Sometime in October I was on a break from my structuralism seminar, eating a candy bar in the hallway. There were maybe fifteen kids just milling around in the space outside the lecture hall, texting while leaning against concrete pillars, some reading the textbook, some doing homework for other classes already. When I saw you on the other side of the hallway, you smiled and shuffled over to where I was standing.

“Hey,” I said.

You started rifling through your backpack. “Wanna walk to the Dana building with me? I need to turn in some forms.”

“Sure.”

I sat outside an office door while I listened to you try to explain something to someone in a position of authority. It dragged on until the second half of my seminar was over, so I had to run to get my laptop out of the room after everyone else had shuffled out. The TA gave me a long, sad look from where he was putting papers back into his worn leather shoulder bag.

Another time, my house threw a party and I saw you in the kitchen wearing a lot of black mesh and pleather. You were really drunk and put both of your hands on my shoulders and said: “Oh my godddd. My faaaavorite girl is here.” I felt a weightless rush, giddily excited in a way raised to vaudeville proportions by the amount of alcohol I had consumed, and I put my hands on your waist and giggled wordlessly as you drew me into a hug. I felt like we might lose balance and fall over. Then someone in the other room was crying and you had to intervene.

A week or two later I was doing my homework in the co-op living room and you walked through with two guys, clearly the ringleader. You were wearing a sort of black denim shirt, unbuttoned to your sternum, tucked into a pleated plaid skirt that looked like it was snipped and sewed from a grandmother’s tablecloth. You were wearing fishnets and big black boots.

Outside, the wind was stripping brown-and-red leaves from the trees. The guys looked so plain next to you. I looked up and waved, and you smiled and waved back.

October 15

At a quiet weeknight party, I kissed a girl named Kira. She had been very purposefully flirty with me all night — lots of eye contact, very attentive listening as I talked, always finding excuses to keep the conversation going, talking a lot about her feelings. She had a big poofy mane of curly, dark hair and a perpetually flushed face. “You’re so pretty,” she said. I kissed her back but sort of stumbled away before her roving hands could unmask the body I was hiding underneath a baggy sweatshirt and jeans. I ended up on the porch, fiddling around in my jacket pockets to find a cigarette. Elena was out there, smoking and looking at her phone, perched on a handrail.