He stalks away from the table and then stalks back. “Wherever you’re from? We’re not like that here.” I know what he means by “that,” and I can’t find a safe retort. “You can’t handle that for an effing month, go home.”

I wish I could. I really do.

When the Lights Go Down in the City

When the Lights Go Down in the City

My dorm mail contains a surprise. Ernie is reading me his note from JJ (who I now know to be wallet-on-a-chain girl), a missive that is very funny in a deadpan way, mostly riffs on the school and classmates. I’m half-listening as I unfold the little paper sailboat Leeza made to keep up with my llama, but there’s not much inside.

Meet me at the shop. 11 p.m. xo L

Um, hello. I would like nothing better than to hang out somewhere else instead of being trapped in the carpeted cinder block box, but there are RAs on duty, and one of them is my dad, who already hates me. (Okay, she doesn’t have any way of knowing that, but I do.) And I can’t afford to get kicked out for sneaking out because my “Connecticut” isn’t real. Where would I go?

On the other hand, oh my god, I love being sneaky. Despite tripping over himself continually, Ernie is a nice guy, but I seriously cannot hear the mechanical sound of another inning of hand-held baseball or whatever. Without my white noise app, it’s hard to fall asleep here, and I can’t Houseparty my friends, who haven’t been born, on a phone that hasn’t been invented. I don’t know how anyone else stands all the empty time, but this note feels like a lifeline.

Dorm mail only comes once a night, so I can’t even reply. (God, the ’80s are inefficient.) This means she’ll be out at the shop building come 11 p.m. whether or not I am. Can’t leave a sis hanging like that, right?

Good thing for me that Ernie sleeps like a log. When “lights out” comes at 10 p.m.—can you stand it?—and the RAs go room to room to enforce it, he climbs into bed, rolls toward the wall, and is gone. I don’t know from this side of the door whether the RAs go to bed immediately after or whether they get some special late-night privileges. I have to trust that Leeza knows that they, too, will be in their rooms, and I have to hope the dorm doors aren’t alarmed.