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152 pages

English

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A hilarious and vulnerable coming-of-age story about the thrilling new experience--and missteps--of a girl's freshman year of college Some students enter their freshman year of college knowing exactly what they want to do with their lives. Elliot McHugh is not one of those people. But picking a major is the last thing on Elliot's mind when she's too busy experiencing all that college has to offer--from dancing all night at off-campus parties, to testing her RA Rose's patience, to making new friends, to having the best sex one can have on a twin-sized dorm room bed. But she may not be ready for the fallout when reality hits. When the sex she's having isn't that great. When finals creep up and smack her right in the face. Or when her roommate's boyfriend turns out to be the biggest a-hole. Elliot may make epic mistakes, but if she's honest with herself (and with you, dear reader), she may just find the person she wants to be. And maybe even fall in love in the process . . . Well, maybe.

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Publié par	ABRAMS BOOKS
Date de parution	03 août 2021
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781647000585
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0777€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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PUBLISHER S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for and may be obtained from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-1-4197-4813-4 eISBN 978-1-64700-058-5
Text copyright 2021 Margot Wood
Book design by Hana Anouk Nakamura
Published in 2021 by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.
Amulet Books are available at special discounts when purchased in quantity for premiums and promotions as well as fundraising or educational use. Special editions can also be created to specification. For details, contact specialsales@abramsbooks.com or the address below.
Amulet Books is a registered trademark of Harry N. Abrams, Inc.
ABRAMS The Art of Books 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007 abramsbooks.com
Dedicated to all my mistakes. I wouldn t be here without you!
CHAPTER 1
Elliot McHugh, beautiful, charming, and upper middle class, with a mediocre wardrobe and a hyperactive disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and she had lived nearly nineteen years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let s back that shit up right here. It s super weird to be talking about myself in the third person, isn t it? It makes me sound like I m some sort of omnipotent narrator of my own life, which is partially true, because technically this is my book, but I don t think I could write this whole thing from a third-person POV. Don t get me wrong, I m vain but I m not third-person-narrating-my-own-life vain. Here s how this is gonna go. I m gonna tell you a story-probably a semi-unflattering one-and most of it will take place up here. 1 So, let s just go ahead and start this thing all over, shall we?
1 But sometimes I ll be down here. What can I say? I m a girl with a healthy footnote fetish.
CHAPTER 1
Hey, hi, hello there. My name is Elliot McHugh, I m eighteen years old and hail from Cincinnati; I m a Leo, a (mostly) chaotic-good extrovert, a freshman at Emerson College in Boston, and I have no idea what the hell I am doing right now.
You know those epic battle scenes in fantasy movies when hundreds of dudes are fighting and it s total chaos and the young, inexperienced main dude is in the middle of it all, looking like he s about to shit his pants because he s just trying to figure out what the hell is going on while also, you know, not getting killed? That s a lot like what the first day of college feels like. I mean, that s what I think it feels like. I obviously have no experience fighting in fantasy battles, but the terrified look on those characters faces is roughly the same as the one I am currently sporting, so I can only imagine that my current emotions parallel theirs.
Here I am, in the bright, marbled lobby of my new dorm, the Little Building, nestled on a pile of black trash bags filled with my crap while I wait for my dad to park the car and help me move in. The lobby right now is eerily similar to an airport on Christmas Eve when a snowstorm has just canceled all the flights. Stressed-out parents are arguing with purple shirt-wearing, moving-day volunteers over who gets to have the next empty moving bin; visibly nervous students run in all directions, towing swollen suitcases with wobbly wheels behind them as they try to avoid tripping over loose Bed Bath Beyond bags; and small siblings loiter in everyone s way as they scan the crowds for the families they ve been separated from.
It s hard to tell if everyone knows what they re doing or if they re just pretending to know and they re actually just as confused as I am. There s a girl five feet to my right, sitting alone on top of a red duffel bag, crying. I would go to her but I don t think I m qualified to console anyone as I am dangerously close to crying myself and that s not a thing I do very often. 1 I am two seconds away from asking a purple shirt to help me when my dad finally strolls into the lobby. He slips out of the way of a luggage cart and casually leaps over a row of suitcases.
What took you so long? I ask as I struggle to stand from my trash pile. He extends a hand and pulls me up, and I notice this goofy, triumphant grin on his face-a look I am, unfortunately, very familiar with. Seriously? I deadpan. You ve been playing Ping-Pong all this time?
His grin widens as he starts gesturing wildly with his hands. They have a brand-new table in the dorm down the street, I think it s called Piano Row? Have you been there yet? Anyways, I was walking by and saw a table in the lobby and no one was using it so I got this other dad to play and I totally smoked his ass. It was great. I honestly do not know how my dad got through college, let alone medical school, because he is the most ADHD adult I have ever met. He s more easily distracted than I am. Under normal circumstances, having the Fun Dad is pretty fucking great, but moving into my first dorm room is not a normal circumstance. He looks at my bags on the floor and the frenzy around us and says, So is this where you ll be sleeping or do you have an actual room in this building? He bounces on the balls of his feet, itchy to do something .
I m on the third floor, room 311, I tell him, and I wonder how we ll get there. For a brief moment, I think about snagging one of the big luggage carts, but considering I saw two adults nearly come to blows over one five minutes ago and the line for the elevator is nine miles long, I think it s best to do this by hand. If you want to stay here and guard my shit, I can do this in about four trips, I say, kicking one of my lumpy garbage bags.
What are you talking about? We can do this in one trip, he says confidently.
I narrow my eyes at him. There is no way we ll be able to carry all these- I start to say but the words die on my tongue as I watch my dad squat down and easily lift three bags and sling them over his shoulder.
Will you be able to manage? he teases, watching me mimic his squatting technique beside the remaining bag.
Yes, I scoff. Of course I can.
First one up the stairs wins! he shouts and then takes off ahead of me.
I try to lift the last garbage bag but it s heavy as balls, so I drag it behind me as I follow him up to the stairwell, the bag knocking against my heels with every step. It takes me a week to climb two flights of stairs because a) I m out of shape and b) my bag ripped open somewhere along the way, leaving a trail of thongs and socks in my wake, but eventually I reach the top and step out onto the third floor-my new home.
Annnnnd, holy shit my new home is LOUD. The halls are clotted with a menagerie of families either hugging, crying, or fighting over the proper way to build IKEA LACK tables. There are empty cardboard boxes, open suitcases, and half-built furniture scattered everywhere. A person wearing a vampire cape sits in the middle of the hall playing on a Nintendo Switch. The soundtrack to Hamilton blasts out of one room and Black Sabbath booms out another, a roll of toilet paper whizzes by my head, and someone in a Scream mask sprints down the hall in one direction while a girl vlogging on her phone with a selfie stick passes by us going in the other direction.
Dad and I pick our way through the gauntlet until we find my room, #311, all the way at the other end. Dad walks right in, the weighted door closing behind him, but I don t follow, not yet. This feels like a Pivotal Life Moment -a rare and particular subtype of moment that seems more significant than other, regular moments-and I have two choices here, so let s make this an interactive reading experience, shall we?
THE ELLIOT MCHUGH INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCE!

