"Tuesday, it's not the end of the world."

She could beg to differ. Of course, it was plain ignorance she hadn't realized it until that moment, scrolling through Instagram to pass the time waiting and seeing a flash of a familiar face. It had popped up in her 'people you might know' feed, and lord did she ever. The fact that she should have known this, that they had planned this together, helped nothing. Seeing Jordan sporting their new school's colors, posing with a heart-stopping smile and a group of nameless background noise–wait, was one of them standing just a little too closely to her to be casual?–had Tuesday's heart plummeting off a cliff straight into a hell of her own making.

Was Jordan in another car mere feet away, waiting in the same line to get moved into the dorms? Was the smile genuine, could she have moved on from the trauma Tuesday had caused her so quickly? How prominent would the scars be if she lifted that university-branded sweatshirt?

Was she with that girl tucked under one arm in the post?

The inching forward of the car shook Tuesday from her thoughts. Glancing up from the phone, carefully avoiding her aunt's pensive stare, she saw it would soon be their turn to unpack. She scanned the crowd of students already outside, loading up carts to fill their new homes with. The one relief came in that she did not spot Jordan amongst them. Of course she didn't. There were thousands of incoming freshmen, and happening upon a post from someone she'd never gotten the nerve to block didn't mean she would actually end up roommates with them. That was the stuff of rom coms, and the only thing she was really certain of was all the pain they'd gone through would not result in a renewed meet-cute. There was no happy ending here.

"Most people lose touch with their high school friends," Mary said, though she seemed aware of how flat that would fall as soon as the words left her mouth. She didn't bother voicing what a farce that was in light of the circumstances. Sure, plenty of people had to see old flames, lost friends that served only as memories of something beautiful they ruined. But this was different. Their friendship didn't end because of a petty feud or just the fact that they were teenagers, in a constant state of change. Tuesday had ended their friendship by mixing her normal life with one brimming with murder and magic and things that would have given Jordan nightmares if she had known the truth.

Tuesday swiped out of the app and tried to focus on reciting poetry in her head, but with each line came a different snapshot of Jordan paired with it. Something beautiful? The two of them laying upside down, limbs enmeshed, fearless, an ugly truth bared. Something hazy? Jordan's face through a cloud of bong smoke. Something heartwrenching, genuine, obscene? Well. That image in particular she flinched away from before really processing it.

"I miss her."

She hadn't intended to say it aloud. But she didn't regret it, either. Performing her excruciatingly emo internal monologue always to an audience of one created a lonely and cold amphitheater in her head. Christ, she was sick of having the starring role in her own nightmares.

"I know," Mary said back, and the sound of tears dampening her voice made Tuesday shiver.

The seatbelt's pressure against her chest suddenly became too restricting, a straightjacket embrace. Tuesday unclicked the belt and cracked her window, deeply inhaling the scent of lilac bushes that decorated campus. Besides Central Park it was the most greenspace she'd seen in the city, though that wasn't saying much.

The car puttered forward another few feet, and she felt the nearness of what came next heavy in her gut. She produced a stick of peppermint gum to combat the nervousness and nausea, and the steady dull march of her teeth and the humming of the air conditioner were the only sounds for the next ten minutes. Then they were at the front of the line, and everything after was a blur. Anxiety made comprehending what was going on around her and encoding memories of it difficult, so it all reached her in flashes. Being greeted by beaming faces she instantly forgot, voices that became nothing more than a drone of bees. Dizziness. Filling a wheeled cart with her sad, sparse collection of bins. Ushered through a six story building, supporting her deadweight on the cart, clinging to it like a safety blanket. Dizziness, the halls narrowing in on her, a fist wringing her faltering lungs and chest.

Somehow, somehow, she found herself still breathing, settled onto a stiff, cracked pleather sofa. Mary gave her shoulder a quick squeeze. "You have a few minutes before the roommates come back. They're making a second trip down for their things."

