Chatoyant College Book 12: Chapter 47: The Corner Room

Dawn hesitated. She was really interested in seeing the inside of a triple—they were very fortunate to have run into a friendly woman who happened to live in one—but she didn’t want to barge in on someone’s room while they weren’t there. She wouldn’t like it if… actually, now that she thought about it, she wouldn’t really care if Naomi brought a stranger into their room, since Naomi was the only one who might be embarrassed by a mess (and she was never embarrassed). But still, it felt strange.

“Are you sure?” she asked. “I don’t want to go in if they might not be okay with it.”

“It’s okay,” Shannon assured her. “We have people over all the time.”

That wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement. Edie looked hesitant, too, though from Corrie’s posture and raised eyebrows, she was only waiting to go in because Dawn and Edie were waiting.

Shannon waved her hand impatiently at them. “Go on! If they get upset, which they won’t, it’ll all be on me. You can say I pushed you into it. Not that they’ll get home while you’re in there, probably.”

“If they don’t get home until we’ve left, will you tell them we’ve been here?” Edie asked. “I don’t want to feel like we’re doing this behind their backs.”

“Oh, yeah, sure,” Shannon said. “I’m not trying to hide anything from them. I just want to show you how cool a triple is.” She grinned and winked. “And you three won’t be stealing anything from us, because if you’re freshmen, you’re behind us for getting your pick of dorms.”

“Come on,” Corrie said, waving her fingers at them and heading into the room. Dawn finally followed, with Edie just behind her.

The room was really nice—Dawn was sure from her first glance around that it was more than half again as big as the room she shared with Naomi, unless it was an optical illusion from the L shape of the room. But she didn’t think so—she thought it was extra big because of the way it had been built. And maybe the doubles in Sayer were bigger than the doubles in Gilkey, too.

In front of her and to the left from the door, she could see two windows and a bed under each of them, desks to the left of each. To the right, past the corner where the building took a turn, was a smaller space, with one window, a desk next to it, and another bed. Many posters hung on the walls above that bed, while the walls above the other two were a little more clear.

“This is nice,” Corrie said, standing close to the middle of the room and looking around. “It might be too nice. I’m sure a lot of people will want these rooms.”

“It depends on what you like,” Shannon said, leaning on the doorway with her arms crossed. “I don’t think too many people have two friends they tolerate well enough to live with. Plus, Sayer is all coed, including the bathrooms.”

“Hickory is coed,” Corrie said.

“Yeah, but each suite in Hickory has its own bathroom,” Shannon said. “If you can handle sharing a bathroom with boys, I think Sayer is a great choice.”

Corrie laughed. “I think we can handle that.”

Dawn grinned. “I actually think gendered bathrooms are stupid, unless there are urinals. And I wouldn’t want to have an all-women bathroom, because then when my boyfriend is over he would have to go find a different bathroom.”

Shannon’s eyebrows shot up, but she didn’t say anything. “Anyway, just look around.”

“I bet we could drag the furniture around and reconfigure this if we want,” Corrie said. “Then we could have desks on one side of the room and beds on the other, if we want.”

“This configuration looks good to me,” Dawn said. “But we can figure that out next year. As long as we don’t have a big fight or anything before the end of the year, this seems perfect.”

Edie giggled and nodded. Dawn turned, a bit relieved to have made a decision and headed back out the door. “Thank you, Shannon.”

“Yeah, it’s cool,” Shannon said. “See you next year, I hope!”

As Dawn, Corrie, and Edie walked back toward the front door, Dawn saw Shannon out of the corner of her eye—rushing to the bathroom.

“So you guys agree, that’s our first choice?” Corrie asked.

Dawn and Edie both agreed. “I hope Shannon was right about it not being what most people want,” Dawn said. “It seems perfect for us.”

“I’m glad that was so easy,” Edie said as they headed back out into the darkening night. “And even if we don’t get the triple in Sayer, we’ll get one in Gilkey. No one seems to sign up for that on purpose.”

“You don’t want to try to put together a suite in Hickory?” Corrie asked.

Dawn shook her head. “Too much effort when we probably wouldn’t get it. We can think about that next year.”