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“You’re just looking for a guy under sixty to make out with come midnight.”
Melanie shrugs. “Under sixty, yes. A guy? Maybe not.” She gives me a look.
“What?”
“I’ve sort of being doing the girl thing.”
“What?!” It comes out a shout. “Sorry. Since when?”
“Since right after Thanksgiving. There was this one girl and we met in film theory class and we were friends and one night we went out and it just happened.”
I look at the new haircut, the nose ring, the hairy armpits. It all makes sense. “So, are you a lesbian now?”
“I prefer not to label it,” she says, somewhat sanctimoniously, the implication being that I need to label everything. She’s the one who’s constantly branding herself: Mel, Mel 2.0. Punk-rock librarian. I ask her girlfriend’s name. She tells me they’re not into defining it like that, but her name is Zanne.
“Is that with an X?”
“Z. Short for Suzanne.”
Doesn’t anybody use a real name anymore?
“Don’t tell my parents, okay? You know my mom. She’d make us process it and talk about it as a phase of my development. I want to make sure this is more than a fling before I subject myself to that.”
“Please, you don’t have to tell me about parental overanalysis.”
She pushes her sunglasses up her nose and turns to me. “Yeah, so what’s that all about?”
“What do you mean? You’ve met my parents. Is there a part of my life they’re not involved in? They must be freaking out to not have their fingers literally in every aspect of what I’m doing.”
“I know. And when I heard about the study hall, I figured it was that. I thought maybe you had a low B average. But a two—point—seven? Really?”
“Don’t you start on me.”
“I’m not. I’m just surprised. You’ve always been such a kick-ass student. I don’t get it.” She takes a loud slurp of her mostly melted iced tea. “The Therapist says you’re depressed.”
“Your mom? She told you that?”
“I heard her mention it to your mom.”
“What did my mom say?”
“That you weren’t depressed. That you were pouting because you weren’t used to being punished. Sometimes I really want to smack your mom.”
“You and me both.”
“Anyhow, later on my mom asked me if I thought you were depressed.”
“And what’d you tell her?”
“I said lots of people have a hard time freshman year.” She gives me a sharp look from behind her dark glasses. “I couldn’t tell her the truth, could I? That I thought you were still pining for some guy you had a one-night stand with in Paris.”
>He was right, after all; it didn’t leave a scar, though part of me wishes it had. At least I’d have some evidence, some justification of this permanence. Stains are even worse when you’re the only one who can see them.
Seventeen
DECEMBER
Cancún, Mexico
