Charlotte stood there with her mouth half open and her face growing hot and crimson. But there was no way out. Timidly she lifted the canvas boat bag and mumbled—she couldn’t even make her voice work—“This is all I have.”

She didn’t dare look at the Douche sisters. She knew they would be cutting proto-sniggering glances at each other.

Hoyt held it up chest-high for a moment, as if weighing it, but, thank God, made no comment. Instead, he jogged the fifteen or twenty feet to the Suburban, tossed the canvas boat bag through the window and onto the backseat, wheeled about, yelled to Charlotte and the two Perfect girls, Crissy and Nicole, “Remember, nobody moves a muscle!” and jogged toward the house.

Charlotte was dying to move somewhere, anywhere. What was she to do? The two sorority girls were already brow to brow in whispery, giggly conversation. Was she to approach them and somehow wedge her way into their conversation—which was no doubt about her? Was she supposed to stand there like a homeless urchin and wait for them to deign to include her in proper cool Douche society—and have everybody in the yard look at her, this…this…this totally socially inept little urchin, this totally clueless little freshman who had no business even being among us?

So without a word—she knew very well she couldn’t even speak—she walked to the SUV and leaned back against the rear door and crossed her arms under her breasts and looked at her wristwatch every ten seconds or so to indicate that she was waiting for someone—which would be Hoyt, obviously, since she was attached to his car—and therefore was not out of place here…But how long could she keep this pose?

Sure enough, when they finally headed off, Hoyt was driving, Charlotte was in the bucket seat next to him, Vance and Crissy were in the second row, and Julian and Nicole were in the third, which meant the whole bunch of them, except for Hoyt, would be looking at the back of her head, whether they meant to or not, and therefore would be aware of her alien presence for the entire trip.

They were barely under way when they drove past the erupting fields of lightbulbs, the big long handle vibrating in shocking-pink neon outline, the gaudy name being written in script as if by an unseen hand: THE SIZZLIN’ SKILLET.

“Last chance for serious grease!” Crissy sang out to Nicole. Gales of laughter, as if there were nothing more low-rent than stopping for a bite at the Sizzlin’ Skillet.

Looking out the window at it was the last thing in the world Charlotte wanted to do at this particular moment. The last thing in the world she wanted to recall was that horrible hour, which seemed like twenty-four hours, in which the planets of Momma and Daddy, on the one hand, and the Amorys, on the other, collided…and this ride was going to be hours of it.

A voice behind her said, “Ohmygod…I don’t believe this…Charlene! Tell your friend his name is Hoyt, not Heeshawn!”

Charlene!

Charlotte turned away from the window. On Hoyt’s head was a…do-rag…just like the ones the black ghetto boys in Chester wore, a swath of black cloth wrapped around his head all the way down to his eyebrows and a flap of it hanging down the base of his neck. He swiveled his head as far as he could to the right, and he was grinning—not at her, however, but for the benefit of Crissy in the seat behind, she who had shrieked the mock shriek—

And called her Charlene!

Hoyt said, “Her name’s not Char leeeeeene…It’s Charlotte.”

Her.

He said it in a merry voice and seemed to sling the words out the corner of his mouth and back over his shoulder to make sure they reached their intended, Crissy. As he turned back in order to see the road, he gave Charlotte a split second’s worth of smile.

Charlene! Her! Hoyt’s her hurt almost as much as Charlene—

Crissy, from behind: “Oh, I’m sorry, I’m so bad with names—Vance! This I really don’t believe! Look, everybody, this is little Master Vance Phipps of the Phipps Phippses! My little Goldilocks.”

Charlotte looked back despite herself. Vance had on a black do-rag, too, exactly the same as Hoyt’s—and so did Julian. They were both grinning foolishly.

Nicole, from the third row: “Ohmygod, you guys—thank God you’re here, Crissy. Can’t we get a little fratty-er?”

Hoyt, eyes on the road, sang out merrily, “No prob, Nicole!”

Vance and Julian laughed.

Nicole said, “You think maybe we’ve got something on our little brain, Hoytsy?”

Crissy said, “I’d like to see you guys wear those things on campus. The AfrAm Solidarity—they gon’ lynch yo’ ass, motherfucker!”

Hoyt, Vance, Nicole, and Julian laughed.

Meanwhile, Charlene…Her…a sound like steam turning into fog filled her head. They all, Hoyt included, acted as if Charlotte Simmons didn’t exist.

After that, as the Suburban rolled down Interstate 95, Crissy and Nicole and Julian and Vance and Hoyt had a rare old gibefest, songfest, witfest, and what-the-fuck-

shit-asshole-motherfuckerfest for themselves, but not for Charlene Simmons. If one of them broke into song, all five of them always knew the words. At one point, one of the countless allusions to sexual perversion—perversion in Charlotte’s book, in any event—inspired Julian to break into song, a rap song that included the lines

Yo, you take my testi-culls,

Suck ’em like a popsi-cull.

The very same disgusting “lyrics” somebody down the hall had been playing on a stereo in the middle of the night when Beverly sexiled her! And all five of the frat and sorority girls knew the words. They couldn’t have sung along with Julian more lustily! The three guys, still sporting their black do-rags, rocked back and forth in their seats to the stupid beat, caroling away while their black neck flaps flopped this way and that. Crissy and Nicole were fairly wailing with delight, as if there was nothing more joyous in the world than the thought of sucking testicles. The highway was ten lanes wide at some points, and people in adjacent cars would look at the Suburban incredulously, trying to make some kind of sense out of the sight of three white boys wearing black do-rags and rocking their shoulders in an exaggerated fashion. The five brothers and sisters enjoyed the hooples’ bewilderment enormously.

They recalled hilarious moments of hilarious parties past. Halloween—that girl Candy, wearing a silver lamé thong bikini, underneath the strobe lights with a spiked leather collar around her neck and a heavy chain as a leash in the hands of that greasy Goth, all dressed in black, the one with the slimy black ponytail and hoop earrings and his two front teeth with gold caps, each inset with a little diamond or rhinestone or whatever the fuck they were. Gales, roars of laughter over that precious memory.

Crissy said, “You think she’s really into S and M?”

“I don’t think so,” said Nicole. “She just blows too many lines, is her problem.”

With that, Hoyt lifted his chin way up and slightly to the right, vaguely in his little seatmate’s direction, and cleared his throat in a loud manner. The car went quiet. Charlotte had the impression that he was telling Nicole and the rest of them not to get on that subject with his date sitting there, although just what the subject—“blows too many lines”—was, she hadn’t the faintest idea.

Hoyt leaned over, put his hand on her forearm, smiled charmingly, and said, “I wish you’d been there. Too much Halloween was that girl’s problem. What did you do for Halloween?”

A nervous jolt hit Charlotte’s solar plexus. She could literally feel it. She was obliged to…say something in this alien company gone suddenly silent.

With a hoarse croak: “I guess—I don’t remember.”

That was so weak and lame she couldn’t possibly leave it at that. She had to say something more. She began hyperventilating. “I guess—I don’t exactly hold with Halloween?” Ohmygod! She had blurted out an old mountain countryism, the “hold with.” Her face was on fire.