Part One
Her by JVKE
Chapter One
MOM:Jose wants me to go to Mexico with him and I just HAD to say yes lol. But dont worry I already made arrangements for the summer ok?
Huh.
That’s new. The only times my mom makes plans in advance are when she asks me what I want for dinner, and it’s usually a choice between two types of leftovers.
I sit up straighter on my bed and scroll down, already bracing myself. The dorm room is quiet around me. Unusually so, since Cami left yesterday with two rolling suitcases and a boyfriend who drove up from New York in a Porsche to collect her. Which means I’m alone for the first time all semester in a room that is approximately 80% Cami, 15% communal, and 5% me.
It’s not hard to tell which 5% is mine. My side of the room is a narrow strip of bed, desk, and closet, the closet being a plywood box with a metal rod that wobbles every time you hang anything on it. The only personal touch is a laundry schedule I printed out during orientation week and stuck to the wall with a single piece of tape that’s been slowly losing its grip since October.
Cami’s side, on the other hand, looks like a boutique had a baby with a Pinterest board. Shopping bags from stores I’ve never set foot in are stacked three deep beside her dresser. Her vanity mirror is framed with photos of her and various boyfriends, all of whom are terribly rich and even more terribly good-looking. She also cheerfully admits to cycling through them with the efficiency of someone who treats dating the way most people treat subscription services. Some are just good for a three-day deal, to be revisited only when they offer something hot and new.
Cami’s clothes take up not just her closet but half of mine. No beef, though; she very cheerfully offered to pay rent for additional space after seeing what little I had, and I was just as cheerful in accepting. We may be polar opposites, my roommate and I, but our friendship is also proof that honesty when negotiating iseverything.
Everything that I know about Cami is something she’s admitted herself. My mom, she’s just as honest. But whereas Cami’s comes off as charmingly self-aware, my mom’s version of being true to one’s self is the kind that forces everyone around her to be the adult—and her own kids are no exception.
Case in point: this message of hers that has me taking deep, calm breaths with every line I read.
Mom:I texted Icelle—
Oh God, here we go again.
Mom:and she said you can totally stay with her fam for the summer!! You guys can just ride back together when school starts. It’s going to be SO fun!!!
Three exclamation marks. My mother only uses three exclamation marks when she’s already mentally on the plane to wherever her latest boyfriend is taking her and she needs me to not make a fuss about being left behind.
I lower my phone to my lap and stare at the wall across from me. There’s a hairline crack that runs from the ceiling down to the light switch, and I’ve been tracing it with my eyes since freshman orientation, imagining it as a tiny fault line that will one day split the building in half and swallow this room and everything in it, which, in my case, would amount to one suitcase’s worth of stuff and a laundry schedule. Cami’s side would probably survive. Her faux-fur throw alone has enough structural integrity to shield a small village.
Why do I even try? Why try making friends when there’s always my own mother to scare them all away? And the worst thing about it is that sheneversees anything wrong in what she does. Like the time she called Daphne to ask if we were friends, and when Daphne said yes, she then asked with zero shame if Daphne could askhermom to pay forourrent because—
A knock on the door cuts my thoughts off. Before I can even say “come in,” the handle is already turning, and the next thing I know, Icelle is walking into my room with the kind of calm, purposeful stride that makes people in hallways instinctively step aside for her, and—