As she continued to unpack and I continued to stare at her, it occurred to me that Jazza and I were going to do this—this sitting-in-the-same-room thing—every night. For something like eight months. I had known my days of total privacy were over, but I hadn’t quite realized what that meant. All my habits were going to be on display. And Jazza seemed so straightforward and well-adjusted . . . What if I was a freak and had never realized it? What if I did weird things in my sleep?

I quickly dismissed these things from my mind.

Chapter 5

5

LIFE AT WEXFORD BEGAN PROMPTLY AT SIX ON Monday morning, when Jazza’s alarm went off seconds before mine. This was followed by a pounding on the door. The pounding went down the hall, as every door was knocked.

“Quick,” Jazza said, springing out of bed with a speed that was both alarming and unacceptable at this hour.

“I can’t run in the morning,” I said, rubbing my eyes.

Jazza was already putting on her robe and picking up her towel and bath basket.

“Quick!” she said again. “Rory! Quick!”

“Quick what?”

“Just get up!”

Jazza rocked from foot to foot anxiously as I pulled myself out of bed, stretched, fumbled around filling my bath basket.

“So cold in the morning,” I said, reaching for my robe. And it really was. Our room must have dropped about ten degrees in temperature from the night before.

“Rory . . .”

“Coming,” I said. “Sorry.”

I require a lot of things in the morning. I have very thick, long hair that can be tamed only by the use of a small portable laboratory’s worth of products. In fact—and I am ashamed of this—one of my big fears about coming to England was having to find new hair products. That’s shameful, I know, but it took me years to come up with the system I’ve got. If I use my system, my hair looks like hair. Without my system, it goes horizontal, rising inch by inch as the humidity increases. It’s not even curly—it’s like it’s possessed. Obviously, I needed shower gel and a razor (shaving in the group shower—I hadn’t even thought about that yet) and facial cleanser. Then I needed my flip-flops so I didn’t get shower foot.

I could feel Jazza’s increasing sense of despair traveling up my spine, but I was hurrying. I wasn’t used to having to figure all these things out and carry all my stuff at six in the morning. Finally, I had everything necessary and we trundled down the hall. At first, I wondered what the fuss was about. All the doors along the hall were closed, and there was little noise. Then we got to the bathroom and opened the door.

“Oh, no,” she said.