ON THE DAY I moved into my college dorm, I was greeted with the sight of a sandy-haired boy tossing his cookies into a large blue trash bin. And I'm not talking about actual cookies.

"Welcome to the University of Michigan! That's your residential advisor, Patrick O'Donald." The chirpy, brown-haired girl wearing a Move-In Maker shirt didn't miss a beat, even though I could see that the huge smile she'd plastered on her face was strained. The expression on her face was a window into her true thoughts: Help me I don't get paid enough for this bullshit.

The barfing boy resurfaced from the trash can at the sound of his name. "Holler if you need help," Patrick said weakly, his hand giving a wimpy little wave. Then he immediately dunked his head back in for more...internal unloading. "Blergh!"

"Um," I said, "nice to meet you?"

The Move-In Maker girl sighed and shoved my giant blue bin of belongings down the hall, taking huge strides with her long legs, like she couldn't get away quickly enough. "Dehydration," she explained before I could ask the question. "From moving around in the heat all day."

"Oh." To me that didn't look like a case of just a little dehydration, but I thought it best to let the matter drop. Especially because my parents, Mr. and Mrs. Worrywart, were right behind me--and had seen the whole thing go down with a silent sort of horror.

"Mingyue," Dad said warningly, puffing to keep up with our speeding bin, "you're not safe here. You see that barfing boy? You know why he was barfing? Homesickness." He paused. "Or maybe malaria. Do they have that here?"

I groaned. "Baba, she just said it's dehydration--"

"Baobei," Mom sighed, clasping my hand into hers. At five foot one, she was already shorter than me, but still treated me as if I were four years old again. As if I was still her precious baby, her baobei. "You should quit this nonsense and go to a college closer to home." She stared around at the welcome banners and smiling upperclassmen surrounding us, distrust written all across her pinched-up expression.

"Why not Berkeley?" Dad asked. "So much closer to home. No vomiting boys. And Nancy goes to Berkeley."

Mom nodded fervently, the curls of her short perm bouncing up and down. "Yes. Nancy--your best friend," she said, as if I might've forgotten this fact.

I rolled my eyes. Did my parents seriously think that, two days before classes were due to start, I could just drop out of Michigan and beg Berkeley to re-extend their offer of admission to me? "Stop worrying. I chose Michigan for a reason." To get the hell away from my parents and their ungrounded fear of everything in life.

"California and Michigan are 2,404 miles apart," Mom blurted out, wringing her hands nervously.

I ogled her. "Did you seriously look that up?"

"Yes. Of course, that's only if you take I-80 E. It would be even longer if--"

"Can we please discuss this later?" I hissed as we boarded the elevator. The Move-In-Maker girl had politely turned her head the other way, but I imagined she wasn't overly thrilled with the fact that we'd been having a conversation in a foreign language for the past few minutes, as if she wasn't standing next to us the whole time.

Dad coughed and stood up straighter, nodding at the girl. Ariana, I read off her nametag. "Excuse me," he said in English, puffing himself up. Dad had always had this weird habit of putting on airs of importance whenever he spoke to Americans, like it would make his accented English sound more authentic or something. Like they'd be convinced that he was just as American as they were. "Excuse me--I have a question."

Ariana smiled. "Yes?"

"Is the malaria common here?"

Years down the road, when my children would no doubt be asking me about my fondest memories of college move-in, I'm not sure which moment I would choose. Maybe it would be Ariana the Move-in Maker explaining patiently to my father that we did not, in fact, live in the nineteenth century, and unless I'd be doing a lot of time traveling, malaria would be the least of my concerns.

Or maybe I'd tell my children about my underwear crate spilling its unsightly contents all over the floor, right in front of my new room and three of my thoroughly unimpressed new hallmates. Yes, I still wore Haynes. Victoria's Secret scared the shit out of me, and if I was going to drop thirty bucks on something, it'd be a new pair of hip hop sneakers--not a tiny shred of cloth they called 'underwear'.

Or maybe we'd laugh over the fact that Mom referred to every stranger in the hall as my "new friend" and asked them to "play nicely" with me. If we'd had gold star stickers, I'm sure she would have handed those out, too.

All of those moments were perfectly fabulous, but this one would have to take the cake: me prying myself away from my doting parents to run to the bathroom, and colliding with a boy in the hallway.

"Ow! Watch where you're--"

An apology rose and died on my lips as the boy straightened, dusting off his blue T-shirt and khakis. Shook out his unruly jet black hair, like I'd left traces of me in it. Then our eyes met, and instantly, my heart lurched.

We faced each other. Wide-eyed. Confused. Horror-struck. For the second time that summer.

I'd seen him before. Last month, at orientation. When we'd drunkenly made out at a party--and then I pushed him into a pool.

In my defense, it hadn't been on purpose. Mostly.

****

O N E    M O N T H .   E A R L I E R

THE SUN hung high above me, unforgivingly hot and glaring. Having lived in California my whole life, I was accustomed to the heat. But the Michigan mid-July heat was something else entirely. Humid and muggy, constantly fluctuating between rain and sunshine, like the weather couldn't make up its mind about how to punish us next. Not like California, where it was just dry summers for days.

