you're alone in that. I had a good summer, but I'm still happy to be back. Been to the dorm yet?"

"Nope. Just got off the train like ten minutes ago." I indicated the large camping backpack on my back and the rolling suitcase I'd dropped on the grass beside the walk when I'd spotted my friend.

"They painted. Looks nice."

"Uh huh." I walked back to get my luggage. "Anything else new?"

"Nah. I mean, new faces, right? Some people gone, some came back. Still pretty quiet A-Tee-Em." She paused as I walked back. "Rita's already here, though."

"Oh yeah?" Rita was a cheerful, nerdy kid, a math major who seemed to alternate between endlessly outgoing and a complete shut-in. She was also taking a bunch of theatre classes, so it made a kind of weird stereotypical sense that she would switch between Big Actor energy and Isolated Student mode.

"Yep, and she's brought full-on hyper-bright-eyes action." Kammy laughed. "I think she got some over the summer."

I laughed with her. "Hey, good on her. Doin' better than I am." I shook my head. "You?"

Kammy grabbed my suitcase from me without asking, the act of a good friend to a tired one, and we started walking to our dorm together. "Abso-fuckin'-lutely. Got back with my high-school sweetie for a few weeks. Both knew it was just a time-limited fling but man, I needed that!"

A small part of me wrenched in petty jealousy. I hadn't had so much as a kiss from a guy in over a year. My longest and latest dating streak was with another creative writing student at the start of my second year, hot and heavy and super fun, which lasted until November when he tearfully came out of the closet. We stuck it out as friends for a bit, and I have nothing against him, we still hung out once in a while, but he washed out and left at the end of the school year and we lost touch. He fixed me up with a couple other guys that year, but without my wingman, I hadn't had anyone looking to hook up with a short, goofy, ginger poet, and I never really felt fully comfortable reaching out myself.

Maybe this year, I'll actually ask someone else out, I thought to myself. Walking behind my athletic friend, I set my mind to a singular goal of just getting laid before the end of the month. Or at least by Hallowe'en.

Or the winter break. Yeah, that seemed feasible.

Kammy's help with the suitcase was welcome, but she also had a longer stride than I did, so I had traded off a loss of energy in dragging my luggage for a loss of energy trying to keep up. I was solidly out of breath by the time we got to the dorm. I don't think Kammy noticed. I was grateful, though, that she didn't try to continue the conversation while I was puffing along behind her.

"So..." I said as we got to the door, "What makes you think Rita's got a romance going?"

Kammy grinned. "She won't stop texting and smiling." She scanned her ID card to unlock the entry and held the door for me. "Plus, she told me."

"Yeah, that checks out." I paused to catch my breath before heading into the main atrium. The entry space wasn't big, it just had a couple oversized ferns, a currently-empty community bulletin board that was almost always covered in outdated notices for university events that no one had bothered to take down, and an unoccupied security desk. We didn't have a guard during the day, just between six PM and eight AM. The university decided to balance the need for protection in a women's dorm with the need to not spend a lot of money on it. Other than that, the first floor was entirely dorm rooms. So was the third. The second floor had some bedrooms and a nice big open lounge where most of us would hang out when we didn't want to sit alone in our private rooms, and the basement had some student storage, some university storage, some maintenance rooms... The usual sort of basement stuff.

"I should warn you, though, uh..." Kammy said, a bit hesitantly. That caught my attention. She wasn't usually the sort to be hesitant. Careful, sure, but not hesitant. "Rita's... a little different? She's definitely changed some. I don't really know why or how but she just seems..."

I laughed it off. "She got laid. I get it."

Kammy's responding laugh was a little more nervous than I would have expected.

I automatically walked past the elevator; it was old, it was slow, it was a rough ride, and it triggered my claustrophobia something awful. It wasn't too hard to walk myself up a flight of stairs to the second floor, even if it meant a longer walk. Kammy, knowing my discomfort, walked with me, and dragged my suitcase up the stairs, which was very kind of her, and unnecessary, but also I knew it was no trouble.

