Later he remembered the sequence of events: he had stood, the name-calling, the kiss, the laughter. The figure on the lawn. He had stood, Ben had done the same. As if he had been there, watching in the dark, all that time. As if he had been waiting.

Boxes

THE NEXT MORNING RONNY TOOK HIS exam for England from the Late Norman Era Through the Plantagenets, his head crammed with reign dates, Edwards, Henrys, the Richards, feudalism, land surveys, tax burdens, fealty, a bit of a pageant. Sitting in the classroom with his blue book and pen, he examined cracks in the plaster walls of Hanes Hall, looked up at the open transom over the frame, paint cracked and peeling, no air-conditioning, the place as open to the day as it could be to keep cool. He had liked the class, liked history in general. The trick with an essay exam was to start writing as soon as the professor said, “Begin.” He rarely worried. The only problem he had at the moment was keeping daydreams away. There were so many things he would prefer to think about than the death of Henry VI.

After two hours of penwork he went by the newspaper office to find out whether paychecks had been cut. The student union was still busy, people hanging about the lounges with rings of books round their chairs; studying for exams in public always had a hormonal edge to it, people cruising one another between the tedium of rereading notes and shuffling index cards. He might have hung out at The Daily Tar Heel but nobody was in the office except Phrena, the new business manager, walking stiff-legged down the row of desks, her polyester pantsuit making a rasping noise with each step. She gave him his check in a white envelope and petted him on the arm. She asked if he was sticking around to work on the summer paper. Maybe, he said. She was older, had hair like a spray-on helmet. A dachshund slept under her desk. The office smelled like old dog.

In the dorm room, Kelly was passed out from a party the night before. He or the bed smelled of old beer. The room was still a mess but the contents were different: beer cans nested among the dirty clothes, a few Chinese food containers huddled near Kelly’s bed. An open biology textbook and notebooks stuffed with comics lay next to the bed; Kelly took the comic books to class to read them during lectures. He was lying facedown, drooling a thread of stuff onto the pillow, but his lips were cracked as if he had just marched through the desert without water. No need to wake him for a fond goodbye. Ronny’s boxes were stacked in the corner. He had packed in the morning before his exam, using boxes from the basement of the dorm. Pathetic how little he had. Jamal was on his way to help with the move. Ronny sat at his desk reading The Brothers Karamazov while he waited. After a while the reading made him restless, though, so he laid the book on his desk and stretched.