At their largest, they were about the size of my thumb, and covered in a layer of bushy black spines, so that each looked like a bit of wool dropped on the ground. I didn’t know where they came from, or why there were so many of them, but they showed up every year. For days I couldn’t walk down the steps without seeing ten or fifteen, and more of their crushed bodies underfoot, smeared like roadkill on the sidewalk. Hardly anyone even looked to avoid stepping on them. It’s amazing what college students can ignore, especially by the middle of the semester.

That day, I saw Harry bent over at the base of the stairs. She had a stick, and she went down on her knees, and coaxed one of the caterpillars off the cement, then flicked it into the grass. And she climbed a couple of steps, spotted another one, and bent down for it. I watched her do this for almost five minutes. She was getting in everyone’s way, and her face was very serious, puckered, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. I’d never tried to pick up a girl I didn’t know before. I wasn’t sure how you were supposed to do it. I started at the top of the steps, and began collecting the caterpillars as I found them.

When we met in the middle, I held one out to her in my cupped palm. The caterpillar was curled into a tight ball, even more like a stray bit of yarn. Harry looked down at my hand, then up at me, and grimaced. “Oh no,” she said, “I don’t like to touch them. They’re kind of disgusting.”

I blinked at her, and then, obediently, tossed the caterpillar off onto the hillside. I wondered how many of them actually survived out there, didn’t crawl back onto the steps to be crushed, or else get scooped up by birds or infiltrated by parasites. “Then why are you picking them up?”

Harry winced, and tugged on the long fringe of her ponytail, a nervous gesture she would have up until she lopped it off. “I just feel bad letting things die.”

There would always be something compulsive and anxious about Harry’s kindness, which made me think sometimes about the difference between not being bad and being good.

That spring I had a single, because my roommate had moved home and hadn’t told housing services, and Harry had a girlfriend who she said she was in love with. The girlfriend was tall, coltish, a criminal justice major. She had that unfortunate verbal tick that articles are always warning women about now, where you qualify all your statements saying, I think, and As far as I know, and This is just my opinion, but, when you don’t need to. Saying, I’m sorry, whenever you start or stop speaking.

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