“Charlotte!” Laurie piped up. “Spill it!”

Bitterly, Charlotte saw Hoyt in her mind’s eye, then said, “No, I don’t.”

She said it deadpan, without humor, without regret, as if she’d been asked whether she had an electric blender in her room. Momma wanted to know where students went on dates. “Nobody goes out on a date, Momma. The girls go out in groups, and the boys go out in groups, and they hope they find somebody they like.”

Momma seemed appalled and wanted to know if Charlotte did that. “I did one time—I went out with some of my friends? But it was so stupid, I never did it again.”

Mrs. Thoms wanted to know what she did instead. By now she was feeling so despondent, so unworthy of human company, she said, “Nothing. I don’t go out. I’d rather read a book.” Saturday night—on the weekend—she didn’t go out at all? “No, I never go out.” Same disengaged poker face. Unconsciously she was beginning to enjoy misery and misanthropy, just the way you’d hear people in Alleghany County say, “Cousin Peggy? She’s enjoying poor health.”

Had she been going to the football and basketball games? Dupont was having a great year in sports. “I can’t go, because they charge too much money for the tickets? But I wouldn’t go if they gave them away, I don’t reckon. I don’t know why anybody gets excited. It’s got nothing to do with them—and it’s got nothing to do with me? It’s stupid, is what it is.”

What did she do for amusement? “Amusement? I guess I—I go jogging or I go to the gym and work out.” For amusement? “Well…to me it’s more amusing than all the stupid things other students do. They all act like they’re in the seventh grade or something, and all that matters is—” She broke the sentence off. She had been about to mention drinking, but she didn’t want to make Momma go ballistic. “Going around acting like idiots.”

Miss Pennington seemed concerned. “Now, Charlotte, surely…the academic side of things must be exciting.” She said it in the tones of an entreaty. She was all but begging for it to be so.

Charlotte suddenly felt guilty for letting Misery out for a romp. “That’s true, Miss Pennington. I have one class—” She started to talk about Mr. Starling’s, but she decided that she shouldn’t call attention to him in view of the catastrophic grade Momma and Daddy and, ultimately, Miss Pennington would soon lay eyes on. I have one class remained suspended in the air.

“A class in what?” Miss Pennington stared at her, still in an attitude of supplication.

“Neuroscience,” said Charlotte. Awkward silence—it was such…agony…making conversation. “I never thought it could be so interesting.” She realized that her face must not have looked as if she was interested in any thing. Another awkward silence. “My teacher, Mr. Starling, says the year 1000 was just forty sets of parents ago. He always puts it that way.”

Mrs. Thoms said, “Starling…Isn’t he the one who won a Nobel Prize?”

“I don’t know,” said Charlotte.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” said Mrs. Thoms. “You were saying, ‘just forty sets of parents ago’?”

“That was what he said. Mr. Starling.” With that, Charlotte dropped the subject. She no longer wanted to talk about the “sets.” Her voice would sound as if every set weighed a ton and she was lugging them out one by one.

Silence. Ten or fifteen seconds of it seemed like an eternity.

Mrs. Thoms plunged into the vacuum. “But I’m curious. Why did he say that?”

“I don’t really know,” said Utter Loganimity on a monument, smiling at Grief.

Silence; a gruesome silence this time. But guilt intervened. Guilt wouldn’t allow her to remain that dead. “I’m guessing, but maybe he meant the year 1000 isn’t all that long ago, but the way human beings look at themselves—in the West, anyway—has totally changed?” Not only Miss Pennington but also Momma seemed preternaturally attentive to this revelation. Then it dawned…for the first time all evening, they were getting a little of the Great Dupont from her, something deep. Charlotte became hyperaware of all sounds in the here and now, the muffled, low-crunching combustion of the potbellied stove…Daddy chewing—he didn’t always keep his mouth closed…Buddy trying to order Sam around in the kitchen in a low voice, because if Momma heard it she’d set him straight and mean it…fwop fwop fwop fwop a car with a flat tire gimping along outside on 1709…a chunk of snow sliding off the roof…

Mr. Thoms said there was certainly a lot written about multiculturalism and diversity in colleges these days. How did they manifest themselves in everyday life at Dupont?

“I don’t know,” said Charlotte. “I just hear about them in speeches and things.”

Laurie piped up again. “At State, everybody calls diversity dispersity. What happens is, everybody has their own clubs, their own signs, their own sections where they all sit in the dining hall—all the African Americans are over there?…and all the Asians sit over’t these other tables?—except for the Koreans?—because they don’t get along with the Japanese, so they sit way over there? Everybody’s dispersed into their own little groups—and everybody’s told to distrust everybody else? Everybody’s told that everybody else is trying to screw them over—oops!”—Laurie pulled a face and put her fingertips over her lips—“I’m sorry!” She rolled eyes and smiled. “Anyway, the idea is, every other group is like prejudiced against your group, and no matter what they say, they’re only out to take advantage of you, and you should have nothing to do with them—unless you’re white, in which case all the others are not prejudiced against you, they’re like totally right, because you really are racist and everything, even if you don’t know it? Everybody ends up dispersed into their own like turtle shells, suspicious of everybody else and being careful not to fraternize with them. Is it like that at Dupont?”

Laurie was looking at Charlotte. They all looked at Charlotte. Charlotte drew her breath in through her teeth with a sharp sigh, focused her eyes at Nowhere in the distance, as if contemplating the question, and then began nodding yes with a pensive frown. She was contemplating all right, but not Laurie’s question on her “dispersity” theory. No, she was thinking of the gusto with which Laurie delivered it, her high spirits concerning the human comedy that was college life, her youthful joy in adventure, her eagerness to impart what she was learning in the great outside world. In short, she had all the qualities they had hoped to see in Charlotte Simmons—the dour little taciturn mope now sitting at the head of the table.

She didn’t envy Laurie. Not at all; from the very beginning, she had hoped Laurie would assume the role she had been designated to play. All this…talk…was so painful. Laurie’s wonderful spirit—venturing forth and exploring the world—made Charlotte realize that she herself had become worthless. Her sitting here at the head of the table was a dreadful fraud. Although Momma’s, Daddy’s, Miss Pennington’s, Mr. Thoms’s, and Laurie’s intentions were only the best, every question they asked her about her college “experience” was de facto mockery. Part of Charlotte wanted to spring it all—now. Get it over with! Go ahead, show all that was left of Charlotte Simmons’s world, which was the handful of souls at this table, how completely she had corrupted herself in a mere four months. She had no ill feelings toward Mrs. Thoms. You have to think yourself worth saving before you get angry at someone who wishes to kill you. She felt like leaning back in this poor drugstore chair, rocking back on its two rear legs, spreading her arms like Christ’s on the cross, looking straight at Mrs. Thoms, and saying, “Come, Death, take me. I have no desire to struggle any longer. Save me the trouble of doing it myself.” Being so young, she had never thought of what Death would look like. It had never occurred to her that Death might be a woman. Now, after eighteen years, the day had come, and Death was a pretty, fortyish brunette with provocative lips, posing as the wife of a country school principal. She stared at Mrs. Thoms, and Death stared at her, pretending to be puzzled.