Dorm life had its ecosystem.
Each bunk bed, each mattress, came with its own story and mine? Mine came with a name twin.
We had the exact same name. That's literally the reason he liked me at first. Said it made him feel like we were meant to be friends or something. He slept right below me, his bunk always cluttered with books he never read, snacks he swore he didn't buy, and secrets he never really kept.
He was recklessly interesting.
The kind of guy who'd disappear for an hour and come back with spaghetti in a black polythene bag like he'd just gone to the corner store, except we were in boarding school. He'd skipped into town like it was a casual errand.
Fridays were our favorite.
The whole dorm would be low and quiet, just the four of us whispering like mosquitoes . My name twin and I would stay up talking all night; about girls, hookups, his ever-growing body count (which I still think he exaggerated), and the one time he swore he kissed a girl in the dinning hall during an inter-school competition .
He even snuck a phone into school.
An actual phone.
Kept it buried inside his mattress, wrapped in a sock under a pile of past questions like it was sacred. He'd play us leaked songs and DM girls on Instagram while we sat in a circle pretending we weren't breaking every school rule known to man.
Right next to us were Amos and Jade.
Amos slept above Jade. Amos, always the chill one, half-asleep but listening to everything. And Jade? Still the same, laughing in the dark, throwing in bold advice none of us should've taken but sometimes did anyway.
We weren't saints.
But in those late-night conversations, talking nonsense, sharing stories, eating contraband spaghetti with forks—we were us.
Boys figuring out who we were. Who we wanted to be.
And occasionally, who we were becoming without meaning to.