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dance moves from bubblegum music videos she hadn’t watched since she was a kid, but her brain was no longer cooperating with the useful part of its usefulness. Despite a lifetime of moving from school to school, city to city, country to country, Very’s ability to excel at academics, to achieve near-perfect scores on standardized tests, had always been her one stabilizing reward; that is, until lately, until her brain had decided to care only about song lyrics in sync with any buzz that announced the sexy siren call of an e-mail or IM.
    The stranger glanced at the book on her desk and asked, “Art History class?”
    “Yeah,” Very said. “I’m calling my term paper ‘Jackson Pollock: A Window into the Modern Psyche, or Just a Contemporary Psychotic?’”
    “He was both. I’m doing my master’s thesis on postmodern art in America.”
    “Love you,” Very said. She’d have to hide out in the library more often—and call upon the cute-guy-summoning powers of fallen pop princesses more often, too.
    It was only four hours later, mid-make-out-session, long after the lights had gone out and neither Very nor Not Such an Angry Man Anymore had bothered resetting the timer to turn the lighting back on, that Very discovered how not hidden her hidden spot was.
    Deafening-*Ah-choo*-wrist-slash-inducing-squeak noise .
    Very could recognize that sneeze anywhere—it sounded like a hyena had ferreted her out in the stacks. How could that un-sexiest of sneezes not cut short her otherwise extremely satisfying kiss-a-thon with the guy who’d just beautifully written the conclusion statement on Very’s term paper? No, written her term paper was not what the cute grad student had done. That would be plagiarism. Cute Grad Student had whispered suggestive sentences into her ear as she’d sat on his lap and typed the words herself. Very totally wrote the paper herself. She had a broken fingernail from tapping the keys to prove it. (Should the nail be saved in a Baggie as forensic evidence in case she was ever called to a Disciplinary Committee plagiarism adjudication? No, no. Worrying is for schmucks , as Cat used to say. Usually Cat said this the day or two before rent was due, the day or two before Very knew she and Cat would be moving again.)
    A-hem .
    Bryan. Poor Bryan. Hung up on the wrong girl, and allergies that always announced his presence.
    Sex—just that one time—had changed everything between them. Herewith, Very vowed to stay the course on her newfound path—strictly making out and above-the-waist fondling à la Ghana and Tweedy Grad Student, until the time came when Very and her true love, El Virus, could be together.
    “Very!” Bryan said, not bothering with the library-etiquette whisper. “I need to talk to you.” He looked up at the ceiling while he spoke, to give the vixen and her victim time to disentangle.
    “Text me,” Very whispered in the grad student’s ear. She admired his lovely rear view as he disappeared into the library stacks. Another one bites the dust.
    Very turned her attention to Bryan. “Do we not think your approach is somewhat stalker-worthy?”
    She didn’t mean to be so cruel. But she wanted to go back to being friends with Bryan, and the brutal route seemed the optimal way to return him to the platonic-without-any-false-hopes friendship track. And the crueler Very cut him loose, the more appealing Lavinia could appear to him.
    Bryan said, “I’m over you. Don’t flatter yourself.” When he was so cruel in return, he could turn tempting again. Careful, Very . “Not going to make that mistake again.”
    Bryan slapped a copy of the Columbia Spectator , the student newspaper, down onto her cubicle desk. A headline on the bottom of page two read: “University Vows Crackdown on Freshman ‘Grid’ Crowd.”
    “Uh-oh,” Very muttered.
    The narcs were closing in. Very could feel it. What to do, what to do? Someone at her work-study job— former work-study job, the one she’d