Chapter 1

Sean Curry, August 25

My roommate hadn’t gotten in by the time I’d finished moving in, so I ate lunch with Mom and Dad and then ambled back to my dorm. I ended up in the elevator with a kid carrying an armful of sheets.

“Which hall are you in?” he asked me

“3rd North.”

“Oh cool, me too. I’m Gabe, by the way.”

“Sean.”

I followed him out of the elevator and down the hall. His room turned out to be right next to mine. There was a sign with his full name, Gabriel Erlbaum, tacked to the door, next to one for his roommate.

“You know who Jesse Marks is?” I asked.

“No idea. It’s weird; most schools they tell you who your roommate is ahead of time.”

“Yeah, my brother says Camden never finalizes room assignments until really late in the year because of all the interest group housing requests.”

“What are those?”

“Like you can request to live in a dorm with all vegetarians or gay people or something. Basically it’s like a frat for losers.”

“Speaking of frats, you rushing?”

“Yeah, my brother’s a Delta, so I’m probably gonna rush there. I’m actually headed over there now if you want to come with.”

“Sure.” We walked over to the frats and found Delta Tau Chi’s house. The brothers knew Gabe, and invited us to get high with them. We went into the living room and they started passing a bong around. Right before it got to me, I mentioned what dorm we lived in, and one of the brothers burst out laughing.

“Ahh ... shit bro, you guys are in the naked dorm.”

“The what?”

“Hawthorne third is a special interest community for nudists,” Gabe’s brother explained, “You guys are probably going to have to be naked the whole time you’re there.”

“What the fuck? No one told me anything about that.”

“Did you look at the special-interest section on the housing form?”

“I just signed the damn thing.”

“You said all the special interest housing was full of PC-Nazis, so I didn’t bother with it.” Gabe protested.

“Sorry about that, li’l bro. I probably should have told you that you have to check a box that you don’t want to be in special interest housing, or they’ll randomly assign you to either regular dorms or one of the special interest houses that’s not specific to an ethnic group.”

“Yeah, that would have been good to fucking know ahead of time.”

“You might still be able to stop it,” one of the other brothers said, “the way special interest housing works is the RA has a meeting the afternoon of move-in day and they vote on floor rules. The nudist one usually votes that everyone except parents has to be naked at all times while on the floor, but you guys might be able to change it if you hurry back.”

“Shit, we’d better go then.”

“Good luck, man.”

We walked back to our dorm. I was worried, not just because I didn’t want people to see me naked. I’m secretly gay, and being in a dorm with a bunch of naked dudes was going to make it really hard to avoid popping a boner at inopportune moments. When we got there, my roommate had moved in and was setting up a flat screen TV. He was, of course, buck naked.

“Hi, I’m Sean,” I said, looking at the ceiling, “you, uh ... need help moving?”

“Nah, I got everything up already. I’m Mark, nice to meet you.”

“Uh ... yeah.”

Just then I heard a knock on the door. I opened it to find a black girl in flip-flops, and nothing else.

“Hi, I’m Julie, the RA for this floor. We’re starting the floor meeting in 5 minutes, so come on down to the common room when you’re ready.”

I went to the common room and found Gabe. “So what the fuck do we do?” I whispered.

“Just explain we got in here by mistake, and we don’t want to be naked the whole time. It’s the best thing I can think of.”