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Move in day finally arrives.
Ryan is more nervous than he is excited, and as he and his parents are packing up the car, his nerves decide to eat him up. The drive is about six hours without traffic, so they pack up the car and start driving after his parents finish work in the afternoon. They stop a few times to eat and get gas, and arrive late into the night around 1am.
Ryan’s dad checks them into a hotel in town by the college, and they sleep in.
The next day, Ryan is the first to wake up. He’s jittery, nervous, and everything he cares about in the world is outside in the car. He’s upset and anxious – his parents drove for the better part of seven hours, and didn’t let him drive at all. He asked if he could, he said he wanted to drive some to help him calm down a little bit. But his dad said no and his mom said, “It’s our job to get you there, so you just sit back and relax.”
Okay cool . It’s not like he’s nervous or anything. It’s not like he’s ever fallen asleep at the wheel ever before (seriously, he hasn’t). It’s not like he wants to drive off some of his nerves. It’s not like going on drives is literally what he does to calm down.
They spend a night in a hotel and in the morning (afternoon) they eat at a burger place called Ryan’s (that Ryan picked) and then they go on campus. There’s a long line of cars between Ryan and his new apartment, and a billion obstacles. He has to pick up his ID card in one line, and then he has to get his keys in another line, and then he needs to check in with these girls at a table to get a cart so he can move his stuff easier, and then finally he’s walking up Hell Hill (his roommate Karly named it, not him) and unlocking and entering his apartment for the first time.
There are people already inside, wearing masks and carrying bins and bags. Ryan and his parents are a bit… lax when it comes to masks. If they must be worn, they’ll put them on. But when they’re outside or exercising (which moving a bunch of stuff definitely counts) they take off the masks. His mom is probably the worst offender – when people can’t understand what she’s saying, she will take off the mask and pull it away from her face in order to enunciate at them. His dad usually just keeps the mask on because it’s easier for him – he wears hats and his masks go around his head, and it’s annoying to take off the hat to take off the mask, so he just keeps it on. Usually .
Ryan will wear a mask unless he’s with his family or by himself, but he’s not super strict about it. At this point he usually wears it out of habit.
Entering the apartment for the first time is nerve wracking. Ryan doesn’t recognize anyone until suddenly he does, and he finds his room which is through the living room and down at the end of the hall. He unlocks the door (it takes three tries) and enters, and he picks the bed on the right side of the room. He puts the stuff he’s carrying (a backpack and suitcase) down on the bed and picks one of the two desks in the room, setting his phone and keys down there.
Across the room is a door that leads outside. Ryan opens it and sees that he has his own entrance into the apartment, and so he and his parents start bringing his things in that way so they don’t have to drag things through the living room and hallway where people and furniture are in the way.
It’s slow going for a while, just because the walk to and from the car is difficult. It’s almost all uphill and the containers Ryan has are all sort of heavy. They either need to be rolled in the cart or have two people carry one. They can each be carried by one person, but the walk is just too long – it's easier and faster if two people do it.
After all of Ryan’s initial containers are brought in, it’s time to go shopping. Ryan needs plates and bowls and cleaning supplies – he also needs a lamp and, oh duh, food .
His parents take him to Target and they fill up two whole shopping carts with stuff . Then they fill the car, again, with all of that stuff. Ryan’s mom would go grab something and bring it up to him, a big, hopeful smile on her face and ask, “Do you like this?”
Ryan would usually look at the thing, be confused as to why she’s showing it to him, then ask, “What’s this for?”
Ryan’s mom held up a sort of double decker metal wire basket, where the bottom slides out like a drawer. She looks at it like she just found the holy grail. “Well, I was thinking we could put it on the windowsill next to your bed,” She looks at Ryan expectantly.
And what’s he gonna do? Say no? “Okay, that might be useful.” It went into the shopping cart.
At the end of that shopping trip, Ryan had two full shopping carts of stuff and his parents unloaded it into the car. It filled up the entire trunk and the last row of seats, which had to be folded down to make room.
