It may be self-indulgent, but not long after running my most recent game of DIE I imagined my characters meeting each other, timelines be damned. This is the first part of that; I think I have three vignettes I want to write about Nat and Donnie meeting and becoming friends at their college orientation. This is very clearly a draft, but it’s also helping me think about what I saddle my characters with when it comes to a game like DIE where you’re almost expected to leave part of yourself on the page. I do anticipate that there will be an evolution in these vignettes over the next couple of months, but for now it’s time for establishing shots and getting ideas on the page.

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Nat sat down on her bed, surveying what was going to be her home for the next year. Her parents had left maybe twenty minutes ago; she got the requisite tight hugs from Mom and Dad and a slightly more reluctant one from little brother Jacob as they filed out after having spent a couple hours unpacking and a bit of time walking the campus and reassuring Nat that she would ‘have a great time’ and ‘is going to fit right in’. Now Nat was alone in the room with her new roommate, who seemed both perfectly nice but also with enough social anxiety that she was already putting in a lot of effort not to be perceived. Nat assented to the dynamic, but it also meant that the room seemed more quiet than it already was.

There was a polite knock at the door, and both girls looked up. The person in the door was blonde and smiley, and met their eyes both in turn.

“Hey guys! I’m Jenna, your RA,” she said. “Just letting you know that we’re going to be kicking things off with a floor meeting at 6:30, so make sure you’ve said all your goodbyes and gotten something to eat by then. Looking forward to it!” Both Nat and her roommate made eye contact and nodded in assent, but the exchange that occurred could in no way be called a conversation; in all honesty even exchange was a bit generous. Nat looked at her bed and desk, all the possessions neatly arranged, and then looked at her watch. It was 2:30. There were four hours and she had no idea what to do.

She did a little more unpacking, got her laptop connected to the internet, and pulled all of the essentials out of the duffel bag that had anything she deemed as needing immediately. With a mix of curiosity and dread, she walked down the hall and poked her head into the combined bathroom and shower. Everything was pretty clean and just so here at the beginning of the semester, but she was already worrying about how it would turn out. Good thing she had shower sandals. She put her toiletries back in the room and looked up and down the hallway. There were still parents milling around with others dragging trunks and giant suitcases into their rooms. Her parents, of course, took the ten AM start time as the time to arrive, and it was clear that wasn’t the same for everyone. Then again, she was coming from just an hour north, and knowing the school a lot of people drove from a lot further.

Among all the bustle, someone came out of one of the rooms and stood next to her. He was taller than her but that wasn’t hard; there was something about the way his mop of curls spilled over his head and almost to his eyes that immediately indicated he was an incoming student, not a staffer or volunteer or even one of those frat boys who was helping with everyone’s luggage. He was wearing a flannel shirt over some band tee she didn’t recognize, and though she braced for him to stink of weed, no such stench came.

“Parents already gone, huh?” He said. She looked over in surprise at his voice.

“Oh!” she said, almost involuntarily. “Yeah. We’re from Massachusetts, it wasn’t a very long drive.”

“Yeah, us too,” he said. They sized each other up briefly.

“Public school?” she asked.

“Yeah. You?” he said. She shook her head.

“Fair enough,” he said.

“More power to you,” she said. “I mean, you’re here. Not that, not that I have an attitude about it. My, uh, boyfriend was going to a public school.”

“Was?” He said. “Also starting college this year, or he was your boyfriend?” She shot a look at him.

“Not that it’s any of your business,” she said. “But both. He’s going to UC Berkeley and long distance seems, well, hard and dumb.” He chuckled.

“Sorry, that was a dumb question,” he said. “My name’s Donnie, by the way.”

“Nat,” Nat said. “And it’s OK. I’ve definitely had my share of foot-in-mouth disease.”

“Doesn’t everybody?” Donnie said. “Would you, uh, want to walk somewhere? We have like three and a half hours before the first floor meeting.” Nat looked around at the parents and the chaos still enveloping most of the hall.

