Eliza stood and examined her apartment door with the eye of a kid at Dave and Busters studying their new mood ring and trying to guess what “green-yellow” meant. Angry perhaps? Nervous? Really fucking stupidly gay for your roommate? She didn't know.

They had a plain brown door with the golden letters “207” bulky and shiny across the front of it. Faceless and a little cheap.

Eliza racked her brain. It was Sunday around 3pm after her morning shift at the museum and she had promised Mickey they would study together at home. Which was all fine and good-- it sounded pretty great actually. However, Eliza couldn’t for the life of her remember what Mickey's degree was.

Eliza sifted through her memories. She had seen psychology textbooks around the apartment-- was Mickey a psychology major? That didn’t seem to be right. Mickey had told Eliza her major at their first roommate interview, but Eliza apparently had thrown that information away into the recycling bin of her brain.

She squeezed her eyes shut and clenched her fists. She felt like a jackass. Did she always have to be so bad at people?

She shook her head and felt a buzz in her pocket. It was time. She reached for the doorknob as her phone’s timer went off. Eliza imagined she was a paper doll again. Easy, maneuverable, empty. Someone unworried about embarrassing herself in front of her crush.

She entered and tried to keep herself blank and distant even from herself.

Mickey was sitting cross-legged on their couch with papers spread out before her. She gave Eliza a tired smile when she walked in the door. “There you are,” she said, but it was softer than usual. “Good day at work?”

She shrugged, “Good as any.” She tried to match Mickey’s smile. A paper doll could mimic other humans if it wanted to. It wasn't nervous at all to spend time with her. “Better than next weekend. We’re hosting another wedding reception and I swear to God if I find cocaine in the bathroom again--”

Mickey let out a bark of a laugh, “Oh you have to tell me that story.”

Eliza shook her head, “I will. But let me change out these clothes and we can get set-up.” She lifted her chin. “Not to brag or anything, but my color-coding system is better than any high that Best Man got from snorting off our counters in the men’s room.”

Mickey gave a weak chuckle, but her face fell at the same time. “Oh.” She shifted in place, “you remembered.”

“Of course.” Eliza reached for the hair tie on her wrist. “I’ll be right back.” She quickly departed to change and let Mickey sort herself out. Eliza couldn’t really fathom what made Mickey hesitate so much, but Eliza figured she could face anything in a pair of her favorite sweatpants and soft grey t-shirt.

She came back out and Mickey was fidgeting and shuffling her notes around, “alright, so my notes for this class have like, a couple holes in them.” She said liquid-quick, “But I had someone send me a study guide so I’m not going in totally blind this time.”

Eliza brought her own backpack and pencils with her to sit down at the coffee table. “Right.” She looked over the scrawled and messy notes. “What class is this for again?”

Mickey’s notes didn’t seem to use any bullet-point system or headings. It made Eliza’s skin crawl just to imagine weeding through all of it.

Mickey hung her head, “upper division child psychology.” She mumbled, “the worst part is that I actually like this class. I like this teacher!” She pulled at her hair. "Ugh." Was Mickey a psychology major? Eliza still didn’t know.

"Well,” she sat up straight, “let’s go over the study guide together and then make some flash cards. When is the make-up midterm?”

Mickey was chewing her bottom lip. “Tuesday. One more day.”

Eliza drew in a deep breath and got out her materials, “then let’s get cracking!” She smiled warmly, but Mickey didn’t return the look. She pulled on her hair again and seemed even more nervous than Eliza got before big exams. Though, nervous didn’t seem to be the right word.

It was more… hectic and scattered.

Eliza reviewed the two-page study guide and started writing out the questions neatly on each flash card. Mickey pointed out ones she struggled with the most now and then, but mostly looked off into space and muttered to herself.

She seemed to read and then reread her notes in bouts and sometimes scratched out sentences and wrote things over them. Eliza wanted to tell her to stop and that it was better to rewrite notes altogether rather than cross out anything, but also didn’t want to step on Mickey’s toes.

It was like pulling teeth to get answers to each study guide question though. Mickey would open her textbook to find definitions and then keep flipping back and forth, “that doesn’t seem right,” she would say with her brow indented, “wait, I think it’s part of a different chapter.”

When she did finally find the answer she would purse her lips, stare at it, and then either read the whole page to Eliza or go off on tangents about each one. She would explain the connection between the hippocampus and cortex and then random examples of delayed development because of diet or conditioning or something else. She would also trail off in the middle of explanations and then go back to the same material and repeat it minutes later.

