“The sign peels right off,” Mom continues, ripping the e at the end of Time, so now it reads Once Upon a Tim.

“You’re gonna get me written up by RA Tim,” I say. RA Tim is so cute I could cry, so, okay, that wouldn’t be the worst thing.

“It’s a sign,” Taylor chimes in, reading my mind, her legs dangling off the edge of my perfectly made bed. “You should make a move.”

My face heats. “Taylor!”

Mom goes silent. Then, “You know to use protection, right?”

My eyes widen. “Ahhhh, whenareyouleaving?”

Taylor erupts in a witchy cackle.

This is why we requested an early move-in. It’s better that we get all this embarrassing crap out of the way now before other people have to witness it. My three other suitemates arrive tomorrow with the rest of the freshman class, but Mom, in her infinite wisdom, knew I’d be an anxious mess and would need to carve out my space first.

“You’ll miss me when I’m gone,” Mom says.

“When ya going?” I won’t admit this out loud, but I will miss her.

Taylor goes quiet. Her face scrunches up the way it does when she’s about to cry. It amazes me how, no matter how old she gets, she never loses the ability to cry on a dime. What sucks is that I’m the reason for her tears now.

“Hey, stop.” I hop onto the bed. Mom sidles up on her other side. “I’m not going to be gone forever. I’ll be back for your birthday and maybe Thanksgiving and definitely Christmas and probably a bunch of weekends in between because, seriously, this place is a hole.”

Which obviously isn’t true because this campus is everything.

But it elicits a mucusy giggle from Tay. I’ll take what I can get.

Mom sucks a long breath through her nose and glances out the window. The sky is streaked with a late-summer hot orange. “We really should get on the road, Taylor-bean.”

With that, all the frustration and exhaustion from packing up my entire existence back home, driving four hours upstate, and unpacking said existence into this tiny room is replaced by an overwhelming sadness that sucks all the air out of the room.

I don’t want them to go.

I’m not ready for this.

The finality of it. That once they walk out of this suite and out of this dorm and get into their car, they’re gone, leaving me behind.

“You could stay. My suitemates won’t be here until the morning. There’s—”

Mom grabs my hand and squeezes. “As much as I want to move in here for the rest of the school year—” She pauses, clearly contemplating it. “I think we should get on the road.”

“What’re you gonna do, alone?” Taylor asks.

I know it’s not meant to be a serious gut punch, but … I stammer, “Chill. Me time. Maybe I’ll do some sketching. Get a jump on some animation projects I wanna start this semester.” Be a strong, independent person and all that.