Knee Pads - Chapter 3: Chapter 3

Katrina Stone was everything I wasn't.
For starters, she was so cheerful, so bubbly it genuinely freaked me out. Secondly, her half of the room was covered in colorful post-it notes, so bright it made my eyes hurt and gave me a pounding headache if I looked at it for too long. Thirdly, she made me feel so boring in comparison as she went on and on about her life.
She loved Yale. She loved Connecticut. Who in their right mind genuinely liked Connecticut?
She was a Music major. She was destined for greater things, greater than the entire Ivy League, and her ultimate dream was to sell out Madison Square Garden. However, she wasn't allowed to do so before completing her superior education, as decided by her parents, so she'd come here to, at least, study something she was interested in instead of being stuck with a boring major.
She let me take a look at her songwriting notebook. I flipped through it, absentmindedly, but the little I retained was enough to make me close it and return it as quickly as possible. I didn't need yet another reminder everyone around me was a lot more talented than I was and was in much more control than me.
"So?" she questioned. "What did you think?"
"Huh?" I blabbered. "What?"
"What did you think? About the songs?"
"Oh, um . . ." I wasn't a liar. I greatly despised liars, in fact, and having to fake a compliment about songs I hadn't really paid much attention to was one of the hardest things I'd had to do this morning. However, she was looking at me with eyes wide open in anticipation, almost bouncing up and down, and I didn't have the heart to let her down. "They're good. They're really good. Do you play any instruments?"
Her face lit up like the freaking sun and I instantly knew my white lie had been a good decision. "Oh, totally. Lots of them. I've been taking lessons ever since I was three." I threw her a tight-lipped smile. I'd never been musically inclined, nor had I ever had any desire to be so. "What about you? Tell me about yourself. What brings you to Connecticut? I have to admit I kind of stalked you on social media as soon as I found out we were going to be roommates."
Great. Just great.
"My family wanted a fresh start elsewhere," I replied. That wasn't a complete lie, but I wasn't going to open up about my trauma and about how it was like to be Jordan Wu's little sister to a complete stranger. If she had stalked me on social media, she'd also found him. She'd probably recognize him from a few headlines—young ice hockey prodigy suffers career-ending injury—and would assume she knew exactly what I was going through. "Connecticut was far enough from California."
"I've never been to California. What's it like?"
I sighed, zipping open one of my bags. Talking about my life back in California was impossibly painful, a harsh reminder that things would never go back to how they used to be. "Sunny. Warm."
"You just described a hundred other places."
I shrugged. "None of those places were home. California was." I glanced back at her over my shoulder. She sat on her bed, legs crossed, and her curls bounced whenever she moved her head just a tiny bit. Her brown skin glowed golden with the morning sun. "I miss it. Everything here feels so . . . cold. Artificial. Like everyone's pretending."
"That's one way of seeing things, I suppose." She hummed to herself. I wasn't sure whether she was oblivious to how I didn't feel like making small-talk or if she was just pretending not to notice for both of our sakes. "You're a senior, right? If you end up not liking this place, at least you'll only have to be here for a year. It could be worse."
I hesitated, frozen in place in front of my designated dresser.
Would I only be in Connecticut for a year?
Sure, that was how long I was forced to stay there, as my family would never let me leave with Jordan in the state he was in, but what came after I graduated? What would I do? Would Jordan be okay by then, okay enough to not require constant vigilance?
"Yeah," I eventually said. "You might have a point."
Katrina grinned at me. "I know." Her smile shifted into a sweeter, more understanding one—the same my parents threw Jordan whenever something bad happened. It threaded on condescending. "I know you're not too happy to be here, Wren. I also know I can be a little bit . . . too much for most people. I've been trying to tone it down, but it's not easy for me. It slips."
Guilt struck right across my chest.
She was perceptive, a lot more than I'd given her credit for, and I supposed I hadn't been making much of an effort to hide my rudeness. I didn't even know why I was already shutting her out, especially when she'd been nothing but nice and welcoming ever since she first found out who I was.
