Room and Board by Miriam Parker

Author:Miriam Parker [Parker, Miriam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2022-08-16T00:00:00+00:00

TWELVE

When she returned to the dorm, nobody was observing the rules—Gillian wondered where Reese was and why she wasn’t controlling the situation. As she walked up the front path, she saw that the lights were blazing and could hear that music was playing via the open windows. It was well into quiet time, but when she went inside, she found Reese sitting in the downstairs lobby looking at her phone, and when she went upstairs, she found girls in the halls, dancing, doors open. Gillian took a deep breath. She walked through the first-floor halls and said, as sternly as she could, “Quiet time warning.” It felt a little overzealous to be imposing order on homecoming night, but rules were rules and certainly there were girls in the dorm who wanted to sleep. She kept a list on her phone of everyone who she issued the warning to. By the time she got to the third floor, word seemed to have gotten out that she was walking the halls, as the doors were all closed, the music was mostly lowered, and the dancing had moved behind closed doors. At least her charges feared her enough to tell their upstairs neighbors that she was coming.

She was concerned about how the night had played out for Bunny, Rainbow, and Julia, so despite the fact that they had closed their door, she knocked on it before heading up to her room on the sixth floor. Rainbow cracked the door open and peeked out. “Hi, Gillian,” she said. She held the door back so Gillian could pass in front of her. Bunny was sitting on the common room couch wearing pajamas, a silky sash, and a homecoming queen crown. Rainbow was mounting Bunny’s plastic scepter above the “fireplace,” which was literally a large poster of a fireplace they had taped to the wall. Julia, still in her handmade gown, was staring at her phone, her mouth wide open.

“So?” Gillian asked. “How was it? Congratulations, Homecoming Queen.”

Bunny smiled and gave a royal wave.

“The twins played a new song,” Julia mumbled. She held up her phone so that Gillian could see her screen.

“Was it good?” Gillian asked.

“Well, three hundred thousand people have already watched my video of it on Instagram,” Julia said.

“It’s, like, tripled in an hour!” Rainbow exclaimed.

“I wonder how it happened,” Bunny said.

“It looks like it got picked up by the feed,” Julia said. “Instagram is recommending it.”

“I bet they’ll be mad,” Bunny said. “That you scooped them.”

“I doubt it,” Julia said. “They’re not very self-promotional.”

“Did they post about it?” Gillian asked.

“I’ll check,” Julia said. They were all quiet as she typed into her phone. “Not yet.”

“You’re the exclusive source of the twins’ content,” Bunny said. “Do you have oodles of new followers? You’re going to be an influencer soon.”

“Do you think they know you posted it?” Rainbow asked tentatively.

“I don’t know,” Julia said. “But a producer from Good Morning America just messaged me to ask permission to use the video on the air. Um, Gillian, we might need your help?”

“You went viral,” Bunny said.

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