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Even though we've been here for weeks, Ellie's side of the room is still pretty bare-bones. Other than the single poster for some obscure film I've never heard of, there is very little to be learned about Ellie from her decor.

Which I think is partly to blame for why she still feels a bit like a stranger, even though I know she brushes her teeth three times a day and listens to 'Rumours' by Fleetwood Mac on repeat whenever she's in a bad mood. But anything more than what you learn simply from sleeping four feet away from someone for a few weeks? Maybe just one: Ellie is a vault.

"Hey." I shut the door behind me, jerking my thumb over my shoulder. "Who was that?"

She glances up from her computer for only a second. "We have a class together."

I want to ask more, but I can tell from her tone that I've been dismissed. Not meanly, but that she simply won't be saying anything else.

When I first got to school, I was excited for a roommate. I thought we'd hang out in the lounge, share meals in the dining hall, walk to class together sometimes. When I arrived and saw the little astronauts our RA had posted on our door—'Elizabeth' and 'Éowyn' written on them—I seriously got butterflies.

Ellie and I had texted a few times, and of course I looked her up as soon as I got my room assignment. But she isn't very active on social media, and her texts were pretty basic as we decided what we'd each bring for the room.

Even as my parents helped me unpack, Ellie was nice but distant. The second they left, she took one look at the handmade Middle-earth blanket Mom had insisted I bring with me and said, "I was wondering about the name, but now&"

"My parents are big fans," I replied, pulling the blanket from my bed. I started folding it up, making it as small as possible so I could shove it into the top of my closet. "I go by Wyn."

My parents' love for 'The Lord of the Rings' is boundless beyond sensibility. They didn't notice when I started moving the memorabilia from my room to other parts of the house, or that I stopped dressing up as characters for Halloween sometime around the age of thirteen. If you asked my parents if I was teased much for my name or their obsession, they'd probably say no.

They have no idea.

"Got it," Ellie said. "We'll have to let the RA know for when she makes her new little name tags." The eye roll was implied.

I liked the name tags on our door. I still do, actually: now we have 'Ellie' and

'Wyn' on hot-air balloons.

It became clear over the next couple of weeks that Ellie and I get along but have little in common. We don't hang out unless we both happen to be in our room at the same time. We don't share meals or walk to class together, though not for my lack of trying at first. But I got shot down too many times for my pride to handle. Ellie was always too busy for me, because as it turns out, she already has friends here. And if I didn't spot them in the dining hall or out on campus, I'd know anyway, because there is a constant revolving door of people in and out of our room.

Like tonight.

"Hey, is that Wyn?" A voice echoes through the shared bathroom that links our room and the one next door.

I shouldn't be surprised they heard me come home. The walls in this place are paper-thin. The other day I sneezed, and someone in the next room said, "Bless you."

A moment later, Dara pokes her head in. She's dressed for bed in a pumpkin- print pajama set and silk bonnet, dark skin shining with cocoa butter.

Of my three suitemates, Dara is the easiest to talk to. But like Ellie, she already has friends at school—Kayla and Yasmin, who drop by Dara's room all the time. Kayla is Dara's friend from back home, and Yasmin is a girl who lives on Kayla's floor. The three of them quickly became a unit, to the point where you'd never guess Yasmin hasn't known Dara and Kayla forever. It's what I wished for myself, coming to school. To find my people. And not the same people I've always known—the ones I've spotted on campus that crossed the stage with me back in Troy, who are familiar-faced strangers at best. I want 'friends'. Kindred spirits. Something I've never had before.

Sure, I had friends in high school—people to hang out with on the weekends, or sit with at lunch, or talk to between classes. But I always felt like a hanger-on, and I learned later, that's basically what I was. Friendships forged in elementary school over crayons and lunch boxes and which cartoon fairy was our favorite soured as we got to middle school and rotted entirely when we reached high school. In the end, there was nothing left between us but thin, worn strings of obligation.