"I'm sorry," I said, no louder than a murmur. "I didn't mean to—"
"It's okay," she cut me off. "You'd be surprised by what people can do without meaning to do it."
I didn't know what to say in response to that, so I decided it'd be best if I kept my mouth shut for the remainder of the day (or, like, the week) and finished unpacking my bags. Katrina chilled on her bed as I paced around the room, hanging clothes and putting away my shoes.
of me felt tempted to break the silence, but I didn't want to risk saying something I'd end up regretting. My friends back in California reminded me of myself to the point it was hard to distinguish one from the other—outspoken, brutally honest, moody—which made the differences between Katrina and them even more apparent.
I didn't know how to deal with people unlike me. Perhaps that had been the problem all along.
I cleared my throat.
"Hey, Katrina—"
"Do you want to go to a party tonight?"
"What?"
I turned around and found her lying stomach down on her bed, legs crossed, feet dangling.
"Do you want to go to a party tonight?" she questioned, never looking away from her phone. "My sorority friends are throwing a homecoming party and I thought it'd be fun if you tagged along."
I snorted. "Are you in a sorority?"
"No, my friends are. I don't have time for sororities." She glanced up. "So? Are you in?"
▂ ▂ ▂ ▂ ▂
If I was minimally sane, I would have said "no, absolutely not" when Katrina invited me to attend a stupid party. I'd never been much of a party girl, finding it absolutely absurd to watch people get wasted and throw up all over someone's house, and big gatherings simply did not interest me. Therefore, the fact that I was standing right next to my roommate at a sorority party was baffling on various levels.
Someone tried to shove a cup of beer into my hand, and it took every ounce of self-control left in me to not spill it all over them. I was not going to tolerate such disrespect, even if it meant spending the entire time sulking in a corner.
Naturally, I found the nearest couch and sulked there.
Katrina ditched me shortly after our arrival, having found her sorority friends, and I couldn't say I blamed her for disappearing into the crowd. After the way I'd treated her, I shouldn't expect her to stick around and deal with my bad mood.
I was drinking orange juice. Orange juice at a sorority party, out of all things, and I could have sworn I'd seen one of the girls throw me a dirty look from the corner of her eye. She seemed vaguely familiar, even though I was assuming I'd seen her earlier today, probably in the parking lot, as it was the only moment when people noticed me enough for me to leave an impression.
Some dude tried to chat me up. He was more oblivious than Katrina, ignoring all my attempts at pushing him away and letting him know I was not interested. While this could get dangerous, it was still harmless and purely annoying at the moment, something I knew I could handle, so I decided to stay put and ignore him and his presence.
I was also impossibly bored, rethinking every decision that had ever led me to this party.
"Wren!" Katrina called, emerging from what I assumed was the kitchen. A group of sorority girls quickly followed suit. "I've been looking everywhere for you. I could have sworn you were right behind me."
"Yeah, I've been . . . right here," I replied, springing up from the couch. My companion slipped forward and fell mouth first onto the pillowed seats, snoring, and I forced myself to look away, stomach turning. I'd seen this film plenty of times before—way too many times. "What's up?"
"I wanted to introduce you to my friends!" Katrina then proceeded to name, at least, ten different girls, while I doubted I'd memorize every single one of their names. They all shared the same amused look, as if I were a particularly interesting animal—a pet—and I knew they knew this party was the last place where I wanted to be. "Everyone, this is Wren from California. She's my new roommate."
Though it bothered me to have them stare at me like a pet, it certainly beat being stared at like a piece of meat by a bunch of salivating dogs.
I gave them a small wave. "Hi. I'm Wren from California."
"I'm from California too," one of them said. Her dark hair cascaded down her back in gentle waves, just a few shades darker than her skin, and I knew she knew she was the prettiest person in the room. I'd met people like her previously—Theo was just like that. "Where are you from?"
