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This is just one of many quirks I’ve observed about the person with whom I’m supposed to share a room for the next three weeks and five days. For the time being, I will stick to irrefutable facts, untainted by my cynical analysis. We’ve still got a long haul ahead of us and I don’t want to damn her right away with my first, second, and third impressions, as my character analyses are usually for shit. I could very well find out tomorrow that she really is cool, despite surface characteristics that indicate otherwise. If I avoid jumping to conclusions now, I won’t have to feel guilty about all the mean things I’ll most likely write about her later.

So here are the facts and just the facts:

Name: Mary “Call Me Chantalle” DePasquale.

Hometown: Huntsdale, which means she is from the wealthiest town in the wealthiest county in the wealthiest state in the wealthiest nation in the world.

Long-Term Goal: Principal dancer with the American Ballet Company.

Short-Term Goal: To share an unspecified “intimate moment” with each and every one of the Lucky Seven. Ack.

Aesthetic Icon: It’s hard to tell. Her body is so teeny that her head looks supersized in comparison, giving her the appearance of a lollipop in a tutu. She makes me (at five-foot-five and 105 boobless, assless pounds) look like a WWF she-male.

Telltale Quote: “Call me Chantalle.” These were her first words to me. “Is Chantalle your middle name?” I asked. “Call. Me. Chantalle,” she replied. Then she ripped Mary DePasquale’s toe shoe off the door, the only evidence that her birth name was more spinster than Parisian prostitute. This switch is fitting, considering it took her less than twenty-four hours to provide Derek, the vocal music hottie, with a manual release. Unspecified Intimate Moment #1. Ack. The thing that really irks me about Call Me Chantalle’s name change is that it’s precisely the kind of summer identity-morphing that I can’t get away with. Damn that Bridget!

Potentially Troubling Fact: On the bookshelves above her bed, Call Me Chantalle displays three foot-high Nutcrackers, like the hero from the ballet of the same name, a mere fraction of the extensive collection she keeps in a display case at home. They are all dressed in military garb but carry different weapons—a gun, a sword, a British bobby baton—as if they were guarding her virginity. They’d better be on high alert, because I walked in on her in full-frontal frottage with “the saxophone player hottie” on Day 5. Unspecified Intimate Moment #2. Ack.

Positively Troubling Fact: Call Me Chantalle brought a half-dozen bottles of Summer’s Eve douche, which she keeps in plain view in her closet, not to mention the Summer’s Eve body wash in her shower caddy, and the travel-size Summer’s Eve disposable wipes stashed in her backpack. What makes this hygienic hoarding so odd is that she doesn’t even try to hide it, which makes me feel like I’m wrong for thinking it’s weird. But it is weird, isn’t it? Then again, maybe there’s something that I’ve been doing in the privacy of my own bedroom my whole life that I think is perfectly normal but is actually illegal in thirty-two states. Call Me Chantalle could observe the way I clip my toenails and think, My God, how can she cut the pinky toenail first, when every sane person knows you finish with the littlest piggie???

I am doing my best to be positive, by celebrating Call Me Chantalle’s quirks. After all, isn’t this the beauty of having a roommate? Getting a glimpse of someone else’s private world and discovering that everyone is as big a freak as you are, just in different ways?

I got a postcard today from Hope, who’s in London, where she has had a far more interesting assortment of cool characters to observe. I’d like to think that she’s got the advantage of a fascinating location, but I know that it’s just the way she is. At first, strangers are struck by her appearance—six feet of luminous, alabaster skin topped by wild, flamecolored curls. But then they’re drawn to her warmth, sensitivity, and good humor.