I'm not a shy person. In fact, I could stand to be a little less inhibited when it comes to encountering new people, but this was different. These were the girls I would be waking up to every morning, the people I'd be crammed into a tiny Brooklyn apartment with. If I rubbed them the wrong way, or vice-versa, adapting to city life would be an even greater struggle. I was basically depending on them to help me find my feet.

It was the same feeling I'd had when I stood outside my dorm at the University of Northern Iowa for the first time, but with added shame in still being able to feel so daunted over half a decade of adulthood later. One of the girls that awaited me on the other side of that door all those years ago was a mischievous Lithuanian by the name of Aksana. On that day she struck me as a preening try-hard who I could never warm to; in the long run she became one of the closest and most loyal friends I made during my time at the college, and someone who to this day I still miss greatly. I've promised to make it to Europe to see her some time, if she doesn't get her green card first.

The other was Maxine Perez; for the first months she was warm and welcoming and I thought we were going to be inseparable. By the end of the year she'd callously broken the heart of another one of my good friends, and generally shown herself to be utterly self-serving and untrustworthy. I'd have paid good money to never see her again. That's the trouble with these things; nothing is as it initially seems. First impressions are not everything.

After what seemed like an eternity, and not just because of the crippling weight of the rucksack on my back, the door opened to reveal a redhead in a tanktop and three-quarter-length plaid shorts. This is going to sound appallingly narcissistic, but we spent the next ten seconds just gazing at each other's abs and biceps in admiration. We'd touched on our similar workout regimes during our brief email exchange in the weeks leading up to my move. It's so rare to find a girl who lifts, as in really, could-beat-most-guys-in-an-arm-wrestle lifts.

"Oh yes, you'll do just fine. My days as the lone source of oestrogen at the far end of the weight room are finally over." Those were the first words Becky Lynch spoke to me. No hello, no awkward courtesy questions about how my journey was, just instant acceptance, familiarity and silliness; the quickest way to my heart. I dug her muscles, I dug her attitude, I dug her dress sense, which hinted at some common musical ground, and I dug her fascinating accent.

After a shake of her my hand and a reminder of her name, Becky led me into the living area. It was just as small as the pictures made it look. A sofa, an armchair, a coffee table, a bookcase and a television, none of which were exactly top-of-the-range, were crammed together to the left of the entrance. On the other side, a second door presumably led to the bedrooms and bathroom. A small, basically-appointed kitchen stood at the far end of the room and a screen door led out from it onto the narrow balcony, where a blonde girl in a rainbow tie-dye dress stood blowing bubbles into the summer evening sky. Guess you really did get all sorts in New York.

"Emma! Emma, Kaitlyn's here!" Becky called enthusiastically. The blonde turned around, ambling lazily into the room as if she had all the time in the world, even doing a bizarre arm-thrusting dance to the pop music blaring from the kitchen radio as she went, knocking several items from the kitchen counter in her wake. And here I was worrying about coming across as weird.

I extended my hand to Emma just as she spread her arms for a hug. So I spread my arms. And she extended her hand. Awkward didn't begin to cover it.

"Sorry, that was stupid of me..." she apologised giddily, not looking me in the eye, or seeming to focus her gaze on anything in particular whatsoever.

"...I mean, who hugs someone they've only just met? I mean, we might end up hating each other... that's not to say you don't look nice, I just mean..."

"What Emma means to say is she's very pleased to meet you," Becky smiled fondly, her familiarity and affection for her housemate's quirks very much apparent. Emma grinned in affirmation, and I grinned back. Her apparent innocence and child-like discomfort with social formality reminded me a lot of Bayley.

"Aren't we missing someone?" I asked.

"The Brit, right?"

"I'm here," an icy, sullen voice intoned behind me, making me jump out of my skin. The door to the bedrooms had opened. The girl's appearance could not have looked more out of place in the summery glow of the room, especially when contrasted with Emma's garish garments. Her pallid skin tone suggested she'd been avoiding the recent weather like the plague. Her jet black hair and T-shirt and charcoal-grey jeans combined with it to make a striking, rather monochrome ensemble.

