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Not only is Lisa quite a sight in her current state, resembling an Asian version of Fantine during her death scene in Les Misérables , minus the shaved head, but she also appears to have come out of nowhere, possessed with powers of precognition.
    “My roommate?” Kaileigh asks. “She . . . she won’t wake up.”

4
    Room Change Request
     
    Name:_____________________
    ID#: _____________________
    Sex:____M____F____Gender Neutral
    E-mail: _____________________
    Cell phone: _____________________
    Where do you currently live? _____________________
    __________________________________________
    What kind of change are you interested in making?
    __________________________________________
    Reason for room change request.
    Please check all that apply:
    ____Not getting along with roommate
    ____Wish for less expensive housing option
    ____Wish to move closer to campus
    ____Other (explain in space below)
    __________________________________________
    __________________________________________
    By signing, I agree that I wish to be offered a room change by the New York College Housing Office.
    X __________________________________________
     
     
    W hat room are you in?” My boss’s pallid face peers through the crack between her door and the jamb, but her voice has all the force of a whip.
    Looking a little shocked, Kaileigh replies automatically, “Room fourteen-twelve.”
    “Heather,” Lisa barks. “Call the RA for—”
    “—the fourteenth floor. I’m on it.”
    I pull out the list I typed out myself of all the emergency numbers for the building, including all the new resident assistants. I used to consider the fact that I’d shrunk this list down to a wallet-size card (that I’d then laminated) pretty high-tech until one of the new RAs—the RA for the fourteenth floor, as a matter of fact, Jasmine—asked in a snarky tone, “Is it okay if I throw this away after I input the numbers into my smartphone?”
    Imagine the nerve, implying that the list I’d worked so hard to make (because, of course, I’d distributed tiny laminated wallet-size copies to everyone) was disposable!
    When Jasmine drops her smartphone in a rain puddle as she’s escorting some student to the hospital (and no matter what anyone says, this does sometimes happen), how will she know who to call from the emergency room pay phone to come relieve her?
    Good luck with that, Jasmine.
    Lisa opens her office door even farther, and a small brown-and-white projectile bursts out from behind her legs, then begins to run excitedly around the room, sniffing everyone’s shoes. Both of Prince Rashid’s bodyguards reach inside their jackets for their sidearms.
    “It’s a dog!” I cry as I dial. “Tricky, come here. You guys, it’s a Jack Russell terrier, not a threat.”
    The dog races over to me for one of the treats I keep for such emergencies—although they’ve never before involved weapons—while Hamad and his partner relax, but not without reproachful looks in my boss’s direction.
    Lisa doesn’t even notice.
    “Is Ameera breathing?” Lisa asks Kaileigh, who is still round-eyed with astonishment over how Lisa knows about her roommate’s situation.
    There’s actually a good explanation: a long metal grate a few inches from the ceiling that separates Lisa’s office from the one in which my desk sits. The grate allegedly provides “light and ventilation to employees in the outer office,” since the outer office has no windows.
    But what it actually does is allow us to snoop on each other’s conversations.
    It doesn’t hurt, however, to let the students think we’re psychic (they never notice the grate), so we don’t bother disabusing them of the notion.
    “I think she was breathing.” Kaileigh, unlike everyone else, is staring at Lisa instead of the dog, whose entire backside is quivering in ecstasy as I pass him treats one-handed, the other hand still gripping the phone. “How would I know?”
    “Had she vomited in the bed?” Lisa