by Meg Cabot
It’s the fact that attendance is mandatory for administrative staff that I find a bit irksome. I have errands to run on the weekend, not to mention a wedding to plan. Plus, I’m not going to have any problem parting with the parents. I can’t really relate to these modern day, ultra-involved parents who want to do everything for their kids. Maybe that’s because my own parents were the exact opposite . . . they couldn’t have cared less what happened to me.
Well, except during the days when I was making tons of money for them, of course. But—at least so far as Mom was concerned—it was only the money she cared about. That’s why she took off with all of it.
If only I’d known then what I do now. I’d have had a very different kind of Parent Parting ceremony with her.
“Oh,” Mrs. Harris says, taking the flyer from me. “Thank you. Yes, this is, er, exactly what I wanted to know.”
Behind her, Gold Rolex looks perplexed. “I thought you were here for the same reason as the rest of us, to sign your daughter up for the—”
“It’s so nice that you’re going to lunch with your new friends, Kaileigh,” Mrs. Harris interrupts him hastily. “But Daddy and I were going to take you out to lunch today in Chinatown. Remember?”
A look of annoyance flashes across Kaileigh’s pretty face, which she just as quickly squelches.
“That’s okay, Mom,” she says. “You guys don’t leave until Saturday. We can grab lunch together in Chinatown another time.”
Mrs. Harris looks as hurt as if her daughter has stabbed her in the heart.
“Oh,” she says. “Well, let me call Daddy now. He and I can join you and your friends. It won’t take a minute, he’s over at Best Buy getting you that new printer you said you wanted, so he isn’t far.”
Mrs. Harris is busy digging through her purse for her phone, so she misses the eye roll her daughter shares with her suite mates.
“It’s okay, Mom,” Kaileigh says again. “Really. You and Daddy and I have had every meal this week together. Maybe we can skip this one so I can hang out with my friends.”
“No, no, it’s cool,” Rashid says, digging into the pocket of his sports coat for his own cell phone. “I’d love for Mr. and Mrs. H to join us—”
Kaileigh glares at him. “That won’t be necessary, Shiraz. The reservation you made was only for four.”
“Five,” Rashid corrects her, his thumb moving over the screen of his phone. “Don’t forget Ameera. I’ll call Drew. He can get us a bigger table.”
“So sweet,” I overhear one of the boys in line murmur with a sigh. “He’s even nice to old people!”
Sarah looks furious. She doesn’t want to find out something nice about the prince.
Kaileigh doesn’t look too happy either, but for other reasons. She’s dressed exactly like her suite mates and the girls standing in line to put themselves on the Fischer Hall Room Change Wait List—like someone who’s ready to go out, but definitely not with her parents. Her long hair has been perfectly straightened, dozens of shiny gold bangles dangle from each wrist, and her miniskirt hits at the most flattering place on her slim thighs.
Rashid is similarly well coiffed. If he’s conscious of the excited stares he’s receiving from the students in line, he doesn’t show it. He’s probably used to it, being the Prince Harry of Middle Eastern royalty.
“You have a reservation?” Mrs. Harris looks bewildered. “You’re not going to the cafeteria?”
“No, Mom,” Kaileigh says, exasperated. “Shiraz got us a table at Nobu. It’s only supposed to have, like, the best sushi in the entire world.”
Carl, up on his ladder, nods. “It really does. Try the blackened sea bass. You won’t regret it.”
“But . . .” Mrs. Harris glances from Rashid to his bodyguards then back to her daughter. “We got Kaileigh the nineteen-meals-per-week plan so she could eat in the dining halls here on campus. I’m sure all of your parents are paying for the same thing.” Mrs. Harris shoots her daughter’s friends a disapproving look. “None of those meals are refundable. Are they, Ms. Wells?”
Put on the spot, I shake my head . . . though I highly doubt the son of the crowned head of one of the wealthiest countries in the world (according to Forbes magazine) cares very much about getting his money back for any uneaten meals on his dining plan.