"So if that's Emma, and that's Becky, you must be..." I began playfully.

"Paige," she finished flatly with a roll of her eyes. No extension of a hand, nothing to suggest my arrival had affected her on an emotional level in any way whatsoever.

"Who wants a drink?" Emma interjected gaily in a vain attempt to puncture the air of tension.

"Too warm for tea or coffee, I think. Lemonade?"

Becky and I replied cheerily in the affirmative. Paige didn't dignify it with a response.

"Oh, I think I left the bottle on the balcony," Emma said, this time moving rather swiftly back toward the screen door.

"I'll get some glasses," Becky chimed in, eager to remove herself from the immediate vicinity of myself and Paige, who was now staring a hole right through me, as if I'd climbed into her treehouse uninvited without saying the secret password. It was an 80 degree day, but the air between us felt cold as ice.

I peered around frantically for some way of breaking said ice. I spied the mosaic of photographs pinned to a corkboard on the wall to Paige's left. They told a story of four fun-loving young women utterly content in each other's company. Paige didn't seem like a killjoy or a black sheep at all on this evidence; she seemed just as prone to pulling silly faces and donning all manner of novelty accessories as Becky and Emma. It was difficult to equate the smiling, wild-eyed girl from the pictures to ashen-faced, pissed off malcontent who was stood before me.

"Looks like you guys have some pretty wild times," I said, cringing at my own horribly square wording and my terrible attempt at sounding relaxed and genial.

"Yeah, we did," Paige sighed resignedly, placing glaring emphasis on the past tense. By this point I'd have preferred it if she just flat out told me I wasn't welcome and to fuck off.

Aside from the three girls I'd just met, the most frequently recurring face in the pictures was that of an extremely pretty blonde Latina girl; the previous occupant of my room, I presumed. In fact, her and Paige were seldom pictured away from each other's side. Maybe I was getting a little closer to discovering the root of Paige's hostility.

"Is that my predecessor?" I enquired, pointing to a picture of Paige and the mystery girl sharing a cocktail pitcher as big as their heads.

"She's quite the looker."

They were all absurdly easy on the eyes, in fact. I felt as if, were I to eventually earn a place on the wall, that I'd be uglying it up.

"Yeah, she was," Paige drawled in the same tone as before. This time the past tense didn't make sense in the context.

"Was?" I repeated, growing a little tired of this game.

"Her name was Sofia Cortez. She was my best friend. She died," for the first time emotion was detectable in Paige's voice; that of utter, understandable loss and disillusionment. On the plus side I now had an explanation for her behaviour. On the negative side... fuck. The landlord could have told me I was taking over from a dead girl. This was still a household in mourning.

"Oh God, I'm so sorry..." I began.

"I don't want to talk about it. Not with you. You don't know me and you'll never know Sofia so what's the point?" Paige fired back before I could finish, back to being as robotic and detached as before. Fortunately I was saved from any inserting my foot any further into my mouth by the arrival of Becky and Emma with the lemonade.

"Shall we all have a seat?" Becky suggested firmly. Seemingly the slightly older of the three girls, I definitely detected an alpha female mentality about her. At this moment, however, Paige wasn't in the mood to respect her elders, and remained frozen to the spot as I took my seat beside Emma on the sofa, while Becky commandeered the armchair.

"So, how about we all introduce ourselves properly? Names, ages, jobs, interests, how we ended up here. Go!" Becky instructed. I heard Paige's breathy groan behind me.

"I'm Emma Dashwood. I'm 25 years old, I'm from Melbourne, Australia. I'm a kindergarten teacher, which is appropriate, because according to my recently ex-boyfriend I have 'the emotional maturity of a 6-year-old.' I'm genetically programmed to say or do the least appropriate thing at any given time. I'm a simple soul who loves bubbles, dancing and Miley Cyrus, completely non-ironically. I came here mainly because I was tired of being judged. There's room for everybody in a city like this."

