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if I’m going to tackle differential
equations.”
    Blake took his hand off my wrist,
looking at the ground. “Lead the way,” he said, looking at me like
he wanted to say something else.
     
     
    By the time I got to our room, Darby
was already dressed in a black a-line dress with pink lace at the
bottom, which was, at least, an improvement on yesterday’s outfits.
It was almost Betsey Johnson-esque, and I liked it.
    “ Oh, good,” she lilted as
I walked into the room, her hair set in wide Velcro curlers. “How
was class?”
    I’d spent three hours in the library,
not even stopping for lunch. I’d made it through a chapter of
three-variable equations and felt, for probably the first time all
semester, that I’d gotten a majority of the answers on our problem
set correct. But the batteries on my graphing calculator were
starting to die, so I figured I’d done enough for the day. I’d
actually managed to put Rush out of my mind, walking back from the
library to the dorm and thinking about hot chocolate and snowy
skyscrapers.
    I sat down on the bed, pulling the
ponytail holder out of my hair. “Do your worst,” I said.
    Darby laughed, as if I’d been
joking.
    “ How was the party?” I
asked, feeling a little spark of guilt at not having gone the night
before.
    “ Oh my gosh,” her lashes
fluttered dramatically. “It was amazing.”
    I turned around, almost burning my ear
on Darby’s curling iron.
    “ So you really liked the
girls?”
    “ Face forward,” she
chastised, her mouth curling into a little smile. “Not exactly the
girls...”
    Ah , I thought to myself.
    “ You met a
guy?”
    I didn’t turn around this time, but it
was as if I could hear her smiling.
    “ I don’t know if he even
likes me,” she said, her voice sounding like she didn’t mean that
in the slightest.
    “ But?”
    “ Jen introduced us at the
beginning of the party, and he didn’t leave my side the whole
night,” she giggled. “He even made his pledges get my drinks any
time I wanted one. He said if I wanted study snacks this week, he’d
send them over to our room.”
    I guessed that in frat boy culture,
that counted as courting at the highest level.
    “ That’s great, Darby,” I
tried to sound enthusiastic.
    “ It’s amazing,” she
grinned, and I felt myself soften. I remembered what it was like
the first time your crush noticed you. I’d probably been way more
goofy and melodramatic than Darby was being.
    “ He’s the president of the
whole fraternity,” Darby said in a tone of voice that sounded like
this guy was one step away from President of the United
States.
    “ Wow,” I was genuinely
surprised. “He’s a senior?”
    She shot me a wounded look. “My dad
was a senior and my mom was a freshman when they met,” she said,
like she was challenging me to find a problem with it. “Besides,
isn’t Blake, like, forty?”
    I snorted a laugh and turned around,
to see her eyes bright and sparkling. I hadn’t meant to offend her,
but I’d only known her a month — I didn’t know where her boundaries
were yet.
    “ He’s twenty,” I shook my
head. Blake had been accepted to Columbia when he’d graduated from
high school, just like me, but he’d deferred twice when he was
playing guitar for Moving Neutral. He’d only finally enrolled this
fall, so we were both freshman, despite the age difference. Which
Darby knew, of course.
    “ Maybe you’ll get to meet
him tonight,” she said hopefully, dropping the last of my curls and
brushing them out. “There’s another mixer after rush.”
    “ Maybe,” I said, trying to
sound politely noncommittal.
    “ Come on, Casey,” Darby
stood up, walking over to the closet. “What’s the point of joining
a sorority if you’re never going to go to any of the
parties?”
    She had a point, but not the one she
was trying to make. Why exactly was I joining a sorority
again?
    Darby held up a black strapless a-line
dress, squinting at it and then at me as if mentally