“Mom, it’s not going to kill anyone if we skip a meal in the cafeteria now and then.” Kaileigh grimaces at her friends, as if to say, My mom’s so embarrassing, right? “I actually only stopped in here on our way out because I can’t find my RA and there’s something wrong with my roommate.”
“Ameera is back?” Mrs. Harris sounds surprised.
“Yeah,” Kaileigh says. “After I hung up from talking to you this morning, I took a shower, and when I got out, Ameera was in her bed. Only she—”
The door to Lisa’s office immediately opens.
“What’s wrong with her?” Lisa barks at Kaileigh.
Kaileigh’s eyes widen. I don’t blame her. Not only is Lisa quite a sight in her current state, resembling an Asian version of Fantine during her death scene in Les Misérables, minus the shaved head, but she also appears to have come out of nowhere, possessed with powers of precognition.
“My roommate?” Kaileigh asks. “She . . . she won’t wake up.”
4
Room Change Request
Name:_____________________
ID#: _____________________
Sex:____M____F____Gender Neutral
E-mail: _____________________
Cell phone: _____________________
Where do you currently live? _____________________
__________________________________________
What kind of change are you interested in making?
__________________________________________
Reason for room change request.
Please check all that apply:
____Not getting along with roommate
____Wish for less expensive housing option
____Wish to move closer to campus
____Other (explain in space below)
__________________________________________
__________________________________________
By signing, I agree that I wish to be offered a room change by the New York College Housing Office.
X __________________________________________
What room are you in?” My boss’s pallid face peers through the crack between her door and the jamb, but her voice has all the force of a whip.
Looking a little shocked, Kaileigh replies automatically, “Room fourteen-twelve.”
“Heather,” Lisa barks. “Call the RA for—”
“—the fourteenth floor. I’m on it.”
I pull out the list I typed out myself of all the emergency numbers for the building, including all the new resident assistants. I used to consider the fact that I’d shrunk this list down to a wallet-size card (that I’d then laminated) pretty high-tech until one of the new RAs—the RA for the fourteenth floor, as a matter of fact, Jasmine—asked in a snarky tone, “Is it okay if I throw this away after I input the numbers into my smartphone?”
Imagine the nerve, implying that the list I’d worked so hard to make (because, of course, I’d distributed tiny laminated wallet-size copies to everyone) was disposable!
When Jasmine drops her smartphone in a rain puddle as she’s escorting some student to the hospital (and no matter what anyone says, this does sometimes happen), how will she know who to call from the emergency room pay phone to come relieve her?
Good luck with that, Jasmine.
Lisa opens her office door even farther, and a small brown-and-white projectile bursts out from behind her legs, then begins to run excitedly around the room, sniffing everyone’s shoes. Both of Prince Rashid’s bodyguards reach inside their jackets for their sidearms.
“It’s a dog!” I cry as I dial. “Tricky, come here. You guys, it’s a Jack Russell terrier, not a threat.”
The dog races
over to me for one of the treats I keep for such emergencies—although they’ve never before involved weapons—while Hamad and his partner relax, but not without reproachful looks in my boss’s direction.
Lisa doesn’t even notice.
“Is Ameera breathing?” Lisa asks Kaileigh, who is still round-eyed with astonishment over how Lisa knows about her roommate’s situation.
There’s actually a good explanation: a long metal grate a few inches from the ceiling that separates Lisa’s office from the one in which my desk sits. The grate allegedly provides “light and ventilation to employees in the outer office,” since the outer office has no windows.
But what it actually does is allow us to snoop on each other’s conversations.
It doesn’t hurt, however, to let the students think we’re psychic (they never notice the grate), so we don’t bother disabusing them of the notion.
“I think she was breathing.” Kaileigh, unlike everyone else, is staring at Lisa instead of the dog, whose entire backside is quivering in ecstasy as I pass him treats one-handed, the other hand still gripping the phone. “How would I know?”
“Had she vomited in the bed?” Lisa demands. “Were her lips blue?”
“Of course she was breathing,” says Kaileigh’s suite mate Chantelle. “I mean, why wouldn’t she be breathing? She’s just, like, hungover.”
