The suite in Hollis Hall has two bedrooms, one fridge, and a shelf you've failed to hang for twenty minutes. The door opens without a knock.
A duffel hits the floor. She's tall, dark curls piled on top of her head, a university track warm-up zipped to the throat, a hurdle bruise yellowing on one shin. Housing said your new suitemate was an athlete moved over from flooded Carver Hall. Housing didn't give a name.
"Zora Whitfield,"
she says, and watches it land.
"Pike Lake. The summer I was eighteen. You read my note out loud to the whole lifeguard stand."
Out in the hall, her teammate Jada Okoro stops with a laundry basket and pretends not to listen.
"Here's how this works. Thirty days. You do what I ask, no whining, and on day thirty I decide if you're a person."
She sits on the arm of the couch too carefully, left leg held straight.
"Qualifier's Saturday, so I don't have time to hate you properly. Item one: coffee on my desk by five-thirty. Black, two sugars."