Wait. Who was I trying to fool? I’d met all those guards, and they’d all have their feet up on the desk with a bag of chips in their hand while music blared. They’d never see a damn thing, but no one would know that other than those who worked or went to school here.

I yanked open the door to the dorm area and was assaulted by bright bulbs that felt much stronger after being out in the dark. The next things to reach my senses were laughter and the smell of something burning. When I first arrived here, I used to be concerned when I smelled something smoldering. But I quickly realized that half the people here were lucky if they could boil water, let alone make a meal.

I pushed open the stairwell door and jogged up the stairs to the top floor. I had an aversion to elevators and would avoid them if I could walk. I’d never minded the extra exercise, but the stairwell felt just as terrifying as the street had for whatever reason. I heard a door open and close above me, and I instinctively stopped moving and listened.

Wild images of a serial stalker were racing through my mind until I heard a female voice laugh. I continued up and past the girl as she jogged down the stairs. Yanking open the door to my floor, I marched down the hallway and sighed as I reached my room. My roommate would be there. Although I wouldn’t call her good company, she was more like a strange little alien from another planet.

Tina was in her usual place at her desk, headphones on and pen tapping away to whatever song was blaring through her headphones. Within seconds the steady ticking noise of her pen hitting the wooden desk made me want to leap across the room like a crazed animal. The girl’s mass of purple and pink curls was piled on top of her head with a pen stuck through the messy knot. I wished I could pull off the look. It was adorable and stylish in its own way, but I just looked like a crazy person that had been dragged from bed if I tried to do the same thing. Her thick glasses were firmly in place as she read whichever textbook she was studying. To make sure she knew I was in the room with her, I stepped into her view and waved, but other than a flick of her gaze up at me, I didn’t get any more of a response.

“Good talk,” I mumbled as I walked away.