By the time the ceiling gave up, I’d already color‑coded my entire semester.
Week one was supposed to be predictable: wake at 6:30, run, shower, breakfast, class, library, work‑study, study, sleep. Repeat until diploma. Nowhere in the spreadsheet had I allotted for “indoor monsoon.”
Something cracked overhead. I glanced up from my laptop just as a brown bubble swelled in the dorm-room ceiling like a blister.
“Oh, no,” I whispered.
The blister burst.
Water slammed down over my desk in a filthy waterfall. My laptop blinked, sparked, and went black. My color‑coded binders bloomed open like paper flowers, notes dissolving into grey mush.
I screamed. It came out embarrassingly high-pitched.
“Fire!” my neighbor shouted from the hall.
“Water!” I yelled back, yanking the cord from the outlet as another gout poured over my pillow. Cold, dirty drops splattered across my glasses, my hair, the scholarship folder I kept hidden under the bed like a holy relic.
Someone pounded on my door. Then it flew open without waiting for my answer because apparently privacy was a myth now.
“Everyone out!” the RA, Jess, barked. “Main line burst. Ella, right? You gotta move.”
“My notes,” I said, staring at the page of dissolving ink that had been Advanced Economic Policy. “My—”
She grabbed my arm and dragged me back from the spray. “Unless your GPA can swim, we’re going. Grab essentials, that’s it.”
Essentials.
My brain short‑circuited. Essentials were everything. The binders, the alphabetized flashcards, the planner, the laptop, the scholarship paperwork, the extra highlighters—
Jess shoved an industrial trash bag into my hands. “Two minutes. They’re shutting water to the building. Housing’s setting up emergency placements.”
Emergency placements. The phrase made my stomach pitch.
I jammed random life shards into the bag—laptop corpse, half‑wet planner, the least soggy binder, a couple of shirts—feet already squelching in my shoes. The bedspread dripped steadily; my pillow was a sponge. This room had been my carefully controlled universe, exactly 114 square feet of order. Now it smelled like pipe rot and lost control.
Ten frantic minutes and one evacuation later, I was shivering in the fluorescent purgatory of the lobby, hugging my trash bag like it held oxygen instead of ruin.
“Okay, listen up!” a woman from Housing clapped for attention near the front desk. Her badge read: MEGAN – RES LIFE. Hair in a frizzing bun, phone wedged between ear and shoulder, she looked one harried sigh away from collapse.
I edged closer, because information was power and power was how you stayed on scholarship.
“Main burst flooded most of the second floor,” Megan said, phone finally pocketed. “We’ve opened overflow housing. Some will be in doubles, some triples, and yes, co-ed. You don’t like it, take it up with Facilities or God. Names I call get your temporary assignment. It’s for two to four weeks while we dry out and assess damage.”
Co‑ed.
My heart rate tripped. They wouldn’t. There had to be a rule. There were so many rules.
“Hart, Ella,” she called.
I straightened my spine, tried for composed instead of panicked. “Here.”
She rifled her clipboard. “You’re going to East Hall, room 518. One of the emergency co‑eds. Your new roommate’s already there. Crowe, Aiden.”
The name was familiar in a way that made my stomach do a weird, resentful twist.
