Dorm Move In Quotes

So the greatest source of happiness is other people--and what does money do? It isolates us from other people. It enables us to build walls, literal and figurative, around ourselves. We move from a teeming college dorm to an apartment to a house, and if we're really wealthy, to an estate. We think we're moving up, but really we're walling off ourselves.

Nodding, Parker ate. “He’s an exceptional kisser.” “He really is. He . . . How do you know?” When Parker just smiled, Emma’s jaw dropped. “You? You and Jack? When? How?” “I think it’s disgusting,” Mac muttered. “Yet another best pal moving on my imaginary ex.” “Two kisses, my first year at Yale, after we ran into each other at a party and he walked me back to the dorm. It was nice. Very nice. But as exceptional a kisser as he is, it was too much like kissing my brother. And as exceptional a kisser as I am, I believe he felt it was too much like kissing his sister. And that’s how we left it. I gather that wasn’t an issue for you and Jack.

I thought of the cool, fresh air of the city I'd always dreamed of living in. The art museums and trolleys and the mysterious fog that blanketed it. I could almost smell the cappuccinos I'd planned to drink in bohemian cafes or hear the indie music in the bookstores I would spend my free time in. I pictured the friends I'd make, my kindred art people, and the dorm room I was supposed to move into.

It's Salvation. When Jen told me I had a vision. A vision Rena. I think I saw the blessed mother smiling and she was hold ing a loofa. [In regards to moving out of dorms and having three bathrooms between 4 roomates]

There were so many times during those years, though, as we moved from one house to another, that I would find myself thinking about my sister. Usually it was late at night, when I couldn‟t sleep, and I‟d try to picture her in her dorm room forty-odd miles and a world away. I wondered if she was happy, what it was like out there. And if maybe, just maybe, she ever thought of me.

The Big Nurse is able to set the wall clock at whatever speed she wants by just turning one of those dials in the steel door; she takes a notion to hurry things up, she turns the speed up, and those hands whip around that disk like spokes in a wheel. The scene in the picture-screen windows goes through rapid changes of light to show morning, noon, and night - throb off and on furiously with day and dark, and everybody is driven like mad to keep up with that passing of fake time; awful scramble of shaves and breakfasts and appointments and lunches and medications and ten minutes of night so you barely get your eyes closed before the dorm light's screaming at you to get up and start the scramble again, go like a sonofabitch this way, going through the full schedule of a day maybe twenty times an hour, till the Big Nurse sees everybody is right up to the breaking point, and she slacks off on the throttle, eases off the pace on that clock-dial, like some kid been fooling with the moving-picture projection machine and finally got tired watching the film run at ten times its natural speed, got bored with all that silly scampering and insect squeak of talk and turned it back to normal.

So I'd grown up eating my words, and it wasn't until later that that I realized how many had gotten backed up inside me. In the factory dorm, sentences spilled out of me like a broken faucet, and when I moved even further away and saw children splashing into rivers spurting from fire hydrants, water pouring into the streets like it was endless, I would see my younger self in that hydrant, but tugged open, a hungry stream.

Oh, and another time he gave me a sex concussion. I can’t really go into the details, because my mother will probably read this, but basically he had a bunk bed in his dorm room (because he’s an only child and only children are obsessed with bunk beds for some reason), so we were on the bottom bunk and I tossed back my hair in what I envisioned would be a total porn-star move, except the wooden beam of the bunk bed above us was too low, and so I violently head-butted the wood plank and totally knocked myself out, which is pretty much the least sexy thing you could ever possibly do. Like, if I also lost control of my bowels that would be worse, but not by much. Then when I’d recovered, Victor was all, “Sex concussion, motherfucker!” like it was something to be proud of. Basically it was like autoerotic asphyxiation, except instead of being choked you get whacked in the head with a two-by-four. And instead of having an orgasm you lose all muscle control and pee on yourself. Which I totally did not do because that would be disgusting. I hardly ever pee on myself.

There can be no fooling ourselves into thinking this is something other than what it is—the willful ejection of Molly from our nest. It’s too late for second thoughts, anyway. She has to be moved into her dorm in time for freshman orientation. It’s been marked on the kitchen calendar for weeks—the expiration date on her childhood.

The work we should do involves calling for the war on drugs to end, supporting phonics-based reading instruction, and celebrating every political move that helps dilute the conviction that all people need to spend four years living in a dorm before they start training for the workplace. That’s work enough, and it will help change the world.

What you need to know is, he’s gonna worship you. It’s his heart. From now till you or he are done he’s gonna watch every twitch of your hands an’ legs an’ body, movement of your lips, dart of your eyes, till he knows your next move the instant you do. He’s gonna adore you, is what he’s gonna do. Unless you put him on a chain. Or in a pen. Or stuff him in a dorm room and leave him alone all day. Do that to this animal and his great heart’ll be ruined. What I want from you, Jamey, is to know there is no chance o’ that. Ever.

