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might have said he’d been filthy . We might have called him an animal , said he had acted abominably . When she’d finished telling me everything, I went right out into the hallway and poured a glass of milk from the refrigerator in the little kitchenette we all shared. I was surprised to see as I put the bottle back that my hands were shaking; they looked like someone else’s hands, my fingers holding the glass so tightly the knuckles shone through the skin.
    When I opened the door, Alex was sitting up on my bed and rummaging busily in her purse. “There!” She held up a lipstick, frowning at the tube. “ Scarlet Sunset . Christ. A little imagination wouldn’t have killed them.” She drew on her red mouth and blotted with a tissue. “Of course, we’ll have to keep the whole thing quiet , ” she went on. The last thing she wanted was a fuss, she said. Besides which, there wasn’t much to tell. She was tired— God , she was positively dead . She’d had much too much to drink. It was a wonder she hadn’t gotten sick. She brought out a compact and checked her reflection, touching up her eyes while I stood there like an idiot with my glass of milk. I had thought she might need to have a good cry. That she might rest there on my bed awhile, gathering her strength, until we came up with a plan. “Everyone makes such a thing about sex,” she said now, examining herself in her little mirror. “I’ve got my career to think about, for crying out loud.”
    I sat down next to her on the bed and watched as she twisted her hair back into place, driving the pencil through that elaborate knot with what seemed to me to be unnecessary force. “But it’s awful what he did,” I said finally.
    She gave me a bland look. “Honestly, I can hardly remember.”
    “You just told me—”
    She snapped her purse shut and stood. “And now I’m saying I don’t remember.”
    She stood there, tapping her foot against the rug. When it was clear I wasn’t about to say anything else, she went to the door, giving me a look; after a moment’s pause, I agreed to silence—nodding, unhappy. I stayed sitting on my bed a long time after she left, drinking the glass of milk down myself, every drop, before turning off the light. I don’t know what the hardest part of the whole thing was—trying to pick out the truth from everything she’d said or trying to explain to myself how and why exactly I felt betrayed.

Chapter 8
    THAT next week was, as I said, exams. I would have shut myself up in the library till all hours even if Alex hadn’t come into my room that night and said what she did. As it was, I stayed deliberately late and left the dorm before breakfast was set out, my pencils sharpened and tucked into the side pocket of my purse. Still, it was strange to see her standing there in Betsy’s driveway when we all met that next Saturday morning before Robin’s wedding—her hair falling loose around her shoulders, her yellow dress cut low and tight. Looking, I mean, as though nothing had changed. She gave a languid wave when she saw me, her cigarette leaving a Z of smoke hanging in the air.
    “Hail the conquering,” she called. “How’d you do?”
    “Fine, I guess.”
    She rolled her eyes. “Don’t be modest, Becky. It doesn’t suit you.”
    “Oh, leave her alone,” Betsy broke in. “You’re just jealous.” She gave me a reassuring smile. “We’re all jealous, aren’t we, girls? Wouldn’t we all like to be as smart as Rebecca?”
    Lindsey patted her curls—copper-colored and tucked under in the style my mother had encouraged me to try. “Some of us will have to settle for being dummies.”
    “Dummies,” Alex said slowly, “with a little foresight.” She reached into her handbag and pulled out a flask; Lindsey broke into applause.
    Both ceremony and reception were being held at Robin’s family’s country house in Indio, a town some hundred-odd miles southeast of Pasadena in an area known as the dusty