“Then I say we better get started,” said Julian. “Hey, Nicole, hand me that handle. It’s in my red-and-black bag, the tennis bag.”

“You get it Julian,” said Nicole. “Those things are heavy.”

Julian sighed.

Hoyt said, “I’ll get it.” He reached inside the bag and withdrew a huge plastic bottle, more like a jug really, with a big plastic handle. It was so heavy you could see Hoyt’s forearm trembling as he handed it to Julian. A yellow label on it said ARISTOCRAT VODKA.

Then Hoyt delved into one of his bags and produced a bottle of orange juice and a stack of eight-ounce paper cups, and Julian arranged them on top of the low-slung bureau—setting up a bar, Charlotte deduced. She immediately went on alert. Five-thirty in the afternoon!

Julian set about removing the plastic seal around the mouth of the big jug of vodka, and Hoyt went to work removing the one on the bottle of orange juice. They were so intense about it, as if they couldn’t wait another second to get at their alcohol. Charlotte tried to work it out in her mind that this was an adventure. She could hear Laurie’s voice on the telephone: “College is the only time in your life when you can really experiment—and when you leave, everybody’s memory evaporates.” That didn’t make her feel a whole lot better, however.

As Charlotte sat on the bed, Julian’s back was to her, but she could hear a voluble, voluminous plummet plummet plummet sound as Julian poured the first ration of vodka out of the great brimming jug into a paper cup. Then he added some orange juice, although it couldn’t have been much, because all that plummeting must have meant a lot of vodka.

He handed the cup to Nicole, sitting on the other bed, who immediately tilted it back, then rocked forward, her eyes squinted and tears forming, and let out a demonstrative half moan, half sigh: “Shit, Julian, you think you like put enough vodka in it?”

“You can handle it.”

Nicole hurried to prove him right, knocking back another gulp and then rocking forward and smiling and lifting her eyebrows way up and opening her eyes wide in a look to convey the notion that it was a little strong but hit the spot.

Julian set about pouring two more cups practically full of vodka.

Hoyt sat on the bed beside Charlotte and began stroking her back. Part of her wished he wouldn’t, not in front of these two people she barely knew, but at least it included her. Nothing else did.

Meantime, Nicole had drunk another gulp and picked up the telephone between the two beds. By the chummy, confidential way she spoke, Charlotte could tell she had called Crissy in her room.

“Oh, we’re just, you know, pre-gaming.” She cupped her hand over her mouth and lowered her voice, but Charlotte was so close she could still hear what she said: “Where’s what?…Ah. You mean the tumor?” She laughed at something Crissy said. “I’ll give you three guesses, and the last two are not eligible for this competition…” She laughed again. “Right…right here, if you know what I mean.”

Charlotte knew what she meant. They were talking about her. She was a tumor, a sick condition that just wouldn’t go away.

By now Hoyt had advanced from stroking her back to rubbing her shoulder with a circular motion. That was even more embarrassing; but as long as Hoyt wanted her—Hoyt, the best-looking, coolest guy in the entire fraternity—whatever the likes of Nicole and Crissy thought of her was nullified, she figured.

“What do you want?” he asked her. “Hey, relax.”

Only then did she realize how stiffly rigid her whole body was as she sat there. “Want?” she said.

“To drink.”

“Oh, nothing, thanks. Maybe some orange juice.”

“Orange juice—come on now, want me to put a little vodka in there for you?”

“No, it’s really okay,” she said.

He started rubbing her shoulder again, rubbing harder yet with tender concern, and that started to feel good, and not only good but important, important for Nicole and Julian to notice. His hands were big…and relaxing…and nice to have on her body. Her shoulder started feeling warmer, and she couldn’t resist looking up at him. She loved the way he was looking down at her. The tenderness and warmth of his smile—and he was so handsome! The cleft in his chin, those flashing hazel eyes that were totally absorbed in her—he was asking of her something she would not be comfortable doing, but she didn’t want him to stop looking at her with that impish expression, that mysteriously lascivious yet loving mien…The look on his face was her inviolable protection against the smirks, the Sarc 3 glances, and the mock ruminations of Nicole and Crissy.

“Well, just a little,” she said finally.

Hoyt reached over and took the jug of vodka off the bureau, and as if he, like Julian, couldn’t control the flow, he practically filled a cup with it and added a splash of orange juice.

“Not a little orange juice—I meant a little vodka!” She added a laugh so they would think she really was entering into the spirit of things…and was not sitting stiffly and anxiously on the edge of the bed.

No way could she keep that laugh from sounding nervous, however. They were all watching to see what she would do with the drink. She was holding it like an as-yet-undetonated explosive. She forced herself to put it to her lips. She swallowed and made a face. Julian and Hoyt laughed, but in a way that said this was all good fun. It tasted terrible. It went down sour and burning and hit bottom, whereupon a sickly sweet aftertaste bloomed. But she could see Nicole already polishing off the rest of her cup and apparently passing it back to Julian for more. It became terribly important that Nicole not seem cooler than she was, more fun, more grown up, on a different planet when it came to sophistication. She took another sip. It didn’t taste any better, but this time she didn’t make a face.

Instead, she looked up at Hoyt again and said, “Actually, it’s not that bad!” and added a smile in hopes he’d think she meant it.

Maybe if she could just finish it, she really would feel better. After all, alcohol was supposed to relax you. In any case, maybe tonight she wouldn’t feel so much like she was on the outside looking in. Maybe she would stop feeling like the little freshman misfit from the sticks sitting down there at dinner tonight…the bump on a log…at a big table full of older, livelier, cooler, perfectly blond boarding school girls who belonged to the best sororities. Why should she let herself be reduced to what Nicole and Crissy thought she was? After all—I am Charlotte Simmons!…and things were not so bad, were they…She was still a freshman so attractive that the hottest guy in Saint Ray, the hottest guy in any fraternity maybe, had asked her to his formal…

The hottest guy was now massaging the back of her neck, and it made her feel secure…inoculated against the others…and each time she looked up at him, he was still looking down at her with a wonderful smile that changed from tender to mischievous and back to tender before she knew it, and she drank some more…How bad could it all be? And it wasn’t just Hoyt…Look at Julian…Look at Nicole…Julian was a very good-looking guy, too, and if she could look objectively at Nicole for a moment, she was a gorgeous blonde. Charlotte took another swallow of vodka and then another. And you had to say the same thing about Crissy, if you were objective…and about Charlotte Simmons, unless she was way off the mark about the face in the mirror…If other people could look on…they’d say Charlotte Simmons was part of the most glamorous crowd at Dupont…and the coolest guy at Dupont was shining his face down at her as if she was what he wanted close to him more than anything else on earth…She took another swallow…The thing about drinking was, it wasn’t really about the taste. It wasn’t the way the vodka went down, it was the way it hit bottom and then bounced up in…a bloom…that left like your whole torso abloom with a warmth that really did make you feel more relaxed. Once you knew you were drinking not a drink but a feeling, it stopped tasting so awful…