What’ll probably happen is I’ll end up watching a marathon of Disney movies on my laptop and falling asleep in a puddle of tears because there’s nothing to do when the campus is practically empty. The sportsball people have been moved in for a few weeks already, but I can’t honestly imagine me, uncoordinated queer AF Disnerd Chase Arthur, just, like, wandering up to the athletes’ dorm being all, “Hey, wanna party? I got the Moana sing-along on iTunes.” The thought alone makes me break out in a cold sweat.

“Sounds like a great time,” Taylor deadpans. She mashes her glasses up the bridge of her nose.

“He’ll call Rae,” Mom says. “Won’t you, sweetheart? She moved into her dorm last weekend, right?”

“I told you this already,” I begin. “Rae and I made a pact that we would not call or see each other until at least the first full week of school is done. You know, so that we give each other time to find ourselves or whatever.”

“In one week, you’re going to find yourselves?” Taylor’s glasses fall to the tip of her nose again. She purses her lips as she turns toward Mom. “He’ll call her the second we leave.”

Rae Ackerman is my actual best friend. She goes to the pristine “little” Ivy League school Laurene University, which is, no joke, two miles away from me at CIA, Cayuga Institute of the Arts. We didn’t design it that way. She didn’t tell anyone, not even me, that she even applied to Laurene, let alone that it was her first choice, because she was so superstitious. She told me it killed her to keep it from me, especially when I told the entire senior class, the janitorial staff, teachers, school board, and the flock of pigeons that posted up outside our high school that CIA was my number one and that if I didn’t get in, my future career as Walt Disney Animation Studios’ head animator was DOA. Rae is my more practical other half. My very tall, very extra other half.

“You don’t know me,” I say with a smirk.

“I packed a surprise for you,” Taylor whispers. “Top drawer, next to your socks.”

My eyes narrow at her. “The fuck?”

Mom slaps me playfully upside my head. She snaps her fingers, a cue for Taylor to get off my bed, get her shoes on, and ready herself for a car ride home filled with tears and an inevitable playlist of Disney musical numbers to remember me by.

As if it’s my funeral.

But they do a great job holding themselves together. At least until our slow march out of the suite. And into the hallway. And down the stairs (because Mom is way too antsy for the elevator). And out the main entrance of the dorm. And into the empty parking lot to her car, where, upon arrival, she looks at me and bursts into tears.

I’m talking Niagara Falls–style bawling.

Her face, hot from the setting sun, is so red I’m worried she’ll pass out, and it’s not like Taylor can take the wheel while they’re driving home.