Girl 1, and girl 2?

A brown haired girl with a pony tail and glasses opens the door. She’s wearing our colleges hoodie sweater and jeans. She sees my bags and correctly surmises that I am trying to move in.

“Uh, hello. Are you sure you have the right room? It’s a two person room and there’s already two of us.”

“…Hi I’m Samantha.” Why did I say that, she clearly doesn’t care.

“Yeah hello. I’m Jane. But we both definitely have the right room. I would check with the dorm office if you need help finding your room.” And she closes the door.

I don’t know what to do with this information. I was counting on having a room. I need a room to curl up into as soon as possible. Okay. It’s fine. I check my paperwork… this is definitely the room. Don’t panic, she said the dorm office can help… now where is that?

I search around a bit before realizing that any office in this building is probably on the first floor, and probably close enough to the door that I walked right past it. Sure enough I find an office with someone behind a counter. Okay. I can talk to this stranger and ask them to help me with a problem they are completely unrelated to. Heck, literal (imaginary) children are entrusted with traveling the (fictional) country with nothing more than pets and wild animals they find on the side of the road all the time. I can talk to a stranger while carrying two oversized lumpy black garbage bags like a serial killer.

One more deep breath and I finally approach the man behind the counter.

“… um, excuse me?” My voice cracks a bit and squeaks on the ‘um’.

“Hi, what can I help you with?”

“My room…”

“Oh yes I can help you find your room here let me see. Yes you see that letter indicates the building, so good news is you’re in the right spot. This number is the floor and the last two are the specific room. Does that help?”

“I’m sorry. But they said to come talk to you since it was full.” Why am I so bad at explaining things.

Luckily he seems to get the gist. “Room is full huh? Let me just check our system… well dang. Your room was triple booked. I’m sorry about that. And all the dorms have already been filled. It’s not unheard of for a student to drop dorms without telling us, but it’s rare and we likely wouldn’t find out for a few days at least. Let me call the main school office to see if they can help.”

The actual confirmation that I have no place to stay grips my throat and I just nod. I want to crawl into my bag of Pokémon and cry, but I settle for hugging the bags tightly while I wait. It’s okay. I have a car. Worst comes to worst, I can drive back home for several hours, lock myself in my bedroom there, and then stay there forever and ever and just forget about this whole college thing.

Several minutes pass before I get more news. “Alright miss. Good news and bad news. Bad news is that we have no place on campus able to house you on short notice. Give us a week or two and we can probably figure out something as the chips fall. Good news is that we have a new professor who has a two bed hotel room booked by the school while she finds a house in the area. She’s already been contacted and has agreed to share her spare bed with you. I know it’s not ideal but I’m afraid it’s the best we can do today. Do you want to do that?”

I want this day to end. I want a bed. So I nod to him and he gives me the address and the room number. I make my way back to my car, admitting defeat on what should have been the easiest day of my college life. I drive to the hotel and leave my bags in the car. After talking to the front desk to let the professor know I had arrived, I nervously try again to find a numbered room in a big building. Approaching the room, I knock three times to be normal.