The Ex-Files, Ep. 2

R: "Hey R U staying at the dorms 2nite?"
M: "Well, I was planning on it."
R: "Oh...k"
M: "But I can totally stay ay my mom's if you want some space!"
R: "Yeah that would be great."

That was a little snippet of a normal text convo between Rachelle and I. (Notice the TOTAL lack of punctuation. I'm just saying...how many extra milliseconds of your life does it take to add a period???)

It had been a few weeks and we had settled into a somewhat normal routine. This said routine consisted of me staying in the ancient ASU Best dorms (gotta love the total irony of that nomenclature...) for as long as I could bear, before making the 14 minute drive home to my mom's for a much needed hot, STD free shower and home-cooked meal. On average I lasted about 3.2 days.

At the time it didn't seem so bad. Especially when you consider that during that same 2007 fall semester a girl at U of A stabbed her roommate to death in her sleep. So, all things considered, I thought I was ok. Or at least shank free.

Before we knew it 3 weeks had gone by and it was time for the first round of tests to start. The night before my first french test I reviewed after dinner (I had been conjugating verbs and memorizing vocab all week) and went to bed around ten. My class was at 7:30am and it was my first test in college. Ever. So needless to say I was a little panicked/worried. I finally fell asleep listening to James Blunt (Oh come on, You're Beautiful was THE song then!), with my ear-buds shoved in my ears in a vain attempt to block out some of the noise my fellow Best residents were making -- the Best dorms were NEVER quiet between the hours of 8pm and 4am. I can only assume that the endless stampede of feet running up and down the halls, as well as the spontaneous shrieks of laughter that erupted every time a door was loudly opened or shut, were just the audio side effects of young people making memories that I am sure will last a lifetime.

Anyways, like I was saying, I finally fell asleep around ten only to be woken up an two and a half hours later to sound of the TV. And after several minutes of me failing (miserably) to ignore it, I sat up in bed ready to kick some seriously roommate butt.

"Who does she think she IS??? This is ridiculous! Come on, I have a test in about 6 hours. One that DOESN'T involve me plie-ing across the floor. Or "moving my body to the music in whatever way I'm called to." But an ACTUAL test. In ANOTHER language! AND It's my TV anyways. She can do WHATEVER she wants WHENEVER she wants when I'm gone but right now I AM here and I would really LOVE it if I could just get some FREAKING sleep!!!

And with that, I jolted myself out of bed. In my mid-sleep daze I had failed to notice one thing. Rachel ("Rachelle") was not the only one in our room. So when I threw myself up out of my bed I was wasn't just looking at Rachel, but about half of ASU's LGBTQ (Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender-Questionable) Organization. Apparently, midnight seemed like the perfect time to start Clockwork Orange. So Rachel invited everyone over to our dorm for a midnight movie.

All of my sleep deprived and derived gumption fled me in about 2.7 seconds when I met the confused gazes of 13 of Rachel's brand new best friends huddled in front of the TV.

R: "Um...are you ok?"
M: "Oh, yeah! Totally, must have just been a bad dream or something...ha ha!"
R: "Oh cool. Cause if we're being too loud we can always turn the TV down...a little bit."
M: "Yeah if you could that would be great. I just have a test tomorrow and am trying to get some sleep...ha ha!" (Yeah, I was still super nervous/awkward around her and basically lived my life trying to avoid any kind of confrontation with her at all costs...hey, a girl at U of A had just been STABBED!)

So Rachel turned the TV down (like 2 notches, but I'm over it...almost) and I went back to bed. Completely mortified. I think/know I would have just grabbed by toothbrush and ran barefoot all the way home to my mom's, if a giant, tattooed, darkly-clad, cluster of spikes and shaved heads hadn't been between me and the door.

I forget what time I finally did fall asleep. And Rachel did apologize the next day for waking me up. The rest of my anger/frustration at that night dissipated when I pulled a 107% on my french test. Setting the curve for my class and receiving a capitalized, red "BIEN!" from my smokin' hot French, French TA.

But unfortunately for me, (and fortunately for you!) things were about to get much, much weirder.

To be continued...