I had the same room as I'd had the year before, 232, right on the corner of that friendly lounge. Made for an easy escape if I didn't want to be part of it, or an easy connection if I did. The downside came when things got a little noisy while I was trying to write or study, but that was pretty rare. The door wasn't locked, and the key was sitting on the desk just as it had been the previous years. Like all the rooms in the building, it was an individual apartment, a single room with a single bed, a single desk, a single window, and a single small dresser. There was a comfortable familiarity to it, after having the same experience each of the past three years.

"Home, sweet home, eh?" Kammy said as I tossed my backpack on my bed.

"A-yup," I replied, gratefully taking my suitcase from her. "Thank you for that."

"No trouble." Kammy gave a small salute. "I'm gonna grab my laptop and sit down in the lounge for a while, join me?"

"Yep. Wanna get changed, first, though, and send a few messages to people back home to let 'em know I'm still alive."

"Natch. See you in a few." Kammy closed my door as she left. Her room was on the third floor, or at least it had been the year before, so I knew what she was proposing would take her a while anyway.

I slipped out of my jeans and tossed off my oversized floral sweatshirt, and took a moment to enjoy the freedom of being in my own, private room, no matter how small. It was warm out, almost too warm for that, but I preferred to wear things that didn't restrict me. I didn't have a shirt underneath, so a good amount of perspiration had collected on my chest, which I patted down with the discarded top. The bigger shirt also meant I didn't need a bra; I didn't usually wear one and I didn't have much there that required support, anyway. Which was fine; I'd heard some of my more well-endowed friends complain about underboob sweat and trouble running and back pain often enough, I didn't really feel I was missing much with my itty bitty titties, no matter how much a particular ex might have felt differently.

The school didn't provide us with a mirror—there were plenty in the bathrooms—so I had to go with what my phone told me about my looks, which weren't that bad. I had a little lipstick on, a touch of eyeliner, but nothing that would run in the heat. My freckles were on full display all across my face, neck, shoulders, and as far down as my bust. My heavy tan lines from my sweaters were very visible, but with judicious use of sunscreen through the summer I'd managed not to burn at any point, so I managed to arrive at school without extensive peeling going on, unlike my previous three years. My hair was plastered to my scalp and halfway down my neck, but I freed it and fluffed it up with my hands easily enough. The rest of me was... I had to take a breath. I looked alright. Normal. I was okay. I was good-looking. The wispy bits of hair in my armpits could be ignored because of my all-concealing tops, the soft fuzz on my legs was easily covered up by flesh-tone tights on those rare occasions when I felt like wearing a skirt. It's not like anyone was putting their hands there anyway so I really didn't have to worry about it. The only thing I had left on were my solid grey boxer shorts, nice and loose and comfortable, the only underwear I ever wore, and even though they weren't exactly sexy underwear, I'd had a few guys in my life tell me how good I looked in them, and they couldn't all be lying, right?

I mean, they could, they say guys my age would do anything for sex, but I didn't need to add constant questioning on top of poor body image.

I pulled out another sweatshirt from my suitcase, solid blue with the school logo on the front, and slipped it over my bare torso. I put on some sweatpants to match, ignored socks and shoes, grabbed my own computer, and paused a moment. I was about to go rushing back in to the school world I'd been away from for almost four months. I was about to walk into that lounge for what was the first time of the school year, the last first time of the school year I would ever have, and I kind of wanted it to be special.

And yet, I didn't know what that meant. And the longer I hesitated, the more time I spent in closer proximity, metaphorically, to the home life I'd left behind. University was different, it was hopeful, accepting, fun, challenging, instructive, all sorts of things that home and family weren't.

I set my phone back up and pulled my little cosmetic kit out. I wiped the light sheen of sweat from my face with the soft cloth and applied a bit of blush and mascara, just to make my features pop a bit. The silver studs in my earlobes came out, to be replaced with little dangling blue hearts in a gold frame. I debated a necklace or choker but decided against it, but I did slip a simple gold band on my right pinky finger, loose enough to toy with if I wanted but not so loose that I had to worry about it falling off.

Whether I was perfect or not, I'd delayed things long enough. I wanted to be all the way back into my university work. Orientation (which I didn't plan to attend) would be the next day, and first classes the day after that. It was time to take the plunge and enjoy my afternoon, at least until dinnertime. I tucked my laptop under my arm and grabbed my phone, unlocked the door, and stepped into the common lounge.