Eliza just wanted to say “summarize the concept in two sentences,” but also didn’t want to disrupt Mickey’s process. Everyone studied in different ways.

It was night time by the time they had almost 30 flashcards that would usually take Eliza herself an hour to make. She warned you, Eliza reminded herself, she wasn’t lying when she said this sort of thing was hard for her.

Eliza tried to ignore the fact that Mickey also seemed to be growing increasingly agitated. She kept flashing Eliza menacing looks and gnashing her teeth. Eliza ignored it to the best of her ability and neatly printed out concept summaries and answers until they were done.

“There,” she folded all thirty of the flashcards together and smiled. “Why don’t we order some pizza and take a break before we start reviewing?”

“Ugh,” Mickey covered her face and fell back over on the couch. “What’s the point?” She kicked her feet in the air, “I’m just gonna be a camgirl for the rest of my life. Do you think men will still pay money for saggy wrinkled tits?”

Eliza flinched and didn’t offer an “I would! If they’re yours!” She didn’t think that would help anything.

“Tits are tits, my friend,” She mumbled and got her phone open, “What kind of pizza do you like? I was thinking just pepperoni.” She tried to catch her eye, but Mickey was glaring at the ceiling. Eliza tensed, “You’ll feel better once you’ve eaten.” She whispered.

Mickey flashed her a hard look, “stop it.” She jerked upright, “stop pretending you’re okay with everything! I’ve seen you sigh at least five times tonight.”

“Um,” Eliza spluttered. “Let’s get pizza and--”

“Oh my God!” Mickey threw her hands up, “give it a rest. You want the circus? Here’s the fucking circus!” She pointed at herself, “you don’t have to pretend everything’s alright or that we’re having fun, Jesus. Go sigh in your room.”

Eliza winced, “I don’t want… I don’t like…” Eliza felt herself fading inward and disappearing into the nooks and crannies of herself. Mickey looked fierce and barbed and she wasn’t entirely wrong. Eliza had been sighing.

She didn’t like confrontation though and her tongue retreated into her mouth.

“Sorry,” Mickey grumbled and she looked away, “I just… I hate when people pity me.”

“I’m not pitying you…” Eliza stood up robotically. “I’m gonna go… order a pepperoni.” She hated herself a little bit as she ran away. She wasn’t good at taking the brunt of other peoples rage and the guilt was a tangible taste on her tongue. Had she been pitying Mickey?

She didn’t know. She ordered the food and then sank onto her bed with the lights off. She didn’t know why she felt like crying. She was about to go out and tell Mickey… something when a knock came at her door.

“I’m sorry, Eliza,” Mickey called with rust in her vowels, “I know you’re just trying to help me and I… snapped at you. I'm really sorry. Please come back out.”

Eliza took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She did want to help.

She jerked her head up and went to the door. “Okay.” She opened the door a crack and Mickey was standing there looking sheepish and defeated. Her eyes were tinged with red.

“I feel like a jerk.” She mumbled. “I was a jerk.”

Eliza sniffed and stepped out, “I want to help. We can try something different this time.”

Mickey barely looked up. “No.” She said simply, “I want us to be, um, good roommates. I want to be a good roommate to you. And, like I said, it doesn’t matter. None of it matters. I probably won’t graduate.” Misery, thick and dank, dripped off of her as Mickey hung her head.

Eliza’s eyes softened and stepped back out, “you know what my therapist has me do when I get down on myself?”

“I’m not being down on myself.” Mickey stubbornly crossed her arms. “I’m being realistic.”

Eliza went back into the living room. “She has me remind myself of everything I’ve accomplished so far. You got into college, yeah? And made it to senior year. And you run your own business!” And you’re super hot and funny and I still like you a lot.

Eliza saved those last thoughts for later if she needed to break out the big guns and also a love confession. “And I mean, it all wasn’t easy, was it?”

“Yeah.” Mickey relented thickly and followed her. “It wasn’t easy.”

“Why don’t you tell me why you want to get this degree?” Eliza offered. “Like, why you want to pass this class. Sometimes it helps to remind myself why I want to stay motivated.”

Mickey looked at her feet, “Will that actually help?” She tugged on some loose hair. “I don’t want to… scare you off.”

Eliza puffed out her chest. “Me? Scared?” She flexed an arm, “you might be stronger than me but I can always sit on you if I have to.”

Some color returned to Mickey’s face. She grinned, “Sit on me? You promise?”

Eliza stood up straight with a tingle up her spine. Had she just heard what she thought she heard in Mickey’s tone? She might’ve imagined it.

