Orientation week was a parade of families carrying boxes into dorm buildings, hugging their kids, taking photos on the lawn, promising visits and care packages and Sunday phone calls.
I dragged my luggage across campus alone.
Dorm housing cost too much, so I rented a tiny room in an aging house five blocks from campus. The walls were thin. The heater clanged. The paint near the window peeled in long curls. Four other students lived there, but we all kept different schedules and moved around each other like strangers in a train station.
My room was barely big enough for a narrow bed and a small desk pressed against the wall.
Still, it was mine.
Affordable meant possible.
My alarm went off at 4:30 every morning. By five, I was at a campus café called Lantern Coffee, tying on an apron while half-awake students shuffled in for drinks and breakfast sandwiches. I learned orders faster than names. Smiling became muscle memory.
Classes filled the rest of the day—economics, statistics, writing, political theory. I sat near the front and took careful notes because I could not afford to miss anything, not even once.
At night I studied until my eyes blurred. On weekends I cleaned residence halls for extra money. Most days I slept four hours. Some days, less.
While other freshmen went to football games or late-night parties, I memorized formulas during lunch breaks and hunted down cheaper used textbooks online. I learned which library corners stayed warm in winter and which vending machine on the third floor sometimes dropped two granola bars instead of one if you hit the buttons in a certain order.
Small victories mattered when everything else was held together by effort.
Thanksgiving came and campus emptied almost overnight. Parking lots cleared. Dorm windows went dark. The whole place grew so quiet it felt abandoned.
I stayed.
Travel home was impossible financially, and even if I had somehow managed it, I was no longer sure I would have been missed.
Still, I called.
My mother answered after several rings, her voice distracted by laughter behind her.
“Oh, Avery, happy Thanksgiving.”
I could picture the scene before she even described it—warm lights, full table, Sadie telling stories from Ashford Heights while my father looked proud.
“Can I talk to Dad?” I asked.
There was a pause.
Then, muffled but unmistakable, I heard his voice in the background.
“Tell her I’m busy.”
The words landed softly, but they landed hard.
My mother came back on the line too quickly.
“He’s in the middle of something.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I just wanted to say hi.”
She asked whether I was eating enough, whether I needed anything.
I looked down at the instant noodles on my desk and the cheap blanket wrapped around my shoulders.
“No,” I said. “I’m fine.”
