Student story: Roommate wreck

By Taylor Escher

Passing around room keys to fellow Notre Dame de Sion students, senior Anne-Marie Albracht had a nervous frown.

All the room keys but one read 323. Emily DeCoursey, Sion junior, glanced down at her room key with a horrified look.

“No! I’m in a different room!” she whined. Her eyes filled with dread as she contemplated her unknown roommates and tugged on her teal shorts – her “awkward shorts.” Emily immediately texted her mom to tell her about the dilemma.

I want to come home, she pleaded before the Flint Hills Publications Workshop had even started.

Emily’s mom, Joan DeCoursey, texted back: “Patience grasshopper. Are they Kitten worthy?”

Emily sighed at her mother’s suggestion that she could possibly become friends with these new roommates. She dramatically responded that she didn’t know them yet. She wanted to die, she said repeatedly. Joan refused to get her.

After dinner, Emily boarded the elevator, for her room on the third floor. She pouted as she dragged herself down the hallway toward room 307.

There it was. She paused nervously before sliding her key into the slot and opening the door. Her roommates weren’t there. One of the bags was personalized with the name “Grace.”

That night, before the group presentation, Emily called her mom complaining. Over and over again she cried that she was having a conniption fit. She seemed devastated that one of her roommates had white hair. Her mom laughed, amused by her daughter’s predicament, but assured her everything would be fine.

Later that night in the room with every other Sion junior, Emily hid out. She left to change clothes and came back exploding with new information.

“There were like seven people in there, including boys, and I said, ‘Hi, I’m Emily.’ They said, ‘Hi,’ and I ran out,” she said.

Meanwhile, Emily’s roommates were assessing her behavior.

“She was really quiet (at first),” said roommate Grace Burghart.

“The second sentence she said to us was, ‘I’m an awkward person,’” said roommate Lauren Kuthan.

Emily was apprehensive about returning. Her new roommates were in yearbook classes. She was interested in newspaper writing. How could they find common ground?

Another Sion senior, Katherine Love, was outraged the girls were not sleeping in the same room. She devised a mischievous and covert plan to get Emily into the Sion junior room, but Emily refused. She didn’t want to break the rules just to get what she wanted.

Alison Long, the Sion sponsor, found out there were no more cots available for use in hotel rooms. Emily was not the only misplaced roommate.

”I would have cried if I were in her situation. She handled it with dignity and respect,” said Ali Swee, a Sion junior. “I would have whined more.”

Lights out. Emily willingly and slightly more cheerful went back to her room and her roommates. Though she was hesitant about the situation, she put on a brave face and decided to make the best of it.

By Monday morning, there was an obvious change in Emily’s demeanor.

“We’ve done as much bonding as you can do in two days,” Emily said. “I wave at them when I see them now.”

Maybe these new roommates were Kitten worthy after all.

Taylor Escher is a junior at Notre Dame de Sion High School and a student in the advanced writing class at the Flint Hills Publications Workshop.