The third day of college was the day we got to pick our activities in college. All of the freshman gathered under a glorious, high-ceilinged tent and walked along the aisles of tables set up for each club, shopping for our activities and our future friends. There was something for everyone: a roller blading club, a Japanese food making club, a club for every imaginable religion, and so, so much more. Each had decorated a table highlighting their strengths to convince us to flock to their tables. Some had even brought bribes in the form of candy, baked goods or stickers.

There was only one group that I knew I had to join: the Emergency Medical Service. My father harbored a resentment against all medical providers so I hadn’t had the opportunity to join. This college EMS was a volunteer squad that responded to medical emergencies on campus. They were a small, dedicated group of friends that acted almost as a family or a fraternity and I was definitely looking for a family.

As I approached, I watched the three EMS members behind the table interact.

“Did you hear about that seizure call yesterday? The kid was postictal, couldn’t even answer our questions and the first thing he does when he comes to is check his phone for texts.”

“It always happens. Who was on your crew?”

“A couple of probies, a responder and me. The probies were so late…I have no idea what they were doing before the call.”

I smiled at them. Their conversation was filled with jargon that I wanted to learn. I wanted to talk about my adventures and what medical emergency I had dealt with that day. They were a family and I wanted to be adopted.

I shyly took a brochure and began to flip through it. The girl at the table stuck her hand out.

“Hi! Are you interested in EMS?”

My head went up and down. I was mute. “Please like me!” I screamed on the inside.

“Great! Take a brochure and make sure to come to our informational barbeque. The date is in there. You can see our office, eat some great food and meet some of the other members.”

“Thank you!” I finally found my voice. “I will be there.”

Ruby walked up behind me. “Andi! What is this?”

“Mind if I take a brochure?” she said to the people at the table.

They handed her one. She took it, smiling effortlessly, the way she knew how, the Florida way.

We walked away, towards other tables.

“Always wanted to be a firefighter. I can do this!” She hugged it to her heart, daring me, so early on in our relationship to say no.

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I smiled, hoping she wouldn’t see my fear that we would apply and she would get accepted instead of me. I would have to watch her enjoy the family accepting her and listen to all of her exciting stories. I had discovered that Ruby was like a pot of water just before it boiled. She had a short fuse and her parents seemed to tiptoe around her because of it. Their fiery little gem, they called her in the parking lot before they left her with me. “Really, she is a good girl.”

I wasn’t sure who they were trying to convince, but I nodded and smiled at them, hoping they would change their minds and take her with them back to Florida. Pittsburgh was going to be too cold for her. It was just a feeling I had, so it might be unfair. I really did want to be friends. I just wasn’t sure that was a good idea.

As we walked to the next table, my pocket buzzed. I pulled my phone out to check the screen. My mom was calling. “You go,” I said to Ruby. “My mom will have a heart attack if I don’t answer.”

“Hi, Mom,” I said.

“Andi, are you okay? I haven’t heard from you in two days! Are you making friends? I hope you were extra nice to your RA. She’ll be giving you your toilet paper for the next year so you don’t want to make her mad. But really, Andi, tell me what’s going on. I’m worried.”

“I’m fine, Mom. I’m okay. We’ve just been busy, that’s all. We have to do a lot of things at the beginning of the year. I’ve only really been to two classes so far. And of course I was nice to my RA. We bonded over our love of cellos.”

There was a small pause and then she came back on the line. “Well, I’m happy you’re behaving yourself. If you’re busy, you don’t need to talk.”

My mother: the Absolute Monarch of the Lands of Passive and Aggressive.

“Mom, that’s not it. I want to talk to you. I’ve just been busy, is all.”

“Love you, dear. Talk to you when you’re not busy.”

I rolled my eyes, happy she couldn’t see me.

“Bye, Mom.”

I wondered if the rest of college was going to be like this. Her wanting me to call even though my talking was never going to be enough. She had my brother, after all, although he had mastered the art of hiding much sooner than I had, saving him from my mother’s ruthless attention and my father’s precise throwing arm.

I put my phone back in my pocket and tried to meander through the rest of the tables. I picked up flyers and goodies, promising myself that I would actually exercise if I joined the crew team. I snatched up the travel flyers for alternative spring breaks and community service trips to countries in Africa and Asia, places I had not seen. I avoided the cello quartet, signing people up for auditions, even though I had played for twelve years. College was supposed to be about finding new passions, not continuing to belabor the old. I could play cello whenever I wanted. By the time I was done, I had a hefty stack of papers about the groups on campus and I had started to receive an enormous volume of email.

I shuttled it all back to my room and put it on my desk. I pulled the EMS flyer out of the stack and stuck it to my new corkboard with a little blue pushpin. I checked for the date of the informational barbeque, two days from then, and put the date in my calendar with several alerts so I wouldn’t forget. When Ruby came back from the activities fair, I was pouring over the application and thinking about how I would respond.

“Going to that barbeque? I’m going to go. This EMS thing is a really fucking good idea.”

“Yeah, let’s go together. It won’t be so awkward then if we show up and no one is there yet.”

“Good,” she said as she began to sort through her own pile of pamphlets.

The way she rustled through them, throwing them this way and that, was contrary to my own way of organizing them. I looked through them once, separating them into two piles, Nos and Maybes. Then, reading through the Maybes to find the most promising ones, and saving the rest of the Maybes in a drawer for if the others didn’t work out as planned. I always believed that my OCD came from the years of being told just how unacceptable it was that I liked to keep my clothes on the floor. It was a pavlovian response to constant disapproval.