Tessa Mellas holds an MFA from Bowling Green State University and a PhD in comparative literature from the University of Cincinnati, where she teaches composition and creative writing. She won the 2013 Iowa Short Fiction Award for her collection Lungs Full of Noise (2013). A former theater director and figure skater, Mellas lives in Cincinnati.

Bibi from Jupiter

A Story

by Tessa Mellas

When I marked on my roommate survey sheet that I’d be interested in living with an international student, I was thinking she’d take me to Switzerland for Christmas break or to Puerto Rico for a month in the summer. I wasn’t thinking about a romp around the red eye of Jupiter, which is exactly what I’d have gotten had I followed my roommate home. Apparently, American school systems have become pretty popular all over. Universities shepherd foreigners in. Anything to be able to write on the brochures, “Our student body hails from thirty-three countries and the far reaches of the solar system.”

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