She learned that rather than perceiving time as a continuum, we tend to think about our lives in “episodes,” creating story arcs from the notable incidents, or chapters, in our lives. One chapter might start the day you move into your college dorm (“the college years”), another with your first job (“the consulting

I realized I still had my eyes shut. I had shut them when I put my face to the screen, like I was scared to look outside. Now I had to open them. I looked out the window and saw for the first time how the hospital was out in the country. The moon was low in the sky over the pastureland; the face of it was scarred and scuffed where it had just torn up out of the snarl of scrub oak and madrone trees on the horizon. The stars up close to the moon were pale; they got brighter and braver the farther they got out of the circle of light ruled by the giant moon. It called to mind how I noticed the exact same thing when I was off on a hunt with Papa and the uncles and I lay rolled in blankets Grandma had woven, lying off a piece from where the men hunkered around the fire as they passed a quart jar of cactus liquor in a silent circle. I watched that big Oregon prairie moon above me put all the stars around it to shame. I kept awake watching, to see if the moon ever got dimmer or if the stars got brighter, till the dew commenced to drift onto my cheeks and I had to pull a blanket over my head. Something moved on the grounds down beneath my window — cast a long spider of shadow out across the grass as it ran out of sight behind a hedge. When it ran back to where I could get a better look, I saw it was a dog, a young, gangly mongrel slipped off from home to find out about things went on after dark. He was sniffing digger squirrel holes, not with a notion to go digging after one but just to get an idea what they were up to at this hour. He’d run his muzzle down a hole, butt up in the air and tail going, then dash off to another. The moon glistened around him on the wet grass, and when he ran he left tracks like dabs of dark paint spattered across the blue shine of the lawn. Galloping from one particularly interesting hole to the next, he became so took with what was coming off — the moon up there, the night, the breeze full of smells so wild makes a young dog drunk — that he had to lie down on his back and roll. He twisted and thrashed around like a fish, back bowed and belly up, and when he got to his feet and shook himself a spray came off him in the moon like silver scales. He sniffed all the holes over again one quick one, to get the smells down good, then suddenly froze still with one paw lifted and his head tilted, listening. I listened too, but I couldn’t hear anything except the popping of the window shade. I listened for a long time. Then, from a long way off, I heard a high, laughing gabble, faint and coming closer. Canada honkers going south for the winter. I remembered all the hunting and belly-crawling I’d ever done trying to kill a honker, and that I never got one. I tried to look where the dog was looking to see if I could find the flock, but it was too dark. The honking came closer and closer till it seemed like they must be flying right through the dorm, right over my head. Then they crossed the moon — a black, weaving necklace, drawn into a V by that lead goose. For an instant that lead goose was right in the center of that circle, bigger than the others, a black cross opening and closing, then he pulled his V out of sight into the sky once more. I listened to them fade away till all I could hear was my memory of the sound.

Around this time, in the first days and weeks after the assault, I became aware of a curious mind's-eye perspective I had never held before. I saw myself as if from high above, moving across campus, going from dorm to Schoolhouse and back again... I watched myself as a tiny figure being pulled in, as though I were about to be swallowed up.

The ticket in my hand moved in the slight fall breeze as I staggered back onto my rock. My body shivered. I should have been shocked by the paper in my hand. I should have called Professor Golkov and asked him for answers or more information. I should have just gone back to my dorm and ignored the unfamiliar feeling rising through me. I should have done a lot of things, but I always did what I should. When the foreign feeling spread through me and filled my being, I finally realized what it was. Thrill. I felt like I held the answer to my life’s puzzle in my hands.

You went on and on about how excited you were to move away. You couldn’t wait to get out of Hamilton and get away from me. I got the message. Loud and clear. It might’ve been the first time in our lives that one of us actually took a hint, ha. I went to Stanford, ready for a fresh start, but instead I spent my entire freshman year thinking about transferring to Duke. I didn’t join any clubs or make those lifelong friends that end up being your groomsmen. I hung out in my dorm room and listened to those CDs you used to make for Madeleine. (I stole most of her collection before I moved.) There was something comforting about listening to the songs you’d handpicked, even if they weren’t for me.

