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single in a dormitory called Blair. Blair, Maggie recited to herself, as she walked and he lurched. She'd have to start keeping a list—the names of places, the names of men. She'd have to be careful. She'd have to be smart. Smarter than Rose, even. Surviving a place like this when you were supposed to be here was one thing, but surviving here when you weren't would be a challenge worthy of all of her cunning, all of her skill, all of the intelligence that Mrs. Fried had promised her, long ago, that she had, no matter what the tests said.
Josh flung open the door like an emperor revealing the cedar walls and golden floors of his palace, and Maggie realized that this was where it could get tricky. She'd have to prepare herself for the possibility of actually having sex with this guy. Two guys in one night, she thought bleakly. Not a statistic she'd set out to achieve. The dorm room was a tiny rectangle, littered with books and sneakers and tufts of unfolded laundry, smelling like sweat socks and old pizza. "Be it ever so humble," Josh said, giving her a sharp, appraising look, and flung himself onto the bed, shoving a chemistry book, a water bottle, a ten-pound barbell, and what Maggie thought was a fossilized half-eaten hoagie, to the floor. He spread his arms wide and gave her the cold smirk of a boy who's gotten every toy he's ever wanted and broken them just for spite. "Come to papa," he said. Maggie instead gave him a slow, saucy smile and stood her ground at the foot of the bed. She traced Ane coy fingertip along her neckline. "Got anything to drink?" she whispered. Josh pointed. "On the desk," he said. Maggie found a flat brown bottle. Peach schnapps. Ugh. She took a swig, trying not to wince as the cloying taste of peaches filled her mouth, and tilted her head at Josh, daring him with her eyes. He was next to her in an instant, his lips cool and faintly repulsive against hers. She darted her tongue into his mouth to the beat of Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Want to Have Fun," which she played for herself in her head, and she let the heavy liquid slide from her mouth to his.
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"When the work-ing day is done," she heard Cyndi wail in her head, as Josh gazed at her with a new drunken appreciation, clearly believing that he'd died and gone to heaven, or at least to the X-rated section of his internal video store. She set one of her small hands in the center of his chest and pushed gently. He fell back on the bed like a tree. She took another gulp of schnapps and straddled him, grinding her crotch against him, smiling. Courage, she thought to herself. She leaned back on her haunches and pulled her top up over her head. Josh's eyes widened at the sight of her breasts in the faint glow from the lamps outside that filtered in through his window. She tried to put herself in his place, imagining what he saw—a lithe, half-naked girl, the spill of h er hair over her shoulders, her white skin and slender midriff and hard brown nipples shining at him. He reached for her. Now, she thought, and tilted the bottle of schnapps so that liquor flowed down her breasts, making a sticky trail toward the waistband of her jeans. "Oh, my God!" Josh groaned, "you are so hot!" He was huffing and puffing, panting words she couldn't make out, as he snuffled at her skin and the schnapps, and his hands were fumbling uselessly at the waistband on her jeans. She'd counted on him being too drunk to operate a button fly, and it looked as though she'd guessed right. "Wait," she whispered, flipping herself off of him and coming to lie by his side. "Let me take care of you." "You're incredible," he said, and lay still with his eyes closed. Maggie leaned close and kissed his neck. He sighed. She planted a trail of tiny kisses from his earlobe to his collarbone, moving a little more slowly with each kiss. He sighed again, reaching down the front of his boxers. Maggie began trailing her tongue toward his chest. Slowly, she told herself, timing each lick and kiss to the beat of her heart. Slowly . . . Each kiss was lighter than the one before it. Each one took longer to come. She held herself in check, and held her breath, tense
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beside him, until she heard his breathing slow to a regular rhythm, until she heard the first clotted rattle of a snore. She raised her head an inch and peeked at his face to make sure. His eyes were closed, his mouth was open, a bubble of spit expanded and retracted between his lips. Josh was asleep. Asleep or passed out. She wasn't sure which, and it didn't matter. Her plan had worked so far. She eased one hand down into his pocket and came up with a plastic card. His student ID. Perfect. Then she crept out of his bed, located her tank top, and pulled it back on as Josh snored. She found a towel on the floor—it smelled sour and felt crusty, but no use looking for clean laundry in here, she thought, grabbing a plastic bucket that contained soap and shampoo. His wallet was on the desk. She looked at it, considering, then picked it up and flipped it open. There were a half-dozen credit cards, a decent-sized wad of cash. She'd look through it later, she decided, and shoved the whole thing in her pocket before turning to the closet. Did she dare? She inched across the floor, and eased the door open by millimeters. Josh had not one but two leather jackets, plus all manner of shirts, sweaters, and khaki pants, sneakers and hiking boots, jeans and polo shirts, windbreakers, winter coats, and even a tuxedo wrapped in dry-cleaner's plastic. Maggie took two of the sweaters, and then looked in the corner. Bonus! There was a goosedown sleeping bag tucked neatly into a stuff sack, and an electric camping lantern next to it. He'd never miss them, and if he did, she was sure that whoever'6 bought him all of his other stuff would just send a check for more. Josh groaned thickly and rolled over, flinging one arm across the pillow where Maggie's head had been. Maggie felt her heart stop. She forced herself to count to a hundred before moving again, then gathered her spoils, cramming the sleeping bag and lantern into her backpack. She eased the door open, and headed into the hallway. It was four in the morning. Maggie could still hear stereos blaring, and the drunken whoops and shouts of people coming back from parties.