OPTION A: Should I embrace this Pivotal Life Moment , stare at my reflection in the shiny metal door handle, and do the Disney princess thing where time slows down, music swells, and I ruminate on the fact that once I walk through this door, I leave my past behind and step into my future?
OPTION B: Or should I just open the damn door already and walk through?
If you selected option A, please proceed to the next footnote. 2 If you selected option B, please proceed to the next sentence.
For most things in life, I like to set the bar real low, that way I am never disappointed-it s my patent-pending method of living and it works in nearly every situation, including this one.
This room is, essentially, a ten-by-fourteen-foot box of blah. I am very glad I did not succumb to the expectations of what a college dorm room should look like based on what Hollywood (and the Emerson catalog) have tried to sell me, because otherwise this big reveal would have been a major bummer. Everything is painted this bright, kinda yellowish, kinda off-white color: the walls, the floor, the ceiling. It s a fluorescent-lit beige shoebox and the monotony of it is only interrupted by one window facing a brick wall four feet away, a collection of unnaturally shiny wood furniture, and two twin bed frames with blue vinyl mattresses bunked in the corner. It s quaint, in an insane asylum kind of way.
The first thing I do upon entering my room is climb inside the ugly wooden wardrobe and close the mirrored door behind me. It smells like mothballs and wet feet but that s beside the point, which is if it s big enough to hold me, it s big enough to hold all my shit and I won t have to make a last-minute online purchase for more storage. I know I was supposed to spend the summer planning for this day, but, well, I kinda put it off and since my mom was in charge of moving m