I awoke to a blood curdling scream. It was Thursday, and what better way to wake up? It came from the second floor, the bathroom right across from our room. I opened my eyes slowly, Aleah was already up, feet on the floor and throwing on her bathrobe.

“Calm down,” I said sleepily as I rolled over.

“Well something’s wrong out there, come on!” Aleah grabbed my shoulder and shook me. It wasn’t even daylight outside.

“Stop it,” I said tiredly. “Either someone’s dead or DEM played a prank on us. Either way, there isn’t much we can do about it.”

“Get up!” She pushed on my shoulder again, but this time lost her balance and literally fell on top of me.

“Okay, okay, I’m getting up!” I pushed her aside and tossed the covers. I sat up and groggily rubbed my eyes as I slid my feet into the pair of white fluffy house slippers I kept beside my bed. “I am so totally up.”

I followed her out of the room, and then followed the screams to the bathroom where Courtney was standing there, hands level with her head screaming like she’d been shot.

“What’s going on?” I asked her. “Are you okay?"

She continued screaming.

“I know this is weird, because we’re in college, but did you just have your first period or something?” I shouted over her hysterical screams, and then, finally noticed that she was staring very intently at the bathtub. I followed her gaze and then let out a shriek myself as I saw that a nice little gift had been left for us in the tub. Live fish. Yes, live fish, swimming around in our tub. Not even the cute aquarium fish; they were like bluegills, or carp, or whatever. What the hell?

“Is this happening right now?” Aleah said, her face betraying her complete disgust and fear. Fear of fish. Okay, that was a new one.
“Yes,” I sighed. “It’s happening, and I don’t see why ANY of us had to be awake to see this.”

“Aren’t we going to feed them?” Isabella said, pushing through us to peer into the tub.

“I’m sorry…what?” I blinked. “Feed them?”

“They’re cute, and they’re animals, we should feed them!”

I turned to look at her. Was she tired? Drunk? Stupid?

“Don’t feed them,” I snapped as I tried to rub the sleep out of my eyes.

“And give them names!” Lauren said excitedly.

“Don’t feed them, don’t give them names.”

“What do we do? How do we get rid of them?” Aleah was slowly backing away from the tub.

“Oh…my…god…” I said turning to walk out of the bathroom. “We LITERALLY pay Audrey to clean up around here. This is a cleanup job.”
I walked out of the bathroom, pushing through the wall of girls that was forming at the entrance. Across the hall, I grabbed my phone from the floor where it had somehow fallen during the night. Snapping it off the charger I whipped up the messenger app, then changed my mind and went straight for the phone. I hit Audrey’s contact entry and waited for her to pick up. She sounded pissed, as she probably should be at five in the morning, but she actually answered.

“What are you doing?” I asked her. “You sound like you’re wide awake.”

“I’m playing a game,” She said. “You know, like a normal person?”

“Yeah okay, we need you to come to the house and clean up a…mess”

“A mess?” She asked, very clearly distracted.

"Yeah," I said into the phone while leaning against the doorway. "DEM left a bunch of live fish in our bathtub--"

I stopped for a second and peered into the open door to see Isabella knelt down beside the tub.

"Stop feeding the stupid fish, Isabella!" I shouted without even bothering to cover the mouthpiece.

"They're people too! And they're cute!" She whined back.

“Where did you even get fish food?!”

I huffed and turned around, walking back into he room.

“Look, you need to get over here.”

“No can do,” She said. “I only get paid from 3 PM to 5 PM.”

“Audrey!” I snapped.

“Okay, okay, fine,” She said. I suddenly felt a twinge of guilt. She’d only agreed so quickly because this was the only place on campus where she could be herself. Oh well, no time to worry about that.

I walked back into the hallway, the girls were still gathered in the bathroom. I squeezed past them and made my way toward the stairs.
“It’s okay, it’s taken care of,” I said as loudly as I could. No one was listening to me as I clumsily descended the stairs and flipped the living room light on. “Anyone get the mail yesterday?”

No one answered. Stupid fish. I crossed the living room, a little more confident in my step now and pulled the front door open. Sticking my hand in the mailbox I managed to pull out a stack of letters, which I brought into the house and tossed onto the kitchen counter.

