Arin was so absorbed in her game, she hadn’t heard her roommate walk in with a tall, muscular hunk-of-sophomore-man hanging off of her arm.

“What?” she asked as she whipped her headphones from her head. She ran her fingers through her pixie-hair to fluff it back out. 

“This is Joel Janson.” Roommate pointed the top of her pale blonde head at the six-foot-tall-walking-magazine-cover.

Arin was not impressed. “Cool. So?” she shot back, still clicking around on her keyboard, refusing to die in-game. 

“His laptop is broken, and I told him you were really good with that techno-nerd-stuff.” 

“I’m not an IT consultant,” Arin replied while smacking her finger repeatedly against her mouse, shooting down an enemy. 

Roommate let go of her new toy, walked up to Arin, and leaned in close. “He’s leaving for break tomorrow, and this was the only way I could get him here You owe me for the vacuum.” She was referring to the time that her new vacuum somehow ended up being partially exploded days after she received it as a birthday gift from her mother.

“I told you, that wasn’t my fault.”  It was her fault, but Roommate had no proof.

“I have money,” Joel Janson said. That grabbed Arin’s attention away from her screen long enough for her to be shot and killed. 

“All right, fine. What’s wrong with it?” 

Joel Janson pulled a sleek, metal laptop out from his backpack and handed it to Arin. “No idea. I lent it to my grandfather to use to teach one of his lectures here. It stopped working at the end of the lesson and hasn’t come back on since.”

Arin felt a small tingle down her spine; she knew what was wrong with the laptop. “Oh—uh, right. That happens sometimes. Do you have the charger?” 

“Yeah,” Joel Janson dug around in his bag some more while Roommate stared at his pretty face. Arin flipped open the laptop and placed her hand on the corner, closing her eyes, and focusing until the screen lit up.

“Look at that. All fixed.”

Joel Janson had one end of the charger cable in his mouth while he was untangling it from twelve other cords in a knot. “What? How?”

“Secret uh… button combo. Auto-restart function…Q, Shift, Control, F5, L, Command—uh… 12… You know what, don't worry about it. It’ll be just fine now. Here.” She held the computer out for him to take back. 

“Thank you!” he cheered with his big, white, pearly teeth. “Take this.” He held out a ten-dollar bill. 

“I shouldn’t,” Arin said, practically drooling over the beautiful, non-taxable income.

“Please, take it. I’ve been messing with that thing for days with no luck. You’ve got a real talent, and you should get paid to utilize it.” 

She did have “a talent.” That was truer than he knew. But she still felt a little bad taking money from a guy whose problem she had caused. She also really needed the money. The money was in her hand before her brain gave her skewed moral compass the high ground.

“It’s really cool that you help people.” The guy kept smiling at Arin. His attractive face got creepier the longer that bright smile lingered there. 

“Uh, thanks.” 

Roommate got right up in Arin’s face and whispered, “He’s really cute, isn’t he?” Arin was sure Joel Janson could hear.

“Is he? I hadn’t noticed,” Arin lied. She noticed, she just didn’t care. 

 “He seems to have noticed you, and that’s not what I brought him here for,” Roommate grumbled. Arin gazed back over at Joel-smiley-Janson and rolled her eyes. 

“Whatever. I’m hungry anyway,” Arin shot up from her desk. She walked to the mini-fridge and pulled out a microwavable burrito in a toxic-green and purple-striped plastic wrapper. Written on it were a few words in big, bold letters:

Arin went to leave the room but not before turning around and saying, “Bye Joel,” with a whisper in her voice, a tiny under-chin wave, and a wink. It was worth it to see Roommate’s face glow bright red before Arin disappeared into the hallway towards the dorm’s shared kitchen.

The kitchen was a total warzone. Cheese was melted to the ceiling, soda was spilled on the stove top burners, and some kind of icky, green mush was smeared across the entire countertop, which, if you looked at it the wrong way, kind of looked like it was looking back at you. 

Arin ignored all the mess and walked to the oven, which she kicked open with her foot to avoid the mass of bacteria and other interesting fluids that might have been resting on the handle. Inside the oven was a huge, half melted, totally stolen lawn gnome sitting directly on the rack, dripping burning plastic.

“Yeah. That seems right.” Arin shut the oven door.