Usually the sight of Corinne would feel like home to me. But now it’s as if some frame that’s been off-kilter for the past five days has suddenly fallen and crashed to the floor in a million tiny pieces.

I watch her gnaw at Palm Tree’s neck, and his tail wags so hard that it knocks her scarf off. It takes another beat of pure puppy-owner delight before she extends me another look.

“Hi,” I say, stunned and not entirely sure that this isn’t the dastardly mind game the little devil and angel were silently concocting all night. “This, um, isn’t Switzerland.”

“There’s that expensive FATE education at work,” she says, putting Palm Tree down. “Have you not been sleeping? You really do look like hell.”

Never mind. No guilt fantasy at play here: this is the real Corinne.

“Why are you back so early? Is everything okay?” I say, wondering if she can see the guilt all over my face.

“Ta-da!” she proclaims, vexedly petting her hair down. She kicks off her shoes. “Mom’s panels were over after two days, and we had dinner together twice—twice!—with Marcel Carnis, this author she knew way back when and who was trying to get into her pants.”

“Corinne! Ew!”

“Well, he was! Kept saying how ‘dee-lightful’ I am. They were palpably horny for each other. By the end, I was pretending to be sick and spending the day on my own.”

“Okay . . . ,” I trail off, still unsure of so many things right now—not the least of which being Chantale and some international lover popping champagne in a hotel suite. “And?”

“And fine, whatever, I missed my boyfriend, all right!” she says. She has her chin up and defiant, her hands on her hips, daring me to say something. “And . . . and . . . I don’t know! I was just bored in a hotel. Museums are weird alone! People just keep trying to talk to you. Like having a vagina puts you in permanent need of a tour guide.”

“Please don’t say vagina.”

“Why? Vagina.”

She puts her boots together by the door as she talks and then bends down again and moves them two inches to the left and then back again. Why is she so nervous?

“We’re seniors,” she continues, and I can see the bullet points of some definite list being checked off in her mind as she goes through them. “And whatever happens, we—meaning you and I—don’t necessarily have that much time left in this current iteration of, well, life. And . . .”

“I missed you too.” I smile.

The thing about Corinne is . . . Well. It’s hard to pinpoint, exactly. She’s been so many things in such a short time. The intense girl sitting in the front row of classes, the neighbor who lived right upstairs, the blackmailer, the Uptown Updogs client, the social understudy, the friend, the college road trip planner, the Girlfriend.