The Saturday after Thanksgiving found me barreling through a sea of sour-faced college students, all of them engaged in a mad rush to get to the dormitory’s only elevator. One look at their determined expressions— some of them bearing the hallmark cold, calculating, soulless glare left over from Black Friday shopping, others with the sort of fierce optimism one picks up after a week of home-cooked meals and motherly affection— was enough to convince me that the elevator would break down before I had a chance of squeezing into the car, laden as I was with my suitcase, backpack, and fancy insulated bag packed with leftovers.

So up seven flights of stairs I went, thanking my lucky stars that my suitcase— obscenely pink and glittery as it was— was sturdy enough to bear my post-Thanksgiving weight when I collapsed upon it after every other set of steps. Eventually, with persistence and no small amount of blood (figurative), sweat (literal), and tears (nearly literal), I stood before the apartment-style room I shared with three other girls.

My phone buzzed

Samantha:
Casey bought more pumpkin

Me:
More pumpkin what?

Instead of a reply, our apartment door swung open, and I was greeted with the sight of Samantha, wearing the same t-shirt she had on at the beginning of break with a different pair of pajama pants.

"More pumpkin everything," she said flatly, before turning around and stomping inside. I followed her, fearing the worst.

We had been invaded by pumpkins.

The three or four tiny pumpkins that were previously scattered across the apartment-style dorm room had been joined by what looked like half a pumpkin patch. Big, small, round, misshapen, mottled, disturbingly squishy— every inch of sitting space was occupied by various shades of orange.

"There's no way this is real," I laughed.

Samantha nodded towards the kitchenette. "Did you know they make pumpkin spiced peanut butter?"

"I can't believe this," I sniggered, whipping my phone out.

Me:
casey, hon, about the pumpkins...

Casey Pittman lived with her phone in her hand, so I received my response in less than fifteen seconds.

Casey:
Kroger was having a sale! :))) I might swing by later and pick up one or two more. Are we out of bagels yet?

I glanced at the three packages of pumpkin spice bagels lined up on the counter.

Me:
no we're fine on bagels. about the pumpkins... don't you think you're going a bit overboard?

Casey:
Sorry?

Me:
you have a lot of pumpkins. we're gonna need to stage an intervention lol

Casey:
I don't really have that many?? :/

Oh crap

Sensing the emoticon-wrapped hostility behind the message, I began backpedaling.

Me:
it was just a joke haha.

Mentally applauding myself for circumventing major drama, I made for my bedroom.

---

Several hours later, as I attempted to understand just how I had managed to acquire so much stuff over just one week, my phone buzzed. I swiped the message open without looking, figuring that Casey had decided to end my silent treatment.

Instead, I was met with a message from my third and final roommate, Alexandria.

Alex:
Smh to see that some people don't know how good they have it

I frowned.

Me:
yeah people can be pretty silly.

Alex:
Love how the guilty ones always project it onto others, too. So cute.

I raised my eyebrows. It almost sounded like— no, there's no reason for her to be directing that at me.

Another message, this one from Samantha.

Samantha:
Not sure when you became a first-world whiner, but you're trending on twitter.

I was suddenly cured of any desire to get on social media that day.

I looked anyway.

---

The Sunday after Thanksgiving found me hunched over my phone, wondering how so many people looked at the screenshot of our conversation that Casey posted and came to the conclusion that I was attacking pumpkins in general.

I didn't even think that many people liked pumpkin.