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“Oh,” Julia said when they finally found room 180. “This is it?” The dorm room they’d entered was smaller than it’d looked in the pictures on the university’s housing portal. It didn’t seem possible that two people were going to manage to live here.
“The space is a little tight,” Howard agreed, “but we’ll make do. Everyone take a box.”
The rest of the family began emptying the cart that they’d wheeled all of Erik’s earthly possessions up to his room in. Erik pushed the suitcase full of his clothes into the closet and then began pulling his sheets out of the nearest box and tossing them onto the empty mattress. “Don’t do that, Erik,” said his cousin, Stefani. “You can’t just start putting things down without cleaning anything.”
“We have Clorox wipes somewhere,” Brenda said, opening a couple of boxes and then closing them again in search of the cleaning supplies.
Erik managed to stop her before she reached for a box that he’d scribbled on the side of with a red Sharpie. “Mom, don’t open that.”
She frowned at him, her eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said, picking up the box and placing it in the closet next to his suitcase.
“What’s in there that I’m not supposed to know about?”
“Found the Clorox wipes!” Howard interjected, opening up the package and taking one out to wipe down the mini fridge and microwave (which thankfully had come with the dreadfully overpriced dorm room). “Family effort, guys,” Howard added when it took a moment for everyone to start moving. Erik was thankful for the topic change and started cleaning off his mattress as well as his desk and chair.
“How the fuck does this even work?” Erik asked, holding up the fitted sheet and trying to figure out which way it was supposed to go.
“Watch your language, bud,” Howard said gently, walking over to help him. “We gotta put the mattress cover on first anyway.” They did that, and then spent the better part of ten minutes explaining to Erik how to use a fitted sheet.
“Now you get to do that every week when you do your laundry,” Brenda said.
“Huh?”
“Laundry, dumbass,” Julia said.
“Julia, your language.”
“Why do I have to wash the fitted sheet if there’s already another sheet over it?”
“Oh my God,” Brenda sighed.
Erik let Stefani be in charge of organizing his desk because she’d insisted on it. He hung up as many T-shirts as he had hangers for and threw everything that needed to be folded in Bobby’s general direction. Brenda was putting all the cleaning supplies in the bathroom and frantically quizzing Erik on which chemicals should not be mixed. Julia was distracted by her new phone and was sitting in the corner with her earbuds in, trying not to be noticed while she scrolled through her Instagram feed. Marty had taken Charlie with him to go buy everything Erik had forgotten to pack (namely toothpaste and paper towels), and Howard was in the hallway somewhere interrogating the RA about the campus.
Once the room had been completely set up, all eight members of the Campbell-Reyes family got lunch at a burger place a few miles away before returning to Erik’s dorm room to say goodbye to him before they left.
“I labelled everything on your desk,” Stefani told him, pointing at the pastel purple sticky notes on each drawer that read “laptop/sketchbook”, “notebooks and colored pencils”, and “books, folders, and misc.”
Stefani also pointed out a coffee mug filled with pens that was sitting at the corner of his desk next to a clock that he’d never seen before. “I got you both of these,” she added. “These are Pilot G2 pens, so they’re nice.”
“Thanks Stef, you didn’t have to do that.”
She waved away his comment. “It was no problem. And you should buy a carbon monoxide detector. I forgot about that.”
“Stef, honey,” Marty said, “I’m sure the dorm already has a carbon monoxide detector.”
“Look into it,” she said seriously. "You never know."
“Will do.” (Erik would not be looking into it.)
“Look Charlie, I even made you something,” Erik said, opening the top drawer to his desk to find the sketchbook that Stefani had placed inside. He flipped back a couple of pages and tore out a sketch of Funtime Foxy that he’d done a couple of weeks ago when he first anticipated that Charlie would have a hard time with his leaving. Charlie’s latest fixation was Five Nights at Freddy’s, and Erik had managed to find out who his favorite character was last time he’d been watching him.
“Thanks,” Charlie mumbled.
“Charlie, let’s say goodbye to Erik now because we need to get going, ok?” Marty said.
Charlie shook his head, silently staring down at the carpet with his arms crossed.
“What’s wrong, Charlie?” Erik asked, gently.
He looked up at Erik with a sigh, and Erik could see that there were tears welling up in his eyes. “You’re leaving me.”
“Not forever,” Erik said, sitting down on his desk chair so that he didn’t have to look down to talk to him. “Just because I’m not staying at the house anymore doesn’t mean I’m not still going to see you.”
“When are you going to be back home?”
