running theory was that my shyness and introversion were linked to my whole ‘never fancying anyone’ situation – maybe I just didn’t talk to enough people, or maybe people just stressed me out in general, and that was why I’d never wanted to kiss anyone. If I just improved my confidence, tried to be a bit more open and sociable, I’d be able to do and feel those things, like most people.
Starting university was a good time to try something like that.
Felipa Quintana
Hey are you in the queue
I’ve befriended my car next door neighbour
She brought a whole-ass fern with her
It’s like five feet tall
Update: the fern’s name is Roderick
I was about to reply, or maybe even get out of the car and meet Pip’s acquaintance and Roderick, but it was then that Mum turned the engine on.
‘They’re calling us,’ she said, pointing up ahead at where someone in a high-vis vest was waving.
Dad turned round to smile at me. ‘You ready?’
It’d be hard, sure, and it’d be scary and probably embarrassing, but I would become someone who could experience the magic of romance.
I knew I had my whole life ahead of me, and it’d happen one day, but I felt like if I couldn’t change and make it happen at university, it’d never happen at all.
‘Yeah,’ I replied.
Also, I didn’t want to wait. I wanted it now.
‘Oh no,’ I said, standing outside the door of what would be my bedroom for the next nine months, and slightly dying inside.
‘What?’ asked Dad, dropping one of my bags on to the floor and pulling his glasses down from the top of his head.
‘Oh, well,’ said Mum, ‘you knew there was a chance of this happening, darling.’
On the front of my bedroom door was my photo and underneath it was written ‘Georgia Warr’ in Times New Roman. Next to that was another photo – of a girl with long brown hair, a smile that looked positively candid in its naturalness, and perfectly threaded eyebrows. Underneath that was the name ‘Rooney Bach’.
Durham was an old English university that had a ‘college system’. Instead of halls of residence, the university was made up of ‘colleges’ spread around the city. Your college was where you slept, showered and ate, but it was also a place you showed your allegiance to through college events, your college sports teams, and running for the college’s executive student roles.
St John’s College – the one that I had been accepted into – was an old building. And because of that, a few of the students living there had to share rooms.
I just hadn’t thought it would be me.
A wave of panic flooded through me. I couldn’t have a roommate – hardly anyone in the UK had roommates at uni. I needed my own space. How was I supposed to sleep or read fanfic or get dressed or do anything with someone else in the room? How was I supposed to relax when I had to socialise with another person every moment I was awake?
Mum didn’t even seem to notice I was panicking. She just said, ‘Well, let’s get cracking, then,’ and opened the door for me.
And Rooney Bach was already there, wearing leggings and a polo shirt, watering a five-foot fern.
The first thing Rooney Bach said to me was, ‘Oh my God, are you Georgia Warr?’ like I was a celebrity, but she didn’t even wait for affirmation before casting her watering can aside, grabbing a large strip of aqua-blue fabric – which I determined to be a rug – from her bed, and holding it up to me.
‘Rug,’ she said. ‘Thoughts?’
‘Um,’ I said. ‘It’s great.’
‘OK, amazing.’ She whooshed the rug into the air and then laid it down in the centre of our room. ‘There. It just needed that splash of colour.’
I think I was in shock a little bit, because only then did I take a proper look around our room. It was large, but pretty gross, as I’d expected it would be – bedrooms are never nice at old English universities. The carpet was a mouldy grey-blue, the furniture was beige and plastic-looking, and our beds were singles. Rooney’s already had bright, flowery bedsheets on it. Mine looked like it belonged in a hospital.
The only nice part of the room was a large sash window. The paint on the wooden frame was peeling and I knew it’d be draughty, but it was sort of lovely, and you could see all the way down to the river.
‘You’ve done up the place nicely already!’ Dad was saying to Rooney.
‘Oh, d’you think so?’ said Rooney. She immediately started narrating a tour of her side of the room to Mum and Dad, showing off all the key features – her illustrated print of some meadows (she liked going on country walks) and one of Much Ado About Nothing (her favourite Shakespeare play), her fleece duvet topper (also aqua, to match the rug), her house plant (whose name was – I hadn’t misheard – Roderick), an aqua desk lamp (from John Lewis) and, most importantly, a giant poster that simply read ‘Don’t Quit Your Daydream’ in a swirly font.
The whole time, she was smiling. Her hair, up in a ponytail, swished around, as my parents tried to keep up with how fast she was talking.
I sat down on my bed in the grey half of the room. I hadn’t brought any posters with me. All I’d brought were a few printed-out photos of me, Pip and Jason.
Mum looked at me from the other side of the room and gave me a sad smile, like she knew that I wanted to go home.
‘You can message us any time, darling,’ said Mum, as we were saying goodbye outside the college. I felt empty and lost, standing there in the cobbled street in the October cold, my parents about to leave me.
I don’t want you to go, was what I wanted to say to them.
‘And Pip and Jason are just down the road, aren’t they?’ continued Dad. ‘You can go and hang out with them any time.’ Pip and Jason had been placed in a different college – University College, or ‘Castle’ as it was commonly referred to by the students here, since it literally was part of Durham Castle. They’d stopped replying to my messages a couple of hours ago. Probably busy unpacking.
Please don’t leave me here alone, I wanted to say.
‘Yeah,’ is what I said.
I glanced around. This was my home, now. Durham. It was like a town out of a Dickens adaptation. All of the buildings were tall and old. Everything seemed to be made of lumps of stone. I could see myself walking down the cobbles and into the cathedral in my graduation gown already. This was where I was supposed to be.
They both hugged me. I didn’t cry, even though I really, really wanted to.
‘This is the start of a big adventure,’ said Dad.
‘Maybe,’ I mumbled into his jacket.
I couldn’t bear to stay and watch them walk away down the road towards the car – when they turned to go, so did I.
Back in my room, Rooney was Blu Tack-ing a photo to the wall, right in the centre of her posters. In the photo was Rooney, maybe aged thirteen or fourteen, with a girl who had dyed red hair. Like, Ariel from The Little Mermaid hair.
‘Is that your friend from home?’ I asked. This was a good conversation starter, at least.
Rooney