They get back to his apartment and unpack everything again.
Then Ryan’s mom reaches for the wrong container to open and start unpacking. The first thing she takes out is a Christmas cookie tin painted over with black paint. “What’s this?”
Ryan bristles, “Don’t open that!” He tries to take it from her.
“Why not?” she asks, while holding a box with a dildo in it.
Ryan blushes and he can’t say anything. “It’s private!” He splutters, yanking it from her and putting it back in the container.
“ Everything is private with you!” His mom yells back.
“I can unpack everything myself. I want to,” Ryan reiterates.
His mom looks really sad. Extremely upset. But she isn’t saying anything. Ryan’s dad steps in. “She wants to help you, kiddo. You’re moving out, it’s a big thing. Let us help you.”
Oh, so helping me means doing it for me , Ryan wanted to jab. Instead he looks at his mom and internally rolls his eyes. He gives her a hug. “Okay, I’m sorry,” He says. “Can you just leave this box alone?”
His mom nods, and he lets his parents unpack all his clothes for him and put them in drawers and on hangers. His mom says, “Go hang out with your new friends.”
Yeah, sure, like he could possibly do that. He wasn’t that excited to be moving in with seven strangers. Now that he’s here, he’s just intimidated. After twenty minutes he goes to check on his parents and finds that they’re practically finished, putting the empty storage bins under his now made bed. His mom put his blanket on it wrong, so there’s six inches of sheet sticking out at the foot of the bed, but otherwise it looks fine.
The last thing they do is go get dinner, which Ryan picks out. He wants Chinese food and finds this place that reminds him of one from home.
He and his parents go and the restaurant has chicken and broccoli, which Ryan loves, so he orders it. It’s the best he’s ever had. This is his new favorite place for Chinese food.
When they get back to Ryan’s new apartment, where all of his clothes are hung up, everything is organized and clean, his mom asks if he wants to stay the night with them or in his new room.
He picks his new room and his parents say they’ll be back in the morning to say goodbye before they leave.
Then they leave and Ryan is alone. He takes a deep breath and sleeps in the quiet new room.
What he doesn’t find out until almost a year later, is this:
Ryan’s parents went back to their hotel room and while Ryan doesn’t know exactly what happened, he knows that his father said this: “I found someone else. I’m leaving you.”
After that, Ryan has no idea what happened. But he found this out from his sister , not his parents.
He almost wishes they had gotten a divorce. Then he could have lived with his dad and been legally barred from seeing his mom again. That would have been nice.
Oh well.
The next morning, the final roommates arrived. Kara and Josh. They arrived separately, and Josh arrived just a few minutes before Ryan’s parents. Both of their parents got to meet and Josh’s parents were very kind to Ryan. They lived less than an hour away, and offered up their house to him for breaks. It was sweet, even though Ryan would never take them up on their offer.
They helped Josh unpack his measly two bags and hung up his ten or eleven shirts on hangers, and made his bed for him. The three left to go shopping, and Ryan said goodbye to his parents.
He gave each of his parents a hug, offered to walk them to their car (which they declined) and watched them walk away. He wouldn’t see them for two months.
At first, he felt crushing anxiety. How was he supposed to get by without them until Thanksgiving ?
But he calmed down. He almost never saw them when he lived with them anyway. He’d be focused on school, so he wouldn’t have time to miss them. He’d be focused on friends – if he made any. Classes started in a week and a half. So he had time.
In the afternoon he starts to get hungry, so he makes himself a peanut butter sandwich. Juniper gawks at him as he eats just the sandwich. “What?” Ryan asks, setting his sandwich down.
Juniper shakes her head. “Nothing, I just – did you put jelly on it?”
“No, I don’t like jelly.”
“Oh.”
Yeah. Ryan almost rolls his eyes but stops himself just in time. He licks his lips and looks down at his sandwich, then glances in Juniper’s direction again. She’s staring. Maybe it’s unintentional.
