“You too. Um …” I said, just to check. “Are you Bronwyn?”

“Oh my goodness!” she said with a laugh. “I’m so sorry! Yes, I am. Bronwyn Elizabeth Taylor. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“Elizabeth Taylor?” I repeated, not sure I’d heard correctly.

Bronwyn laughed again. “Yes, I know. Blame my older sister. She was obsessed with National Velvet around the time I was born. Girls and horses, you know,” she said, and I nodded, like I was able to follow this. “So she suggested it as a middle name, and here I am. That’s why you don’t let a five-year-old pick your name, am I right?”

“Right,” I said, a bit stunned. She spoke fast, seeming to go against all the things I’d heard about the slow Southern drawl. Reeling a bit, I tried to drag the conversation back to familiar ground. “Thank you so much for letting me stay here tonight.”

“Oh, pshaw!” she said. I had never heard anyone actually say this word aloud before, but there it was: puh-shaw. “I’m thrilled you all are staying here. I am just starved for some good conversation. And Roger is one of my top ten favorite people in the world.” She said this like it was truly an honor. I believed her immediately.

“Oh,” I said. “Yeah. He’s really—”

“And I am just sick,” she continued on, “about what that girl has done to him. Such a sweet boy. Nothing but practice to someone like Hadley.” I noticed that Bronwyn pronounced her name in the opposite way that Roger had, practically spitting out the syllables. “She took one look at him and saw someone she could sharpen her claws on.” I nodded dumbly, feeling a bit like I’d just walked into a tornado. I tried to sift through what she’d just said, tried to think of a proper response to any of it. “So …,” I began.

“My goodness, where are my manners? Please sit down.”

I didn’t see any place where this seemed possible, but Bronwyn swept some clothes off the bed and patted it, then crossed the room and hopped up on her desk. I lowered myself carefully onto the space she’d cleared. She was looking at me expectantly, so I decided to try again. “So,” I said, then waited a moment. When she didn’t jump in, I continued, “So you’re the RA here for the summer?”

“I am,” she said with a groan that somehow managed to also seem good-natured. “It’s free room and board, keeps me from having to be home all summer and provide slave labor at my aunt’s day care. But enough about me!” She leaned forward. “I want to hear all about you! How’s the drive been so far?”

“Oh,” I said, feeling a little uncomfortable now that the full force of her attention was turned to me. “Good, I guess. So far.”

“Has she come up yet?” The way Bronwyn said “she,” I had no doubt who she meant.

“No,” I said. “Not really. He hasn’t really talked about it.”

Bronwyn nodded. “I thought as much. No worries, darling. I’ll get it out of him.”

“Um,” I said, “I think that’s why we’re here, though. One of the reasons,” I added quickly. “He said he was looking for Hadley—he thought she might be on campus this summer.”

Bronwyn snorted. “Well, she’s not. Believe me, I’d have known about it and sent out an all-points bulletin.” She turned to her desk and lifted a framed photo off it. “You want the visual?” Before I could reply, she crossed the room and handed it to me.

There were four people in the picture: Bronwyn on the left, standing next to a cute, stocky guy with close-cropped curly black hair, then Roger standing next to a striking blond girl. I figured this had to be Hadley, and not only because someone had drawn horns on top of her head with red marker. I looked closer. She was almost as tall as Roger, willowy, with small, perfect features, evenly tanned skin, and pale blond hair. She was smiling absently and looking off-camera, but Roger, who was smiling right at her, hadn’t seemed to notice. “Huh,” I said, not sure what the proper response to this was.

“I know,” Bronwyn said. “Totally, right? Can’t you just see it on her face?” She took the picture back from me. “But look at Jaime,” she said, smiling at it, her finger resting on the guy standing next to her. “Isn’t he just the sweetest? Don’t you just want to eat him up?”

“Mmm,” I said, as neutrally as possible, figuring this was probably not something to agree to with too much enthusiasm. “Is he your boyfriend?”

“He is,” she said, sighing happily. “And pretty much Roger’s best friend around here. That’s how I got to know him, you see. And her,” she added darkly, after a moment.

“So,” I said, feeling like I was on the verge of uncovering a mystery, “what exactly happened between them?”

Bronwyn shoved another armful of clothes onto the floor and sat down next to me. “Honey, if I knew that I could have fixed this two months ago. I think the problem is that there isn’t any there there. I think she just got bored and wanted to be free in Kentucky for the summer. But I don’t know,” she said. “We’ll have to ask RS….” She paused and looked around, as though she had just noticed Roger wasn’t in the room. “Speaking of, where is that boy?”

“He’s getting the bags,” I said. I realized that he really should have been back by now, and I wondered if he was taking his time on purpose, so that Bronwyn and I could talk.

“Gotcha. Well, we should start getting ready anyway. There’s a party at the Quiet Dorm tonight. You’re coming,” she said, and I noticed that she didn’t phrase it as a question, or wait for my answer. “We’ll get dressed, and …” Her eyes shifted to my outfit. “Well, maybe you can borrow something of mine. It’ll be fun!”

And you’re doing fine in Colorado.

—Jackson Browne

The Quiet Dorm did not live up to its name. Roger had explained, on the walk to the party, that the houses that were for specific things during the school year—like the International House—became just regular housing during the summer for the students staying on campus. Apparently, the wildest parties over the summer happened at the Substance-Free Dorm.

We could hear the party when we were still down the street from it: the steady, pounding beat of music mixed with laughter and the occasional yell. The Quiet Dorm was walking distance from the International House, in another run-down house—this one looked like it might have been an old Victorian. When we got closer, I could see that there was a fake beach in front of the wraparound porch, an expanse of sand with a volleyball net strung up across it. It didn’t seem like anyone was going to be playing tonight, though, as a small campfire had been made next to the net. There were people standing around it, couples talking on the porch, and a guy passed out over the railing, still clutching his bottle of beer. It was all very familiar—replace the bottles of Mile-High Ale that were scattered around with Dos Equis, and it could have easily been the parties I’d been to at College of the West. I’d only been to a handful, and always with Michael. I had tended to stick next to him, sipping the warm keg beer out of my red plastic cup and smiling when someone spoke to me, trying not to say anything that would identify me as a high school student.