He visited Sheria a week before Thanksgiving and found her brightly happy, watching her small color television, sitting against the wall of her bed, propped against pillows. That was the time he saw that there were cuts on her wrist—not very deep, not enough to penetrate the layer of fat there. But the straight lines of the cuts were distinct, across both wrists, very neat and precise, reminding him of the frog he had dissected in high school. There was no sign of bleeding; the flesh had started to heal. “What are you looking at?” she asked. She had been talking about Pat, the RA for the boys’ floor on the other side of the dorm, who was, she said, a cutie and a friend of hers.

“What’s going on, Sheria?” he asked.

“Ronny, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The smile remained but there was a feverish cast to her expression. Sheria was like a human furnace, she exuded heat; but this was different.

He pointed. “You have cuts.”

The smile scarcely changed. “No I don’t. I wouldn’t do anything like that.”

There passed an extended moment in which they simply sat together, and he could feel it then, her fear. It had always been there but he had never noticed it before. There might be a thousand reasons for it. She had been one of the only black students at Governor’s School. She was heavy. She kept to herself. There were the problems with her mother. These were just the things Ronny knew about her. After a moment he said, “I know you wouldn’t.”

“Do you want to sit down? You can sit on the other bed. I don’t have a roommate.” She was the RA for the girls’ side of this floor so she had a room to herself. He started to sit on the bed and then slid to the floor beside it instead. He wasn’t sure why but he was afraid, something about the moment made him so. She said, “I have been a little blue lately.”

“Me, too,” he said.

“I guessed you were. That’s why I said something. Your mom is okay?”

“She’s fine. I haven’t heard from her since her boyfriend moved out.”

“The one with the bad teeth?”

“Yes. Dennis. His dentures kept falling out.”

She giggled, the bed shook as the laugh grew, and she waved her hand and said, “I’m picturing inappropriate moments at which that would happen.”

“Oh. I know. But I think he takes them out when they have … you know.”

“Oh, oh.” She was waving an old church fan at her face. She kept the fan on the table beside her. “You are bad.”

“It’s true.”

“I would never ever discuss my mother having sex with anyone.”

“Does she?”

“Stop. Please. Of course she doesn’t. She wouldn’t be so visceral.” That stopped her, the manic quality of the laughter dissolving. “She said the most terrible thing to me the other day on the phone. ‘At least you’re not wasting your time dating anybody.’ Can you imagine? ‘You’re good at friendship but I don’t think anybody will ever love you.’ ” She blinked at him, let the words hang there. She was no longer smiling.