Stranded in an Empty Hall With My Injured Roommate, I Slipped and Took His Towel With Me novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Form

Noah admits he stayed, cooks the first real meal of the week in the empty kitchen and finally talks to his roommate, then finds Damian's request to move out of their room on the warden's desk.

Noah lay there and couldn't think of a single lie.

"Noah?"

"You were on your own," he said to the wall. "Everyone else went to the pub."

"Brodie drove me there."

"Brodie dropped you at the door and went to the pub."

Damian didn't answer that.

"Somebody had to sign the form," Noah said. "And get the taxi back."

"You sat there for six hours."

"There was a vending machine."

Damian laughed.

It was a real laugh, low and surprised, in the dark.

"You missed your coach for me."

"I missed my coach because I fell asleep."

"Because you sat up all night for me."

Noah pulled the sheet over his shoulder even though it was thirty degrees in the room.

"Go to sleep, Damian."

Damian didn't say anything else.

But it was a long time before either of them slept.

In the morning the first thing Noah did was the floor.

He filled two bin bags with Damian's rubbish.

Under the bed he found a half-eaten meat pie, three more cans and a sock that had been there since winter.

Damian watched him from the bed with his arms folded behind his head.

"You don't have to clean my side."

"I'm not falling on it again."

Damian went a bit red.

So did Noah.

"There's no food," Noah said. "That's why you've been living on Shapes."

"The dining hall's shut."

"The kitchen isn't."

Noah held up the warden's key ring and jingled it.

Damian's eyebrows went up.

The warden kept an old bike in the shed by the car park for errands.

The tyres were soft and the seat was cracked, but it went.

Noah rode it into town at eight before the heat came up.

The smoke was thick enough to taste.

The sun was a flat orange coin over the main street.

Half the shops had signs on the doors about the fire.

The IGA was open.

He bought eggs, bread, bananas, mince, onions, a bag of frozen peas and two big bottles of water.

He rode back with the bags swinging off the handlebars.

By the time he got to the hall he was soaked with sweat.

The big steel kitchen downstairs had been scrubbed and shut for summer.

Everything echoed.

He found a frying pan the size of a tyre and turned on one burner.

He was cracking eggs when he heard the crutches in the corridor.

Thump, swing. Thump, swing.

Damian came through the swinging door in a singlet and footy shorts, red in the face.

"You came down the stairs on those?" Noah said.

"Slowly."

"You're not supposed to."

"I'm a physio. I know what I'm not supposed to do."

He lowered himself onto a stool at the steel bench.

Noah put a plate of eggs and toast in front of him.

Damian ate it like he hadn't eaten in three days.

Which he hadn't, really.

Noah made him more.

"You cook," Damian said with his mouth full.

"My mum works night shifts. Somebody had to."

"Where's home?"

"On the coast. Four hours east. Past the fire."

"Does she know you're stuck?"

"She rang twice last night. She thinks I'm going to burn to death in the dorm."

Damian smiled.

"My dad rang four times. He wants me to hitchhike."

"To Perth?"

"To Sydney. Then Perth. He says that's how he did it in the eighties."

"With that ankle?"

"He says that's a soft-boy ankle."

Noah laughed before he could stop it.

Damian looked at him.

"Nine months in the same room," Damian said. "And this is the first time you've talked to me."

"You never asked me anything."

"I asked you stuff."

"You asked me if I'd seen your charger. Twice."

Damian opened his mouth.

Then he shut it.

Then he looked down at his plate and smiled a small, crooked smile Noah had never seen on him before.

"Fair," he said.

They sat in the empty kitchen for an hour.

Damian told him about his two older brothers, who both played football and both thought physio was a girl's job.

Noah told him about his thesis on the 1890 flood that nearly washed this whole town away.

Damian asked real questions about it.

Noah didn't know what to do with that.

At ten he needed somewhere cold to put the mince.

"There's a cool room," he said. "The key's in the warden's office."

"I'll wait."

The warden's office was by the front door.

It was small and neat and smelled like the warden's aftershave.

Noah found the right key on the hook behind the desk.

On the desk was a wire tray full of forms.

He wasn't snooping.

The one on top was in handwriting he knew from nine months of sticky notes on their fridge.

ROOM CHANGE REQUEST.

Name: Damian Whelan.

Current room: 14, East.

Requested: single room, North wing, from February.

It was dated Friday the twenty-first.

The day before the final.

There was one line for the reason.

Damian had written a single word on it.

Personal.

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