Regardless, Ryan doesn’t like to be watched when he’s eating. He usually eats alone because he hates when people watch him. He gets up and goes to his room.
The first night everyone spends together is huddled in the triple room with Karly, Ophelia and Lis. It’s an exciting time of conversation and overlapping words.
Everyone finds out Juniper is a younger sibling. She says that her and her older sister were born under, to simplify, less-than-ideal circumstances. On the first night that everyone spent in the apartment together, Juniper shared this set of circumstances. “My sister and I were both miracle babies. My sister was born prematurely and I was born with my umbilical cord wrapped around my neck.”
All Ryan could think was, Why the hell are you telling us this?
He soon realized that Juniper doesn’t get enough attention at home, with friends, or in public – at least not attention that she desires, or welcomes – so she says things that will get her attention. She also doesn’t know how to speak concisely or precisely.
In the instagram group chat, she sends extremely long messages. Extremely long and stupid messages.
He finds it immensely annoying. Juniper will reply to herself to continue the conversation when no one else will.
She also corrects everything you say. Ryan said he thought the difference between pansexuality and bisexuality is that bisexuality means you are attracted to someone’s gender, or the attraction is based around gender, and pansexuality means you don’t care about gender at all and focus solely on personality.
Juniper heard this and decided it was a crime against humanity. “Bisexuality is a spectrum, it’s not all about gender, because bisexuals can be attracted to non-binary people too.”
So Ryan argues with her. “Okay, then how do you define pansexuality and bisexuality? How are they different?”
Juniper can’t come up with an answer.
“Okay, so my understanding was that pansexuals don’t care about the gender and date anyone. It was my understanding that bisexuals are attracted to their own gender and the opposite, which can include non-binary people because that essentially functions as a third gender.”
“Non-binary isn’t a third gender though,” Juniper cuts in. “It’s outside the binary, neither male nor female, so it isn’t a gender.”
“Oh it isn’t?” Ryan asks, standing now and looming over Juniper, who had seated herself on a stool from the kitchen. “Tell me, what does a non-binary person write on a form that requires their gender? Do they put nothing? It was my understanding that a non-binary person isn’t nothing, because they are non-binary. ”
Juniper looks like she wanted to argue.
Ryan smiles politely. “I think I’ll go to bed now. Good night.”
He leaves the room and lays in bed. He decides to read until he falls asleep.
In the morning, he goes into the kitchen to make himself cereal for breakfast. Juniper is sitting at the table. They don’t say anything to each other.
Ryan suspects he’s being ignored. Which he’s fine with.
He’s decided he doesn’t like Juniper. It’s not because of her race, like she might think – Ryan actually finds her to be very attractive. She has beautiful brown eyes and dark smooth skin. Her hair would be beautiful, but there’s no life to it because it’s been straightened. Ryan wonders if she likes her natural hair.
Anyway, he doesn’t like her because of her personality and attitude. She’s also a coward, and Ryan can’t respect that. For someone who wants race equality, gender equality, and what is basically special treatment for being bisexual and non-binary, she has no capacity for assertiveness in a real situation.
This decision Ryan makes isn’t something he does willy-nilly. He takes two weeks. Two weeks to decide if Juniper is someone he actually wants to try and work on a relationship with or ignore for their time as roommates.
After those two weeks are up, Ryan has made his decision.
It all hinged on a conversation they had in the kitchen the day after classes officially started. It was in the afternoon, after lunch but not quite late enough for dinner. Josh had come home smiling.
“What’s with the grin?” Ryan asks, sipping his water.
“Well I hung out with this girl earlier,” Josh says, stepping closer. “We were kinda flirting, and i said ‘so do you blush a lot?’ and she said ‘yeah, I guess,’ so I smiled at her and said, ‘I can tell’ and then she giggled.”
Ryan smiles, “Oh dude, that’s pretty good.”
At the same time Juniper says, “Ew, you didn’t say that!” Then, she turns to include Ryan – almost unintentionally, I might add – and says, “Listen, I don’t know how to flirt –”
Ryan cut her off, “Oh, so you can’t say anything! How can you say that was bad? He got a good reaction!”
