The computer was at the end of my bed. I closed it with my socked foot and continued reading my selections from The Diary of Samuel Pepys (which is pronounced Peeps, not Peppies, something I found out the hard way in class)—specifically, a section in which he describes the Great Fire of London. There was a knock at our door. Charlotte opened the door when we called.

“Benton, Deveaux, you’re wanted downstairs.”

In Hawthorne-speak, downstairs meant Call Me Claudia’s apartment, and last names meant the business was in some way official.

“What for?” Jazza asked.

“Sorry. No idea.”

She and her hair left us. Jazza shoved her German off her lap and spun toward me.

“Oh, God . . . ,” she said.

“It’s fine,” I said. “It’s fine. She would have killed us by now if she wanted to.”

“She was probably waiting until the police left.”

“Jazza.”

“Why else would she want us?”

“Jazza,” I said again.

“What do we do?” she said, rocking on the edge of her bed. “Rory? What do we do?”

“We go down.”

“And?”

“And . . . she says stuff,” I said. “I don’t know. We just go.”

We gathered ourselves together, put on our most innocent faces, and walked downstairs as a united front. Claudia called us inside on the very first knock.

“Ah, girls . . .”

I immediately relaxed. It was a cheerful “ah, girls.” Not an “I’m going to murder you now with a hockey stick” kind of “ah, girls.” She gestured for us to take a seat in one of her floral chairs. Jazza swallowed so hard I heard it.

“You’re getting a roommate tomorrow,” she said. “Her name is Bhuvana Chodhari. Late admission.”

“Why is she moving into our room?” I asked. “Eloise has a room all to herself.”

“Eloise has severe allergies. She needs an air purifier in her room.”

This was so obvious and outrageous a lie that I almost laughed out loud. Eloise didn’t have allergies. She smoked more than a tire fire.

“Your room was originally a triple,” Claudia went on. “There’s plenty of space. If you have anything in the third wardrobe, you need to get it out tonight. That will be all, I think.”

We returned to our room and shut the door.

“She knows,” Jazza said.

I nodded.

“This totally blows,” I added.

After briefly analyzing the dimensions, we concluded that there was no way this room was a triple. At most it was maybe four feet wider than the rooms around it, and it did have an extra window, but that was it.

“You never know,” Jazza said. She had recovered from the initial shock and was trying to be the ever-bright-and-cheery one. “She may be lovely. I mean, I like having just the two of us in here, but it might not be bad.”

“We’re losing our sofa.”