"My name is Rebecca Lynch. I'm 27, I'm from Dublin in Ireland, I'm a fitness instructor, I'm as single as someone with my weakness for terrible puns deserves to be, I'm a grunge aficionado, and I make a mean pancake. Also, contrary to stereotype I can't riverdance, I hate Guinness, and I'm not the slightest bit religious. But people are always after me Lucky Charms. I came to New York because, seriously, have you been to Ireland?!"

"I'm Kaitlyn Bonin. I'm also 27, I'm from Donnybrook, Iowa; you've probably never heard of it, it's about one-third Deliverance, two-thirds Gilmore Girls. I'm ruthlessly frank, loyal and protective to a fault. I love animals, moustaches and the sense of triumph that comes from out-lifting, out-drinking and I must admit, once drunk enough, out-burping men. I came here because I'd wasted way too much of my youth in the dead-end Midwest already and wanted to make something of it before it was too late."

"Oh good... you're just as bonkers as us... we won't need to uphold some false pretence of normality ... phew," Becky said in relief.

Emma, Becky and I shared an admiring chuckle, then turned to look expectantly at Paige. She smirked sardonically.

"I'm Paige Knight. I'm 22 and I'm from Norwich, England, and I've neither the time nor the patience for this shit. See you guys later," and with that she was gone. Emma and Becky didn't seem the slightest bit moved or surprised by this. I didn't want to pry, but I was pretty comfortable around them already.

"Is... is she OK?" I asked hesitantly.

"That girl... Sofia. What happened to her exactly?"

"She went back to Puerto Rico to visit people. Hooked up with an ex-fella, he gave her a ride home, he'd had way too much to drink..." Becky shut her eyes and winced deeply before continuing.

"...She was twenty-fucking-five. A really feisty, confident girl; worked at the same bar as Paige, that's how they met. The two of them had been living together for four months before me and Emma showed up. We all loved Sofia, she was a great laugh, but what her and Paige had, it was something else. Paige has never been the same since the day we found out. I mean, don't get me wrong, she's always been a moody little fuckwit, she's always had the colour palette of an early-90s printer, that's nothing new. But her attitude... that's not our Paige. The real Paige is..."

"...She's the most awesome, supportive, considerate, trustworthy person you could meet," Emma finished with uncharacteristic conviction in her voice, the kind that only true friendship and admiration brings out in people. It was a strong, solid unit I'd come into the midst of, that was for certain, and it was a gang I very much wanted to join.

"Well said, Em. That thing just now... she just doesn't want to admit it's over, that Sofia's never coming back. You represent the passing of time, the biting of reality. Her issue's not with you personally at all. She'll see that in time. Just give her space and she'll be bombarding you with music recommendations and piggyback requests before you know it, trust me," Becky proclaimed. It seemed a very long way away at this moment in time, but I figured I could only hope she was right.

"Does she have anyone? You know, a boyfriend or whatever?" I asked, figuring it'd be a while before I got a proper introduction from Paige herself.

"She moved over here with a fella. Only seen him in pictures; tall bloke, quite a bit older, name was Wayne or Wade or something. Anyway, they broke up not long after they got here, and I've never seen her look twice at a guy the whole time I've known her. It's bizarre, I mean, you're never short of offers when you look like she does. Never fails to amuse me how pale skin is exotic to Americans, not that it seems to help me any," Becky mused.

"What about you? Got some hunky farmboy keeping the bed warm for you back in Idaho?" Emma asked. I was too polite to correct her on the state.

"I probably wouldn't be here if I did..." I sighed wistfully.

"...Nope, been man-free for about a year; it's been the best and the worst year of my life. Best because I've had no responsibilities, I've been able to reconnect with my sister and my best friend from school and remind myself what really matters, worst because I was back where I started. Back in Donnybrook. Dolph showed me a brave new world than snatched it all away."

"Dolph?" Emma repeated with a chuckle.

"Yep, Dolph Ziggler. That's honestly his real name; Iowa is a weird place. We met at college, looking back it was never going to work. The jacked-up tomboy punk and the obnoxious frathouse-dwelling wrestling team captain... we basically hate-fucked for the first three months, but somewhere along the way we actually found common ground. We were both cynical, no-nonsense, headstrong pricks who were disastrously awful at not speaking our mind.