A familiar figure was sitting in one of the softer chairs by the coffee table, phone in her hand. Enthusiastic sophomore math major Rita Dior, who Kammy and I had been discussing earlier, looked up at me. She'd slimmed down over the summer, got a deep tan—enough that she could almost have been mistaken for someone of Hispanic or Indigenous ancestry, though I knew that, like mine, her tan would fade in a few weeks—and looked fairly stunning, generally. She was wearing a pair of fancy sandals and a pretty red sundress that flattered, almost showed off, her figure. She flicked the tip of her nose with her thumb, reading something on her phone, and smirked prettily with a light little chuckle that I'd heard her make many times in the past.

Then she looked up as I moved towards her, and I paused.

There was something in her eyes I'd never seen before. A fire there, a pure blaze hiding behind those hazel irises.

I flushed under that gaze. I didn't know why.

Her expression shifted, and for a brief instant, a moment, nothing more, she looked... confused. As if I was a complete stranger, and not the sort-of-mentor and half-friend dormmate that she'd met about that time the year before. After that there was a flicker, just for a second, of complete understanding, a look of such absolute knowledge that even I could see she'd figured something significant out. That look then vanished, along with the flame that had pulled me up short, and it was just Rita there, beaming at me, and it was almost possible for me to forget about the confusion and the clarity and even the momentary shock that I'd felt and it was just the math kid saying hello to me and asking how my summer went.

"Hm?" I said stupidly as she got to her feet. "Oh! Uh. Hi, Rita! Hey, good to see you. My summer was..." I hesitated. I didn't want to get into all the tension I'd left behind. "... fine."

I'm sure she knew I was lying. She was probably too polite to say anything.

She did give me a hug, though, much like the one I'd given Kammy when I first saw her. "Mine was absolutely great."

"Told you," Kammy said, coming around the corner to the lounge.

Rita let me go and smirked, turning on her heel and making her red dress flare around her like a dancer might. For a brief moment the harsher light and the colourful flash conjured an image in my imagination of the younger student spinning in flames, and I filed that away for a potential piece of a story or poem.

"She's not wro-ong..." Rita said in sing-song voice, moving back towards her former chair.

"So wait," I said, plunking my tech on a table and sitting down. "You have a sweetheart? A boyfriend?"

"A they-friend," she replied, not sitting down but grabbing her phone from where she'd left it on the seat, sweeping it up gracefully and bringing it over to me on light feet. She flipped it to me almost carelessly and I grabbed it, and there she was, sure enough: Rita standing with her arm around a cute femme Asian, the two of them in fairly revealing swimwear with messy, wet hair, probably at the beach or something given the surroundings. "That's us," she added unnecessarily, "me and Emi."

"Amy?" I asked.

"Emi. E-em-eye."

"They're cute."

Rita nodded rapidly. I think she was blushing.

"How'd you two get together?"

Rita stepped around beside me, reached down, and swiped to the right on her phone. The picture of her and Emi was replaced with an image of six feminine figures looking up at the camera in a standard selfie sort of pose. They were quite varied, and all lovely in their own way.

"Okay, so that's me, and that's Emi, obviously," Rita was saying, pointing at the pictures. Given what the two of them were wearing, it was probably taken on the same day, maybe right before the other picture. "Behind us are Skye and Erynn. Skye was my babysitter as a kid, she's my parent's neighbour, and I guess our... uh, well, not my, but everyone else's landlord? She owns the house they all live in."

"Sounds... uh... complicated?" Skye and Erynn both looked a bit older than the rest, especially Skye, though she still had a childlike innocence in her look. Erynn, meanwhile, seemed a bit more knowing, and almost a bit motherly.

Rita laughed. "You dunno half of it! The other two in the back, that's Lyric, and that's Tempest." The former looked a bit uncomfortable, maybe because she was underdressed in a public space. Tempest, meanwhile, was showing off all the tattoos she could, and had the smallest solid-black bikini imaginable serving that purpose. "Lyric is a digital artist, Tempest is a musician. Hang around with me and I'm sure you'll hear me put some of it on. It's amazing."

Something in her voice, the passion in it, made me want to hear it, just to prove her right. I handed Rita back her phone. "Looking forward to it," I said, and meant it.

