Chapter Text
It doesn’t hit Link right away.
Not when he’s packing up his bedroom. Not when he’s putting his boxes in the trunk of his mom’s car. Not when they’re unloading his things into his new dorm room. Not even when his mom is driving away and he forces himself not to cry.
Well, maybe a little bit then.
But it really hits him later, when he’s alone in his dorm room with the stark white walls and the uncomfortable twin bed and the silence.
This is his life now.
He feels like he’s in a hotel room. Not at home. Not his home.
These are just temporary accommodations – and he can’t possibly be staying here all year, can he? Not in this tiny shoe box of a room, with a communal bathroom he has to share with a bunch of strangers. And who will he talk to at the end of his day? Who will wash his clothes and tell him goodnight? Who will wake him up with pancakes and bacon on Saturday mornings?
He isn’t a child, but he still wants those things.
He misses his mom and he misses home, and when he goes to the cafeteria that night and eats a bland dinner with gross mushy vegetables and meat he can’t identify, he misses the pizza bagels in the freezer at home. Sure, he never figured out how to cook them quite right and the cheese and sauce coagulate if he leaves them too long, and the crust goes stiff as a board, but he’d give anything to be sitting in the kitchen at home eating some right now. Even if he was alone, waiting for his mom to get home from work, at least he’d know she’d be there at some point.
But now he’s alone in a weird place with weird food, and his mom isn’t here to talk to, and he doesn’t have any friends here, and how in the hell is he going to stay here all year?
He hates that he hates it already. He shouldn’t be homesick. He’s a grown man now.
But he just wants to go home.
He thumbs through the pamphlets he’d grabbed from the main building when they’d arrived. The school one, the faculty one, and when he reaches the one for his residence building, with a bunch of happy, smiling strangers on the front, pretending to have a great time hanging out in a drab dorm room, Link pauses.
There’s writing on it – his mom’s. Notes she jotted down when they’d arrived. Meal times, quiet hours, his floor name, and his room number. 84.
He runs his fingers over the pen marks, suddenly wishing he had something else from her. Something nicer than a pamphlet. Something he could keep. Maybe a little note, or a card with a teddy bear and a heart on it, with some cheesy text, like I’ll miss you beary much
But as much as he knows his mom loves him, he also knows she’s not prone to corny displays of affection. She’s very matter of fact, and she’d hugged him in the parking lot, and kissed his cheek, and told him she loved him, and now here he is, holding onto a pamphlet full of scribbled notes because he’s all by himself and it’s something familiar.
He keeps the paper with him when he goes to bed. There’s no one there to see him anyway, and who cares if he misses his mom already. He’s allowed. It’s the first day.
The days have to get better after this, don’t they?
Link holds onto hope that it will all get better.
***
It doesn’t.
After the first few weeks, he’s still homesick.
And his classes aren’t helping. He feels like a fraud, studying something he has no interest in, taking the spot of someone who would have loved to major in that field.
He’s made some acquaintances in a couple of his classes, but that’s it so far. He has no friends outside of class, not even in his dorm, and maybe it’s his own fault – maybe he’s not trying. Maybe he doesn’t want to.
He skipped all the freshman events in the first week that might’ve helped him connect with the other guys on his floor. And after accidentally dropping an entire tray of food during the busy dinner rush – something that gained him a round of applause from the entire cafeteria – he now waits to get his meals just before the cafeteria closes, preferring to eat alone.
In high school he was always a social person, but this isn’t high school. This is something different, and he’s never had to put himself out there to make friends because the people he knew in Buies Creek all grew up together and travelled in the same circles for years.
Link has never had to try before, and he’s not sure he wants to.
If he can just buckle down and focus on school, the year will be over before he knows it and he’ll be back in Buies Creek. Back in his own house, in his own room, in his own bed. Back where his mom is, and where his friends are, and where everything is comforting and familiar.
He has a planner, an actual physical book that they gave all the freshman in their welcome packages, and he’s got the last day of classes circled in red pen.