“I don’t know,” Erik said. “In a couple of weeks?” This seemed to do little to soothe him. “Alright, how about this—it’s Saturday the eleventh now. I’ll see you again in two weeks. Saturday the twenty-fifth. How about that? And I’ll call your dad the week before that, and he’ll let you talk to me.”
“Do you promise?”
“Yeah, I promise.” Erik even made it a pinky promise so that Charlie knew he was serious.
“Okay,” Charlie said, glumly, staring down at the carpet again.
Erik felt a pang of guilt at the prospect of Charlie feeling like he was being abandoned again, especially with Erik being the first of the cousins to move out. It didn’t seem as though he was going to manage to make the kid smile when suddenly, he got an idea that he hated. Begrudgingly, he walked over to the closet, pulled a teddy bear wearing a Santa hat out of the box he’d been hiding from everyone, and held it up to Charlie. “Do you know who this is?”
Charlie shook his head.
“This is Teddy,” Erik said, “and I’ve had him ever since I was a baby. And I brought him with me because I don’t like to go anywhere without him, but I think you should be the one to take care of him while I’m gone instead.”
Charlie’s eyes widened. “Really?”
“Now, I expect to get him back,” Erik said, “so you gotta keep him safe for me, okay?” Charlie nodded quickly, and Erik pulled him into a hug. “I’ll miss you, but I’ll talk to you soon.”
“Bye Erik!”
“Bye Charlie.”
Erik said a quick goodbye to his uncle, and then it was only his parents and siblings still there. His mom took a shaky breath, and it looked like she was about to start crying. Luckily, Bobby spoke first. He opened his backpack and said, “I got you a going away gift.” He handed Erik a small turtle stuffed animal. “So that he can remind you of Paco.”
“Thanks Bobby,” Erik said, giving him a hug. “I’ll put him here on my desk.”
“You’ll still call, right?”
“Yeah, I’ll still call. And you can call whenever you want too.”
“Julia,” Howard said, “can you look up from your phone please? Your brother’s moving out of the house.”
She glanced up. “Goodbye, loser.” She gave him a half-hug that she pulled away from after a second—which was more than he’d expected from Julia anyway—before returning to the screen.
Brenda immediately burst into tears the moment that Erik hugged her. “It’s gonna be fine, Mom,” he tried to comfort her. “I’m only forty minutes away.” He patted her shoulder sympathetically, not really knowing how to react.
“We’re—going to miss having you around—so, so much,” she said through tears. She pulled away and looked at him through teary eyes. “You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to. You know, if you don’t like your roommate, or if you’re going to be homesick, or if you hate the room, or the food, or—” She let another small sob and hugged him again. “Just call us, and we’ll bring you right home. We can bring you home right now if you wanna stay another night at the house. I think that’s what we should do. Your classes don’t start for another few days now, and—”
Erik mouthed “help me” at his dad, who calmly took Brenda’s shoulder and pulled her away from Erik.
“He’s going to be okay, Brenda.”
“And you have to wash your sheets once a week,” she cried.
“I will,” Erik said.
“Howard, he needs quarters for the laundry.”
“You don’t have to pay for the washing machines,” Howard said. “The RA said they’re free.”
“He needs—”
“Brenda, everything’s going to be okay. Erik’s going to be okay.”
She walked over to Erik to hug him again. “Yeah, Mom, I’m going to be okay,” he said. “I’ll be back soon. You don’t have to worry.”
Brenda sniffled and wiped the tears from her eyes. “Okay. Okay. But if you don’t want to stay at the dorm anymore and you want to come home, you tell me right away.”
“I will.”
Howard was the last one to say his goodbyes to Erik. “Well, this is it, buddy.”
“Mhm,” Erik said, nodding and suddenly feeling a pang of worry in his chest. When his dad hugged him, he held on a little tighter than he’d ever admit to anyone, realizing for what felt like the first time that he wasn’t going to be living at the Campbell house anymore.
When Erik finally pulled away, Howard repeated, “You’re going to be okay.” Erik hoped it wasn’t obvious that he’d needed to hear it.
“Yeah, I know.”
“Call us whenever you want to talk. Or if you want groceries or food that isn’t from the dining hall. Or just to say hi. That’s ok too.”
“I will, Dad.”
“Alright, don’t forget about your floor meeting tomorrow night.”
“I won’t.”
“Be safe. Make some friends. I love you, bud.”
“Love you too, Dad. Love you, Mom,” he said, giving Brenda one last hug.
And before he knew it, the Campbells were gone, and Erik was alone in his room. He sat on his bed held onto the stuffed turtle that Bobby had given him—he was still slightly lamenting the fact that he’d given his childhood teddy bear to Charlie—and resolved to go out into the hallway that night and actually try to meet people. Erik Campbell was going to be okay.