be apart. Despite getting rejected by my top-choice school, I was starting to really believe in myself again based on all the positive feedback we continued to get on our videos. And besides, I knew I could always reapply to Emerson the following year and transfer. • • • College started out great, with the best part being my newly found freedom. I was finally on my own and able to make my own schedule. And not only was Amanda with me, I’d already made a new friend before the first day of classes from a Facebook page that was set up for incoming freshmen. I started chatting with a pretty girl named Chloe who mentioned that she was also going to do the film and video concentration. Fitchburg isn’t located in the greatest neighborhood, but the campus has lots of green lawns and old brick buildings that look like mansions. My dorm room was a forced triple—basically a double that the school added bunk beds to in order to squeeze one extra person in. I arrived first and got to call dibs on the bunk bed that had an empty space beneath it. I moved my desk under it and created a little home office for myself. I plastered the walls with Futurama posters and made up the bed with a new bright green comforter and matching pillows. My roommates were classic male college stereotypes—the football player and the stoner. Their idea of decorating was slapping a Bob Marley poster and a giant ad for Jack Daniels on the wall.

In her Vanderbilt dorm room, trying to fall asleep at night, she’d gotten unexpected comfort from taking mental walks through Flanagan’s, corner to corner, over to the jukebox, down the hall to the restrooms. In these walks she was the only person there, moving freely through the space, cataloging the bar’s brass footrail, the Marilyn poster, the Houdini photograph, the specific taupe of the fireplace brick. But now she saw that it was just a bar, filled with people she didn’t know—she guessed the regulars had been deterred by the gawkers and tourists. Wood, brick, bone, flesh. Random shoes against the footrail, people hollering for drinks. It was never really hers, and it would carry on fine without her.

Saying goodbye to everyone, I picked up my bag and began walking away as a deep husky voice called my name. I didn’t stop walking, but looked over my shoulder in time to see Brandon walking around the table toward me, and Chase holding the brunette’s head away from his as he watched us, she just continued onto his neck. Falling into step with me, he held out a hand, “We haven’t met yet, I’m Brandon Taylor.” Dear Lord that voice could warm me on the coldest day of the year. “Harper Jackson, nice to meet you.” He smiled as he held the door open for me, “You too. You seem to know the rest of the guys pretty well though we’re just meeting, they said you’re Bree’s roommate?” “Uh, yeah. I am, but I don’t really know them well. I’ve only talked to them for a total of about ten minutes before today.” “Really?” The corners of his mouth twitched up, “You seem to make quite an impression in a short amount of time then.” “Oh I definitely made an impression with them.” I muttered. He looked at me quizzically but I shook my head so he wouldn’t push it. We stopped walking when we got to the path that would take me to the dorms and him to his next class. I turned towards him and shamelessly took in his worn jeans resting low on his narrow hips and fitted black shirt before going back to his face. I hadn’t realized how tall he was when we were walking out, but he had to be at least a foot taller than me. His height and muscled body made me want to curl up in his arms, it looked like I’d fit perfectly there. I nervously bit my bottom lip while I watched his cloudy eyes slowly take in my small frame. It didn’t feel like the guys at the party, looking at me like I was something to eat. His eyes made me feel beautiful, and it thrilled me that they were on me. Thrilled me that they were on me? Get a grip Harper you just met him two seconds ago. “Come on PG, let’s go.” Chase grabbed my arm and started dragging me away. “Chase! Stop!” I yanked my arm out and shot him a dirty look. “What is your problem?” “I’m taking you and Bree to the house, and you need to pack for the weekend so let’s go.” He grabbed for me again but I dodged his hand. “The weekend, what?” “You’re staying with me, go pack.” I narrowed my eyes and started to turn towards Brandon, “Fine, hold on.” “Harper.” “Go away Chase, I’ll meet you in the room in a minute. Go find Bree.” He moved to stand closer behind me so I just sighed and gave Brandon a lame smile. “Sorry, apparently I have to go. I’ll see you tonight?” I don’t know why I asked, he actually lived there. A sexy smile lit up his face as his hand reached out to quickly brush against my arm, “See you then.” With a hard nod directed towards Chase, he turned and walked away.

So, about your classes,” said Doug. “I put in the requirements already. History of Woodsmen and Pirates, Safety Rules for the Internet, and”—he cleared his throat—“Remedial Goodness 101.” “Let me guess...” said Mal. She popped a piece of candy into her mouth. “New class?” Doug nodded sheepishly. “Come on, guys,” Mal said, dropping the wrapper on the floor. “Let’s go find our dorms.” She started up a flight of stairs. Carlos, Jay, and Evie followed her. “Oh! Uh, yeah, your dorms are that way, guys,” said Doug, pointing in the opposite direction. As Mal and her friends came back down the stairs and headed in the direction he indicated, Doug hung back, counting through the dwarves again. “Dopey, Doc, Bashful, Happy, Grumpy, Sleepy, and...” “Sneezy,” said Carlos, passing him and ascending the opposite staircase. Doug sighed and looked at the ceiling. Upstairs, Mal and Evie opened the door to their dorm room. It was light and airy and dappled in sunlight. The white canopy beds were covered with pink pillows, and flowery curtains fluttered gently in the fresh breeze from the open windows. Evie’s eyes widened with delight as Mal’s narrowed in horror. “Wow,” said Evie. “This place is so amazing—” “Gross,” said Mal. “I know, right?” said Evie, changing her tune. “Amazingly gross. Ew!” When Mal wasn’t looking, Evie couldn’t help giving a silent gasp of joy at her new crib. “I am going to need some serious sunscreen,” said Mal, arms crossed. “Yeah,” said Evie. “E,” said Mal, pointing to the windows. She closed the curtains as Evie moved to other windows in the room and did the same, plunging the dorm into darkness. “Whoa!” said Mal. “That is much better.