“Yeah, sure,” she said.

The whole campus was caught up in moving day, with freshmen and their families everywhere, staff and volunteers trying to guide them, and everyone else on campus just hunkering down until it ends. Nat and Donnie dodged a few lines of people shuttling between dorms and academic buildings, and got far enough from the campus to be somewhat in Providence proper.

“Are you going anywhere in particular?” Nat asked. They had spent most of the first part of the walk dodging people and luggage, and there was finally a chance to get a word in edgewise.

“Thought I saw a neat coffeeshop on the drive in,” he said. “Hopefully I don’t have this city backwards.”

“As long as we can make it back,” Nat said. Donnie looked at her, then looked up at a street sign that said ‘Brown University’ on it with an arrow pointing back in the direction that they had come from. Nat narrowed her eyes at him.

“You were a bit of a joker at home, weren’t you,” she said. He chuckled.

“I guess you could say that,” Donnie said. “I wasn’t really in with any of the cliques, so making people laugh helped you move around easily.”

“A bit of a social floater, then?” Nat asked. Donnie winced.

“Yeah, but I’m not a fan of the term,” he said.

“A social butterfly, then,” she said.

“Sure. How about you?” he asked.

“Stereotypical artsy goth,” she said. “Here for creative writing, possibly deluding myself. Played TTRPGs and got mad at the boys who told me I shouldn’t be.” Donnie looked back at her with renewed intensity.

“Wait,” he said. “TTRPGs? Like D&D?”

“But not D&D,” she said.

“Yeah, me neither,” Donnie said. “But my buddy Jason ran this wild dark fantasy game. Highlight of my social life, though don’t tell anyone I went to high school with.” A smile broke through on Nat’s face.

“Yeah, I ran the game,” she said. “We made up a fantasy world called the Infinite Library. Like Myst, but with more monsters.”

“That’s awesome,” Donnie said. He wasn’t putting her on.

They did find the coffee shop, and set up at a table in one corner after buying drinks and snacks.

“So you’re a fellow nerd,” Nat said. “What else did you get up to?”

“A bunch of things, I guess,” Donnie said. “Played a bit of music, hung around. Did some writing, but that was more of an alone time thing.”

“Does it being an alone time thing make it count less?” Nat asked.

“I guess not,” Donnie said. “But I never felt right being off on my own. At least one to two other people around me is most comfortable.”

“So that’s why you asked the random girl in your new dorm to go get coffee,” Nat said.

“Exactly,” Donnie said. “My parents drove me down, we got the room unpacked, and then they left. So what am I going to do before the university-mandated nametags and trust falls?” Nat snickered.

“Orientation isn’t going to be that bad,” Nat said.

“I mean of course not, we’ll be meeting a whole bunch of new people and have a bunch of new freedom,” Donnie said. “But the whole thing starts by treating us like we’re still high schoolers.”

“I guess it hasn’t really struck me that I’m not a high schooler yet,” Nat said.

They detoured to a pizza place on the way back to campus, grabbing slices for an irregularly timed dinner. Donnie stopped on a bridge going over the river, eating pizza and looking out on the water. Nat almost kept walking but realized what was going on only two steps too late.

“What are you looking forward to this year?” Donnie asked.

“I don’t know,” Nat said. “I have no idea what to expect, I don’t have any friends here, and I don’t even know if I’m going to be able to keep up.”

“Keep up?” Donnie asked.

“Academically?” Nat said. “You know, in classes.”

“Right! Right,” Donnie said. “You know I haven’t even been thinking about class yet. All I know is that this year is going to be different, and I’m excited for that.”

“Different could be good,” Nat said.

“It really could,” Donnie said. “Like, you took a chance on some rando introducing himself. Did you do things like that in high school?”

“I knew everyone in my high school,” Nat said, smirking.

“Okay okay, bad example,” Donnie said. “But still. It’s a good place to take chances. I’m glad you took a chance on me, small as it was.”