Rita spun about again and flopped into her chair. "So yeah, it's been an awesome summer." She giggled. "I've learned a whole lot."

"I bet. You never struck me as, uh..." I didn't have a clever way to end that phrase.

She smirked. "A kinky polyamorous sapphic exhibitionist seer?"

I blinked. "... what?" I wasn't sure I understood any of those words, at least in this context. I knew what each of them meant, but all together, and applying to Rita, it didn't make sense.

Kammy, who had been sitting across from us, silently watching, let out a similarly surprised noise.

Rita turned to Kammy with a knowing look. "Oh, I'm sure you two'll find out in time."

Kammy and I stared at each other. It almost felt involuntary.

Rita shrugged and put her feet up on the table. "I dunno, or not, maybe. Doesn't really matter what I do about it."

I put a hand to my head. I was feeling a bit dizzy. "This is maybe a bit much for my first day."

Kammy laughed. "She's been like this since she got here!"

"Oh girl," Rita said, "I've been like this for weeks now."

I stood up. "Right, I need to get some water and use the bathroom, be back in a few."

"I won't let anyone but Rita steal your laptop," Kammy said.

"Appreciate it."

I didn't need to go all that badly, and I wasn't all that thirsty, but there was something in that conversation, in that space, that was weighing on me. I had no clue what it could be. Rita's presence, her attitude, her outbursts of joy and happiness, were making me uncomfortable. She never had before. Maybe there was an edge of jealousy for her happiness, that she could just stumble into a relationship—possibly multiple relationships, given what she'd just said—because her neighbour suddenly had a bunch of renters.

But that wasn't like me, either.

Something was wrong, something strange in the air. It didn't make sense. I splashed some cold water on my face to try to shock myself out of it, but while I did shock myself, something still wasn't sitting right. I made my way into a stall and just sat a while. My phone was silent in my hand; I had intended to text people back home to tell them I was safe, and I still hadn't done that, but something just kept me from dealing with that at the moment.

The truth was, at that moment, I wasn't feeling safe. I wasn't physically in danger, but something else was making my anxiety twitch. It seemed ridiculous that I could associate anything dangerous with either Rita or Kammy, and yet they were the only ones there. Kammy could easily overpower me, but if anything she was more gentle (when she wasn't in the midst of competitive sports) than Rita was.

I sighed. I felt ridiculous, sitting there with my sweat pants and shorts around my ankles, emptying a few drips from my bladder, holding a blank-screened phone. I decided to stop being a little girl about it and send a couple text messages; if I was going to be hiding out anyway, I figured that I might as well do something functional.

It took longer than I expected to do so. The words just wouldn't come, which, for someone studying creative writing, was a bit distressing. Finally I just forced out some simple, I'm at school, I'm fine messages to the people back home who would care. I took a breath, put my phone on the toilet paper dispenser, cleaned up, got dressed, and surprising myself with how shaky I was, grabbed my phone and went to wash my hands.

A more thorough wetting of my face didn't help anything. I looked at myself in the mirror over the sink, and almost didn't recognize myself. My makeup had washed away, I would have to go touch that up if I wanted to. Maybe I just needed a break, a rest, it had already been a long day.

That was it. I would go back to the lounge, make my excuses, take my laptop, put on some quiet lo-fi and slip my earbuds in, and just stare at the ceiling for a while.

I made my way back to the lounge. It wasn't just Kammy and Rita there, and my arrival didn't really stop the conversation that I wasn't paying too much attention to.

Kammy spotted my approach, though. "Hey, you doing okay?" she asked me.

"Yeah," I said, then shook my head. "No, not really, I think I'm just worn out. I'm gonna have a nap."

"Cool," she answered, and helpfully handed me my laptop. "You know where we are if you need us."

"Yep, thanks, I'll ask if I need something." I headed towards my room, then paused. "Kammy?"

"Yeah?"

"Knock on my door at supper?"

"Think you'll be asleep that long?" she asked me, then without waiting for my answer, continued, "Of course I will."

I nodded and forced a smile. "Thanks, Kam."

Rita looked up from the other two girls she was talking to and gave me a wave. I waved back as well as I could, and slipped into my room.