The fragility of the US economy had nearly destroyed him. It wasn't enough that Citadel's walls were as strong and impenetrable as the name implied; the economy itself needed to be just as solid. Over the next decade, he endeavored to place Citadel at the center of the equity markets, using his company's superiority in math and technology to tie trading to information flow. Citadel Securities, the trading and market-making division of his company, which he'd founded back in 2003, grew by leaps and bounds as he took advantage of his 'algorithmic'-driven abilities to read 'ahead of the market.' Because he could predict where trades were heading faster and better than anyone else, he could outcompete larger banks for trading volume, offering better rates while still capturing immense profits on the spreads between buys and sells. In 2005, the SEC had passed regulations that forced brokers to seek out middlemen like Citadel who could provide the most savings to their customers; in part because of this move by the SEC, Ken's outfit was able to grow into the most effective, and thus dominant, middleman for trading — and especially for retail traders, who were proliferating in tune to the numerous online brokerages sprouting up in the decade after 2008. Citadel Securities reached scale before the bigger banks even knew what had hit them; and once Citadel was at scale, it became impossible for anyone else to compete. Citadel's efficiency, and its ability to make billions off the minute spreads between bids and asks — multiplied by millions upon millions of trades — made companies like Robinhood, with its zero fees, possible. Citadel could profit by being the most efficient and cheapest market maker on the Street. Robinhood could profit by offering zero fees to its users. And the retail traders, on their couches and in their kitchens and in their dorm rooms, profited because they could now trade stocks with the same tools as their Wall Street counterparts.

Although thrilled that the era of the personal computer had arrived, he was afraid that he was going to miss the party. Slapping down seventy-five cents, he grabbed the issue and trotted through the slushy snow to the Harvard dorm room of Bill Gates, his high school buddy and fellow computer fanatic from Seattle, who had convinced him to drop out of college and move to Cambridge. “Hey, this thing is happening without us,” Allen declared. Gates began to rock back and forth, as he often did during moments of intensity. When he finished the article, he realized that Allen was right. For the next eight weeks, the two of them embarked on a frenzy of code writing that would change the nature of the computer business.1 Unlike the computer pioneers before him, Gates, who was born in 1955, had not grown up caring much about the hardware. He had never gotten his thrills by building Heathkit radios or soldering circuit boards. A high school physics teacher, annoyed by the arrogance Gates sometimes displayed while jockeying at the school’s timesharing terminal, had once assigned him the project of assembling a Radio Shack electronics kit. When Gates finally turned it in, the teacher recalled, “solder was dripping all over the back” and it didn’t work.2 For Gates, the magic of computers was not in their hardware circuits but in their software code. “We’re not hardware gurus, Paul,” he repeatedly pronounced whenever Allen proposed building a machine. “What we know is software.” Even his slightly older friend Allen, who had built shortwave radios, knew that the future belonged to the coders. “Hardware,” he admitted, “was not our area of expertise.”3 What Gates and Allen set out to do on that December day in 1974 when they first saw the Popular Electronics cover was to create the software for personal computers. More than that, they wanted to shift the balance in the emerging industry so that the hardware would become an interchangeable commodity, while those who created the operating system and application software would capture most of the profits.

A few months ago, leaving for college seemed glamourous, but now it’s hard to believe that this little dorm room, with its scratchy sheets and a lock that sticks, is home. It’s hard to accept that this is my new life, that these are my new friends. I am one in many here. There are dozens here as good as me, even more who are smarter, funnier. And it scares me because before I stuck out and now I blend in.

Arjun came from a staid Pakistani family that prioritized academics and shunned alcohol. When he had moved into his dorm last week, his parents asked Jake, whom they knew was not a drinker, to watch over their son.

