The Shadow Twin

MY ROOMMATE BEING RUDE

Chapter 3: Is My Roommate Being Rude

MARIANA'S POV

St. Aldrich University looked nothing like anything I had ever seen up close.

I had looked it up online enough times to know what the buildings looked like but standing in front of the main gate with my backpack on my shoulders and a crumpled campus map in my hand was something else entirely.

The grounds stretched out in every direction, it was all perfectly trimmed, students were moving through the pathways like they had been born knowing where they were going. What am I even saying?

I had been standing at the gate for four minutes and I was already lost.

I unfolded the map again and turned it. Hawthorne Hall was where first year students were supposed to register and collect their room assignments. According to the map it was on the east side of campus.

According to my current position I had no idea which direction east was. So I just started walking.

Twenty minutes later I was on the wrong side of campus entirely, somewhere near what the map labelled the athletics complex, with sore feet and the very strong feeling that the map had been drawn by someone who had never actually been here.

I stopped at the edge of a wide courtyard and looked around, trying to find a sign, a landmark, anything useful.

That was when I heard a low rumble of a car engine moving too fast for a campus road.

I stepped off the pavement to let it pass and kept my eyes on the map.

The screech of tires came a second later making me spun around. A black car had stopped less than two feet from where I was standing, close enough that I could feel the heat coming off the bonnet.

My heart froze in shock, well I can't just explain the feeling. But it was worst than panic attack. I stood completely still for one second, then the shock dissolved and what replaced it was pure anger.

And the driver's door came opened. A tall, dark haired, broad shouldered, the kind of guy who looked like he had never been inconvenienced by anything in his life walked out.

He looked at me with an expression that managed to be both annoyed and bored at the same time, like I had interrupted something important by almost getting run over.

"Are you trying to get yourself killed?" he said.

I stared at him. "Excuse me?"

"You walked into the middle of the road without looking. This is a private campus road, not a pavement."

"I was not in the middle of the road, I was on the side and you were driving like you were the only person on the planet."

He blinked, like he was not used to being spoken back to. "I was well within the speed limit."

"You almost hit me."

"Almost is not the same as did." He looked me up and down once, taking in the backpack, the crumpled map, the fact that I very obviously did not know where I was going. "Are you lost?"

"No," I said immediately.

He looked at the map in my hand.

"I am figuring it out," I said.

"Hawthorne Hall is on the east side," he said flatly. "You are on the west side. You have been walking in the wrong direction."

"I did not ask for your help."

"No, you asked to stand in the middle of a road and get hit by a car." He got back into the driver's seat. "Hawthorne is past the fountain, turn left at the science building and follow the signs."

He pulled the door shut and drove away without another word.

I stood there for a moment, the map still in my hand, I tightened my jaws.

Fuckkkkk!!!! Of all the people to almost run me over and then condescend to me about it, it had to be someone who looked like that. Like the world had been arranged specifically for his convenience and everyone else was just in the way.

I turned and walked in the direction he had pointed. He was right about the directions, which made it worse.

Hawthorne Hall was exactly where he said it would be, a wide red brick building with a set of double doors propped open and a long queue of students spilling out onto the steps. I joined the back of the line and shifted my bag on my shoulders and waited.

The registration process took two hours. There was a problem with my name on the system, the kind of problem I had been expecting because I knew my parents might be up to something fishy.

The woman at the desk frowned at her screen and asked me to wait on one side while she made some calls.

I sat on a hard plastic chair for forty minutes while she sorted it out, and by the time she waved me back over and handed me my room key I was exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with the journey.

Room 14. Second floor. I found the room, unlocked the door and stepped inside.

It was small, two beds, two desks, one window with a view of the car park. The bed on the left had already been claimed, a suitcase was open on the floor beside it with clothes out. I put my bag on the right bed and sat down.

Then the door opened. My new roommate walked in and stopped when she saw me.

She was short with curly red hair scraped back from her face and an expression that looked like she had already decided today was going to be terrible and was not open to being proven wrong. She looked at me, looked at my bag on the bed, looked at me again, then scoff.

She did not say hello. She picked up her towel from the desk, walked into the bathroom and shut the door behind her.

I sat on the edge of my bed and stared at the closed bathroom door.

Perfect. Just so perfect.