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And I guess there’s the work-study studentthe reception desk But she doesn’t even look up as I go by, she’s so engrossed in a copy of Us Weekly she’s stolen froain She and Tania Trace are neck and neck for Tabloid Skank of the Year)

It’s not until I turn the corner and pass the elevators that I see the line of undergrads outside the hall director’s office And I re semester is also the first day a lot of kids come back from Winter Break--the ones who didn’t stay in the dorain today, the day after Martin Luther King Day

And when Cheryl Haebig--a New York College sophoe because she’s a bubbly cheerleader and her current roouises, plus has a pet boa constrictor--leaps up from the institutional blue couch outside my office door and cries, "Heather!" I know I’rande café

The other students--each and every one of whonize, since they’ve been in the office before due to roommate conflicts--scramble up fro, the couch being only a two-seater I knohat they’ve been waiting for I knohat they want

And it’s not going to be pretty

"Look, you guys," I say, wrestling my office keys out of es until all the transfer students are moved in Then we’ll see what’s left"

"That’s not fair," exclaie plastic disks in his earlobes "Why should soet dibs on all the open spaces? We got here first"

"I’m sorry," I say I really am, because if I could justany to have to wait until they’ve all checked in Then, if there are any spaces left, we canon until next Monday, e knoho’s checked in and who hasn’t shown up--"

I a "By next Monday I’ll be dead," one resident assures another

"Or my roommate will," his friend says "Because I’ll have killed hiotten the office door open and flicked on the lights "Or yourself Coo away, gru excited as she follows irl in tow

"Heather," she says again "Hi Listen, remember when you said if I found someone ould swap spaces with me, I could move? Well, I found someone This is my friend Lindsay’s roommate, Ann, and she said she’d sithit on a nearby hook Now I sink into my desk chair and look at Ann, who appears to have a cold, fro into a wadded-up Kleenex I hand her the box I keep handy in case of Diet Coke spills

"You want to trade spaces with Cheryl, Ann?" I ask her, just to ine why anyone would want to live with a person who painted the walls of her side of the roo to Cheryl’s roommate that Cheryl’s side of the rooewan

"She does," Cheryl assures uess," she says again