Tuesday remembered absolutely nothing about whoever they were. They were just names she'd forgotten in an email she let be buried under a mountain of spam.

"They seem nice," Mary said in response to her blank stare. She began to fill Tuesday in on details she'd missed, their names and majors and hometowns and half a dozen other things she still did not comprehend. This time, she didn't even try to. It was like the people she worked with at the coffee shop, temporary, new connections she only wanted to shy away from. Why open herself to new possibilities when it might end in years worth of necessitated therapy for both parties? She didn't want to get attached.

Tuesday silently rose from the couch on legs no more useful than a fawn's. Aware of the dwindling time she had left before she'd no longer have the place to herself, she wasted none of it to take a look around. She felt like a new pet, cautiously exploring its foreign surroundings; any sudden sound might set her off and on to scuttling under the bed or maybe to rear back on hind legs, claws extended. There were three individual rooms just large enough to each contain a raised twin bed, a desk underneath it, and a closet on the opposite wall. Blank walls, bare blue plasticky mattress that had seen better days about ten years ago, exposed pipes. There was a tiny kitchen, devoid of an oven after all. The couch overlooked a window exposed to a busy main street below, the traffic providing free white noise to go with the buzzing in her own head.

"Where's the bathroom?"

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

Mary stifled a laugh, quickly twisting it into a sympathetic–and slightly pitying–grimace. "Honey, they're communal. Out the door and hook a left."

"You have got to be fucking with me."

"Language."

It felt ridiculous, infantilizing, to be chided for swearing when learning she had literally lured men to their deaths had solely been met with Mary popping a handful of NSAIDs and benzos followed by a thorough smudging session. Before Tuesday could point that out, though, the door squeaked open and two loud, tanned, tall girls came in, already attached at the hip. Both obviously a long way from home, she figured that should have been comforting, but it only intimidated her even more.

Tuesday tried to offer them a smile but felt it evaporate almost immediately. "I, uh, gotta pee," she managed to say, glad she hadn't bothered putting on actual makeup when she felt her anxiety over-doing it on the blush. The voices behind the door she quickly shut, she imagined, were already gossipping over what a weirdo she was.

The communal bathroom resembled her high school gym locker room much more than she needed, with its bank of four sinks and tiny stalls squished together, too much open space around the doors, the black plastic soap dispensers that were already running low. The only thing separating the showers from the rest of the world were thin curtains that she could easily imagine being involved in unfortunate hazing incidents. She ended up in the only unoccupied stall, knees tucked up so no one would see identifiable shoes under the door, covering her mouth with tear-dampened hands to muffle the sound of her angst. She had many regrets, too many to count, and more added as she heard the bathroom door open half a dozen times over the next five minutes, laughter and chattering and running water filling the void. What if one of them was Jordan? Oh, Christ, what if she saw how pathetic Tuesday was right then, an even less sympathetic repeat of when she'd hid in the high school bathroom having a similar breakdown? At least that had been over something reasonably upsetting–hearing about a crime she herself had witnessed the end result of.

With shaking hands she opened up Instagram again, scrolling madly until she found Jordan's account again. Now that she'd been on campus, she recognized the building Jordan was posing outside of. It was a different dorm on the opposite end, one that had already welcomed its new occupants yesterday. This observance allowed Tuesday to stabilize her hitched breath, but she still considered the possibility of running into her in other scenarios. What if Jordan made friends in her building? She was so charismatic, so beautiful, so kind; she could befriend the entire university student body, if she wanted to.

Tuesday rubbed her cheeks redder with scratchy one-ply until evidence of the quick crying jag flushed away. She ducked her head, drew her shoulders in, making herself small for the dash back to her room. At least the girls had retreated to their respective rooms, the only proof they existed being some boxes still stacked in the hall labeled in shaky Sharpie: KITCHEN. CLOTHES. MUSIC/BOOKS. DECO. She quickly retreated to her bedroom where Mary was unpacking the first of her own two unlabeled bins. The bed was already made in plain dollar-store sheets. Tuesday attempted to thank her aunt for the help but could not find her voice.

