The dorm room she shared with Carol Anne was just like the other rooms that ran up and down the hall, up and down a thousand buildings like it on campuses across the kudzu-covered South. Brick buildings holding rooms with posters taped crooked and tattered on the walls, filled with bedspreads and pillows bought with parents the weeks before school started, in a frenzy to claim one’s own space in a mass of uniformity. Gaudy colors and crisp sheets filled the rooms the first day. Framed pictures of family and friends sat on gunmetal desks and bedside tables in an attempt to conjure up their love and presence in a chaotic world of books and competition.

Amy’s bedspread was blue and green plaid. She’d chosen it from the Sears catalog and had thought it grown-up and classy. When she’d first smoothed the quilt across her dorm-room bed and lain on top of it, she’d realized with a twist of sadness that she was no different than any other freshman putting her quilt on her bed.

Now, curling beneath the covers, she felt somehow that in meeting the boy with no name, in touching his hand, in allowing him to touch her face, she had become a tiny bit of an individual; maybe she could claim something different than the sameness surrounding her. She tried to sleep, but found herself in a spiral, never quite reaching its end. She would begin to fall asleep, then startle to the touch of the boy’s hand on her chin, to the flash of his jaw. She tossed against the sheets as she heard his gravely drawl thicken her sleepless fatigue.

Carol Anne’s drunken attempts to navigate the minefield of their dorm room—full of books, laundry and clothing they’d tried on but discarded that night before going out—thoroughly woke Amy. In the full dark, Carol Anne cursed each shoe and book she tripped on.

“You can turn the light on, Carol Anne.”

“Oh, you’re awake. My loyal roommate is awake.” Carol Anne flicked on the overhead light and Amy buried her head under the pillow.

“I believe the bedside lamp would have done just fine.”

“Oh, but you deserve it. Leaving me all alone at the KA house. My, my, what would our dorm mother say if she knew the sainted Amy left her roommate at a fraternity keg party?”

“I couldn’t find you anywhere. I looked.”

“So you just left.”

“Hmm.”

Carol Anne giggled, hiccuped. “I’m glad you did. I got a ride home with the evening’s designated protector of innocent young ladies.” Carol Anne sat on the side of the bed, pulled a cigarette from beneath the mattress and lit it.

“Don’t, Carol Anne. You’re going to get us expelled from the dorm. Go outside.”

“Don’t you want to hear about this delicious boy?”