

The tick, tick, tick, I find out, is coming from an improvised ping pong table on the corner of the large common room past the front door. The guitar noises are coming from a guitar, which is being worked by a girl on the opposite corner who is also working on what looks like a bottle of Jose Cuervo. On the other end of the room, a lonely girl in freckles and big glasses leans over a large hardcover book, her fingers pressing against earbuds pressing against her ears as she sings along to her tunes in a desperate attempt to muffle the nightmare of noises around her. A number of generic-looking girls in assorted pajamas go in and out of a side door leading to what I suspect is either the kitchen or the magic cornucopia room, because they all seem to emerge with jello and cereal and other kinds of food from there. I'd say the place looks like hell, but that'd be unfair to Hell. "Sabina, is that a Principles of Newtonian Physics book under the table?" A girl yells from a torn up couch facing a TV older than some continents just by my right side. The girl that greeted me at the front door, paddle in hands, eyes focused on the ping pong ball, yells back: "I don't know, I'm playing!" One of the girls watching the game checks under the desk and emerges a second later. "No, it's Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets." After watching the living room movement from my spot by the entrance for a while, I decide it's about time to move the fuck on and head for the stairs, so I do just that. I climb past some worried-looking girls rushing down holding books across their chests, fast stepping like they're late for a date with Chris Hemsworth's bodybuilding brother Simon the Well Hung. The wood cracks and creaks under my feet as I climb the last few steps and look around the second floor of the house. The noise downstairs is reduced to a muffled mix of laughter, tick-ticks and conversation. A long corridor extends both ways around me. I pick a side and walk, searching for my number. 201. 203. 205... 207. This is it. The door's opened a crack, so I push it. No one inside. Though someone's definitely been here recently, by the looks of the bed by the door. Blanket and sheets and pillows are crumpled against each other in a messy display, fighting for room against a MacBook Pro, uncountable pieces of dirty laundry piled up halfway to the ceiling and a fishing rod (???). I take the other bed – the one that doesn't look like it belongs to Duck Dynasty's hipster daughter -- and throw my bag on top of it, and then throw myself next to my bag and lie down. Nice place, I gotta admit, save for the hurricane that seems to have – "God damn hipster-wannabe-chicks wanting to play Wonderwall on my guitar, I swear to – oh. Hello, there." I look up, and then I sit up. The girl stares at me from the bedroom door behind curly black hair, deep eyes and the Epiphone acoustic guitar she was playing downstairs. "D'you need anything, honey? Cause I just ordered a burrito, and I like to eat watching TV shows on my computer. In my room. Preferably alone. So, ya know..." I get up. "Uh... hi. I'm your new roommate. Lilith," She smiles a big, big smile. Big lips and a big mouth, this girl has. "Oh! Hi, my new roommate Lilith! Someone told me you'd be moving in, but I thought it would be sometime next week." She gets closer and offers her hand. "It's great to meet – woah! Something's awfully wrong with your eyes, sweetie!" "What? No, I –" I rub my eyes like that'll take the pinkness away. "It's like that naturally. It's a... genetic thing." The girl frowns. Then she shrugs. Then she throws her guitar over her bed. "All right. It's weird, is all."