Again by Lisa Burstein

familiar. Brought me right back
to the morning I’d conceived this idea.
    This crazy plan that now,
too, couldn’t even keep me on the right track.
    Maybe I should have gone to
rehab, but then I’d only be sober. Being here was supposed to help me start my
life again. Become the Kate I should have been if college-take-one hadn’t
happened. I was already failing.
    Like they say, wherever
you go there you are.
    I was Kate, and no matter
where I went, she would follow me. She would get wasted and leave her expensive
new clothes at frat houses and practically sleep with a guy seven years
younger—a really nice guy who was an insanely good kisser and had abs as tight
as woodblocks under his skin.
    I shook my head, then,
remembering the pain, moaned instead, blowing out a long, contemplative breath
tinged with stale beer.
    I wondered if Steph and Alex
had come back in and left me lying here—or worse yet—Dawn, up early and already
out for the day. I reached into my pocket for my phone and checked my mirror
app, phew , no penises , not even the severed demon variety.
    I slowly stood, shuffled to
the elevator, and headed to my room craving only sleep, wanting only to forget
everything that happened the night before. But it was impossible. Carter’s
concerned face floated in front of me.
    Hopefully I hadn’t humiliated
myself beyond forgiveness last night.
    The elevator ride was
solitary, interminable. Standing sucked. I headed down the hall, slipped into
the bathroom quickly, and bee lined it to my room. I opened my door slowly,
trying to slink in quietly and not wake Dawn, but she was already up. She sat
on the corner of her tightly made bed.
     Had she been waiting for
me? Maybe even been worried about me?
    “So, you slutted it up
already,” she said, her eyes tight, like she was disappointed. The thing was, she
had absolutely no right to be. I mean, I’d just met the girl.
    Sure, I told her I wouldn’t
be anything like her last roommate, but that hadn’t been a lie. It had been
more of a lapse.
    Though who was I kidding? I
was exactly like her last roommate, hung over and wearing the coat of the guy
who’d stopped me from slutting it up.
    “No, I passed out in the
lobby,” I said. It was easier than explaining. I hung Carter’s coat on my
chair.
    “Then why are you in only
your bra and jeans?”
    “Sweater thieves,” I replied,
pulling off my boots, then my jeans. Dawn watched me the whole time.
    “But you had some guy’s
coat,” she said, glancing at it. “So maybe he has your sweater,” she reasoned.
    “What do you care?” I asked.
I was not in the mood to be judged, I was doing a fine job on my own. I pulled
on a T-shirt and got into bed.
    “I don’t,” she sneered. Her
lips were black, her eyes lined in it, too .
    Full makeup at five-thirty a.m.?
Maybe she slept in it. Maybe she was even more committed to her character than
I was.
    I pulled the covers over my
head. I wondered if Steph and Alex were snoozing next door, both happy with the
night they’d had, not feeling like more of a loser because they had a hypercritical
mirror who wore safety pins in her ears staring back at them.
    “At least you didn’t bring
him back here,” she said.
    “I didn’t bring him anywhere,”
I retorted from under the blankets. She didn’t need to know what I’d tried to
do. What he, someone years younger than me, had to stop me from doing. In terms
of maturity at least, it appeared I had nineteen down.
    “I told you it would happen
to you, always does.”
    I swallowed a guilty
swallow. I hadn’t wanted it to happen at all, let alone so soon. “Thanks for
the lecture, Dawn. It’s the cherry on top of my hangover.”
    “Not a lecture,” I heard her
shrug, “simply a statement.”
    “Yeah, well, you can shove
your statement,” I said, sitting up to glare at her.
    “Try to hurry with your
implosion,” she flitted her hands out in front of her. “I’d really like a
single room again.”
    Before I