There was a long pause. He tapped again. I tapped back.

We did this several more times, like musicians who’d fallen out of sync. The system was far too vague, I thought; we needed more than one signal. Which one of us was offering to give the head? Finally, I heard him sigh, and heard the squeak of his stall door and his footsteps as he left the bathroom. I felt both frustrated and relieved, since I would have been terrified if anything had actually happened.

But when I got back to my carrel, I saw him. He was hunched over a bound periodical, his red sneakers tucked beneath his chair, teetering on their rubber-soled toes. He had horn-rimmed glasses, and hair so black it was nearly blue; enormous biceps stretching the sleeves of his burgundy FSU T-shirt; a superhero’s jaw, right down to the divot.

When he tossed his backpack over a shoulder and left the library, I followed him. I’d never tailed anyone before and I wasn’t very good at it, for when he turned unexpectedly—say, to cut across a lawn instead of following the sidewalk—and put me in his peripheral vision, I stopped short and began looking around like someone who’d just dropped his keys, even glancing up into the dogwood trees to see if they’d landed there. He didn’t seem to notice. In tandem, we made our way through a patchwork of buildings, on paths shaded by enormous pines. I concluded he was heading toward the football stadium, which would explain the arms. But before we got there, he veered off to the right. The buildings thinned out and the sidewalk turned to grass. The grass wore down to dirt, and then opened onto a clearing, and there before us stood an enormous white circus tent. A woman was coiling rope around a wooden spool near the entrance. She said hello to him. He high-fived her, and disappeared inside.

Frankie and I spoke several times over the phone during that first week. He apologized for not having seen me and said he was “swamped with stuff,” and I lied and told him it didn’t matter.

We compared notes about the disparate architecture of the campus, and talked about how awful the meal plan was (he hadn’t signed up for it again, and had forgotten to warn me about it). I asked him about the circus tent.

“Isn’t that great?” he said. “I think we’re the only state school in the country where you can major in clown.”

“So it’s an actual program?”

“Sure it is. Why? You want to switch majors?”

Several more days went by before we at last made solid plans to see each other—at another party given by one of his friends.