"I used to live in Sacramento, but I studied at UCLA. Maybe you've heard of it. It's in—"
"—Los Angeles." Her lips curved into a smug smile, understanding the inside joke. "I'm familiar with it."
"Dang, Marl," another girl chuckled. "Should we give you two some privacy?"
A mischievous glint sparkled in the girl—Marl—'s eyes. "Maybe so."
▂ ▂ ▂ ▂ ▂
Unexpected thing number three, following the sorority party and the orange juice: I was hooking up with a girl at a sorority party.
Marl—whose real name was actually Marley—led me up the stairs towards what I assumed was her room, which had been considerably hard to do considering she'd had plenty to drink by then. Everything in me screamed this was a bad, a terrible idea, even, but part of my brain had shut off.
She smelled like my parents' kitchen the day Jordan had thrown that bottle at me. That, alone, should be repulsive enough to make me stay away from her, but I turned into an idiot with cotton candy for a brain whenever a pretty girl gave me the time of day.
"You don't do this often, do you?" she asked, lounging on her bed, still naked under the sheets, while I put on my sweater, back turned to her.
"What?" I mumbled. "Hooking up with girls?"
"Sorority parties," Marley clarified. I briefly turned around to face her, sitting with a leg beneath me. She was glorious, absolutely radiant, face still aglow. "I can't imagine why you came here from California, out of all places. You probably feel like a fish out of water."
I chuckled. "I suppose you could say that. Things are . . . complicated. It's a bit personal, if you don't mind."
"Yeah, no worries." She sat up and reached out for her underwear, which had been unceremoniously thrown to her wooden floor. "I didn't mean to intrude. We've only just met, after all."
I didn't have the heart to tell her I wasn't looking for anything, especially not for something that would make me open up about my personal life, and I just wanted to get college over it—something I never thought I'd say. It wasn't the smartest thing to tell someone after sex and I wasn't trying to leave a bad impression among Katrina's friends.
If anything, I needed her a lot more than she needed me. We had already started off on the wrong foot; risking anything would be an even more terrible decision than everything I had done today.
"I'll take you out for coffee someday to make it up to you," I proposed, buttoning up my jeans.
"Do you even know where to take me out for coffee?"
"I'll figure it out."
Downstairs, I was in desperate need of some water. Katrina's sorority friends threw me smug looks as I walked past them and I refused to feel embarrassed over something as trivial as a hookup, even on my first day at Yale. I truly wanted to believe society had moved past the need to shame women for doing whatever they wanted with their bodies, but I wasn't going to get my hopes up.
In the kitchen, I wasn't alone. The blonde girl from that morning was there, swirling a red plastic cup with all the pretentiousness in the world, and she was the absolute last thing I wanted to see.
"Well, well," she said. "Still going to threaten to slash my tires?"
"I should," I replied. "If I get pneumonia, I'll make sure to send you the hospital bill."
She was wearing heels, which allowed her to tower over me, something I suspected she enjoyed. Her legs looked impossibly long with those shoes on, too, left exposed by her denim skirt, and I did not want to stare.
Absolutely not.
"Why do you seem to be everywhere I am?" I questioned, filling a red cup with water, which made me the only sane person in the house, possibly. "It's the second time today."
"Maybe I'm following you. Who knows?" She sipped her drink, eyeing me carefully. "Of course, you'd have to be interesting enough for me to even think twice about it."
"Apparently I am. You're here."
"I was invited." She narrowed her eyes. "Not that it concerns you, obviously."
"Heeeey!" We both turned to face Marley, who had just made her triumphant return. "You haven't been properly introduced to our captain, have you?" Marley swung an arm around my shoulders. "Meet Corinne. Corinne, this is Wren. Wren, Corinne."
Captain. I didn't want to know what that meant.
"Lovely to meet you," Corinne said, even though her eyes told me she felt any way but that. I clenched my fingers around my cup. "Guess we'll be seeing each other quite often."