Troy hears someone say, “It’s none of your business!” This is Marta Hillary. Troy waits. Marta Hillary exclaims, “Well, but what if I still think it isn’t?” Marta Hillary is speaking to someone over the phone. “Yes, I know,” Marta says conspiratorially. There is a pause. “Well, I don’t care. At any rate,” Marta is saying, “I’m going to have a new student soon. A good one. I know! Yes. No, he’s already here. Yes, yes, I know. Yes, next week is still good. It’s all I can think about. Well, we wouldn’t have to. As you know.”

Troy can hear Marta moving around the room.

“I’m getting changed. Yes, obviously we’re having people over. The masses. You know us. Oh? Well, now that you remind me of it! No, he’s been entirely acceptable.” Hangers squeal. Marta seems to be struggling to extract a garment. “Yes, Dieter, darling,” she tells her interlocutor, somewhat breathlessly, “I got them. I love them.” Here she adds a phrase or two in what Troy determines is lilting German.

“Hey!” Someone pokes Troy in the back.

Troy half jumps and turns and is nonplussed to discover Lizzie Hillary shaking her head in insouciant censure. “Harry, Harry, Harry,” she is saying. “Way to be way lewd, dude.”

Troy/Harry blinks.

Lizzie tugs at his sleeve. “Hello?” she whispers with a certain amount of force. She drags Troy/Harry away from the doorway. “They barely know you and you’re going to act like a total freaking perv? Do you just love to hate your boy Loudie so much? Because I feel like you don’t want him to get any money next year?” Lizzie wears a pale pink cardigan and her cheeks shimmer with copper pigment. Her hair is ironed and she’s edgy and clean. “Like my outfit?” she wants to know.

Harry nods.

“Thanks, man.” She is pulling him down the hall. Words tumble out of her. “I mean, you shouldn’t have been looking at my mom like that, but everybody has, you know, their days? I know I totally do. Anyways, I want to show you my room? I think I might feel like that’s a good idea. I do really like you, Harry, did you know that?”

Lizzie opens another door. “Ta da!” Lizzie is saying.

The room Harry is now looking into is an unremarkable girl’s room, the room of a normal, if privileged, teenager. The walls are white, the carpet pink. The bed is white, the comforter a white-and-pink trellis. Embellishments born of more mature tastes hang on the walls. There are images of early R.E.M. and Smashing Pumpkins and Charles Bukowski and a poster version of Odilon Redon’s dancing spider, a Jenny Holzer truism, Tyra Banks in profile. Near a mirrored closet, clothing sits in a heap.