“Junk, junk, really junk, bill, junk…” I muttered as I sifted through the thick stack of envelopes. I was about to give up on finding anything interesting when I came across a thicker white envelope addressed to Aleah from Woodcrest University. The address was from the financial aid office, and a red ‘Past Due’ was stamped on the outside of the envelope. What the hell was this?

“Aleah?” I shouted as I walked toward the stairs. I was interrupted by an abrupt knocking on the door. “The hell?”

Audrey was standing at the front door with a huge blue plastic barrel at her side, the kind that they put oil in.

“How…did you get here so fast?” I said, astonished. “And how did you just happen to have a barrel?”

She shrugged.

“Doesn’t everyone have a barrel?”

“No,” I said. “No they don’t.”

I squinted. There was someone behind her. It was her roommate, Mason.

“Mason brought his truck,” Audrey explained, almost apologetically.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “You just happened to know you needed a truck, and a barrel?”

“Yeah,” Mason said. “This happened over at the Tri Pi house last year. We took care of it then too.”

“Oh…my…god,” I said, moving aside so that they could come in. Audrey and Mason grabbed the barrel and walked it up the stairs, slowly and carefully. I sat down on the couch and stared off into space. Lord, I hope no one called her Audrey up there while Mason was around, that would open a whole new can of worms – bigger than the one we were going to deal with tomorrow. Guaranteed. Except, tomorrow wouldn’t even be bad. I knew Chastity pretty well; she was always watching Drag Race and talking about other girls. I allowed myself to stop worrying and rested my head against the couch, dozing off for a moment. The next thing I knew, Mason and Audrey were coming back down the stairs lifting the barrel by a pair of handle on the sides.

“Okay,” Mason said. “We’ll get this out there, then I have to come back in and use the bathroom, alright?”

“Sure, whatever,” I mumbled. They disappeared through the front door. Maybe I could get a few more hours of sleep before class. Probably not. Mason walked back through the door, alone. I’d completely forgotten about him coming back to use the bathroom.

“Oh, hey,” I said. “There’s a bathroom downstairs he—”

“Can it,” He said sternly. I snapped to attention and stared at him. “What’s going on?”

“Sorry?” I said. “What do you mean what’s going on?”

“With my friend, Tiffany,” He said, still staring at me, his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket.

I slowly stood to face him, straightening my white cami as I did to make sure it was pulled over my pajama bottoms. Didn’t want to show any skin this early.

“I really don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. “I just asked her to come over and take care of the fish. She works here.”

“She?” Mason raised an eyebrow.

“Ugh,” I huffed. “Mason it’s five in the morning, you know what I meant.”

“Whatever,” He said. “He’s distracted, he doesn’t want to play games anymore, he spends all his time in the bathroom. When I try to go in there he screams that he’s ‘almost done’ and locks the door. He spends half his free time with people from this house. Oh, and he acts like he’s scared shitless. None of this shit started until he started hanging out here, so what’s going on?”

“I’m sorry, Mason,” I crossed my arms. “I have literally no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You know something,” He said accusingly. “And I’m going to get to the bottom of it.”

Good luck with that, Mason, I thought to myself. He turned to leave.

“Didn’t you need to pee?” I called out after him as he trudged through our living room and toward the door.

“I can hold it,” He called back as he left the house, closing the door behind him.

I turned away from the door and looked at the stairs. Aleah and Isabella where standing there, gripping the railing and staring at me.
“She can’t keep it a secret forever,” I said, exasperated. “And you can’t expect me to lie everytime it comes up.”

“It’s not our secret to tell,” Isabella said softly. “You did good.”

“I’m not looking for your approval,” I snapped. “I’m going to bed. Wait, Aleah, there’s a letter for you.”

I held the letter up for her. Her eyes widened. We were sharing a moment, sort of. That letter meant that Aleah was not only having financial problems, she was behind on her payments. It didn’t bode well, at all. She walked down the stairs and took the letter from my hand. She glared at me for a moment and then walked back up the stairs. Whatever. It wasn’t my problem. I had class in a few hours, and then a date with Captain Affluenza himself.

“Alright,” I said, walking past them as I turned off the light. “I can get a few more hours of sleep.”