She lurches forward in the metal chair, smacking at her body to get the birds off, though they’re gone. Then she curls into a ball and hides her face. I reach out to touch her shoulder, to reassure her, and she hits my arm, hard. “Don’t touch me!” “It’s over,” I say, wincing--she punches harder than she realizes. I ignore the pain and run a hand over her hair, because I’m stupid, and inappropriate, and stupid… “Tris.” She just shifts back and forth, soothing herself. “Tris, I’m going to take you back to the dorms, okay?” “No! They can’t see me…not like this…” This is what Eric’s new system creates: A brave human being has just defeated one of her worst fears in less than five minutes, an ordeal that takes most people at least twice that time, but she’s terrified to go back into the hallway, to be seen as weak or vulnerable in any way. Tris is Dauntless, plain and simple, but this faction isn’t really Dauntless anymore. “Oh, calm down,” I say, more irritable than I mean to be. “I’ll take you out the back door.” “I don’t need you to…” I can see her hands trembling even as she shrugs off my offer. “Nonsense,” I say. I take her arm and help her to her feet. She wipes her eyes as I move toward the back door. Amar once took me through this door, tried to walk me back to the dormitory even when I didn’t want him to, the way she probably doesn’t want me to now. How is it possible to live the same story twice, from different vantage points?

Traveling with us did have its advantages. Before Barack’s presidency was over, our girls would enjoy a baseball game in Havana, walk along the Great Wall of China, and visit the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio one evening in magical, misty darkness. But it could also be a pain in the neck, especially when we were trying to tend to things unrelated to the presidency. Earlier in Malia’s junior year, the two of us had gone to spend a day visiting colleges in New York City, for instance, setting up tours at New York University and Columbia. It had worked fine for a while. We’d moved through NYU’s campus at a brisk pace, our efficiency aided by the fact that it was still early and many students were not yet up for the day. We’d checked out classrooms, poked our heads into a dorm room, and chatted with a dean before heading uptown to grab an early lunch and move on to the next tour. The problem is that there’s no hiding a First Lady–sized motorcade, especially on the island of Manhattan in the middle of a weekday. By the time we finished eating, about a hundred people had gathered on the sidewalk outside the restaurant, the commotion only breeding more commotion. We stepped out to find dozens of cell phones hoisted in our direction as we were engulfed by a chorus of cheers. It was beneficent, this attention—“Come to Columbia, Malia!” people were shouting—but it was not especially useful for a girl who was trying quietly to imagine her own future. I knew immediately what I needed to do, and that was to bench myself—to let Malia go see the next campus without me, sending Kristin Jones, my personal assistant, as her escort instead. Without me there, Malia’s odds of being recognized went down. She could move faster and with a lot fewer agents. Without me, she could maybe, possibly, look like just another kid walking the quad. I at least owed her a shot at that.

Write your routine, Ronan. Now. While I watch. I want to see it." 7:45 A.M.: The most important meal of the day. 8:00 A.M.: Feed animals. 9:30 A.M.: Repair barns or house. 12:00 P.M.: Lunch @ that weird gas station. 1:30 P.M.: Ronan Lynch's marvelous dream emporium. "What does this one mean, Ronan?" It meant practice makes perfect. It meant ten thousand hours to mastery, if at first you don't succeed, there is no try only do. Ronan had spent hours over the last year dreaming ever more complex and precise objects into being, culminating in an intricate security system that rendered the Barns largely impossible to find unless you knew exactly where you were going. After Cambridge, though, it felt like all the fun had run out of the game. "I don't ask what you do at work, Declan." 6:00 P.M.: Drive around. 7:15 P.M.: Nuke some dinner, yo. 7:30 P.M.: Movie time. 11:00 P.M.: Text Parrish. Adam's most recent text had said simply: $4200. It was the amount Ronan had to send to cover the dorm room repairs. *11:30 P.M.: Go to bed. *Saturday/Sunday: Church/DC *Monday: Laundry & Grocery *Tuesday: Text or call Gansey These last items were in Declan's handwriting, his addendums subtly suggesting all the components of a fulfilling grown-up life Ronan had missed when crafting it. They only served to depress Ronan more. Look how you can predict the next forty-eight hours, seventy-two hours, ninety-six hours, look how you can predict the rest of your life. The entire word routine depressed Ronan. The sameness. Fuck everything. Gansey texted: Declan told me to tell you to get out of bed. Ronan texted back: why He watched the morning light move over the varied black-gray shapes in his bedroom. Shelves of model cars; an open Uilleann pipes case; an old scuffed desk with a stuffed whale on it; a metal tree with wondrously intricate branches; heaps of laundry curled around beet-read wood shavings. Gansey texted back: don't make me get on a plane I'm currently chained to one of the largest black walnut trees in Oregon

