Camille woke up with a jolt from her door slamming shut, albeit a very slow one.. The sun was shining through her window into her face, forcing her eyes to adjust for a bit before she got a look at the mess that was her dorm room. Dirty clothes, empty wine bottles and scattered notebooks and papers lay strewn around the floor, but she barely even noticed it since it had been piling up during the weeks since *that* happened. Camille got up to sit on the bedside, noticing that she wasn't wearing a thing. "Strange" she thought to herself. She always went to bed wearing at least a night shirt. As she sat and tried to orient herself, a pounding headache suddenly made itself known, so she started rubbing her temples.
While looking down she spotted a used condom, and suddenly her current clothing situation, headache and her waking because of her door slamming shut started to make sense. Fragmented memories of a night out at a bar with her girl friends came back to her. She had gotten way too drunk once again, staying past the time her friends went home, and let the first guy who seemed the slightest bit interested take her home and fuck her. She didn't even remember his name or his face. Camille shakily rose to her feet, plugged her dead phone into the charger and went to the bathroom to bin the condom and get some water to try and fix her headache.
Looking at herself in the mirror, Camille just felt sorry for herself. It had only been a few weeks since she ruined everything for herself, but it had started to show, big time. She looked at her tall figure, noticing that her usually toned physique had started to slip away as a result of several weeks of binge drinking during the nights, and inactivity during the days. Her long, blonde hair was in disarray and full of tousles, in contrast to how immaculate and straight she usually kept it. Lipstick and mascara was smeared around her mouth and her eyes.
At this point it didn't really faze her though, so she just started tidying herself up a bit while drinking what felt close to a gallon of water. While washing up she heard her phone starting to buzz intensely as it got back to life. She secretly dreaded looking at videos on snapchat of what kinds of wacky shit she had gotten up to last night, even though she portrayed herself as a happy-go-lucky party girl that couldn't care less about the fact the she had failed the end of term exam during her first year in med school, thrice. Meaning that she was unable to continue her studies until she had passed it. Meaning that the next time she was able to try passing it would be in almost half a year.
Also meaning that it would be her last attempt before she got permanently blocked from completing med school. The mere thought of it sent her mind into a dark spiral that she was all too familiar with, and as a response she swiftly pressed her palms as hard as she could over her ears and started humming the first melody she could think of in order to distract herself. "God damn it I'm such a wreck" she muttered out loud. Still without getting dressed, she picked up her phone and started going through messages she had received since her phone died some time last night. In the snapchat group with her friends she watched herself being an expert at maintaining the facade of being a gone wild party girl that didn't care about exams, all while getting progressively more drunk and obnoxious. The last video was of her outside the bar, sloppily making out with a man who's age probably doubled that of her 21 years as he squeezed her plump ass through her jeans, but Camille barely felt shame about such things anymore.
Besides some more messages about the night prior and a text from her parents asking how she was doing in school, Camille saw that she had gotten a text from the section of student housing. Her heart dropped.
*"Dear Camille! We have been informed that you have failed to complete sufficient amounts of your studies during the last year to be eligible for continued student housing and study grants. We regret to inform you that this means we will have to ask you to move out of your dorm room in order to provide housing for another student. You have two weeks to evacuate your room.
Best regards."*
Camille was in shock. She was going to be homeless. And broke. Of course, she could probably have asked her parents to help her out. They weren't overly wealthy, but could probably pay for her rent while she got a chance at studying for the next attempt to pass her exam, but there was just one problem. They had no idea that she had failed her exam in the first place. Camille had postponed telling them about it for too long now, and she wasn't about to show them how imperfect their perfect daughter was either.
Camille put on a pair of thongs and a t-shirt several sizes too large before she went out into the common kitchen area to brew some coffee and get breakfast.
"Holy shit Camille, you look like you just woke up!" exclaimed Adam, a male student in her dorm that was slightly younger than her, as he spotted her from the common sofa.
"Yeah so what?" Camille grunted.
"It's 14:00 on a tuesday" Adam muttered in feigned disbelief.
Damn, he was right. Adam tried his luck at getting some more words out of her while she was making breakfast, but failed miserably. After shuffling back to her room, Camille booted up her laptop and immediately went on facebook to look for cheap housing in her area. While scrolling, she gradually got a sinking feeling in her belly as every housing option that wasn't dedicated student housing was insanely expensive. Lots of people were commenting way before her, and it looked like every one of them had full time jobs to pay for the rent. Her lifestyle of constantly going out to bars had left her bank balance at just 50 dollars, meaning that she'd probably be the last choice as a tenant.
Just before tearing up and freaking out over the whole situation, she found something that made her eyes flare up. *"Cheap housing in a large central villa, only girls need apply."* read a post written by a woman named Ellie. Camille immediately shot away a message explaining her current situation in more explicit detail than she probably had needed to. After hitting "send" she hastily devoured her breakfast, and went back to her bed to take a much needed nap, she was still hung over like crazy.
When Camille woke up it was almost sun down. "Another day wasted on being hungover" she thought to herself as she went over to her computer to check on facebook for housing once again. She immediately noticed that the woman with the post about housing in a villa had replied to her, which sent her mind into overdrive.
*"Hi Camille! I'm sorry to hear about your situation, and I would like to help you out! Could you make it over to my place today in order to conduct an interview? As you might realize, there have been a great number of people that have shown interest, and I'm trying to make sure that I get along with the person that I'm choosing."*
"Of course, I can be there anytime you want if it's not too late?" Camille replied thinking that she probably had slept through her chance. Her message was read almost instantly, and Ellie replied "It's no problem, but get here as soon as you can!".
"Fuck!" Camille thought out loud, as she realized that she would have to conduct an interview hungover. She almost lept from the laptop, and started getting into a proper outfit. She settled on a black skirt that went down past her knees and a white button up shirt before hurrying out of the dorm in order to catch the first bus there. The address was only about 15 minutes away, way more central than her cheap dorm.
Camille got off the bus at the station she usually got off at when she was going out drinking, and started walking towards the nearby block of villas advertised. It was a strange feeling walking there, as she had never had a reason being in that area due to her not knowing anyone with enough funds to live in a house of the caliber that she was passing by. After a short stroll she found herself in front of the gates to a large, white villa which matched the picture in the advertisement. Camille opened the metal gates, needlessly worried about damaging anything expensive. She walked along the paved path, noticing the well kept garden on her sides thinking about how surreal it would be to live here, imagining about "cheap" housing actually could mean someone living like this. Just as she was about to ring the bell beside the carved wooden door, the door flung ajar and a girl aged about the same as Camille stormed out the door with a trodden down look on her face, not acknowledging Camille's existence.. Camille rang the bell out of politeness, and went inside.
"Hello? I'm here for the interview?" ecalled out into the empty hallway.