Inspection

Lindsey and Rachel stood shoulder-to-shoulder in silent contemplation. It was that most dreaded day of the month for those who dwell in student apartments: monthly cleaning checks.

“We did everything we were supposed to right?” Lindsey asked her roommate.

“Sure we did. We went right down the checklist,” replied Rachel, a quaver ruining the confidence she was trying to project.

There came a tapping, a rapping on their chamber, er, apartment door.

“Well, no sense worrying about it now. Let’s have done with it,” said Lindsey, squaring her shoulders and yanking open the door. Valerie, one of the Branbury’s RA’s came in and greeted the two warmly. Lindsey had taken an instant liking to the blond-haired girl, as they were both from Australia.

“Ready for cleaning checks?” Valerie asked, smiling.

“Of course!” replied Rachel with a somewhat forced grin.

“Alright then, it’ll just take me a few minutes,” Valerie said and then walked into Rachel’s room.

Not quite being able to take the suspense, the two girls followed Valerie into Rachel’s room. It was extremely neat, almost too neat for a student apartment, with pictures of her family and other things of an LDS nature on the walls and everything in its place… or so Rachel hoped. They caught their breath a bit as Valerie bent down to check the desk and its contents and then moved on to Lindsey’s room, giving the two them a slightly odd look for following her around.

Lindsey was, by far, the more nervous, as Valerie entered her room. She had cleaned and vacuumed it to the best of her ability, but it looked… just a little more wild then her roommate’s. Various posters covered the wall that had more to do with pop culture than anything else, especially the large poster of Chris Hemsworth on the far wall. But Valerie just looked around for a few moments, checked a few things off on the sheet and then moved on.

She had no objections to the state of the living room, so she moved on to the kitchen. Rachel and Lindsey watched in trepidation; there was always something you missed in these sorts of things and like as not it would be found in the kitchen. Their anxiety grew as Valerie poked and prodded around the kitchen, taking muchy longer than she had in any of the other rooms. Lindsey started to clench her fists as she began to run various scenarios through her head. What was the hold up? Why was it taking so long in this part of the apartment? Couldn’t be the sink; they’d cleaned that till it sparkled. The floor? No, Rachel had a Swiffer mop and they’d cleaned the floor until it practically sparkled as well? Did they not clean out the fridge enough? Finally, Valerie made a few last notes on her checklist, wrote two large checks on Rachel and Lindsey’s own checklist and smiled broadly at them.

“You passed!”

They waited until Valerie was out of the apartment before erupting with whoops of joy and hugging each other.

“Why did we have to get so worked up about that?” said Lindsey, flush with relief, “I bet we would have passed even if we hadn’t cleaned! It’s not like either of us are that messy.”

“Yeah, I’m more worried about Ryan and the boys in the next building. How much do you want to bet they’re all cleaning right now?”

This was not entirely true. Ian, Chris, Ryan and Mikael had done the majority of their cleaning the previous night. Ian and Mikael were sleeping past it, while Ryan and Chris watched TV in the living room. Ryan suddenly sneezed.

“I have this weird feeling that someone’s talking about me,” he said.