Write your routine, Ronan. Now. While I watch. I want to see it." 7:45 A.M.: The most important meal of the day. 8:00 A.M.: Feed animals. 9:30 A.M.: Repair barns or house. 12:00 P.M.: Lunch @ that weird gas station. 1:30 P.M.: Ronan Lynch's marvelous dream emporium. "What does this one mean, Ronan?" It meant practice makes perfect. It meant ten thousand hours to mastery, if at first you don't succeed, there is no try only do. Ronan had spent hours over the last year dreaming ever more complex and precise objects into being, culminating in an intricate security system that rendered the Barns largely impossible to find unless you knew exactly where you were going. After Cambridge, though, it felt like all the fun had run out of the game. "I don't ask what you do at work, Declan." 6:00 P.M.: Drive around. 7:15 P.M.: Nuke some dinner, yo. 7:30 P.M.: Movie time. 11:00 P.M.: Text Parrish. Adam's most recent text had said simply: $4200. It was the amount Ronan had to send to cover the dorm room repairs. *11:30 P.M.: Go to bed. *Saturday/Sunday: Church/DC *Monday: Laundry & Grocery *Tuesday: Text or call Gansey These last items were in Declan's handwriting, his addendums subtly suggesting all the components of a fulfilling grown-up life Ronan had missed when crafting it. They only served to depress Ronan more. Look how you can predict the next forty-eight hours, seventy-two hours, ninety-six hours, look how you can predict the rest of your life. The entire word routine depressed Ronan. The sameness. Fuck everything. Gansey texted: Declan told me to tell you to get out of bed. Ronan texted back: why He watched the morning light move over the varied black-gray shapes in his bedroom. Shelves of model cars; an open Uilleann pipes case; an old scuffed desk with a stuffed whale on it; a metal tree with wondrously intricate branches; heaps of laundry curled around beet-red wood shavings. Gansey texted back: don't make me get on a plane I'm currently chained to one of the largest black walnut trees in Oregon

My roommate, Remi, was a kid from Haiti who was at Saint Ignatius on a scholarship. The day I moved into the dorm he was losing his mind because the leaves on some of the maple trees on campus were starting to turn red. He’d never seen anything like it.

For the past several years, Matthew had always felt like the bridge between two buildings—one burning, one standing tall. After their father had died (been murdered), Ronan had gone a little wild. Before, he used to get sad sometimes, but after Niall died, weirdly that seemed to go away. Matthew never saw him sad anymore, only ferociously angry or ferociously smiling. Every word now sprang razors. Declan, who had previously seemed quiet, was now gratefully still, an unmoving body for Matthew to sob into, a calm voice to take calls from the school or funeral home or government. Matthew spent more and more time with Declan, especially after Ronan moved out of the Aglionby dorm and into his friend Gansey’s warehouse. The whole time, Declan had quietly explained that Ronan wasn’t a bad person, he was just messed up by Niall dying, so now he was doing his best to ruin his life and also theirs because he thought it would make him feel better. He told Matthew about how Niall had actually been the one to cause all this, with negligence, with lies, with careless behavior, with abandonment. Ronan, on the other hand, told Matthew how Declan was a huge liar and how wonderful Niall had been. Now Matthew thought maybe he had mislabeled the brothers. Maybe it wasn’t Ronan who’d been the burning building.

This meant that victim and perpetrator were both given an equal right to things like the school counseling center or extensions on academic assignments. They both had the right to move dorms, safety plan, or file a no-contact directive to keep the other party from speaking to or about them. They both had the right to know about the other’s academic schedule or get a refund on tuition for classes they failed and have those low grades removed from their transcript. When perpetrators asked for privileges originally created for survivors, they got them. Western University isn’t alone in taking this approach. According to a NASPA report,5 48 percent of schools provide “identical” support to survivors in the “complainant” role and perpetrators in the “respondent” role.6

It’s not fair that she can undo me with a simple kiss at a mirror when she doesn’t even see me as a real, live, flesh-and-blood man. She still sees me as the boy who grew up next door to her. She seems to forget that I’m the one who held her hair back as she threw up her first few shots of tequila. She forgets that I’m the one who carried her luggage up three fucking flights of stairs when I moved her into her dorm room. I’m the one who hugged her when Dusty Forbes dumped her at the homecoming dance. I’m the one who left my own date—who was a sure thing, by the way—standing alone by the wall while I retrieved Lacey from the ladies’ room and stroked her hair until she could breathe. She

