I was making a cheesecake for a party at my professor’s house. Sour cream cheesecake, the kind with the layer of sweet sour cream on top, slathered in blueberry compote or something like that. I slid it in the oven, locked it so that no one would open it and sat down in the living room watching one of those old Christmas claymation specials that was on a marathon on the Family Channel. It was cold, dark, icy and generally nasty at 1pm when I had finally dragged myself out of bed. It was now 5:30pm and I was about to eat some leftover noodles for a snack and thinking about how everyone would love the cheesecake at the party. Just before I started to slip noodles into my mouth, my phone rang. It was my supervisor informing me that my roommate was dead.
“She’s not dead, she just left yesterday,” I said, a comment that sounded logical at the time. She did leave yesterday. She said she was going home and then driving to Oklahoma or Arkansas or somewhere to spend time with her new boyfriend’s family.
“Eat my non-perishables,” she said. I said okay and did not bother to tell her to drive safe.
My supervisor insisted that it was true and said she was coming over. A recent conversation between Melissa, Frances and I came to mind.
“So when I die, we’re going to have a party,” Melissa said, brightly smiling. I laughingly agree.
“What kind of party?” I am sitting at the edge of her slightly made bed and Frances, obviously in deep thought about the whole thing, volunteers an idea.
“A rock party,” she says, coolly. “That would be awesome.”
“Yes. At my funeral, we’re going to have a rock party. And Anisa…you make pie,” Melissa points at me, flipping her hair.
“Why are we talking about your funeral again…?” I ask, not serious.
“Because we have to think of these things now,” Melissa says, picking up some paper and throwing it into the newly unpacked boxes. “ We’re all going to die young anyways, might as well make it fun, right?”
I find this rather cryptic, but I can’t agree or disagree, so I watch the television.
Ten minutes later, I had accepted the fact that Melissa was probably dead and couldn’t feel the tears. One of my other roommates had walked through the kitchen to her room and said “hi” and I had greeted her in a similar pleasant fashion after she had shut her bedroom door. By the time my supervisor knocked on my door, however, my face was damp, but not soaked, out of hope that maybe this was a mistake or a joke and that Melissa was just sitting at home or talking to Frances on the phone or something. Anything. Then I saw my supervisor’s face, long and hollow, shoulders slumped—a posture that said, “Somebody’s dead and I have to tell you about it.”
I didn’t listen to what my supervisor had to say. I didn’t hear her when she told my other roommate. I don’t remember anything that she said except, “Hey when you’re ready to hear something funny give me a call,” before leaving me standing in the kitchen smelling sour cream cheesecake, staring at congealed noodles and fearing looking inside of the room where my friend lived.
The room was always vacant before Melissa, a lieu of possibility that came from indecision and led to storage of soccer equipment and an old prom dress. Smaller in proportion, empty of prospects, this room made it possible for me to have my own bathroom and a guest room when need be. It is on the side of the apartment building that doesn't catch that much light with a view of the mud pit that looked as though a finger slid right through it, creating a stream that raged during rainstorms and flowed steadily between humidity; the Ganges. It was left open a lot, partly because I neglected to close it but mostly because when it was locked up by the master key, I fetched this master key and unlocked it myself. Party at Anisa's: Sleep in "The Room." Store extra crap: "The Room." Friend needs a nap: "The Room." At the peak of its convenience, sometime around Thanksgiving, Melissa was put there randomly. I cursed the university's residence life office, the hand that slid me my salary. I found that Melissa had been someone I had spoken to previously about moving in.
I was watching a cooking show in September when a knock came. I opened the door to a strawberry blonde curly-haired girl."Hey, can I look a the vacant room?" She asks, looking past my shoulder, then noticing the television show, added, "Oh man I love Food Network!"Had there been no mention of the Food Network, I do think there would have been a problem."Sure," I say, half amused but half wanting to not show her because I wanted to keep The Room. She shuffles over through the kitchen to The Room and peeks in."It's small. But I guess it would do if I moved in...since you know, it's better than having a room full of people who hate you and are trying to kill you with their cat," the girl said, non-chalantly in an almost playful way. "I am deathly allergic to cats. They can kill me. I'm Melissa."
