I Let My Roommate Move Her Boyfriend In Again

I woke up with my face pressed into a pillow that smelled like cheap detergent and rain, and for one long second I did not know where I was. Then the dorm room resolved around me in soft gray light, and I recognized everything: the fissure in the ceiling tile above my bed shaped like a crooked river, the communal microwave on top of the dresser, the poster of a band Wren had been obsessed with all summer, its corners curling off the wall. My phone said 7:14 a.m. Tuesday, September 9. The date sat in my chest like an ice cube. I had already lived this Tuesday. I had lived all the days after it too. I sat up slowly. Across the room, Wren's bed was empty, sheets thrown back, her pink duffel open on the floor with clothes spilling out. The door to the hall bathroom was open and the light was off. I could hear water running somewhere down the corridor. I picked up my phone and read the thread I already knew was there. Wren: hey are you up Wren: diego ended up staying the night again, sorry, he'll clear out before noon Wren: also he kinda has nowhere to go until october, is it cool if he stays through midterms Wren: i know it's a lot to ask but he's really trying this time I stared at the messages for a while. The same words. The same little lies folded into them, the way she said he ended up staying the night like he was weather, like he had nowhere else to land. Last time I had typed back, yeah ok. Last time I had spent three months sleeping on a couch in the basement lounge and letting Diego eat my groceries and letting Wren cry on my shoulder and telling myself it was fine because she was my friend and she needed me. Last time I had been the one who stepped between them the night everything went wrong, and I had the scar on my left forearm to prove it, a thin white line I woke up this morning already knowing was under my sleeve. I did not type yeah ok. I got dressed. Leggings, the soft gray sweatshirt, socks. I pulled my duffel out from under the bed and started packing the things I was not willing to lose: my laptop, my charger, my grandmother's watch, the cash from my campus job in the coffee can. I was careful about it. Quiet. I did not want to wake anyone in the next room. By 7:40 I had a reservation confirmation email open on my phone. Bellhaven Inn, room 214, Route 9, two nights, prepaid. The confirmation number sat there like a test I had already passed once and was not going to fail again. Wren texted me again at 7:43. Wren: you there? Wren: diego made coffee, come get some before it's gone I locked my phone and slid it in my pocket. I was tying my shoes when the door opened and Wren came in with a paper cup of coffee and her hair still wet from the shower. She was taller than me by three inches and had that easy pretty way of moving that made people forgive her for things. She smiled when she saw me. "Hey, you're up early." She set the coffee on the dresser and glanced at my duffel. "Going somewhere?" "Sit down," I said. She laughed, a small nervous sound. "That's ominous." "Sit down, Wren." She sat on the edge of her bed, frowning, still holding the coffee. I stayed standing because I did not trust my hands if I sat. "Diego can't stay here through midterms," I said. Her face did the thing it always did when someone pointed out a problem she did not want to have: it softened, it looked hurt, it tried to make me the one who was being difficult. "He's really trying this time," she said. "He's got an interview at the warehouse next week. He just needs a stable place until he gets his first check." "He had an interview at the warehouse last time too," I said. "What?" "Nothing. He can't stay here." "You're being kind of harsh." She set the coffee down. "You don't even know him." "I know enough." "Kat." She said my name slowly, the way you talk to someone having a bad reaction. "What happened? Did something happen?" Last time, I told myself I would protect her. Last time, I moved out and let her keep the room and let Diego move his things in, and two weeks later a girl named Sofia Levine was found at the bottom of the Bellhaven overlook with Diego's fingerprints on her jacket and no clear story about how she got there. I had spent the rest of the semester watching the news and not sleeping. I had spent the rest of the semester wondering whether I could have said something sooner. "Where's Sofia?" I asked. Wren went very still. "What?" "Sofia Levine. Freshman. She was in this room two nights ago. You told me she was a friend of Diego's who needed a place to crash." I watched her face. "Where is she now?" Wren's hands were folded in her lap and her knuckles had gone pale. "I don't know what you're talking about." "Yes you do." "Kat, you're scaring me." "Good." She stood up. "Okay, this is not funny. Did somebody say something to you? Did somebody text you something?" "I need you to answer the question." "I don't know any Sofia." Her voice had gone high and thin. "I don't. I don't know who that is." She was lying. I knew she was lying because last time I had stood in this exact spot and watched her lie about the exact same thing, and last time I had believed her, and last time I had let her talk me into going back to bed. "Fine," I said. I picked up my duffel. "Then I'm going to the Bellhaven Inn on Route 9. Room 214. You can come with me, or you can stay here with Diego and answer to the campus police when they start asking about Sofia. I leave in ten minutes." Wren stared at me. For a second something crossed her face, something small and real, and I thought she might actually come. Then her phone buzzed on the bed and she glanced down at it, and whatever was on the screen smoothed the fear right back out of her. "It's Diego," she said. "He's downstairs. He wants to know if you're really moving out." "Tell him yes," I said. I walked out of the dorm with my duffel on my shoulder and did not look back. The Bellhaven Inn was a two-story motel on the edge of Route 9 with a flickering vacancy sign and a parking lot that smelled like pine needles and diesel. The clerk at the front desk was a man in his sixties named Howard who did not ask me any questions and did not care that I was a college student checking into a motel by myself on a Tuesday morning. He gave me a key card, a Wi-Fi password, and the local news channel. Room 214 was at the end of the second-floor walkway with a window facing the highway and a bathroom with a hair dryer bolted to the wall. I dropped my duffel on the bed and sat down and let myself breathe for the first time all morning. Then I opened my laptop and pulled up the public records search I had learned to use last time when I was trying to figure out where Sofia had gone. Sofia Levine, age 19, sophomore, no listed address after August. Her student file at Kestrel College was flagged as inactive with a note about a medical withdrawal. Her last known phone number. Her parents' address in a small town two hours north. A police report from the previous autumn about a missing person, filed by her mother, never resolved. Last time I had found all of this a week too late. Last time I had pulled it up on my phone at 2 a.m. and stared at the little scan of her face, and then I had walked out onto the balcony and sat on the cold concrete and listened to the highway and tried not to think about what I could have done. This time I was going to do it right. I picked up my phone and called the number for the Kestrel College campus safety office. A woman answered on the second ring. "Kestrel College campus safety, this is Jackie." "Hi," I said. "I need to report a concern about a missing student. Sofia Levine. She was last seen at Westfield Hall on Sunday night. I think her roommate's boyfriend may have been involved." I gave them my name. I gave them Wren's name. I gave them Diego's name and the fact that he was staying in our room without a housing contract. Jackie asked me to hold. I held. I listened to the hold music and watched the red numbers on the motel clock flip from 10:12 to 10:13 to 10:14. When Jackie came back, her voice had changed. It had gone flat and careful the way official voices do. "Ms. Vaughn," she said, "we have a Sofia Levine flagged in our system. Can you tell me again exactly when you last saw her?" "Sunday night," I said. "In Westfield Hall, room 312. She was there with Wren Ashby and a man named Diego Reyes. I left at 11:40 and when I came back Monday morning she was gone. Wren told me Sofia left early to catch a bus. I don't think Sofia ever caught a bus." Jackie was quiet for a moment. "Stay on the line," she said. "I'm transferring you to someone who needs to hear this." I stayed on the line.