From a building away I can see people are already milling around the lawn outside my dorm with red cups in their hands. I smile as I walk past, but they don’t say anything to me.

I walk inside and can hear the music as soon as I step into my hall. I’m not sure which room it’s even coming from, but the floor is practically shaking from the bass.

As I get closer to my room, it gets louder. The door before mine is slightly ajar. I pause in front of it. Through the crack I can see that the suite is crowded. There are people sitting at the kitchenette table and piled on the couch, three on the seat and another on the arm. And even more people are standing. They’re drinking and talking and laughing and flashing smiles and tossing hair over shoulders with a wink.

It’s not just one person playing loud music. It’s a party.

They have the overhead lights off and shades closed, and a little disco ball on the table throws multicolored light across their trendily clothed bodies.

I recognize Colleen McGregor, one of the residents of the room, who is also in my Intro to Rhetoric class. She is standing over the table, a drink in one hand and a cell phone in the other. A cord runs from the bottom of the phone to the disco ball.

She is speaking rapidly to another girl, who is looking at the phone too. Probably debating the music.

Colleen looks up from the screen and right at me. I step backward. I hadn’t realized I had been standing here for a while and was blatantly staring at this point. Crap, she’s going to think I’m so weird.

I practically run to my door, unzipping my Longchamp as I go. I scrounge around for my keys among the Post-its and pens and lip glosses. Why aren’t there pockets in this damn thing? Who thought one giant sack was a good handbag plan?

“Sara!”

I turn to see Colleen standing in the hallway. She tucks the red cup in her hand behind her back. Her face is sort of shiny but her makeup is still in place, if a bit smudged around the edges. It’s her eyes that betray her drunkenness the most. Well, that and the cup she’s not hiding well.

“Yeah?”

“Have you done the assignment yet? The reading response thing?”

“Oh, um, no,” I adjust my skirt. “Not yet.” The statement is both true and not: I had done most of the assignment today in the library, but I still had one question left.