A breeze swept through the room, raising the hair on her bare arms. It was late August--too early for that kind of chill. Grumbling under her breath, sure this was yet another way for the universe to laugh at her, Tuesday turned to shut the window and saw it was already closed. She looked away again to see Mary was watching her.

"What?" she demanded, crossing her arms tightly, trying to suppress a shiver. The defensiveness that sparked was enough to remind her how to speak.

"Nothing," her aunt said back, picking up her purse from the twin-size dorm bed and giving the room one last cursory glance. "It could be worse," she tried half-heartedly, and when the words fell upon unamused ears, she added, "When I went to school, I had to share my room, which was half the size of this one, there weren't utilities or air conditioning, and--"

"Okay, okay, I'm blessed with this wonderful opportunity," Tuesday said quickly, ushering her aunt out the door. "I'll call you tomorrow."

"You better." Mary paused at the threshold to the hallway. She seemed to hesitate with what she wanted to say, before finally settling on, "Don't do anything I wouldn't do."

Tuesday simply raised an eyebrow at this. From what she'd heard, her aunt had been quite the rebel back in her day. Maybe she wasn't referring to week night parties and underage drinking, though; images of blood and monsters danced in her head, warring for center stage.

She swallowed hard. "Me? Never. I'm a saint."

Mary snorted, shook her head, and then she was gone. It felt like an ending, but to what, Tuesday was not sure.

She settled down onto the mattress. It didn't mold around her like the one at home, rather remaining unyielding, like a slab of wood. Despite it now being covered, she couldn't help but think of the stains left by previous owners and shuddered, leaping back to her feet.

It was going to be a long night.

The walls were thin and she could hear conversations reverberating down the hall as a door slammed, feet pounding along the ground. And she could swear she heard Jordan's voice among them, as much as logic tried to convince her otherwise.

For a moment it hurt to breathe. What air managed to squeeze through her lungs ached, and it almost seemed better to just suffocate. She wanted to go out there, see if Jordan was really out there and how she would react, fix things–

No. Some things couldn't be fixed.

Huffing, Tuesday knocked aside the welcome folder full of flyers she'd barely glanced at and settled in front of her laptop. She whittled away the remaining hours of the day zoning out to YouTube, not even sure what was playing. Her fingers itched to open a new tab, to start a forbidden search only exacerbated by the sight of the welcome flyers at her feet. But no, it was better to go to bed before she managed to fuck things up even further. Hours had passed, though she wasn't aware of this until a chill passed over her again and she glanced at the still-closed window. The sky outside had turned navy.

Dammit, she thought as she shut her laptop. Of course there'd be a draft here. Just another perk of cheap community living.

She couldn't sleep, but for once in her life it wasn't because of nightmares (but those were on their way as well). Somewhere above her was a repetitive thumping sound; to one side, an inaudible conversation; to the other, someone had their music on too loud. Tuesday wrestled with her blankets, throwing her pillow over her head, and when all else failed attempted to drown out all the other noise by humming herself a lullaby. She stared at the clock until it reached 3 am, and then the next thing she knew it was dawn again, but she was all dead weight and blurry eyes like she hadn't slept a wink. And, she got the faint sensation that something had been tapping on her bedframe at intermittent points throughout the night. It must have been a dream. Her imagination wasn't exactly kind to her... If real ghosts couldn't stick around, her own subconscious would surely pick up the slack in haunting her.

She groaned, the sound muffled by the pillow still over her face. All else was quiet. It took the sun rising for everyone to finally settle down. The pillowcase clung to her skin as she tried to pull away, which is when she realized she'd been crying at some point. Her hand reached out for her phone of its own accord, autopilot somehow reaching months and months back to when her parents were alive–she'd been about to call her mom, tell her about her shitty first night in the dorms. She really was losing her mind.

At least that one thing hadn't changed.