Lata woke to a red light flashing in the darkness. For a crazy second she thought she was on a submarine, and a torpedo was seconds away. But she was just in her room in the Tower, shielded from the afternoon sun by the blackout curtains her roommate had insisted on hanging. Jill was supposed to draw the curtains when she left, to prevent exactly this kind of decadent oversleeping.

"Draw?" Is that right? Does "draw" mean to open or close? Lata drew the curtains herself and recoiled from the blinding light that streamed into the room. There was nothing worse than that late-afternoon light on a weekend, the sun already starting its descent. It was like a crime-scene photographer's flash, flat and pitiless, illuminating all your faults and sins. It was a sign that you had wasted part of a day that you would never get back.

Lata's head pounded as she crossed the room to the answering machine, the source of the flashing red light. Last night she'd collapsed into bed at 8:30, after a brutal first week. She'd signed up for at least two more classes this semester than was advisable; her advisor had in fact advised her to take a smaller course load. But she needed a math credit anyway, and Dr. Golding's Honors calculus class – the one the older Scholars couldn't stop raving about – was only offered fall semester. Plus there was that Apocalyptic Lit class that looked cool, even though she was pretty sure you needed three years of Religion courses to even begin to understand it. But they let her sign up for it, so why not. And the Comp Lit class that Dr. Rosenzweig was teaching – that one was all Scholars. She'd be a fool not to take that. How was she supposed to know that the name "Dade" next to an English course number in the catalog meant it would have twice the reading of a normal class? She supposed she could drop one or two classes before Drop/Add ended. But would Asha give up so easily? Unthinkable.

Lata pressed the button on the answering machine. "You have...five...new messages," said the robotic voice.

"Lata. Caroline. I'm bored. What up." BEEP

"Did you hear that knocking on your door just now? That was me! Let's go do something! It's Friday night. I'm not spending the first Friday night of my college career in my dorm room. At the very least let's go downtown and laugh at some townies. You're literally never going to be this young again, Lata. Think about that for a second. You are the oldest you've ever been. Right now. And right now. And now you're even older. So freaking old. Let that blow your mind. Yeah, I'm taking Intro to Philosophy." BEEP

"Question: do you know what Warcraft is? I do, because I'm currently hanging out with Neal and Malcolm, and they will not stop playing it. If I hear 'Yes, me lord' one more time, I'm going to choke both these little bitches. Do you see what you've reduced me too? Do you see? Ah fuck, they're already coming back with their Mountain Dew. Help me, Lata Khan. You're my only hope. Shit, I guess I'm a nerd too. Call me at Malcolm's number. It's... who am I kidding. You don't want any part of this." BEEP

"Boooooo. Boo to you. Friendship over. Your outgoing message sucks, by the way." BEEP

"Der-nernt, der-nernt, der-nernt. Want a whole lotta love! Der-nernt, der-nernt. Want a whole lotta love! Get it, 'whole Lata love?' Yeah. Sorry. Ignore me. This is how I have to amuse myself, since you wouldn't hang out last night. But it's a new day, the sun is shining, so I reckon I'll give you one more chance. I figure we gotta hit that Scholars thing, but I say we duck out at intermission, maybe grab a couple of the other nerds if they're cool about it, and hit the Dip or maybe the Globe. I heard they're not exactly rigorous when it comes to checking IDs. Or maybe the Purple Room? I don't know what your stance is on local bands – I'm a solid thbbpp—" Lata knew without having to be told that Caroline was giving a thumbs-down—"but I think they've got a DJ spinning after the band – wait, no, I'm looking at the Ambassador now and it says it's Swing Saturday. No thanks. Anyway. Meet you in the lobby at seven. We're gonna hear the shit out of some sweet vibraphone jams. I don't know how familiar you are with 'Whole Lotta Love,' but it's actually a pretty gross song. Do not leave me hanging, Lata. Later. Lata. Later Lata."

The machine BEEPed one last time. Lata actually felt bad. She'd let Caroline down – even through the sarcasm, she could tell. She was used to letting her parents down, but this was different. She'd given up on winning their approval years ago, but she coveted Caroline's. She wanted to bask in it. She picked up the phone to call Caroline, but thought better of it. She wanted to see Caroline's face, her hair, her clothes. She wanted all of her, not just her voice.