“Okay, so I wasn’t gonna go to college.” Mickey sat down again, “hell, I almost didn’t graduate high school.” She said soberly and went to the couch. She patted the place next to her, “if you want the 411 on me at least.”

“I do.” Eliza slunk over to sit. “I mean, what else don’t I know about my roommate?”

“Well you know that I take my clothes off for money,” she said and some confidence had returned to Mickey that made Eliza blush. “But I actually have my reasons.”

Eliza snorted, “and here I do it for free like a fool.”

“You take your clothes off for people?” Mickey raised an eyebrow and Eliza knew she was teasing her.

“If you consider the evil spirit trapped in my mirror a person. Sure.” She said and folded her legs up onto the cushion. “But I am interested in the degree you chose.” She drew a deep breath, “since I sorta, um, don’t remember?”

Mickey didn’t explode or lash out at her for admitting she forgot, she just leaned back. “So I was a literal terror to teach in school,” she started, “like, I’m sure the teachers who knew me wrote notes to the next year to warn them about my arrival. You know, like how you warn people about hauntings or monsters in the attic. It’s coming! It’s coming! Hide your best chalk.”

“I’m sure you weren’t too bad,” Eliza said softly. “You were just a kid.”

“Kids can be little shits,” Mickey said fervently, “I mean, trust me, we have this whole rose-colored glasses thing about how sweet or innocent they are, but they’re just people and some of them, say me, knew they could get away with a lot of hell.”

Eliza chuckled, “God, I wish I knew that as a kid.” She met Eliza’s gaze, “I was so terrified about disappointing my teachers I would practice saying ‘here’ in my head before roll-call.”

She expected Mickey to tease her or laugh as well, but she just tilted her head to the side, “I’m sorry.” She said softly and reached for her, “I’m sure you didn’t need that kind of pressure.”

Eliza blushed slightly. “It’s fine. I got ahead in most of my classes by the second week. Teachers loved me,” she looked at her lap, “there’s worse things in life than being loved.”

Mickey studied her for a moment longer before deciding to continue, “I’m sure I’d love to have you as a student.” Mickey gently patted her knee, “But most of my teachers didn’t look forward to me being there. They just attempted damage control.” She looked at her lap, “but there were a couple that gave a shit.”

Eliza leaned forward, “the good ones?”

“Eh, good, maybe,” Mickey hummed, “Mostly just the tough bastards. Like Mrs. Butler, she was the first one. She was this old bag with forty years of experience and bad eyesight and we went nuts over her name since it had ‘butt’ in it. When I got to her I was in the third grade and reading at a first grade level.” Mickey paused there thoughtfully.

“Mm?” Eliza prompted after a moment.

Mickey drew a deep breath, “She was the special ed teacher. I... obviously had the whole crayon-box full of issues, dyslexia, ADD, some sort of mood thing.” She said without any inflection or emotion. “Most of the special ed teachers gave me the easiest packets to do and then only sighed and asked me to try again when I didn’t finish. Mrs. Butler wasn’t like that.”

“Nicer?” Eliza smiled fondly.

“Absolutely not,” Mickey gave her barking laugh and it was good to hear. “She was a hardass and, most days, my ultimate enemy. The other teachers could care less if I got anything done. But Mrs. Butler looked me in the eye and said ‘I know you can do better.” Mickey took a deep shaking breath, full of something wet and tense that Eliza couldn’t name. “No one else told me that. No one else saw me and thought I could be anything better than a screw-up.”

“You can,” Eliza said quickly and breathlessly.

“I know,” Mickey smirked at her, “my confidence isn’t that low. I got this far, didn’t I?” Eliza was not going to point out that Mickey had been on the verge of declaring defeat only thirty minutes ago. “Have you ever been really seen?” Mickey asked and her eyelashes fanned out large and dark around her deep blue eyes, “Like, really really seen?”

Eliza held her breath. “I’m not sure.” She said honestly.

“Mrs. Butler… was an ass, but she was honest and determined. She never gave up on me. She treated me like I was just as capable as the other kids,” Mickey’s eyes were swimming now, “it didn’t matter if I was slower or had to do things differently. She saw me and said ‘I know you can do better.’ And I could. I did.” Mickey wiped at her face, “And that’s why I went back to school, you know? So I could help some other little wretches. So I could be their Mrs. Butler and tell them that other people might give up on them but I won’t.”

Eliza rubbed her back as large fat tears rolled down Mickey's cheeks. "You're gonna be a great teacher."

Mickey took Eliza's hand and hid her face, "you think?"

Eliza squeezed her hand, "I know it."