Third Wheel

I am filling out the pile of paperwork for college, checking all the boxes that will help determine my roommate Freshman year. I realized that the person you live with during this first step into the world could end up a lifelong friend and future bridesmaid.

  My best friend and I desperately wanted to go to college together, but her parents forced her to attend a Christian school with strict curfews, a dress code and an expressed goal of keeping the sexes separated as much as possible. I helped her break every one of those rules, climbing over stone walls at midnight to sneak into the all-male dorm then slipping back to the girl’s side of campus, tip-toeing past the housemother’s room, stifling our drunken giggles. Oh yeah, the campus was also dry, but we were often drenched.

  So, it is very important that I find the right living situation, one that will also provide a fun haven for my bestie when she breaks out of UCLA, which is what we call the University of Campbell between the towns of Lenoir and Angier.

  I check the box that NO I am not a morning person and NO I don’t smoke. YES I am neat. YES I like to shower before bed. I imagine that MAYBE I’ll find a soul sister from the random selection process. But fear kept me awake at night imagining I could end up living with someone who might cut my Jordache into Daisy Dukes, or eat all my Ritz Crackers and Cheese Whiz. What if my roommate stabs me in the night with a number two pencil?

  One sleep-deprived morning, two days before the residence hall paperwork had to be postmarked, I get a call from Stacy, a girl who came to our high school senior year and dated a guy in my friend group. She seemed nice, if a little shy. We’d never had an actual conversation. I stretched the phone cord into the downstairs bathroom seeking privacy from the cacophony of my brother’s HEY JUDE on the piano and my sister’s watching Sesame Street at full volume to drown out Jude.

  There in tiny half bath with its ocean motif and dusty clam-shaped soaps, Stacy said, “I hear you’re going to Carolina. I’m filling out this dorm paperwork and thinking maybe you’d want to be roommates?”

  Bold move. Turns out Stacy was tossing and turning at night too, worried about getting stuck with a crazy person.

  We spent the last month of summer shopping for our dorm room and getting to know each other, and I was feeling good about my choice. I was certain I could pull Stacy out of her shell and get her to go to parties. I imagine Stacy felt  certain she could inspire me to sit at my desk once in a while to actually study. We were percolating with excitement as we plotted all the things we would do together on that beautiful campus.

  When our dorm assignment came, the letter did not say Spencer, our first choice and the oldest women’s dorm on campus. It was not McIver, the stately, columned brick and ivy-covered building. It was not the beautiful Kenan dorm near the library and arboretum. No, it was the co-ed high rise in South Campus with the long hilly walk to class.

  My mother was certain I’d lied about my request for an all-girl’s dorm when I landed in a building filled with BOYS. I hadn’t. I was actually devastated. North campus girls’ dorms were charming and old and looked like Barrett Hall in Love Story. But I was going to college with the intent of finding my own love story. So, the only salvation to being stuck in a modern high-rise was the fact that there would be ten floors half-filled with BOYS.

  South campus dorms also had suites where 8 students shared one bathroom. Well in our case, it was at least 9.

Enter Catherine.

The campus was overcrowded, they said in a letter that came just days before we were set to move in. We’d been assigned a third roommate.

  Catherine was the daughter of a Florida State Senator. She was an exotic out-of-state student with bountiful resources and a thousand-watt smile, and she showed up with a brand-new television still in its box and a trunk full of fancy clothes. Clearly, she wouldn’t need to borrow my Jordache. She had 5 pairs of her own. My effervescence was initially matched and I thought I might have a new friend, but it didn’t take long for the magnet that was Catherine to pull Stacy into her orbit. And I became the third wheel.

  Then came sorority rush. I didn’t want to be a Theta Beta Pi or an Alpha Gamma Phi. I was a GDI – a goddamn independent. Non-Greek pals and I joked about not wanting to buy our friendships, but the truth was I couldn’t have afforded to if I wanted to, and if I was honest with myself, which I wasn’t, I would really have loved to have a group of sisters who chose me, yet I was fearful that I wouldn’t get picked. I’d heard they asked questions during rush like “What does your daddy do?” Doctor, lawyer or State Senator were the answers they wanted, not manager of telephone repairmen.

  It didn’t take long before Catherine hardly talked to me, busy as she was with her new group of friends. When she could invite a plus-one to sorority events, it was always Stacy. I learned about Catherine’s life only by overhearing her long calls home to family and friends at all hours of the day. I was only allowed to call my folks collect after 7pm or on weekends. When I called collect during prime time they rejected the calls.

  The phone bill was in my name, but Catherine was always good about reimbursing me, yet living together became tense. Eventually the third wheel totally came off and I became a unicycle, staying away from my room as much as possible, which was not at all part of my plan to find my lifelong friend and future bridesmaid.

I wasn’t there when Catherine moved out, but I was there when the final phone bill showed up. Catherine’s calls for the last month totaled close to $200. I wrote her a couple times that summer and sent copies of the bill but got no response. I had to work extra hours to cover it and to earn enough to pay the next year’s tuition.

I don’t recall ever seeing Catherine around campus the next three years. I long wondered if I played more of a role in the demise of our relationship than I realized. Maya Angelou once said, “At the end of the day people won't remember what you said or did, they will remember how you made them feel.” I remember feeling hurt and lonely, unseen and irrelevant.

Cut to several years after I moved out to Los Angeles, and Catherine showed up at an Alumni event in Santa Monica. Turns out her new husband was in graduate school out here. I couldn’t believe my eyes. But more than that, I couldn’t believe my ears when she came up to me and said, “I am so sorry for how I treated you in college. I was a total bitch.”

  In the end, I remember what she said, AND that it made me feel good.

As shared at Story Salon September 24, 2025.