I smile because I feel like I’m supposed to. I wonder why we always thought kids who went to college were magically cool.

“So, you’re all like grunge and shit, huh?” he says, leaning into me again. He’s still not wearing a shirt and his armpits don’t smell great. He’s like radiating heat.

“Sure,” I say, nursing my beer.

That’s the end of our conversation for a good ten minutes. He stands and bobs to the music, fighting to keep his eyelids from slamming shut, the stupid hat still nesting in his curls. I watch the girls in the living room. I don’t understand the way they act like these boys are another species. They’re just boys. They aren’t worth all the giggling and lip gloss.

I ask to use the bathroom. Lion Boy breathes in hard through his nose and opens his eyes wide like he’s waking up.

“Okay, so you go up the stairs and then you make a—” He holds his hands up, trying to figure out which is right and which is left. “I’ll show you.” He grabs my hand, threading his sweaty fingers between mine, and leads me across the living room. We walk up creaky, crooked steps. It’s the second door on the left.

I close the door behind me and have to push hard to get it to stay shut. There are porno mags on the back of the toilet and a hair clog in the bathtub drain so big it looks like it could grow legs and run away if it wanted to. I pee hovering as far above the seat as possible and wash my hands with hot, hot water. I wish I could run every part of me under hot water. I’m still not thawed.

When I open the door, the room across the hall is open. There’s a black light and someone painted a drippy skull and crossbones on the wall with Tide so it glows. Lion Boy sits on the bed strumming an electric guitar that isn’t plugged in. Thin metal chords sound vaguely like November Rain.

“You play?” I say.

“Yeah, you?”

“A little.”

He’s wearing a shirt now. A white one with a face on it that looks kind of like one of the statues from Easter Island. The stupid Seuss hat is on the bed next to him. He hands the guitar over. “Play something,” he says. Suddenly he doesn’t seem like such a lame-ass bonehead. He plugs the guitar into a small amp and turns the volume down.