“We didn’t check the color of her lips, though. She had the covers pulled up over her head. We just shook her and she wouldn’t wake up.” Nishi’s squatted down in front of the dog and is scratching his ears, to his delight. “Oh my God, he’s so cute. What’s his name?”
“Tricky.” I hang up the handset. To Lisa, I say, “Voice mail. Jasmine’s not answering.”
Lisa looks worried, and not only about Ameera. Jasmine isn’t the RA on duty, but all student employees are supposed to be “available” during orientation week. The fact that Jasmine isn’t answering her phone (especially since it’s the hall director’s office calling) is troubling.
Then again, it’s only the first week of school. Jasmine will learn . . . especially after Lisa Wu gets through with her at the next staff meeting.
“I told you,” Mrs. Harris says, looking triumphant. “She’s not there.”
“I’ll phone the front desk to have the RA on duty go check on Ameera,” I say, ignoring Mrs. Harris as I dial, “and also Jasmine.”
“No need,” Sarah says quickly. “I’ll go.” She turns to face Kaileigh, who seems to be the only one who’s concerned about her roommate . . . or maybe she’s still freaked out about Lisa’s apparent mind-reading abilities. “I’m the graduate housing assistant for this building. It’s my job, along with Ms. Wu and Ms. Wells, to help assist in matters like this.”
One might assume Sarah’s superciliousness stems from an anxiety to make up for her earlier faux pas with Kaileigh’s mother—and possibly for the attitude she pulled with Prince Rashid—but the truth is, she basically lives for moments like this, since she’s studying for her master’s degree in psychology.
On her way out the door, Sarah says over her shoulder, “Lisa, why don’t you go upstairs and get back in bed? Heather and I have things under control.”
Like Sarah’s, the hall director’s position is live-in. Lisa receives free room and board—a one-bedroom apartment on the sixteenth floor that she shares with her husband, Cory, and of course, Tricky—in addition to a salary that isn’t much more than mine, but I have to pay my own rent.
Or I would if I didn’t live rent-free on a floor of my landlord’s brownstone in exchange for doing his bookkeeping . . . or at least I did until we became romantically involved. I still do his bookkeeping, but now I live rent-free in the entire brownstone.
“Ms. Wu.” Mrs. Harris sees her opportunity for an impromptu meeting with someone in charge—even though the person in charge looks like death warmed over—and jumps in before Lisa can disappear on her. “Perhaps you and I should speak privately—”
Lisa shakes her head as if everyone’s voices sound like irritating flies buzzing around her ears.
“Not now,” she says.
Mrs. Harris looks taken aback. “But—”
“I said not now.”
Rolex Watch has taken a step forward to speak with me, but hearing Lisa’s tone, he takes a quick step back again.
“Gavin, it’s me,” I say when the student worker manning the reception desk in the lobby picks up. “Can you please grab the master key for the fourteenth floor? Sarah’s going to be up in a minute to borrow it. And have you seen Jasmine anywhere?”
“Who’s Jasmine?”
Gavin’s one of my most reliable work-study employees, but only for showing up when he says he’s going to—and sometimes even when he’s least expected, but also most needed.
Unfortunately, he’s not necessarily the best at paying attention when he’s actually doing his work-study job, which is working at Fischer Hall’s hub, the front desk where residents go to receive their mail and packages, report problems, and borrow keys if they’ve locked themselves out of their rooms. Gavin aspires to a career in filmmaking, not hospitality, and it shows.
I sigh. “Jasmine’s one of the new RAs, Gavin. Remember? She works on the fourteenth floor. You met her at the student staff icebreaker last weekend.”
“Whatevs.” This is Gavin’s favorite word. “There were like five girls named Jasmine at that thing. Is she the hot Asian Jasmine who’s premed? Or the hot Indian Jasmine who’s prelaw? Or is she the hot white Jasmine who’s studying communications? Or—”
“Don’t you have a girlfriend, Gavin?” I interrupt.