Juniper talks over Ryan, yelling, “But! But!”
“You just said you don’t know how to flirt, how can you judge –”
“Okay, can I finish speaking?”
“But –” Ryan starts.
“Can I finish?!” Juniper shouts.
Ryan says nothing. Just stares at her.
“Okay. Jesus,” Juniper says, almost under her breath but still loud enough. “So.”
She pauses to think of what to say, and in that pause, Ryan reacts with a quiet, “Wow.” He can’t believe her. What makes her think she can act that way?
Juniper swings back around to face Ryan. “What?” She asks, because she didn’t hear.
Ryan doesn’t say anything for a few seconds, then reminds her, “It’s your turn to talk,” As you so clearly forced upon me.
Juniper points at him then, one hand holding her phone up by her shoulder, and the other accusing Ryan. “No, what did you say?”
Ryan starts to get frustrated, so he says a little bit louder for the apparently deaf girl in front of him, “It’s your turn to talk!”
Juniper rolls her eyes and turns back to Josh, who is just looking between them silently. She rudely says, “Okay,” then talks only to Josh. “People used to say in high school that I had a flirty personality, but I’ve never flirted with anyone before.”
Ryan rolls his eyes and sets a timer for three seconds on his phone. When it goes off, he gets up, picks up his cup and goes to his room.
He has seen and heard plenty. More than enough.
Ryan is a pretty normal guy. He likes to think he’s stable. He has an imagination, of course; he’s a writer, so he thinks up all sorts of situations. That is the first time he’s had a vivid murder fantasy. Not just killing someone, but the planning leading up to it, then the actual murder itself, then how he would deal with the aftermath. Getting rid of evidence and disposing of the body and the like.
Ryan knows the act of murder is difficult. Mentally and physically, and morally, depending on the person. But this is the first time where he’s almost disappointed he won’t get to do it. No, to be clear, he is disappointed he won’t get to do it.
As he passes by Juniper’s room on the way to his own, he sees her door is open. He pushes the door open with one finger, gently nudging it open wider. He gawks at how stuffed and messy the room is. The bed is on the left side, pushed into the corner against the wall on the long side with the glass sliding door, hidden by the curtain, at the foot of the bed. On the opposite wall from the bed is Juniper’s desk, with her computer on the main desk, and the tabletop is covered in items. Books, papers, pens, tchotchkes and personal items. Next to the desk is a four foot long mirror, resting against the side of it. Next to that is a dresser, covered in more stuff, and lined on the carpet by clothes, shoes, and a trash bag full of coats, maybe.
He checks down the hall and sees it is still clear, so he takes out his phone and takes a video of the room, trying to show all the mess but quickly . He goes into his own room and closes the door firmly. Then he sends the video to Andy.
Ryan: look at how messy her room is
Andy: whos room?
Ryan: Juniper’s
Andy: oh, yeah thats messy
Ryan: right
Andy: yes
Ryan: yes
After that, every time Ryan sees Juniper, he tries to ignore her. She does the same thing, she ignores him right back. There’s one day where she’s eating breakfast and Ryan is washing his dishes and he forgot his music so he tries to have small talk with her.
“Hey, morning,” he says, walking around the counter to get to the sink.
“Good morning,” Juniper doesn’t look up from her phone.
“You okay?”
Juniper just barely rolls her eyes. Ryan wishes he had stayed silent. “I just have to wash my hair tonight and I’m not really excited about that.”
“Oh,” Ryan says, not understanding why that is bad. He starts to wash the plate in his hand.
“It’s just my hair is gonna get curly and I don’t like it.”
“You can’t straighten it?” Ryan asks, feeling his need to fix it kicking in. He scrubs at his plate just a little harder.
“I don’t know how to.”
“Oh,” Ryan says again. “Well curly hair might be nice. I’ve never seen you with it, it might look good on you.”