Lata spent the next few hours catching up on her reading. Dade had started them off with Whitman – never her favorite, but every now and then a line could knock her flat. "Vigil of silence, love and death, vigil for you my son and my soldier," she read aloud, into the lazy swirl of dust hanging in the room's clear light. "As onward silently stars aloft, eastward new ones upward stole." She saw him, a soldier in blue – maybe Walt himself, maybe not – sitting in a wide pockmarked field under a blanket of cold stars, his hand in the hand of a dead boy. The boy watched himself – his now-obsolete body – from a vantage high above, where he floated on golden wings, keeping his own strange vigil.

Lata snapped awake. She'd dozed off, for a minute or a second. That was the danger of sleeping so late. You reached a point where the benefits of rest started to reverse, and more sleep only made you sleepier. Her reading was starting to blur together, Whitman smearing into 1 Enoch for the Apocalyptic Lit class. The Watchers. Fallen angels horny for human women. Fathers of giants. The fun stuff they should have left in the Bible.

She looked at the clock. 6:15. She'd dozed off for three hours, not a second. The light in the room was golden now, as golden as the wings of the Watcher keeping his vigil.

She grabbed her flip-flops and hurried down the hall to the bathroom to take a shower, to wash away the haze of sleep that would overtake her if she let it. She spent the whole time wondering what to wear – what would be appropriate for a Suttledge Scholarship-sponsored outing to hear an experimental percussion quartet. When she returned to her room, slightly more alert, it hit her.

Caroline's hologram dress was hanging over her desk chair, a frozen drop of quicksilver. She'd forgotten it here a week ago, and Lata had washed it, intending to return it tonight in exchange for the Braves shirt that Caroline took with her. Now she had a better idea.

She felt like a knight, putting on a shirt of mail, when she slid the dress down over her arms. It would be her armor tonight. The dress was a couple of sizes too big for her, hanging loose like a shift dress where it had hugged Caroline's exaggerated curves. Lata twisted back and forth in the mirror, and the dress swirled around her knees, sending rainbows spiraling up and down her body. She pulled on purple tights and her Mary Janes and wrapped a paisley tie – one she'd stolen from her dad's closet the night before leaving for UNWG, in a fit of sentimentality – around her waist as a belt. She looked in the mirror and saw herself anew, a sheep in wolf's clothing. Her thick black curls hung wild and tangled around her head and in her eyes. She had to meet Caroline in a minute. No time to do anything about her hair, so she left it that way. She daubed on some dark eyeshadow, imitating Asha's favorite look, and paused in front of the tiny bronze Ganesha on her dresser. "Wish me luck, Janice," she said.

As soon as she stepped out the door she felt like a fraud. She didn't want anyone to see her like this, to recognize her as an impostor, until Caroline could see her. Caroline could give her permission. Until then, she scurried to the elevator and offered silent thanks that it was empty.

Caroline lorded over the lobby from a perch atop the circular couch in the middle of the room. Malcolm lounged on the seat next to her, a plump favored cat at the foot of the queen. Caroline was dressed like a sci-fi lawyer in tight black pants, a white blouse and a black jacket with sharp oversized shoulders. Her hair was shellacked back, shiny and rigid, ending in a tight ponytail that curled around her neck and ended in an upside-down question mark on her décolletage.

As Lata walked toward the couch, Caroline stood – a miracle in her spindly heels on the plush cushion of the couch. She reached for Malcolm's head to steady herself, and stepped down to the floor. He didn't seem to mind.

Lata stopped in front of Caroline. She didn't know what to do with her arms. Caroline looked her up and down. "Give us a spin," she said.

Lata obliged. In the two seconds it took to complete the circle, her self-consciousness was whisked off of her like a magician's silk, leaving her transformed. "I hope you don't mind."

"What I mind is that you look so much better in that than I do. That's your dress now. That's your look. It's like some Courtney Love-Valley Girl-Xanadu kind of something going on." Caroline turned to Malcolm. "What do you think? Gorgeous, right?"

Malcolm rose and gawked at Lata, searching for something to say. "I, uh..."

"Exactly." Caroline extended her elbow, and Lata slipped her arm around hers. "We are some smarties, huh? Experimental percussion. I'm into it. Malcolm, would you be a gentleman and get the door?"

Malcolm jogged ahead to open the lobby's front door. Caroline leaned in close to Lata. The smell of wildflowers enveloped Lata in a sweet, dizzying cloud. "We haven't talked about it," she said.