“Of course I do,” he says. “Jamie’s the hottest girl in this dorm, I mean residence hall. After you, of course, Heather. But that doesn’t mean all the Jasmines who live here aren’t hot too. You see, I’m a man who appreciates women. Women of all races, sizes”—he lowers his voice suggestively—“and ages too, if you get my meaning, Heather.”
I swallow. “You know what, Gavin, I do. Just give Sarah the master key for the fourteenth floor when she gets up there, please.”
“Oh, here she is,” Gavin says in his normal voice. I hear the rattle of the metal cabinet in which we lock all the master keys—except the building master, which is kept in a box in the bottom drawer of Lisa’s desk—then Sarah’s voice, in the background saying “Thanks, Gavin.”
“Good,” I say, when Gavin comes back on the line. “Now do me a favor and beep the RA on duty?” I’m looking at the schedule pinned to the bulletin board next to my desk. “It’s Howard Chen. Tell him to get up to fourteen-twelve and meet Sarah for a possibly sick student.”
“Okay, I will,” Gavin says, sounding skeptical, “but he isn’t going to like it.”
“What do you mean, he isn’t going to like it? I don’t care if he doesn’t like it, it’s his job, he doesn’t have a choice.”
“I know,” Gavin says. “I’m just saying, I had to call old Howard a little while ago about a lockout, and Howard was pretty pissed about it. He says he isn’t feeling too hot.”
I glance at Lisa, then lower my voice to hiss, “Well, tell Howard from me that he can suck it up. He gets free room and board for the entire year but only has to be on duty a couple of days a month. Lisa has the stomach flu, has to be here nine to five every day, be on duty in the building at night, and yet she still made it to work.”
“There seems to be a lot of that flu thing going around with RAs today,” Gavin says obliquely, and hangs up.
“Excuse me.”
The second my receiver hits the phone cradle, Rolex Watch is on me like cream cheese on a bagel.
“I’m sorry, I can see you’ve got a lot going on right now, and I really hate to bother you, but what about that Room Change Wait List you mentioned?”
Fed up, I pull open my bottom desk drawer and grab a stack of bright orange forms.
“Here,” I say. “Give your son one of these.”
A small riot ensues as the line surg
es forward, hands eagerly grabbing to take a form.
I realize I probably should have handed them out sooner, but when a building has been known as Death Dorm as long as Fischer Hall has, it takes a while to adjust to the fact that it’s suddenly gotten to be a place where people actually want to live.
“Here you go, miss,” Rolex Watch says a few minutes later, handing his completed form back to me, seeming to feel no compunction about doing so, even though I’d explained just moments before that only residents were to fill them out. “And can I ask just one more thing—”
Anything to get rid of him. “Go ahead.”
He lowers his voice. “I’m sure you get this all the time, but has anyone ever told you that you look just like Heather Wells the pop singer?”
He seems so sincere, his plump face beaming, that I realize he isn’t putting me on. He genuinely has no idea. I don’t keep a nameplate or anything like that on my desk.
“No,” I say with a smile, taking the form from his fingers. “No one’s ever told me that before. But thank you. I’ll take it as a compliment.”
“Oh, it is,” he assures me. “Such a pretty girl. My daughter loved Heather Wells. She has all her CDs. Still plays them too, sometimes. There was that one song—” He can’t seem to think of the name.
“ ‘Sugar Rush’?”
“That’s the one! So catchy. Oh, darn. Now I’m going to be humming it all day.”
I nod. “Hard to get it out of your head.”
“Oh, well,” he says with a sheepish grin. “Thank you. I knew when people told me New Yorkers were mean that they were all lying. I haven’t met a mean one yet.”
I smile at him. “We aren’t all bad.”
Soon my office has emptied—except for Mrs. Harris and her daughter and her suite mates, and of course the prince and his bodyguards.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” the prince is asking, looking regally worried.
“You can go to your lunch,” Lisa says stiffly. “This is none of your concern.”
“I’m afraid it is,” the prince says. “I’m acquainted with the young lady in question. She’s very . . . amiable.”