Juniper doesn’t reply, and Ryan doesn’t have his glasses on so he can’t really see her face. Is she listening? Hm…
“I’ve always wanted curly hair, y’know,” Ryan says, drying his plate now. “I can’t wait to see it on you, maybe we can…” He looks over again and notices Juniper is now visibly shut down, staring at her phone and holding it in a vice grip. “Okay…” Ryan says quietly to himself.
He puts the towel he was using down and walks out of the kitchen, feeling weird. What did he say? Was he objectifying her? Is she upset because he said she would look good?
He goes into his room and after a few minutes of thinking he goes back outside and catches Juniper in the hallway. “Hey, Juniper? Sorry if I said something to upset you,” Ryan says, legitimately feeling bad. “I didn’t mean to.”
Juniper sighs. “It’s okay, I just – I’m sure you didn’t mean to,” Then she steeples her fingers and points them all at Ryan. “Just I don’t think you should be talking about a Black woman’s hair. It made me feel like a circus animal to be stared at.”
Bewildered, Ryan apologizes again. “I had no idea, I’ll just – I won't say anything like that again. I’m really sorry.” This time, his apology felt halfhearted. He seriously did not understand how trying to compliment her made her feel like a freak. Well. Maybe he could understand how she felt, but he didn’t understand how he caused that feeling. This girl is fucking weird.
In the corner of his eye, Ryan sees Lis leaving her room silently, crossing her arms to watch the pair of them, then she walks into the kitchen as she realizes this is, like, a “serious” talk. Ryan brings his eyes back to Juniper’s.
“I don’t think you meant it that way, so,” Juniper shrugged.
“Okay,” Ryan laughed nervously. “Sorry.” Then he backs up and goes back into his room as Juniper goes into hers.
That was wild. That was super fucking weird. Ryan resigns himself to never interacting with Juniper unless absolutely necessary. It’s sort of impossible, but he finds that ignoring her is quite easy. She doesn't even look up when he enters the kitchen/living room. She doesn’t say anything to him. So he doesn’t need to say anything to her.
But that’s weeks into living together. A month or two almost.
The first week they lived together, everyone decided that they should have a movie night. Lis had brought DVDs, and Ryan loves DVDs – he has a whole collection at home. He was admiring hers and she asked if there was anything he wanted to watch. He picked out Spider-Man from 2002, directed by Sam Raimi and starring Tobey Maguire and Willem Dafoe.
Lis smiled and put the movie on, and all the roommates except for Josh piled in and sat down on the couch and at the table. Ryan took the one arm chair, sitting almost directly in front of the tv but angled to the side. He loves Tobey Maguire Spider-Man. This movie is his childhood. He watched it all the time with his siblings.
And guess what Juniper did as soon as the story started? Right as Peter got bit by the spider.
“This movie is so stupid, I mean, this guy is a nerd and he’s terrible. He’s so creepy and weird.”
Ryan blinked and tried to drown everyone out – Juniper wasn’t the only one shitting on the movie. After a few minutes – Ryan didn’t even make it to the scene where the Green Goblin is created – Ryan stands and leaves the living room, going to his room and shutting the door behind him.
Barely twenty seconds later, there’s a knock at the door. Ryan answers it, because he hasn’t learned yet.
“Yeah?” He says.
Juniper is standing there. “Hey, are you okay? You can come back, I thought we were critiquing the movie, you know, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
Ryan blinks at her. He considers. He knows how his roommates watch movies by now, they talk over everything, they shout, they call the movie stupid and terrible and shit and problematic. He knows what they will say about Sam Raimi’s movie. “No, I’m good.” Ryan shuts the door.
He lays on his bed and reads fanfiction until he falls asleep.
Months of events like this pass. More fracturing. More annoyances. More clashes. Ryan complains endlessly to Andy, the only one he feels he can talk to right now.
Andy: Babe you should move
Ryan: I already missed the deadline
Andy: is it impossible to move now?
Ryan: i don’t know
Ryan takes a minute to look up on the school website about housing.