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The bathrooms were at the end of the hall, and they had locks that required codes but, luckily, the ladies' room door was propped open by the prone body of a passed-out coed who'd succumbed half in and half out of one of the stalls. Maggie stepped over her legs and stripped, hanging her clothes neatly on one of the hooks, hanging the towel on top of them. She stepped under the warm water and closed her eyes. Okay, she thought to herself. Okay. Next would come food and a place to regroup. She was thinking of the library, thinking how at every college she'd ever attended or visited the security guards never looked too closely at identification cards. If you looked like you belonged, they just waved you in. So first she'd get her clothes from behind the couch in the first dorm, and then she'd use his ID to sneak into a dining hall for some food, and then .... Maggie looked down and saw a white plastic hair clip sitting in the soap dish. . . . the same kind of ugly thing that her sister used to shove her hair back off her face. Rose, she thought, and was suddenly caught in such a drowning wave of regret that her breath caught in her throat. Rose, she thought, I'm sorry. And in that instant, naked and alone, Maggie felt as wretched as she ever had in her life.
TWENTY'FIVE
Maybe this is what it feels like to go crazy, Rose thought, and rolled over and gave herself to sleep again. In her dream, she was lost in a cave, and the cave kept getting smaller and smaller, the ceiling pressing lower and lower until she could feel the stalactites—or possibly the stalagmites, Rose had always gotten them confused—pushing wet against her face. She woke up. The dog that Maggie had left behind was perched on a pillow beside her, licking her cheeks. "Ugh," said Rose, burying her face in a pillow and rolling away. For a minute she didn't remember anything. Then it all came crashing back—Jim and Maggie. Jn bed. Together. "Oh, God," she groaned. The dog put its paw on top of her forehead, as if it were taking her temperature, and gave an inquisitive-sounding whine. "Go away," Rose said. Instead, the dog turned in three circles on top of the pillow, curled itself into a graham-cracker-colored bundle and started to snore. Rose closed her eyes and followed the dog back into sleep. When she woke up again, it was after eleven o'clock in the morning. She staggered to her feet and almost slipped in the warm,
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wet puddle outside of the bathroom. She stared at her wet foot dumbly, then back at the dog, still perched on the bed. "Did you do this?" she asked. The dog just stared. Rose sighed, then dug out the Pine-Sol and a roll of paper towels and dealt with the mess. She couldn't blame the dog, she supposed . . . the poor thing hadn't been walked since yesterday. She plodded to the kitchen, put on a pot of coffee, poured herself a bowl of bran flakes, and moved her spoon through them, back and forth. She didn't want bran flakes, she realized. She didn't want anything. She couldn't imagine ever feeling hungry again. She stared at the telephone. What day was it? Saturday. Which gave her the weekend to get herself together. Or maybe she should just go ahead and call in sick right now, leave someone a message saying she wouldn't be in this week. But who? If Maggie were here, she'd know what to say. Maggie was the queen of white lies, half-truths, and mental-health days, which she felt completely justified in taking. Maggie. "Oh, God," Rose groaned again. Maggie was back at her father's house, or lurking in the bushes or on a bench outside, certain that the morning would make Rose change her mind. Well, fat chance of that, she thought fiercely, giving up on breakfast and setting her bowl next to the sink. The dog, evidently, did not share her black mood or lack of appetite. It had materialized by her feet and was staring at her cereal bowl with wet and avid eyes. Rose realized she had no idea what Maggie had fed the thing. She hadn't noticed any dog food around. Not that she'd been noticing much of anything. Except Jim. Or lack thereof. Tentatively, she lowered her cereal bowl to the floor. The dog sniffed it, lowered her nose, took a small lick of the milk, then snorted once, dismissively, and stared up at Rose. "No good?" asked Rose. She rummaged through her cabinets. Pea soup. Probably not. Black beans . . . she didn't think so. Tuna fish! Or was that for cats? She decided to give it a go, mixing it with mayonnaise and setting it in front of the dog, along with a cup