Hell, you knew she had baggage. Layers. You told me you wanted to find out everything about her. Find out why she doesn’t have a family. Find out why she’s all alone in New York. Find out why she’s living in Pete’s spare room until tomorrow.” I spin to face him. “She’s living with Pete and Reagan?” I didn’t know about that. “Why?” He shrugs. “She had to move out of the dorm after graduation. They had an empty room. But Reagan’s parents are coming to stay for two weeks, so she’s going somewhere else.” “Where?” I ask quickly. He shrugs. “Does it matter?” But he’s grinning. Fuck yeah, it matters. “Is she going to stay with one of the douchebags?” “What douchebags?” Matt scratches his head. “Never mind,” I say. Hope swells within me. I shouldn’t let it, but it does. I get out a piece of paper and write on it in magic marker: ROOM FOR RENT PRICE NEGOTIABLE ONLY BEAUTIFUL LITTLE BOMBSHELLS NEED APPLY PREFERABLY ONES NAMED FRIDAY I walk out of the back room and go to the bulletin board. I stick a thumbtack in the “advertisement” and walk away. I hear a snicker from behind me and turn to grin at Logan. You’re a d-o-o-f-u-s, he signs, fingerspelling the last word because there’s no sign for something so stupid. I know, I sign back. He looks a little worried for me, but I don’t care. I can’t get where I want to go if I don’t take a first step. Regardless of whether or not she’s pregnant, she needs a place to stay and I have two empty rooms. And she’s family, for Christ’s sake. I’ve never wanted to eat out a member of my family, though. I scratch my head. I should probably stop thinking like that. I whistle to myself as I walk to my office. I have some paperwork to do before my first appointment arrives. And I need to give Friday time to find my ad.

They drove to her dorm room. Myron waited downstairs while she packed a bag. She had her own room, but she wrote a note to her suite mate that she was staying with a friend for a few days. The whole enterprise took her less than ten minutes. She came down with two bags over her shoulders. Myron relieved her of one. They were heading out the door when Myron spotted FJ standing next to his car. “Stay here,” he told her. Brenda ignored him and kept pace. Myron looked to his left. Bubba and Rocco were there. They waved at him. Myron did not wave back. That’ll show them. FJ

Beethoven’s String Quartet in A Minor, a piece I’d always loved since a college boyfriend first played it for me in his dorm room. I still remember the knobs of his spine as he bent over the record player and slowly let the needle down. The third movement is one of the most moving passages ever written,

Teresa told me, she once tried to be a sidewalk. Or, she decided she was the sidewalk. Being steady as concrete seemed wiser to her than rushing between classes during finals. She lay down, stiff as the ground in winter, on her favourite spot in the quad, where the afternoon light shimmered golden, next to an old oak whose bark reminded her of her father’s beard. She got still- very, very still- still as stone, and she was stone, so of course she didn’t hear her peers when they asked her what was up. Nor could she hear the dean when he asked her to move and when her friends Hollie and Sean picked her up and carried her back to her dorm, she didn’t soften, but rather stayed steady, steady stiff. They called that a depression. It seemed perfectly sensible to me.

The amount of time that elapsed between my two-year-old self toddling along the National Mall waving a flag and my eighteen-year-old self moving into a dorm feels vast to me, but I know now how time moves when you're grown-up, and I know those years must have gone much faster for my parents than for me. To my dad, hardly any time at all passed between when the siren called him into the bunker and when he started packing boxes full of shelf-stable food to send to his baby at college.

... The last thing I want to do is harsh your vibe or rain on your parade, but I take no shit on your behalf. I haven’t since the day we moved into the dorms freshman year and you demanded we stay up all night bonding over burnt microwave popcorn because you, and I quote, have a feeling we’re supposed to be best friends. I’m not going to start now.

for the day. I gather my things into my bag and head across the campus toward my parked car. I used to live in the dorm, but it’s the start of my senior year, and I made the decision to move out on my own. I’m sure it was a huge favor to the person in line to share a dorm with me. I

taller than my wheelchair-bound teacher, holding something that looked suspiciously like an archer’s bow. I opened the nearest door and slipped inside. A few seconds later I heard a slow clop-clop-clop, like muffled wood blocks, then a sound like an animal snuffling right outside my door. A large, dark shape paused in front of the glass, then moved on. A bead of sweat trickled down my neck. Somewhere in the hallway, Mr. Brunner spoke. “Nothing,” he murmured. “My nerves haven’t been right since the winter solstice.” “Mine neither,” Grover said. “But I could have sworn…” “Go back to the dorm,” Mr. Brunner told him. “You’ve got a long day of exams tomorrow.” “Don’t remind me.” The lights went out in Mr. Brunner’s office. I waited in the dark for what seemed like forever. Finally, I slipped out into the hallway and made my way back up to the dorm. Grover was lying on his bed, studying his Latin exam notes like he’d been there all night. “Hey,” he said, bleary-eyed. “You going to be ready for this test?” I didn’t answer. “You look awful.” He frowned. “Is everything okay?” “Just…tired.” I turned so he couldn’t read my expression, and started getting ready for bed. I didn’t understand what I’d heard downstairs. I wanted to believe I’d imagined the whole thing. But one thing was clear: Grover and Mr. Brunner were talking about me behind my back. They thought I was in some kind of danger. The next afternoon, as I was leaving the three-hour Latin exam, my eyes swimming with all the Greek and Roman names I’d misspelled, Mr. Brunner called me back inside. For a moment, I was worried he’d found out about my eavesdropping the night before, but that didn’t seem to be the problem. “Percy,” he said. “Don’t be discouraged about leaving Yancy. It’s…it’s for the best.” His tone was kind, but the words still embarrassed me. Even though he was speaking quietly, the other kids finishing the test could hear. Nancy Bobofit smirked at me and made sarcastic little kissing motions with her lips. I mumbled, “Okay, sir.” “I mean…” Mr. Brunner wheeled his chair back and forth, like he wasn’t sure what to say. “This isn’t the right place for you. It was only a matter of time.” My eyes stung. Here was my favorite teacher, in front of the class, telling me I couldn’t handle it.

