A vivid look. Ben didn’t know what that meant. He swallowed and began speaking as she continued to take pictures. He had to concentrate hard on saying even a few words to keep his self-consciousness from entangling him, and he remembered this same feeling with Nina, who now seemed decades removed. “How do you think you come off?” he asked.

“Me?” she said.

He nodded and she took a picture.

“Well, I’m pretty self-conscious too.”

“Hm.”

“Yeah”—snap—“so I guess we’re”—snap—“like partners in self-consciousness.”

Ben almost told her everything right then, but it felt good to leave it, and he found that he was laughing with pleasure as she kept snapping photos, and she started laughing too.

“Don’t laugh, you’re ruining them,” she said.

12. Half Unfolded

12. Half Unfolded

JANUARY VERGED OVER INTO FEBRUARY, AND THE TEMPERATURE rose just enough for a grinding rain to start up after classes. Ben had started to skip wrestling practice, but no one called him out. The team itself seemed to be dissolving and they had lost three meets in a row.

Dark puddles formed in the footprints in the snow, and after class Ben came back to the room in soaked clothes and shoes. His Sauconys now had small tears along each toe box. He didn’t know how they were going to make it through the semester. He stripped to his boxers in the hallway and carried his clothes into the room, then pulled back the curtain to his closet and dropped everything into the white plastic hamper. Also in the hamper were all of his towels. The one he had used that morning smelled like mildew, but he wanted to take another shower now to warm himself up. He knew he shouldn’t, but he pulled back the curtain to Ahmed’s closet to find one of those spectacular towels. He would throw it in the dryer downstairs before Ahmed even knew it was gone.

He had never bought Ahmed new towels after throwing up on them in the fall, and it was too late for that now.

At the back left-hand corner of Ahmed’s closet, beneath the neat rows of suits and shirts on hangers, Ben saw the Coach satchel, empty now and compressed thin with its strap folded over the top edge. Next to that was an L.L.Bean shoe box that looked like the one Ben’s slippers had come in. Had Ahmed bought slippers without consulting him? Ben had a strange urge to turn and make sure his own slippers were in his closet.