Rachel…
Finished with classes for the day, Rachel hurried across campus, more than ready to relax for a few hours before she needed to prepare for tomorrow’s exam. With every step, she prayed that her roommate would be gone. It was hard enough to live with a person, but it was miserable to share a five hundred square foot space with someone who refused to put anything away.
Reaching the building, Rachel climbed the stairs, smiling to the others who were coming and going from the dorms, wishing that she’d had someone else for a roommate. Someone who was even moderately neat!
Standing in front of her doorway, she took a slow, deep breath, then pushed through.
Silence! “Thank goodness!” she whispered.
“Hey Rachel!” Melanie from across the hallway called out.
Rachel turned, shielding the interior of her dorm from the other girl. “Hey Mel. How was your literature test?”
Melanie groaned. “Brutal!” she called back. “Heading to bio. Talk to ya later!”
Rachel was relieved as she waved and slipped into the room. The whole floor was carpeted with clothes, books, notebooks, hair styling tools and wet towels. None of it was hers!
“I can’t take it any longer!” she snapped. Tossing her books onto the bed, she started at one corner and began tossing things into either the laundry bin or folding up the clothes if the item didn’t smell particularly bad. An hour later, the floor was visible once again.
“Not enough,” she muttered and started organizing her roommate’s items. She dumped all of the pens into one of the red, solo cups that had somehow come home from a fraternity party. Next, the wet towels were draped over her roommate’s headboard to dry out. She didn’t care if the woman’s pillow got wet. At this point, Rachel just didn’t want to step on the towels with her socks!
By the time she finished, everything was clean and organized. “That’s better!” she sighed and finally sat down on her bed. She’d just opened up her textbook in order to study for tomorrow’s exam when Rachel heard a key in the lock. Groaning, she shifted so that her body was angled towards the wall, silently signaling to her roommate that she wasn’t in the mood to talk.
Beth stepped into the room and stopped. “Oh my gosh! Look at this place!” she gasped, coming to the middle of the room and turning around. “This is amazing!” She looked over at Rachel. “Did you do this?”
“Yes. I couldn’t take the mess any longer.”
Beth merely laughed. “You’re a genius! You really should go into some sort of organizing type of job. You’re brilliant at it.” She walked over to her bed, dumping her purse and bag on top. “I heard about this massive frat party tonight. Wanna come with me?” she asked, pulling her hoodie off over her head and dumping it on the floor. She reached into her closet, laughing with delight when she found a sweater, one that she’d mentioned being one of her favorites at the beginning of the semester. “Where did you find this?” she asked, pulling it on over her head.
Rachel didn’t bother to answer. She eyed the hoodie on the floor with increasing fury.
Beth was oblivious to her roommate’s anger. She shimmied her jeans off and yanked open the boring armoire that now contained her clothes, everything perfectly lined up and hanging from hangers, ready to be worn. “Oh! I missed this too!” she yelled, hugging a tiny leather mini-skirt to her chest. She then bent over and pulled it on. The mini-skirt barely covered Beth’s butt.
Beth tossed her blond locks over her shoulder, added a bit more lip gloss, then turned to survey Rachel. “Are you sure you don’t want to join us? It’s gong to be a blast!”
Rachel fully understood what “a blast” meant to Beth. She and her friends would get disgustingly drunk at whatever party they decided to attend and then stumble home in the wee hours of the night.
“I’m good. Test tomorrow.”
Beth laughed, shaking her head. “I do to, but ya only got one life, right?”
Then she was gone.
Rachel stared at the door, then at the jeans and hoodie laying on the floor. “It’s starting all over again!” she whispered, stunned that her roommate was so pathetically self-centered. “I can’t believe that I spent the last couple of hours cleaning everything up and she’s just doing it all over again!”
With disgust, Rachel slid off of her bed and grabbed the jeans and hoodie. Instead of folding them up or putting them into the laundry bin, she stuffed them under Beth’s bed, making sure to push them all the way to the back corner. If Beth wasn’t going to take care of her clothes, then why should Rachel? Organization was the key to a peaceful world! At least, Rachel thought so. Obviously, Beth didn’t have the same perception!
Astir…
Astir stared at the blob in the lacy basinett, wondering what all the fuss was about. It was a baby. Just a gross, disgusting baby! And it was a girl! Girls couldn’t ride horses or build a fort! They were…girls!
Turning away with a sigh, he looked at the others. “I don’t know what’s so great about a baby,” he grumbled.
His nanny came forward with an indulgent smile. “You don’t like the idea of a new sister?”
Astir shrugged. “Not really.” He squinted up at the woman. “What do girls do?”
The woman took his hand and led him out of the massive ballroom. “Well, I imagine that girls do the same things that boys do.”
He squinched up his nose. “No. They’re girls. They are different.”
His nanny brought him into his room that was filled with toys. But he moved directly over to the puzzles he’d been working on before all the hubbub erupted. “Girls can’t even do puzzles.” He grabbed several of the blocks and fitted them into the various places. Astir didn’t know that the puzzle was meant for adults. It seemed pretty easy to him. “Girls stink.”
His nanny laughed, sitting down in the chair where she crocheted, her long, gnarled fingers immediately twisting and flipping the yarn with her fingers and the long, metal “needle”.
“Baby girls and baby boys smell wonderful!” she gushed. “And girls can do anything that boys can do. I guarantee it.”
“They can’t ride,” he grumbled and picked up another puzzle. “I like to ride horses with my dad.” He paused and looked up at his nanny. “Does this mean I won’t get to ride as often with my dad? Will he have to be with my sister more often?”
She laughed softly and nodded. “Your father will enjoy spending time with Princess Calista, my dear. But I’ve seen the way you ride alongside your proud papa on your pony.” She shook her head. “Scares me to death!”
“I don’t like girls!” he groused, fitting the metal prongs into the wooden slats, once again manipulating the puzzle too easily. “I want a brother!” He turned and his nanny paused in her crocheting. “When am I gonna have a brother?”
The woman chuckled. “Well, we’ll have to see, won’t we?”
Astir didn’t like that answer. For some reason, it sounded like she didn’t know and Astir seriously didn’t like unknowns. He figured there has to be a book somewhere around here that would tell him. His mother and father always told him that books had information. So he’d just find the right book that would tell him when he’d get a brother!