I introduce myself, and add that I am a resident advisor as well. Most people who I told didn't want to live with an RA, out of paranoia or something. But Melissa seemed more interested in this fact."Hey, can you come with me to see the other rooms in this building? I don't want to go alone and then all of these people will think I'm some sort of freak."
I hesitate, but put on my shoes. We proceed to walk the hallways knocking on doors, Melissa chatting the whole time, mostly about food and how she used to be a "fat kid." I was charmed."You know what the best thing in the world is?" She chimes, almost bouncing erect, curls about her face."What? Cheesecake?""No," she almost whispers. "You know those pudding pops? The ones that Bill Cosby made everyone buy? Well the best thing in the world is that thin layer of ice that's coating it. It cracks when you lick it!" Well that sold it. I told her that if she doesn't find another place to stay, that she could move in with us.
She didn't move in with us that September. She chose another room and stayed there until October. She didn't get along with her new room mates either. The rumor was that she did not get along with her room mates because they were black and so it was believed to be a race issue. In mid-October, there was another knock at my door. Melissa stood there and looked at me apologetically."Hey. Here I am again.""Hey, what's up?" I saw the white check-out slip in her hand."Well, my new room mates suck so I'm just going to go home and commute.""Where do you live?" I ask."Rockmart," she said, almost embarassingly."That's like...an hour and a half away! Why don't you just move in here?""It's okay, I don't mind. I just hate dorm living anyways." I ended up checking her out of the room, talking with she and her dad the entire time. I tried to convince them that she should just move in with me instead of the commute, and that they wouldn't get any refunds as it was.

During the same period of time that I had taken Larry hostage, I was also a student at Sand Hill elementary, a place of which, to this day, I felt I never belonged. I knew exactly how Balki felt when he moved to America from Mypos; after a recent move from Connecticut, Villa Rica was a strange land. I never made the connection that possibly Larry the turtle was going through the same ordeal as I was, as I did take him from his home and made him a new home with me. This school was foreign territory. When entering the parking lot of the school, one who is observant may notice that the building seems to draw within itself. It is a low, dirty, ominous looking school, which at the time, was surrounded by trees, a Patel-run gas station, a small rash of trailor homes and three dumpsters housing stray cats.
Every time my mother dropped me off at the car-rider’s station, I looked at the sidewalk leading to the door, grass growing through the cracks, and dragged my feet inside the cavernous enterance. I walked down the hallway past the lunchroom every morning, looking ahead at the gleam of light that slithered up the glossy, dingy-tan floor, and out of the back door of the building to my classroom. The classroom was actually a small trailor, where I believed the teacher Mrs. Ethridge, dwelled day and night.
Mrs. Ethridge was a teacher of whom I was terrified. She had a sharp tongue, which was hidden during parent and teacher conferences, and quick darting eyes and a nose like a beak. She would squack orders from the Pledge of Allegence until the last bell of the day.
Because I was afraid of Mrs. Ethridge, my father made up a story which I believed, about the habits of Mrs. Ethridge. With Larry on my knee, I listened as only a gulliable daughter would, as Daddy told me that Mrs. Ethridge had webbed feet and ate pickled frog’s legs in the classroom when the kids went home at the end of the day. With this knowledge, Daddy and I cackled at the expense of my web-footed, bird-like teacher. Apparently, Mrs. Ethridge was a witch of sorts and had I not been able to find solice in my one friend, I think I would have been at my wit’s end.
My best friend, aside from a delusion that Larry was my best friend, was Abby Smith, a short chubby shy girl who loved cats. We braved the 3rd grade together. She would talk about her cats during recess and pass me notes from across the room about cats when Mrs. Ethridge was illegedly not looking, and I would pass her notes about Larry and his progress in becoming a house turtle. A kid named Jason, of whom I would have a giant crush on in the 4th grade, would deliver the notes back and fourth between us by pretending to sharpen his pencil, eagerly wanting in on the fun.