Just Remember to Breathe (Thompson Sisters)

God! ” she shouted. “The summer was so boring with you gone. We are going out for drink. Right. Now.”
    I blinked, then said, “Um… can I get my bags inside first?”
    I’d gotten up at 5 a.m. to catch the first flight out of San Francisco. Going east meant I’d basically lost an entire day: the flight landed at 4 p.m. at JFK. Then the long wait to get my bags, wait for a taxi, and fight the ridiculous traffic. I’d let myself into the dorm at 7 p.m.
    “Well, of course!” she said. “But we can’t lose any time!”
    “Kelly...”
    “I so have to tell you what happened with Joel. Yesterday he showed up here with no shirt on, and—”
    “Kelly.”
    “—he’s got a new tattoo. Which would be fine, except…”
    “ Kelly! ” I finally shouted.
    She stopped, as if I’d stuffed a plug in her mouth.
    “Please,” I said. “I’ve been up and traveling since five this morning.”
    “You don’t have to yell at me,” she said.
    “I’m sorry. It’s just… can we go out tomorrow? Or at least let me get a nap first? I’m seriously exhausted, and I need a shower.”
    She grinned. “Gotcha, of course. Nap. Sure. But then we are so going out. You need to meet Bryan.”
    What?
    “Who is Bryan?”
    “Good God, Alex, weren’t you listening to anything I said?”
    She continued as I dragged my bags inside. I loved Kelly. And she would have fit in great with my tribe of sisters back home. But God, couldn’t she just shut up for one second ?
    I finally dumped my bags on the floor, then navigated around her. My bed, stripped since I’d flown home at the beginning of summer, looked inviting. I collapsed, feeling the weight of my body sink in. Kelly kept talking, but I was having trouble making sense of her words. I tried to nod at the appropriate times, but the world slowly faded to black. The last thought I remember before losing consciousness was my regret that I’d lost that damned mug.

    ***

    Kelly woke me up an hour later and hustled me into the shower.
    “I refuse to take no for an answer,” she shouted. “It’s time we cured you of your asshole ex-boyfriend!”
    God, it was like she had the volume stuck on max.
    I don’t want to give the wrong impression of Kelly. Yes, she talks way too much. She’s a girly-girl, in ways I’ve never been. Her side of the room is disgustingly pink, decorated with Twilight and Hunger Games posters, and she acts as if she’s had more experience with guys than one of the girls posing on the back pages of the Village Voice .
    My side of the room is mostly stacked in books. The truth is, I’m sort of a geek, and proud of it.
    Kelly, though, she’s shy as hell, and overcompensates by being super gregarious. She charges into the center of parties, dances like a wild woman, and does everything she can to drag me out of my shell.
    Problem is, sometimes I don’t really want to come out.
    Once I got out of the shower and changed into a pair of black skinny jeans and a long-sleeved tee, she led me out. There was a party somewhere, she said, and we were going to go find it.

    A Bad Idea (Dylan)

    Coming here was a bad idea.
    If I could go back up the chain of “if-only’s” back to the source, I suppose the reason I was starting as a student at Columbia University is because one day when I was twelve Billy Naughton gave me a beer. Billy was a year older than me, and might have been a bad influence if my parents hadn’t been somewhat worse. As it was, the effects of alcohol held little mystery for me, at least as viewed from the outside.
    Viewed from the inside, though… that was another thing.
    One thing led to another, and one drink led to another, and on my sixteenth birthday I dropped out of high school. Of course, by that time, Dad had left, and Mom had cleaned up her act. She laid down the law. If I wasn’t going to school, I could just get out. She wasn’t going to have her child turn out like her husband.
    I went couch surfing. I slept in the park a couple times. I got a job, lost it, got another one, lost that one, too. And the damnedest thing was, Mom was right. I went back and registered for school. Then I showed up on her doorstep, showed her my registration and schedule, and she wept and let me back in the apartment.
    A lot of other things happened since, of course, including me getting blown up by some hajis in Afghanistan. But I don’t talk about that stuff so much. If you want to know, just read the papers.
    Screw that. The papers never