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First Edition
The Roommate
B efore she loathed me, before she loved me, Genevra Katherine
Winslow didn’t know that I existed. That’s hyperbolic, of course; by
February, student housing had required us to share a hot shoe box
of a room for nearly six months, so she must have gathered I was a
physical reality (if only because I coughed every time she smoked her
Kools atop the bunk bed), but until the day Ev asked me to accom-
pany her to Winloch, I was accustomed to her regarding me as she
would a hideously upholstered armchair—something in her way, to
be utilized when absolutely necessary, but certainly not what she’d
have chosen herself.
It was colder that winter than I knew cold could be, even though
the girl from Minnesota down the hall declared it “nothing.” Out in
Oregon, snow had been a gift, a two-day dusting earned by enduring
months of gray, dripping sky. But the wind whipping up the Hudson
from the city was so vehement that even my bone marrow froze.
Every morning, I hunkered under my duvet, unsure of how I’d make
it to my 9:00 a.m. Latin class. The clouds spilled endless white and
Ev slept in.
She slept in with the exception of the first subzero day of the se-
mester. That morning, she squinted at me pulling on the flimsy rub-
ber galoshes my mother had nabbed at Value Village and, without
saying a word, clambered down from her bunk, opened our closet,
and plopped her brand-new pair of fur-lined L.L.Bean duck boots
at my feet. “Take them,” she commanded, swaying in her silk night-
gown above me. What to make of this unusually generous offer? I
touched the leather—it was as buttery as it looked.
“I mean it.” She climbed back into bed. “If you think I’m going
out in that, in those, you’re deranged.”
Inspired by her act of generosity, by the belief that boots must
be broken in (and spurred on by the daily terror of a stockpiling
peasant—sure, at any moment, I’d be found undeserving and sent
packing), I forced my frigid body out across the residential quad.
Through freezing rain, hail, and snow I persevered, my tubby legs
and sheer weight landing me square in the middle of every available
snowdrift. I squinted up at Ev’s distracted, willowy silhouette smok-
ing from our window, and thanked the gods she didn’t look down.
and smiling. Collared shirts, crisp cotton dresses, eyelet socks on the
French-braided little girls. I was grateful she had put the picture over
my desk; I had ample time to study and admire it.
It was three days before she noticed the envelope. She was smok-
ing atop her bunk—the room filling with acrid haze as I puffed on
my inhaler, huddled over a calculus set just below her—when she let
out a groan of recognition, hopping down from her bed and plucking
up the invitation. “You’re not coming to this, are you?” she asked,
waving it around. She sounded horrified at the possibility, her rose-
bud lips turned down in a distant cousin of ugly—for truly, even in
disdain and dorm-room dishevelment, Ev was a sight to behold.
“I thought I might,” I answered meekly, not letting on that I’d
been simultaneously ecstatic and fretful over what I would ever wear
to such an event, not to mention how I would do anything attractive
with my limp hair.
Her long fingers flung the envelope back onto my desk. “It’s
going to be ghastly. Mum and Daddy are angry I’m not donating
to the Met, so they won’t let me invite any of my friends, of course.”
“Of course.” I tried not to sound wounded.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” she snapped, before dropping back
into my desk chair and tipping her porcelain face toward the ceiling,
frowning at the crack in the plaster.
“Weren’t you the one who invited me?” I dared to ask.
“No.” She giggled, as though my mistake was an adorable trans-
gression. “Mum always asks the roommates. It’s supposed to make
it feel so much more . . . democratic.” She saw the look on my face,
then added, “I don’t even want to be there; there’s no reason you
should.” She reached for her Mason Pearson hairbrush and pulled
it over her scalp. The boar bristles made a full, thick sound as she
groomed herself, golden hair glistening.
“I won’t go,” I offered, the disappointment in my voice betraying
me. I turned back to my math. It was better not to go—I would have