"Are you just getting up? It's almost two," said Miranda.
"I- you said you'd text!"
"I did text, baby. Didn't you see it?"
Rachel seemed to be in a dream as she picked up the phone from where it sat next to the door. "Oh my God," she said quietly.
"Don't worry about it! You know I love a bit of an ambush," said her mother.
"Uh," said Rachel.
Miranda pushed her way into the room. The floor was carpet, another proof that Hansen hadn't modernized in the slightest. Better than that plasticky fake wood, as far as she saw it. The place was an absolute mess. No surprise there. Nineteen year olds weren't much into cleaning routines. She'd thought Rachel might be a bit different, but it wasn't the end of the world. The duvet was balled up at the end of the bed. The rest of the bed had been allocated to a carelessly discarded set of black lace bra and panties. "Your first home away from home," Miranda said.
"Mom, why don't we..." Rachel stammered. "I -- let's just, I--"
"Oh, you don't have to worry about a little mess."
"No, it's not -- uh -- let's just--"
Then Miranda stepped over to the desk. It was pushed right up against the window so that Rachel could make the most of the light throughout the day. Her old Macbook sat in one corner, a few sticky notes plastered to its shell. Next to that were textbooks and a few novels for her English class. Aside from that the desk looked like a carbon copy of the door to the room, all covered in Polaroids. "Aw, I'm so glad you're getting good use out of that camera." It had been a birthday gift that June. Not wearing her glasses, she picked up a few of them sitting at the edge and brought them up to her face. The first one was a picture of Rachel and one of the girls whose pictures hung on the outside door. They were both red in the face, and the other girl's pupils were enormous. A touch of something not-quite-legal, thought Miranda with a smirk. Rachel's eyes were closed, and she was kissing her friend on the cheek. Nothing outrageous about that. It was just how girlfriends acted around each other. And then the next--
"Oh," said Miranda, feeling her heart drop into her stomach.
"That's not--!" Rachel grabbed the pictures out of her mother's hands. "It's not, it's not what you think, you don't understand, I know this girl, who, who, she's an artist, ah, a photographer, I--" Her lip was quivering, and she pressed the slides to her chest like she could absorb them into her body. No such luck. And unfortunately for her, there was a fortune of other, even less explicable pictures elsewhere on the desk. Rachel watched in abject horror as her mother picked up another set of two.
