The overhead light is off. Someone made that decision early and it was the right one — the string lights along the headboard do something warmer, something that makes the room feel smaller than it is. Which, given that there are seven people in a freshman double, is already pretty small.

You're sitting on the floor with your back against the closet door. You were invited by — honestly, you're already losing the thread of how this happened. Cait said something in the elevator three days ago and here you are.

Here they all are.

Cait herself is perched on the desk chair like she's presiding over something, plastic cup raised, blond ponytail catching the string light. "Okay, so." She gestures at the middle of the room where nothing is yet. "We're doing something. That's decided. What is not decided—"

"Is what," Maya finishes from the floor across from you. She doesn't look up from the middle distance she's been studying. Her drink is balanced on her knee with suspicious precision.

"Three-three," Darius says. He's leaning against the wall near the door like he arrived somewhere rather than got invited. Easy smile. He's been watching Cait the way you watch someone you haven't figured out yet. "Truth or Dare's got me, Jade, and Cait. Never Have I Ever's got Maya, Sophie, Connor."

Connor raises his hand faintly from the floor by the snacks, then immediately lowers it. "I still think it's the safer choice," he says, to no one in particular.

"That's why I voted for it," Sophie says from the window. Her sweater is too big. Her drink is barely touched. She's the only one who looks like she already knows how tonight ends.

Jade is sitting on the bed, curls loose, one leg folded under her. She looks at you — warm, easy, the kind of look that doesn't have anything behind it yet except genuine curiosity. She tilts her cup slightly in your direction.

"So." Her voice is lighter than you expected. "You're the tiebreaker."

The room shifts. All six of them — Cait leaning forward on the chair, Maya finally glancing over, Darius with that same patient smile, Connor who has found something very interesting to look at on the ceiling, Sophie who hasn't moved but is somehow more present than she was a second ago — they're all waiting.

Cait points at you. "Truth or Dare or Never Have I Ever. Pick one. Don't think about it too long."