"And because Dolph was so open, I never for a second thought he'd keep anything from me. Not for two years. Not the fact that he was fucking my cousin on-and-off behind my back."

Becky let out an incredulous, disbelieving 'no!' as I reached the 'punchline,' so to speak. Yep, it's true. I thought I'd tamed the rampant fratboy, I thought I'd domesticated him, made him grow up. We had an apartment in Des Moines, steady jobs, a cat, everything.

Charlotte is my mom's brother's daughter. I never liked her. We're the same age, I used to see her about once a month growing up. She'd lived in Des Moines her whole life, and regarded Donnybrook as the seventh circle of backward, inbred hell. She never went through the awkward, pudgy phase me and Bayley did, she'd somehow managed to dodge those genes. I remember endless childhood afternoons of her turning cartwheels and juggling soccer balls on the lawn while me and BB looked on with awe and a feeling of total inadequacy.

It wasn't just jealousy, I swear. She was a nasty, entitled little brat, even then. She loved nothing more than to exploit Bayley's naivety, to bury her in peer pressure until she'd do pretty much any embarrassing thing Charlotte's wicked mind could concoct. My poor little sister found herself stuck up trees, running naked through neighbours' gardens, the works. Charlotte called AJ 'that weird little Mexican orphan girl,' no matter how many times I told her that A. she has a name, B. she's Puerto Rican and C. being adopted doesn't automatically make you an orphan.

While me and Bayley saw our growth spurts stopped at around the five foot five mark, Charlotte grew to nearly six feet tall; most of it legs, and not an ounce of it fat. She went to the University of North Carolina on a volleyball scholarship, then moved back to Des Moines just as me and Dolph were settling in there, and Bonin family etiquette demanded we met up for coffee once a week.

College hadn't matured her, only made her games all the more damaging. She didn't want anything someone else didn't already have. She was driven by glory and conquest. Stealing someone's friends or boyfriends proved you were superior, finding your own only proved you were adequate, that's how she saw it. Dolph claimed to find her just as pathetic as I did. If that was true, turned out he had a funny way of showing it.

If there's anything I'll give him credit for, at least he came clean before I rumbled him. He said it meant nothing, like they always do, but he was kind of right. He had no interest in actually dating Charlotte, as soon as she stopped being a dirty little secret she lost all attraction. That of course didn't make it any more forgiveable, it didn't make me any less upset, and it didn't stop me packing my things and heading back home. Working in the same convenience store I had when I was 16, seeing the same people, walking the same streets, God it was grim.

But I digress. I was here now, here among improbably like-minded folks. They rallied to my defence like they'd known me for years. I showed Becky pictures of Dolph and Charlotte from my phone and she took apart every aspect of their appearances in exquisite, brutal detail. I was nearly crying by the end. It was immature, it was stupid, but it was just what I needed.

Then Emma told her story of love gone awry. Her heartbreak was fresh and raw, just two weeks old in fact, and it came through in the hushed, still disbelieving way she recounted the tale; the voice of an open wound. Even in fifteen minutes in her company, I could tell there was a lot more to Emma than met the eye, a depth and a wisdom behind that ditzy, daydreaming exterior. I just wished for her sake that Justin, whoever he was, had thought so too.

But we had each other. I could say that already with confidence. Becky and Emma were my kind of people. Paige... well, we'd just have to wait and see on that one. But then my phone rang, it was 'SummerfromAceMarketingandPublicRelationshowareyoutoday?' Seriously, she didn't take a single breath. It was the delivery of someone who had said those words so many times that they had lost all meaning. She asked how I was in that way business people do where it's a rhetorical question.

The call was regarding my job application. I had an interview, on Thursday morning, with Ms Torres. She said it like I ought to know who that was. I'd applied to that many different places it was hardly practical to do any research beyond the bare essentials. I had to be at their office in Manhattan in formal attire at 10am sharp, Ms Torres was a very busy lady, apparently. They always are.

I'd almost forgotten that I was here for reasons besides finding some cool new friends to chill with. I was here to finally put that English degree to some use. I was here to achieve things beyond what misfits from the sticks are supposed to achieve. I was here to be someone.