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of water. The dog wolfed it down, making little grunts of happiness and nosing the bowl across the entire length of the kitchen floor, attempting to remove every last morsel of mayonnaise and flake of fish. "Okay," said Rose. It was now the unimaginable hour of one in the afternoon. Her apartment was spotless, thanks to last night's cleaning. She wandered into the bathroom and stared at herself for a long moment. She was an ordinary girl, with ordinary hair and ordinary brown eyes. She had lips and cheeks and eyebrows, and there was nothing remarkable about any of them. "What's wrong with me?" she asked the face in the mirror. The dog sat at the bathroom door, staring. Rose brushed her teeth, washed her face, made the bed, moving through the room on heavy, leaden legs. Go out? Stay in? Go back to sleep? The dog was scratching at the front door. "Hey, stop that!" She looked around, wondering whether Maggie had left a leash, then she pulled out a scarf she'd bought once during a single misguided afternoon when she'd thought she might actually become a scarf-wearing sort of person—the kind of woman who accessorized, instead of the kind of woman whose scarves inevitably wound up either slammed in the car door or trailing in her soup. She knelt down and threaded the scarf through the dog's collar. The dog looked unhappy and put-upon, as if it—she?—realized that the scarf was polyester, not real silk. "A thousand pardons," Rose said sarcastically, finding her keys and sunglasses and mittens and a twenty-dollar bill to tuck into her pocket so that she could buy pet food. Then she headed to the elevator, scooped the dog up under her coat, slid past the doorman and headed out the door. There was, if she remembered right, a strip of grass at the corner of her street. The dog could do its business there, and then she'd cross the street to the Wawa, tie the dog to a parking meter the way she'd seen oth er people do, and buy dog food, and a doughnut, Rose decided. A jelly doughnut. Possibly two jelly doughnuts, and coffee
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with cream and three packets of sugar. She'd gain weight . . . but that didn't matter. Who'd be seeing her naked now? Who'd care? She could gain weight; she could let her leg hair grow until it was long enough for French braids; she could wear every single frayed, dingy, snapped-elastic pair of panties she had. None of it mattered anymore. The dog shot Rose a grateful look as soon as they'd made it out of her building, trotted to the gutter, and squatted there, peeing for what felt like a very long time. "Sorry about making you wait," Rose said. The dog snorted. Rose wasn't sure what that was supposed to mean. The dog certainly snorted a lot. Maybe it was just a ... a breed thing. Maybe this was a particularly snorty breed of dog. Rose had no idea. After Honey Bun, their dog for a day, she and Maggie had never had so much as a goldfish. Too much extra responsibility for their father, who clearly found the two girls burden enough. And then after she and Maggie had left the house, Sydelle purchased her designer dog, a dog with a pedigree, and papers to prove it. "I'm allergic," her father had said. "Don't be silly," Sydelle had replied. And that was the end of that. Chanel the idiot golden retriever stayed. Her father suffered. "What a cute little pug!" said a dark-haired woman, kneeling to let the dog sniff her hand. Pug, Rose said to herself. Okay, so the dog was a pug. That was a start. "Come," Rose said, wrapping the scarf around her hand, and the dog walked sedately by her left heel as they made their way to the convenience store. "Stay," said Rose, and tied her scarf around a meter. The dog—the pug—looked up at her like a dinner guest waiting for the soup course. "I'll be back," said Rose. She went inside and spent ten minutes staring at the bewildering array of pet food before purchasing a bag of kibble for small adult dogs. She also bought a plastic bowl to pour the food into, two jelly doughnuts, coffee, two pints of ice cream, and a bag of cheese curls she'd grabbed from a display promising that they'd be the most CheeseRageous thing she'd ever eaten. The cashier raised his eye 194 Jennifer weiner
