On one knee, pink and gray sweats swallowed the girl’s hips at Theo’s eye level. It hung from shoulders that would have been on the second floor a lot of places back on earth. It was topped by a hood the size of a large beanbag chair.

Theo opened his mouth to introduce himself to the hulking mass of cloth when he heard her say, “What do you want, Pee Wee?” Just like that. In that high, girly voice. First thing she said to him.

Theo said, “I’m... the new roommate.” She had turned to see him over her shoulder, and he was getting nervous again. “I live here.”

She looked away, started rummaging again. “Yeah, I don’t think so,” she said. Then she sat on the floor, putting the bag in her lap, continuing to look.  Like the conversation was clearly done.

He reminded himself she was barely older than Gen, and Gen was a “sweetheart”, right?

But that same Gen had left him unconscious the previous night and only an hour ago had terrified three college age men, each over eight feet tall.

This girl was roughly Gen’s height sitting on the floor.

Theo spoke up again.  “You’re Roxanne, right?  You must be Roxanne. I’m Theodore.”

She didn’t look up. She said, “Hello, Theodore. Maybe you should find Alvin and Simon.  The other two Chipmunks.”

Theo said “Wow,” in a whisper. He was thrown off his game.  She wasn’t even hiding a little bit of her contempt here. He didn’t know what to say.  Was she sitting out here just to block him from getting back in?

He thought to walk past her, but her reach would definitely clear the far edge of the door.  One hand would be plenty.  No way he’d get past her, and the situation would likely worsen.

“I don’t understand, I was sure you... Camille acted like... we... can we just get Camille?” Theo could feel his heart rate start to rise. He realized she could probably hear it, and that made it rise some more.

Almost like she reacted to his heart rate, she said “How about you go back to your hollow tree and keep making those fucking cookies?”

What the fuck.  Insulting him on purpose.  For sport. What was he going to do? Insult her back? She was trying to intimidate him, and it was fucking working.  He couldn’t afford to have it work, but it was working.  Theo gritted his teeth, rubbed his head nervously.

She stopped moving again , and Theo found himself stepping back.  She said, “Take off, perv.”

Theo stopped.  He forced himself to step forward. “Perv? It’s my apartment!”

She looked up, locked eyes with Theo. All he could see was her huge brown eyes and black curls hanging out of the hood covering her head. She was wearing a gaiter mask covering everything else.  In the back of his mind he found it puzzling but a question for another time.  She started moving toward him, and Theo freaked out a little. 

She didn’t move far.  She just leaned forward from her seated position inspecting hm. Then she shook her head, silently.  Her eyes looked off to the side like she was trying to figure something out.

“No way,” she said, mostly to herself. “We tried to get a girl from the core since last year but... they couldn’t get past...”

She bit her lip, and looked back up at Theo.  Theo tucked the location implant he was looking over under his arm, and reached in his pocket for his phone. He pulled out his phone, just wanting the simple resolution. He said, “I’m going to call Camille.”

Faster than he knew what happened, her huge sprawling fingers had locked around both fists with the phone smashed between them.  His knees buckled as she leaned over him, glaring down at him. There was something wild in those eyes. Anger, betrayal, and a clear confidence that she was in control.

No argument on that point from Theo.

“It’s a phone!” Theo stammered, thinking by reflex, maybe she thought it was a gun. He felt his knees buckling from the torque in her wrist putting him off balance. His whole world was her fist in that moment, as she lifted it up higher, pulling him up to his tiptoes. He was trying to stay in touch with the floor, like some deep misguided instinct telling him that if his feet could touch the floor, he was still in control.

Talk about living up to her reputation.

Then she lifted.  He rocketed away from the floor, then stopped. Theo’s momentum carried him up several feet even after she stopped pulling him upward. Gravity caught him, pulled it back down.  Now he was swinging back and forth helplessly, his feet kicking in the air.

Time seemed to freeze. She was regarding him calmly, the mass of sweatshirt  seemingly everywhere. The fist with his hands and his phone was only level with her nose. Theo looked down just to confirm... yep, she was still on her knees. Her hand wasn’t shaking from the effort, either. If anything, Theo got a sense he was almost imperceptibly rising and falling... because she was simply breathing.

This was way past his experience with Camille. Camille could toss him around like her muscle memory was doing it on its own. To this girl, this seventeen year old girl, he was nothing. She was so strong, he was like a figment of her imagination.

She was looking at him like she was deciding something. Whatever happened, Theo knew he could not do one damn thing to stop her. He was trying to release the phone, to push it out of his hands. She wasn’t hurting him, but her grip was tight enough that his muscles were barely working.

Roxanne squeezed her eyes shut, and blew out a deep breath.  Theo felt his thick hair move in the breeze.

“I’ll go,”’Theo said. “I’ll go, I’ll leave, okay?”He was looking up to her face. He finally managed to push the phone through his fingers with his thumb. It fell past Theos eyes, and he followed it down to see her free hand catch it down beyond his toes.

She abruptly placed him on the floor, half-dropping and half-shoving him. Theo stumbled backwards.

She was staring into the center of her palm.  It’s where the phone was, but Theo couldn’t see it from below. He was going to have to give her the code. That was totally against his principles, but he knew he would give in when she asked him for it. 

Roxanne dropped her huge palm low, opening it for Theo to take the phone back. Theo relaxed for a microsecond before taking the phone.  Then he started thinking about what was next.  Where could he stay?

 Theo backed up and was about to turn to go.  She stopped him. “Nope. Stop right there. We’re not done, are we?”

Roxanne shifted her weight over him and started to rise. And rise. Past Camille’s height, past Diane’s. Up.  Up. It felt like she finished standing, then somehow stretched up for another two feet. Theo’s heart was dropping with every completely excessive inch.

Her head stopped just past the edge of the insanely high door frame. She pulled off the hood, and curly black locks longer than Theo was tall tumbled out. She stared down icily at him from that enormous height.

Some dam of cool composure burst open at that point with Theo, and he yelled loudly toward the door, his voice cracking a little.  “Camille!?  Little help out here?” Looking straight up to see this woman’s face for context clues as to his safety was making him light-headed. His fight-or-flight response was kicking in.

Fight-or-flight. Right. Nothing that could happen here fit any available definition of a “fight.”

 Roxanne put the palm of her hand calmly down toward him in the universal sign for “pipe down” and Theo shut up. She sighed, pulling at her sweatshirt hanging around her hips.

“I shouldn’t have grabbed you.,” she muttered, like she was saying it to herself.  “Gen’s coming to the door,” she said more clearly. So you...” she paused and laughed a chillingly unhumorous laugh to herself, “...really better be confident with what I hear next.”

Oh man, that sounded bad. Suddenly,  Theo wasn’t confident. What if he was in the wrong hall? He was first floor, right? What was the room number again? He looked up, and she was still staring him down.

Oh, Lord.