It was the last day of my college orientation, and I could safely say I'd been thoroughly orientated. To campus, college life, and even the horribly unpredictable weather.

My phone pinged, lighting up with a string of missed texts. Nancy and Louisa, two of my closest friends who I'd left back in California for the weekend of my orientation, were keeping tabs on me like I'd gone off to Ghana instead of Michigan.

Nancy: You doing alright over there Amelia? Has it snowed yet? I hear the weather is crazy.

Louisa: Met any cute boys???

Nancy: Omg, is that all you ever think about? -_-

Louisa: Says the 1 who's having week-a-verseries w/ her boyfriend ;)

Nancy: When have Alexander and I had a week-a-versary?? We just go on dates and he calls them that on his own. Ugh.

Louisa: Oh pls, like ur not enjoying ittttt

Nancy: Amelia come back soon to help me keep this girl in line!

Me: Lol Nancy no snow yet--plenty of rain tho. Can't wait to see u guys again tomorrow xx

Nancy: Can't wait to hear all about it!!

Louisa: Yah college boys r much better than hs ones

Me: Sry to disappoint haha but no boys yet.

There was supposed to be some kind of party going on tonight, though. One of the girls I was rooming with for the weekend, a social butterfly who'd already fluttered her way into the thicket of the Ann Arbor college party scene, had invited me and the two other girls in my room to tag along. But I wasn't sure I was ready to ditch my high school innocence yet. I'd seen enough movies to know that these parties were where purity went to die.

Me: Question--should I go to a party tonight?

Louisa: YES A THOUSAND TIMES YES

Nancy: A party?? Are you crazy? You have to be up early for your flight back tomorrow, remember?

Me: Ugh 4:30 AM whyyyy. That's not morning, that's bedtime

Louisa: Don't listen to her Amelia this is ur chance to do something crazy!! Go wild, ur a college chick now ;)

I set my phone down even though it was still pinging with incoming texts, no doubt Nancy telling Louisa off for being irresponsible. The idea of a college party was still intimidating--I mean, the craziest stuff I'd seen at parties was my uncle streaking through the living room covered in aluminum foil after taking one too many trips to the spiked punch bowl. And I had no doubt that a college party would take crazy to the next level.

But maybe I should go. After all, I was sitting alone in the middle of the school's quad, staring up at the trees above me, watching students and families stroll through campus greenery. Utterly alone. I'd made zero friends here. At least if I went to this party, I'd have the chance to meet people.

"Amelia?"

I paused in the middle of unsticking my yellow sundress from my sweaty back. Looked up, squinting against the glaring sunlight, to find myself staring at my three roommates. They were holding half-melted ice cream cones in their hands. Great. Now even the three people I had managed to become somewhat acquainted with had decided they'd rather hang out without me.

"Oh, hey."

Jennifer Whitman, the social butterfly, licked her chocolate ice cream and gave me a pitying look. "Did you get our messages?"

"Messages?"

"We invited you to come get ice cream with us," the blonde-haired Hannah added, bobbing her head up and down rapidly.

"Oh, I must've missed them." I checked my phone and realized that their invitation had gotten buried in the mass of messages from Nancy and Louisa. "Sorry."

"It's okay," Jennifer said. Her wide doe eyes reflected concern for me and my social loser-ness. I was reminded of Mom with a sudden pang of homesickness. "But you should really, you know, explore a little more. Come with us to the party tonight."

"It's a house party," my third roommate, a Korean-American girl named Lauren, reassured me, as if she'd heard the warning bells going off in my head, too. "It won't be, like, as crazy as a frat party."

"It'll be chill," Jennifer promised. "I already know the guys in the house, and they're planning to keep it low-key."

I hesitated. The three of them looked like wholesome, innocent, friendly girls. Like the kind of girls who wouldn't agree to a party if they thought it would end in insanity, in drunken hook-ups and blaring police sirens. 

I imagined Louisa would jump up and squeal 'yes!'. That Nancy would do her best to talk me out of going. But they were both thousands of miles away. They weren't the ones being invited to a college party. And besides, I was going to college--college--in the fall. It was time to branch out.

"Okay," I said finally. "Who's bringing the toilet paper?"

*****

A/N - Ok, so I wasn't going to post this so soon, but I couldn't wait to get y'all's opinion on this short bonus chapter. Also, I just had so much fun writing about my children again that I wanted to post this ASAP. Are you excited to read about Amelia's college adventures, including this party?? :) 

I made an announcement already about my plans, but for those who aren't following me, this is for you: I'm expanding this bonus about Amelia into a full-length novel to come in the fall. Probably within the next couple of weeks. I'll be writing and publishing part 2/3 of this bonus very shortly, and then I'll be publishing the rest of the novel as a separate book. (I'll have a more detailed synopsis of the novel once I post the 2nd half of this bonus!)

If you haven't already, please follow me for updates! And please do vote/comment if you enjoyed. Thanks so much for your support, I'm so grateful for you all and can't wait to write more about Amelia. xx