Ryan: There’s an email i can send requests to
Andy: good, send an email
Ryan: but what if i leave and its worse somewhere else
Andy: at least you’ll be out of the apartment and away from those shit roommates
Ryan: but what if it’s worse somewhere else
Andy: but what if its not
Ryan lets the fear get to him and stays.
He tries to like his roommates. He knows for sure the only one he hates is Juniper. She – they (because they have changed their name to Jun and pronouns exclusively to they/them) get ignored.
Ryan goes on shopping trips with Jun, Bailey, and Carleigh (their name has changed as well, because Karly is apparently feminine, and Carleigh is not). They have to take the bus and they’re all terrified to go alone. Ryan rolls his eyes at that, but he doesn’t exactly want to go alone either.
He doesn’t have his car, he has to rely on a public transportation system. He has to carry his own groceries, he has to do this all himself. At first he found it annoying.
If he didn’t have all these roommates stealing his food and stealing his space in the fridge, he would have found this freeing.
But as it is, he finds independence burdensome.
Eventually he finds himself able to walk to the bus stop alone. He goes shopping by himself. He buys a small amount, enough to feed him for two weeks but not enough that he can’t carry it back in the two bags he has. He goes on days when he doesn’t have classes so he doesn’t have to worry about catching a bus and rushing to class after. He listens to music and wears a mask, partially because he has to, but partially because he enjoys the privacy it gives him. He doesn’t need to speak, he doesn’t need to look at anyone, he can just listen to his music and focus on what food he needs to buy.
Months pass like this. Silence, isolation, ignoring and being ignored.
Ryan has Kara, but she’s too similar to him. She stays in her room all the time and she spends 90% of her time on her computer.
Ryan has one friend outside of the apartment – aside from Andy – called Thomas. They’re neighbors. They met the first week of college because Ryan noticed Thomas walking by the living room sliding glass doors at least once a day, always walking the same direction. Ryan happened to be cooking one day, and he saw this familiar stranger walking by the door, so he ran to the door and opened it.
“Hey! What’s your name?” He asked the guy.
His eyes were dark brown and he was wearing a mask. But he didn’t seem to recoil at the fact that Ryan didn’t have one on. “I’m Thomas,” the guy said, and he held out his hand.
See, being raised a girl and only having shook hands with a handful of adults before, Ryan didn’t immediately recognize what Thomas was doing. But then it clicked and they shook hands. “I’m Rain – Ryan, sorry, I’m Ryan. Nice to meet you.”
His face burned at the stumble of his name. He’d only been using it a few months and had barely introduced himself to people since his name change. His heart was pounding, but he smiled through it.
“Nice to meet you too,” Thomas said. His smile was covered, but it was there.
“See you around,” Ryan smiled again, and Thomas walked off. He shuts the door and turns around, facing whoever was inside at the moment. He felt proud, he felt spontaneous, his heart was beating fast and he was smiling. He didn’t know he liked handshakes so much. “That was fun!”
No one else seemed to share his enthusiasm. But that was okay.
As time went on, it got more annoying. But Ryan was able to ignore it more.
Ryan finds that he hates it here. He hates it more than anything. He wants to live in the woods rather than here.
He hates school. He throws every assignment into the “I’ll do it tomorrow” bin. He desperately wants to go home but it doesn’t seem like a possibility. He’s annoyed every time his parents call – which they call maybe once every two weeks – and he gets the impression that they hate him.
In late November his sister drives up to get him and he stays with her for a few days, because neither of them could go home for Thanksgiving. It’s a great reprieve from school and the roommates, but he just feels tired the whole time. He just chills on her couch and then she drives him back.
Around December 10th, winter break officially starts and Ryan’s mom flies up to pick up him and his sister. They drive in his sister’s car all the way back to the house. It takes almost eight hours. Ryan wasn’t allowed to drive at all, even though he stayed awake the entire drive and could have helped out.
Finally, relaxation.
Of course, it doesn’t last long.