"About what?"

"What happened last week. With that guy. You stabbed him." Lata had tried not to think about that guy – Xander – since it happened. Her encounter with him barely felt real. The morning after, she'd tried to bring it up with Renee, but she'd been so hungover she could barely talk. After that, Lata just put him out of her mind. Whatever fear or fascination he might have held, she took it away when she took his picture. It was on film now, in Renee's possession. He could not trouble Lata here, in her Tower.

"What is there to talk about?" Lata asked. She felt the tension in Caroline's arm as she pulled her head back. For a second there was a flicker of doubt in her eyes, a break in her titanic self-confidence, but it passed like a fast-moving cloud in front of a late summer sun.

"All right," Caroline said. "All right." She turned to Malcolm, waiting at the door. "Let's go get cultured."

******

The experimental percussion concert was exactly as advertised, so at intermission Caroline dragged Lata outside on the pretense of having a smoke, but instead they caught a Yellow Line for downtown.

"Gone for cigarettes and never came back," Caroline said, hanging from the grab bar at the back of the bus, her shirt riding up to expose the soft white flesh of her belly, like the perfect swirl of Cool Whip in a freshly opened tub. "Just like my dad."

"Really?"

"No. If anything, my parents were around too much. What about yours?"

"They're great." Lata's parents were hyper-attentive, just not to her. She always made sure to stand near Asha, to catch the splashback.

The bus pulled up to the stop at Delmonico and disgorged them at the threshold of downtown. The streets were packed with more people than Lata would have believed it could hold, but there was an angry, bitter edge to the atmosphere. The Ambassadors had lost the first football game of the season. There would be just as much drinking tonight as if they had won, but to different purposes.

"Where to?" said Caroline.

"I'm starving."

They headed for The Leaning Tower. They drew stares from strangers as they passed, looks of disbelief or disdain at their bold fashion choices. Lata stared right back. Normally she would have shrunk from this attention, but in Caroline's clothes, with Caroline at her side, she felt invincible. The Scholarship administrators subtly (or, in Dr. Rosenzweig's case, not so subtly) encouraged the Scholars to revel in their intellectual gifts, to inhabit and take advantage of their superiority to the common rabble of the campus. She was finally starting to understand what they meant.

"Cool dress," said the guy working The Leaning Tower's register, a skinny kid with bad posture and two weeks' worth of beard covering a surprisingly strong jawline. He stared at its ripples and undulations with stoned fascination and smiled. His teeth were perfect. "I can see myself in it."

"Keep it in your pants, Todd," said Caroline.

All of the tables were full so they ate their slices walking. "I don't think he was hitting on me," said Lata. "He was just stoned."

"Stoned or not, you can do better." Lata thought about this and concluded that maybe she didn't want to do better. Maybe after four long – seriously long – years of high school, a sweet stoner with great dental hygiene was exactly what she needed. She tried to picture it. In her imagination she kept the dress on, and she turned in to Caroline, and then he turned into Caroline, and then the Watcher with the golden wings, and then she was inside his head, and she saw his/her reflection in the dress, and it was gold but it wasn't him.

"Just follow my lead," Caroline said. They had reached the Globe. A massive bouncer perched on a stool just inside the door, the thin legs trembling under his weight.

The bouncer stopped them as they approached. "Evening, ladies. IDs, please." Caroline handed hers over. The bouncer examined it as Lata fumbled through her purse for her driver's license. "Wow," said the bouncer, in a distinct non-wow tone. "How is Montana this time of year?"

"Just beautiful. It's big sky country, you know."

The bouncer looked at Lata's license. "This says you're eighteen. This is just your actual driver's license. Ladies, come on. You have to try harder than this."

"Can you just be cool?" Caroline said. "We're not going to cause any trouble. We're upstanding young women. Pillars of the community."

"Even so. Can't let you in."

"Kevin!" A voice called out from the back of the room. The bouncer turned his head. Lata looked past him to see Dr. Rosenzweig heading their way, maneuvering around chairs and tables with a drink held aloft in one hand. There was a sway in his step, and behind his scholarly beard he was smiling, which Lata couldn't recall seeing in the brief time she had known him. "Kevin, my good man. There's no harm in letting them in." Dr. Rosenzweig passed the bouncer a folded bill in an awkward handshake.

"Whatever, Doc."

"Aren't you two supposed to be at an experimental percussion concert?"