As numerous economists and positive psychologists have observed, globally we make the mistake of becoming less social the richer we become as individuals, and as a society. As Weiner observes: “The greatest source of happiness is other people—and what does money do? It isolates us from other people. It enables us to build walls, literal and figurative, around ourselves. We move from a teeming college dorm to an apartment to a house and, if we’re really wealthy, to an estate. We think we’re moving up, but really we’re walling off ourselves.

Estamos todos deitados num berço que se move suavemente, e há uma voz que murmura ao redor do mundo: "Dorme, dorme tranquilo, nós te governaremos. Sobretudo não sonhes, não sonhes, não sonhes, não sonhes..." E nós, obedientes, não sonhamos.

So the greatest source of happiness is other people—and what does money do? It isolates us from other people. It enables us to build walls, literal and figurative, around ourselves. We move from a teeming college dorm to an apartment to a house and, if we’re really wealthy, to an estate. We think we’re moving up, but really we’re walling off ourselves.

thought down, shut my notebook, and get to my feet, deciding to call it quits for the day. I gather my things into my bag and head across the campus toward my parked car. I used to live in the dorm, but it’s the start of my senior year, and I made the decision to move out on my own. I’m sure it was a

Evie’s eyes widened with delight as Mal’s narrowed in horror. “Wow,” said Evie. “This place is so amazing—” “Gross,” said Mal. “I know, right?” said Evie, changing her tune. “Amazingly gross. Ew!” When Mal wasn’t looking, Evie couldn’t help giving a silent gasp of joy at her new crib. “I am going to need some serious sunscreen,” said Mal, arms crossed. “Yeah,” said Evie. “E,” said Mal, pointing to the windows. She closed the curtains as Evie moved to other windows in the room and did the same, plunging the dorm into darkness. “Whoa!” said Mal. “That is much better.

You don’t remember me, I’m not – I’m Lou, we met at Army Cadets, ten years ago – you don’t remember, that’s fine – I don’t cry, uh. Ever. Doctor said I was hard as fuck, so – as a baby – so, yeah, don’t feel anything, at all, never have, ’cept this one night, with you. You don’t remember, that’s – It was last night of cadets. Camp. The boys sneak into our dorm, cos the girls want to play this game thing, where you have to guess where our nipples are. Guess our nipples and belly buttons. With our pyjamas on. Which is erotic, and challenging, cos we’re all different aren’t we? Some people have really, like, low, nipples, or whatever – And anyway, you’re paired with me, cos no one else – I guess maybe we’re getting bullied, you seem upset, you don’t want to do it, you look at the floor, and you just sort of jab your finger at me, and turn to go, but you… You get it. You get me. Bang on. My left one. I think you feel it. And I say ‘wowza’. Like that. Breathy. ‘Wowza.’ And people cheer, cos – Maybe they’re bullying still, but I don’t care cos it feels real, like in a romcom, and you have this. Smile. I notice it. And then you guess my right one. And you get that too and – I s’pose that’s easier after the first, cos you sort of line ’em up, don’t you, I wouldn’t know – and then I nod, and then your hand moves down, to my stomach. And you look me in the eye, for the first time… and I didn’t mind looking in yours, uh… sorry… hang on… Uh… ‘Bomb… sound effect…’ No, that’s not yet, sorry. Sorry. Uh… So… She looks back to her notes. Oh yeah… so… Then, really gently this time, your hand reaches – Your finger just (moves), like that, and, like, slowly dis-disappears into me, into my stomach, my belly. Only up to about there, and with a pyjama. Sheath. Over it – shouldn’t – don’t say sheath – but, it feels like you’ve reached right in. Your whole hand. And touched something, right in the core of – Freezing cold in the core of me… and, just for a second… lit it up. And, it’s like…