It’s only September, but he’s anxious for May to hurry up and arrive. Then he’ll have the entire summer at home.
It feels like a long way away.
***
One afternoon, Link skips his last class of the day and heads back to his dorm. He crawls into bed and eats an entire package of Oreos, and usually he’d hate having crumbs in his bed, and he’d run to get the hand vacuum, but he’s in his dorm and there’s no vacuum, and he can’t be bothered caring about crumbs anyway. He just wants cookies and milk and video games and Saturday morning cartoons and he wants his mom there to tell him it’s going to be okay. It’s always been the two of them, depending on each other, but now he’s on his own.
He should be able to do this. Be a man. Take care of himself.
But it’s hard.
He’s got a constant thrum of anxiety running through him, and he hasn’t been sleeping well, and he just wants to go home.
But he’s definitely not going to call his mom and make her worry about him.
Lately, on sleepless nights, after tossing and turning for what feels like forever, Link finds himself on his side in bed with his phone to his face, watching YouTube.
It’s become a habit. He usually turns to SNL reruns and vintage episodes of He-Man, but once, out of desperation, he’d pulled up an old episode of Blues Clues just to hear Steve tell him to be brave, and he nodded off after tearily singing along to the mail song.
“Here’s the mail it never fails..”
Then one night, before he’s had a chance to look up an old favorite, a recommended video catches his eye:
I Make Friends With a Goose *emotional*
The thumbnail is a guy’s face, close up, with a fake tear sliding down his cheek and a goose photoshopped next to him. Usually Link ignores the recommended videos, wanting to stick it to the YouTube algorithm, but this particular video looks silly and stupid – and Link needs something silly and stupid – so he clicks on it.
The guy in the video is probably around Link’s own age, and he’s walking under some trees. He’s talking about the Canada geese that run rampant on campus and how they sometimes chase people, and he says he figures if he befriends one goose, that goose can tell his goose buddies and the geese will stop terrorizing the humans.
The guy’s holding his camera selfie style and narrating as he walks, and as he gets closer to a large number of geese he slips and nearly falls. There’s a few seconds of fumbling and blurriness before the guy catches himself, somehow remaining upright, and he gives an accusatory glare to the camera before panning quickly to a smear of goose crap on the ground.
He eventually takes a seat on a bench and there are several jump cuts as he attempts to get a goose to come closer. He motions to the flock, calls to them, offers them snacks he doesn’t actually have. And finally it cuts to a shot of a goose behind the guy, farther back, just staring. The guy is in the foreground of the shot, saying stupid things to the goose, as if they’re conversing, and the goose looks unimpressed and pissed off.
Finally after a long ramble of words from the guy, asking for peace between the humans and the geese, there’s a pause as the goose just watches with suspicion and then lets out a loud HONK at him, and Link laughs loudly in the quiet of his room.
The guy smiles at the camera as if he’s pleased with himself, and the video ends.
It’s silly and pointless, but also weirdly enjoyable, and Link clicks on the guy’s name – Rhett McLaughlin.
Without scrolling too far he clicks on another video that stands out to him: Urban Exploration Gone Wrong: Trapped in a Tunnel. The thumbnail shows Rhett close-up again, and he’s used a filter to make himself look pale and ghostly. He also looks like he’s been crying.
In the video, Rhett looks to be in a campus tunnel – one that runs underground between buildings. It’s well lit and not at all creepy, but he’s talking like it is, and after wandering for a few minute he finds a mouse eating what appears to be a pop-tart.
Eventually it cuts to Rhett doing a Blair Witch style monologue while looking lost and terrified. A moment later, two students open the maintenance door behind him and walk by, looking at him as they go. Rhett remains quiet, letting them pass, and then he carries on like he’s lost and alone and distraught over it.
It’s incredibly stupid but Link is smiling.
He watches several more, and just after 3am he nods off with another Rhett McLaughlin video playing in the background.