"We were," said Lata.

"Now we're not," said Caroline.

Dr. Rosenzweig grinned. "I see you've already learned the first rule of on-campus events," he said. "If the first hour is bad, the second hour is most likely worse." He drained his glass and raised it in the direction of the bartender, signaling another one. "Follow me, ladies," he said, already moving back through the room.

Caroline raised her eyebrows at Lata. "Are we sure this is Dr. Rosenzweig?" He had interviewed Lata for the Scholarship, and he was the one who had called a few days later to offer it to her. Both conversations had been businesslike, at best.

Lata shrugged, and they followed him. As Lata passed the bouncer, he stopped her. "If you need anything, you holler. Okay?"

"Okay."

Dr. Rosenzweig led them to a banquette in a corner of the bar and slid in next to its occupant, a trim figure in a beige linen suit.

"Dr. Dade," said Lata, surprised. He leaned forward into the light from the lamp hanging over the table. His polished bald head reflected the light like a mirror ball.

"Miss Khan," he purred, "what a pleasant surprise. And who's your friend?"

Caroline stuck out her hand, tipped with black nails as long and sharp as the curled points of Dade's moustache, shining like tiny knives. "Caroline Sams," she said.

"Albert Dade." Dade shook her hand. "Is that a touch of Birmingham I hear?"

"Trussville, actually."

"Ah. I did my graduate work in Tuscaloosa. I do maintain a fondness for those long Alabama vowels."

"I reckon it wouldn't go over well if I said 'Roll Tide' too loud in here," said Caroline.

"And who even knew that Alabama offered a graduate program," said Dr. Rosenzweig. "Sit, girls, sit. Lata and Caroline are two of our new Scholars this year." Lata scooted onto the red vinyl seat next to Dade, and Caroline followed. "I was just cajoling Albert into hosting one of our dinners this semester. Oh, thank you, dear." A waitress set down a fresh tumbler of whiskey in front of Dr. Rosenzweig.

Dade shot Dr. Rosenzweig a brief but vicious look of disgust as he threw back the whiskey. No one saw but Lata. The waitress pointed at the half-full glass in front of Dade, which might have been a gin and tonic, or maybe just club soda. "You still good?" she asked.

"Yes, thank you," said Dade.

Dr. Rosenzweig sucked a few stray whiskey droplets off the drooping hairs of his moustache and pulled at his grey-brown beard. He pointed at Lata. "You're taking Albert's class?" Lata nodded. He pointed at Caroline. "You?" Caroline shook her head. "Of course. You're our mathematician. Well. What you may not know is that Albert here is one of the finest writers of the last fifty years."

"Jerry," said Dade, in a tone of warning. He swirled the glass of ice and clear liquid, but did not drink.

"No, Albert, it's a crime that your name is never mentioned in the same breath as your Pynchons and Roths and Hellers. Diamondwood changed my life. I'm serious. I know you want me to shut up, but I'm not going to until this next generation knows who you are."

"I didn't know you wrote a novel," said Lata.

Dr. Rosenzweig swallowed the last of his whiskey. "Exactly!" he sputtered, spraying fine mist of the liquor halfway across the table.

Dade's face was impossible to read, his mouth hidden under the smiling moustache, his eyes in the shadow of his brow. "I wrote a thinly veiled autobiography, decades ago," he said. "A trifle, really. It received some notice at the time. But I failed to follow up that modest success, and I have not heard from the muse in some time."

Dr. Rosenzweig snorted. "The muse." He tipped a couple of ice cubes into his mouth and crunched them.

"You're drunk, Jerry."

"And you're not." Dr. Rosenzweig turned to Lata and Caroline. "Help me out here, girls. Wouldn't you like to hear one of the greatest living American writers read from his magnum opus?"

"Sign me up," said Caroline.

"Me too," said Lata.

"You are a traitor, Miss Khan," Dade said, "and you shall see this lapse in character reflected in your grade." The crinkles around his eyes filled with shadow, and the tips of his moustache raised as he smiled.

A commotion at the door drew Lata's attention. A man in his thirties – another professor, Lata thought; she'd seen him around Thorn Hall – was trying to bypass Kevin the bouncer. Kevin heaved himself off the stool to block him, and the stool fell to the floor with a CLACK.

"That's Dr. Burton," said Dr. Rosenzweig. "Give me a second." He got up to offer his assistance.