My senior year at high school, I knew I had to go to Barnard. Like falling in love, or an obsessive crush I doodled the name on notebooks, tracked down friends of friends who had gone to Barnard and might in some way, possibly, be able to “introduce me” or “put in a good word” with the admissions office. Not surprisingly, given the time I spent talking (instead of studying) with my two best friends about the things that really interested us: like our lives and ourselves, I was only wait-listed.

I went to Sarah Lawrence, where there was no required math or French, re-applied to Barnard and was accepted as a transfer student. I heard the news that summer, while I was answering phones at my internship for Interview Magazine.

Maybe, because I was a transfer, or because I was admitted late, I was given a room with another transfer student on 110th street in a building called the College residence hall. Later, I found out it was known as the college roach motel.

The room was down a dark hallway, lit with buzzing lights and from the closed doors came the sound of radios and voices. An old woman always stood by the railing of the stairs in her nightgown and slippers, a cigarette in her hand. There was one other student on my floor, a senior, a studious girl who seemed to be always heating rice and black beans on her hot plate.

The keys to my room had been left for me at the desk downstairs, by the resident advisor who I had met just once, at the new student orientation. When I opened the door of the room, I entered a large sunny room with two single beds, two windows looking south, a pullman kitchen and its own private bathroom. There was matted down, sticky in barefeet, red wine colored wall to wall carpeting covering the entire studio. I looked out the window, I looked in the kitchen. I knew I would have this room to myself, I had spoken to the girl who was supposed to be my room-mate on the telephone and she told me that she was living with her boyfriend. I felt immediately lonely in the strange building with the music playing behind doors, the old lady in the hallway, the serious student across the hall and I turned and left, walking uptown past the new students on Broadway in the still warm end of summer air.

At the housing office I posted a note for a room swap on the board and left walking back down Broadway, past the students, who seemed to have already made friends with other students. That’s what I wanted: to be in a dorm full of girls, to make friends, to stay up late talking in the hallways or rooms.

When I got back to my room the telephone rang. A girl on the other end said, “Is this Galaxy?”

“Yes.”

“Hi. I’m Rebecca, I got your name in the housing office.”

We planned to meet, and said goodbye.

Rebecca had long wavy brown hair, she was thin and sun-tanned after spending the summer with her boyfriend in Italy. She wore espadrilles and a large plastic flower in her ponytail. Her boyfriend’s name was Marco, she said. “I really like him,” she smiled and giggled. Marco was ten years older, a mechanic and still lived with his mother.

“This room is great,” Rebecca said, looking around the sunny room.

“You can have it,” I told her. I had decided to live downtown in my friend’s apartment.

“Here,” I handed her the keys. “If the resident advisor says anything just pretend you’re me.”

She looked at me slightly surprised.

“Okay,” she said, laughing and I laughed too.

I said goodbye, waving from the dark hallway and walked down the stairs out into the bright sunlight on Broadway. I didn’t know this then, but I had just met my best friend.