It took us four long, sweaty trips up the stairs to the fourth floor to get all my stuff to my room. My roommate, a guy named Albie Harris, at least according to the e-mail I’d gotten, wasn’t around, but as we opened the door, we found that his stuff sure was.
Albie’s side of the room was messy. Like earthquake messy. The furnishings were all pretty standard stuff: linoleum floors, two faux wood desks side by side, two white dressers at the feet of two metal-framed single beds on opposite sides of the room. But a box of Cap’n Crunch was open and spilled across the floor. A pillow, sans pillowcase, had traveled across the room and was under my bed, along with a black T-shirt, a science textbook, and what appeared to be a fake nose and mustache attached to a pair of eyeglasses. He’d gotten here maybe one day before me, since the dorms just opened yesterday, yet there were at least five crumpled Sunkist soda cans underneath and around his unmade bed. Two open suitcases lay in the center of the room, still full but with clothes overflowing in all directions. On his desk was a pair of two-way radios, as well as another radio with tons of buttons. Above his bed was a huge, menacing poster that depicted a car exploding. In big, bloodred letters at the bottom it read, SURVIVAL PLANET.
I looked at my dad and opened my eyes wide, and he got this half grin he gets when he is savoring something that he can use for later. I’m the kind of kid who keeps spare Swiffers in his closet, and he knew me well enough to know how horrified I was at the sight of this disaster area.
I flopped down on the bed the roommate had left untouched. Dad stood in the doorway and took out his iPhone, and I groaned.
“A perfect match,” he said, panning the room with his phone.
Nothing was more annoying than when my dad had an opinion, and it proved to be correct. For four months, and more vehemently for the 2,164 miles we’d just driven, he’d told me I was making a mistake. Normally, this would be my time to deny it, to insist he was wrong, but it seemed useless to argue. If my dad and mom could have paid my roommate to have my new room look like the worst possible home for me, this would have been it.
So I gave in. I put my head in my hands and shook it exaggeratedly, like I was really upset. “This does not bode well,” I said.
Dad laughed and came and sat next to me, putting his arm on my shoulder.
“Hey. It is what it is,” he said, always the great philosopher.
“I know, I know. I get to make my own choices and live with the consequences. I have free rein to make my own mistakes,” I said.
“Hey,” he said, shrugging. “The universe is infinite.”
In my dad’s language, that means, I’m just a guy. What do I know?
He stood up. “You want me to help you unpack?” he asked, his tone that of a man who had a 2,164-mile return journey ahead of him and really didn’t want to place polo shirts in dresser drawers just now.
“I can do it,” I said.
“You sure?”
“Yeah,” I said.
Dad walked to the window, so I joined him. My room was on the back side of the dorm, which faced the huge, grassy quad. Outside, guys were throwing Frisbees, congregating in small groups. Guys, all guys. Mostly preppy. Very New England conservative. It didn’t look that different from the pictures on the Internet, the photos that had gotten me interested in the first place. Very unlike what I could see of my roommate.
“You sure this is the right place for you?” he asked.
“I’ll be fine, Dad. Don’t worry about me.”
He stared out the window as if the whole place made him sad.
“Seamus Rafael Goldberg. At the Natick School. Doesn’t sound right, somehow,” Dad said.
Yes, my name is Seamus — pronounced SHAY-mus — Rafael Goldberg. Try being five with that name. They called me Seamus as a young kid, then Rafael, which is almost worse, until I was like ten. I picked Rafe when I was in fifth grade, and I have insisted on it ever since.
He crossed the room, leaving me alone at the window, and I watched this kid loft a Frisbee a good fifty yards.
Dad pointed the camera at me, and I winced.
“C’mon. One video for your mom,” he said, and I shrugged. I went to the middle of the room, next to the Cap’n Crunch spillage, and pointed down as if I were a tour guide at the Grand Canyon. Dad laughed. Then I trotted over to my roommate’s bed, put my two hands together, and leaned my head on them as if to say, I’m in love!
With the iPhone still recording, I walked back to the window, trying to come up with a funny pose. But then a strange thing happened. I felt this pang in my gut and I bit my lip. I’m not super big on emotional outbursts, which is what made it weird. I thought I might break down and start crying, starkly aware that as soon as Dad left, I’d have no one but strangers around me. Dad must have seen something in my body language, because he put his phone down, came back over to me, and gave me a sweat-soaked hug.
“Hey. You’re gonna be a rock star here, Rafe,” he whispered into my ear.
It was one of those things he always said, ever since I was five and going off to kindergarten. I was gonna be a rock star in the sandbox, I was gonna be a rock star in sixth-grade orchestra, and now I was gonna be a rock star at Natick.
“Love you, Dad,” I said, a little choked up.
“I know you do. We love you too, buddy. Go kick some ass, take some names,” he said, nearly tripping on the tipped-over cereal box as he let me go and stepped toward the door. “Find a boyfriend.”
I tensed up. That wasn’t exactly the thing I wanted broadcast in my first hour at Natick. Kids were walking by, but nobody stopped and looked.
“Give Mom a hug for me,” I said, and I hugged him one more time.
“One last video for the road?” he asked, pointing his iPhone back in my direction.
I put my hand in front of my face, as if I were a celebrity who was tired of having pictures taken. And really I was. Not a celebrity, but truly tired of being on camera.
When you’re Gavin and Opal’s gay kid, you always feel like someone is looking at you. Not necessarily in a bad way. Just looking. Because something about you is interesting and different. But what you don’t know is what they’re seeing. And that’s the kind of thing that could drive a guy crazy.
Dad took the hint and pocketed the phone for a final time. “Bye, son,” he said, as a sweet, inimitable smile creased his face.
“Bye, Dad.”
And he left me alone in my new world, staring at the semiblank slate that was my side of the room.
One thing I didn’t realize when I created the idyllic world of Natick in my head was that the reality didn’t include air-conditioning. Old building, I guess. My window and door were wide open as I tried to get some cross ventilation going, but it didn’t do much to cool the oppressive room or my sweltering pits. So as I stuffed my second empty duffel bag into the dorm closet, I decided on a shower, since I smelled like my expiration date had come and gone weeks ago. A guy zoomed by the doorway, then I heard the footsteps slow and stop. He came back. Standing at my door in a royal blue tank top was a tall, built kid with black hair, blue eyes, and shoulders to die for.
“Hey, guy,” he said. “We’re gettin’ a game going downstairs, do you … holy Jesus!”
“What?” I said, looking behind me.
“You look just like Schroeder.”
“From Peanuts?”
“What? No. This kid. Graduated last year. Megapopular. You could be his brother.”
“Oh,” I said, my heart pulsing fast.
“I’m the first to tell you that?” the kid said, revealing a flawless set of pearly white teeth.
I smiled back, dazzled by him. I hoped I wasn’t blushing. “You’re the first to tell me anything. You’re the first person I’ve met here.”
“You’re kidding. Well, come on downstairs. We’re playing touch football, could use another player or two,” he said. He stuck out his hand. “Name’s Nickelson. Steve Nickelson.”
“Rafe Goldberg,” I said.
“You comin’?”
“Um, sure,” I said. Showering could definitely wait.