With a cry that was half shriek and half laugh, the blonde, Nicole, poked her thumb into Crissy’s side—a big twitch and a Heyyy—and said in a merry coloratura, “Oh, you little hypocrite!”

Vance motioned toward an SUV, which turned out to be Hoyt’s Suburban, and said, “All right, then where’s the rest of your shit? Your shit’s your job, right? I don’t know if we have room for all this girl stuff. You think we’re going away for a week or something? Why’d you need a duffel bag?” Stern—and Vance wasn’t the stern type.

Charlotte began to get the picture. Vance was rolling out all the gruff stuff to show Julian, Boo-man, Heady, and the other guys just who wore the pants in this relationship. God help him if he indicated in some unguarded moment that he felt tenderly toward her.

Now Charlotte remembered where she had seen this Crissy before. She was the girl Vance had tried to bring into the bedroom that night at the Saint Ray party, prompting Hoyt to say, “This is our room.” She obviously had him whipped. And why not? She was merely perfect. Wide jaws, smooth jawline, model-girl face, big blue eyes, long good-as-blond brown hair, a suede jacket so soft it made you want to bury your head in it, a brown leather belt that matched it, a button-down shirt with the top four buttons undone, absolutely the right jeans, pointy-toed boots polished to a mellow glow, as opposed to a sharp shine, and a little bright brown leather bag that probably cost more than everything Charlotte had on put together. The blonde had the pointy boots, the jeans, the same little brown bag, and a tight T-shirt with bright yellow and light blue horizontal stripes that made her chest look bigger.

And here came Charlotte Simmons in her mousy outfit, half of it borrowed, a ratty red T-shirt—a pair of still not-quite-right jeans, and sneakers—sneakers!—no handbag at all, no garment bag, not even a duffel bag, but rather—a shapeless canvas boat bag.

Amid all this scurrying around the front yard, however, no one had even acknowledged her arrival. And why should they? Some droopy little freshman standing there in rags toting her miserable sack. Julian was busy trying to jam more “girl stuff” into the rear end of the Suburban. Vance was busy trying to stare down the good-as-blond Crissy, who stood on the porch with her hips cocked insolently and the rest of her body Cybex-machined, tread-milled, and de-carbohydrated to near perfection. Boo-man, Julian, and Heady had lowered their voices an octave in order to sound like manly rakes. They bantered, they bellowed, they ribbed one another with hawhawhawhaws. And Charlotte just stood there in social oblivion. Where was Hoyt? Should she start looking for him? But she couldn’t…too demeaning…too demeaning…

“Crissy!” the blonde, Nicole, was saying. “You are so bad! How can you say he’s an alcoholic? I mean, I wish I had a little video of you at the after-party last night. You don’t remember how you like…got down on all fours—”

“Hahhhhh!” Crissy soared into a trill of laughter, “Oh, puh-leeese! Give—me—a—break! Do you honestly think you could have like…aimed a camcorder? How many times did you go throw up?”

“Ohmygod,” said the blonde, rolling her eyes, “don’t even mention that ohmygod…that bathroom was so-o-o-o-o disgusting. Did you go in there? Eccccch. I woke up with such a hangover this morning. I’m not talking about a hangover, I’m talking about like a toxic hangover.”

“Tell me about it.”

“But I mean poisonous. I got up and I was walking like…what are those birds that have one leg shorter than the other?”

“The dodo bird?”

“I guess. Whatever. I could like hardly make it downstairs to the dining room. I stuck my head in the kitchen, and I said—”

While Charlotte stood there like an invisible waif, the two girls regaled each other with “hilarious” accounts of how each, unbeknownst to the other, had gone to the kitchen of their sorority house and implored the cook, Maude, evidently black, judging by the way they mimicked her accent—“Maude took one look at me…I didn’t even know I still had Vance’s sweater on…the fucking thing comes down to here…and my hair was all like…plastered down over my face…it stuck like fucking Velcro…and Maude, she’s like, ‘Lawd God in Heaven, Crissy, lookitchoo! Whatchoo girls be up to now!’”—how they implored her for “grease,” greasy omelets, greasy French toast, biscuits glopped with butter, which made Nicole feel like she had just swallowed a basketball afterward, but how the fuck else could you deal with a hangover except with grease?

“I need some grease right now,” said the blonde. “I need some serious grease. I mean, like french fries. You know the really nasty kind, like they have at the Sizzlin’ Skillet?”

Both laughed and laughed.

To Charlotte, this bit of repartee could scarcely have been more deflating. They had to make the Sizzlin’ Skillet the lowest and most disgusting of all cheap food…The two were upperclassmen, great pals, members of what was known as the hottest, most socially luminous sorority at Dupont—Delta Omicron Upsilon, or DOU, affectionately—even reverently—called the Douche—blessed with an aura of northeastern private schools, fair, straight hair, and sophistication. And they were such lovely little liars. Charlotte couldn’t imagine an ounce of grease going down the gullet of either one of those two perfect skinny bodies.

“Hey, babe! Put your stuff in the car?”

It was Hoyt! Coming out the front door of the Saint Ray house, beaming a big, hearty smile at her! Thank God! She felt saved from utter oblivion. He bounded down the steps toward her, as perfect in his frat-boy way as the two Douche girls were in their way. He had on a well-worn tan hunting jacket over a light blue shirt unbuttoned down the front to just above the sternum, the shirttails hanging out over a pair of chinos frayed at the bottom of the pant legs, and flip-flops.

“Put your stuff in the car?” he said again as he came closer, still smiling. Charlotte hung on to that smile for dear life. It was her validation. No matter what she looked like to them, she was under the aegis of the coolest of the cool, Hoyt Thorpe.

But she didn’t know how to answer him. She couldn’t just hold up the boat bag—

So she said, “Not yet.”

What a sad, weak not yet! She couldn’t get a word out with the careless ease, the perfectly at-home insouciance of the two girls standing near her on the porch.

“Well, we can’t keep dicking around or we’ll be late,” said Hoyt, pleasantly. “We got a band to make connections with, the hotel’s got waiters and shit lined up for us. I see Vance. Is everybody else here?” He turned that way and saw Julian. He turned this way and saw Vance’s date, Crissy, and the other one. “Djou meet Crissy and Nicole?”

Charlotte looked at the pair with a sinking heart. Crissy and Nicole. On top of everything else, they were both –ey girls. All the cool girls at Dupont, the ones who were with it, were –ey girls—Beverly, Courtney, Wheatley, Kingsley, Tinsley, Avery, and now Crissy. Of course, there was Nicole…and Erica…but thinking of Erica made her sink still farther—

She croaked out a miserable little “Hi”—just that, all the while realizing that her stricken, frightened face spoke volumes concerning her confidence, maturity, strength, social competence, bon vivance, charm, wit, knowledge of the ways of the world—volumes!

“And this is Charlotte,” said Hoyt, gesturing toward her.

Oh God, it was too much. The two –ey girls merely waved to her—no, not so much a wave as a half a wrist tick…and that dead smile…the same one Beverly’s chum Erica had given her…The lips widen and even turn up slightly at the corners, but the eyes die and the brow ages twenty bored years and the lights go out.

“Don’t anybody move,” said Hoyt. “I gotta get one more bag”—he motioned toward the house with his head—“and then we gotta get the fuck on the fucking road. Wait a minute”—now he was looking at Charlotte—“where is your bag?”