Null Pointer

17.17. Roommate

“I think your roommate is already here,” one of the orientation guides told him as he led Matt down a dormitory hallway. “This is you, 717. Go ahead and get settled in and then we’ll meet in the lounge at 4:30 and get to know each other before dinner.”

Matthew Wheeler nodded his understanding, but, when the guide had walked away, he didn’t immediately put his key in the door. Roommate.

Matt had been eager to see the world beyond New York City. His acceptance to Harvard would give him the perfect chance to conquer a new city. It was far enough away that he wouldn’t see someone he knew on every corner. His fellow classmates would come from enough varied backgrounds that he wouldn’t be known only as Mr. Wheeler’s kid. He could just be Matt, and he could figure out exactly what kind of man Matthew Wheeler was. One thing he knew, Matthew Wheeler was not a kid anymore. He was seventeen, accepted to college—the best University in the United States, even. He was an adult now, and he was ready to be treated like one.

His parents had told him college would be an eye-opening experience, that not all of his classmates had led the sort of life he had up to that point. He had rolled his eyes, frustrated that his parents didn’t seem to think he understood that he had been born into a wealthy family and that others had been born into both richer and poorer families (and mostly poorer). But he had never considered the possibility of a roommate.

He’d seen a model dorm room on one of the campus tours last fall. The room was already smaller than his bedroom. He was supposed to live in that little space? Not just himself, but someone else, too? Maybe it’s just for orientation weekend, he thought. They did say our housing assignments this weekend were unrelated to our fall housing assignments.

Another student and guide were coming down the hallway and Matt realized he needed to get his suitcase out of the hallway, and stop staring at the doorknob of room 717 like it was an alien thing. It wasn’t. Even if the idea of a roommate was.

Matt fit the key in the lock and turned it. He heard the thunk of tumblers moving and tried the knob but the door wouldn’t open. Puzzled, he twisted the key the other way. This time the door swung open. Matt flushed. Of course the door had been unlocked. The orientation guide had told him his roommate was already here. Matt stepped into the room, dragging his suitcase out of the hallway, and met the eyes of his roommate, feeling off-balance and more self-conscious than he ever had in his life.

If the young man standing beside one of the desks hadn’t been dressed in khakis and a green blazer, instead of Matt’s dark grey slacks and deep blue button down, Matt might have thought he looked into a mirror. The man had the same auburn shade of hair, cut in a similar style, and the same piercing emerald gaze. Then his new roommate smiled and his whole face lit up. “Guess we’re roommates. Shake. My name’s Winthrop Frayne.”

Winthrop didn’t seem at all flustered by sharing this pitiful amount of space with Matt for the weekend. Matt shook his head, still trying to process it all, and took the offered hand. “Matt. Matthew Wheeler.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Matt. I was just starting to get settled. Do you want the top bunk or—”

“Sure,” Matt said hastily. It didn’t matter. Bunk beds. What was this? Summer camp? He hadn’t slept in bunk beds since he was ten.

“Long trip?” Winthrop asked pleasantly. His new roommate seemed a bit out of it.

Matt shook his head to clear it and focused on unpacking and making his bunk, another unfamiliar process. Servants had always had his room squared away before he got there when he moved or travelled with his parents. “Not too bad,” he told Winthrop. “I’m from New York City.”

“I don’t know how you stand being hemmed in like that, but then I’m a country lad. I’m from Sleepyside, up in Westchester County.”

“One of my father’s business associates takes him hunting up that way sometimes,” Matt said.

“Not this past hunting season, I hope. Our deer population’s thin,” Winthrop said seriously.

Matt, Winthrop, and a dozen other young men gathered in the dormitory’s first floor lounge around 4:30. Two of the orientation guides were there. “Residential Life does make a minimal effort to ensure roommates will not cause bodily harm to one another before midterms when they make the freshman housing assignments, but that’s as far as that goes. This weekend, rooming assignments were done as you registered, so you’re roomed with the person who registered in the closest proximity to you. You don’t like your roommate? That’s tough luck, for you. Consider it your first experience of University life, and figure it out. I didn’t make the assignments and I don’t want to hear complaints. You are considered to be intelligent, so problem solve for yourself. We’re not here to sort out your fights like Mommy and Daddy.”

Matt flinched, not because he particularly disliked Winthrop Frayne, but because this speech confirmed his fear that this roommate thing was something he had to get used to. What if he didn’t actually like his roommate in the fall? It would be bad enough to be trapped in a room as small as the dorm rooms with a friend.

Winthrop leaned against one of the desks when they returned to their room late that night. “Listen, Matt, can I ask something? Is something wrong? I don’t mean to sound rude or judgmental, but you seemed a bit out of it when you arrived and I saw the way you flinched when the OG was going on about not wanting to hear any complaints about the housing assignments. Do you have a problem with me, or something?”

“No. It’s not you,” Matt told him, flushing with embarrassment that he was apparently such an easy read.

“Then what’s going on? It’s just a couple days. We can make this work for that long, can’t we?”

“Sounds like we have to,” Matt muttered and then frowned when he saw how Winthrop recoiled and realized how it must have sounded. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it. I really don’t have any problem with you. You seem like a nice enough guy, for a roommate.”

Winthrop nodded sagely. “That’s it, isn’t it? You’ve never had a roommate before?”

“Or a room this small,” Matt said glumly. “It’ll be fine for a weekend. Like you said, we can make this work. We have to. But all semester?”

Winthrop laughed, but Matt wasn’t insulted. “You get used to it,” Winthrop assured Matt. “I’ve been in boarding schools since my parents died six years ago. It’s an adjustment, but you figure it out. A good roommate helps. Give this weekend a shot. If it works out, we could request to be roommates in the fall. At least then you’d know what you were getting in to.”