Lydia wakes to the smell of burning. She is so tired that she considers staying in bed anyway, but soon the sound of the alarms is unbearable. She pulls her coat on over her pajamas. Outside, almost a hundred irritated, exhausted students are huddled on the lawn near their dorm, waiting for the ambulance to arrive.

Lucas is standing a little further off, smoking a cigarette. She walks over to him, trying to seem casual and absent-minded.

Josh is standing next to him. Like Lydia, Josh and Lucas are freshmen. They share a room in Cottage B, on the northernmost side of campus. Cottage B is painted to look like a farm in a storybook, but inside it has the fluorescent lighting and dirty linoleum floors of a particularly gross hospital. Lydia lives down the hall.

During the first week of school, Lydia’s classmates all buzzed with the same nervous, desperate energy. Lucas looked bored and amused, as if the room full of rich kids, all longing for friends, was a party he’d simply walked into uninvited, and decided to stay. Josh was less intimidating, and so Lydia befriended him first. During orientation, they learned the symptoms of alcohol poisoning and practiced trust falls together. Josh has a warm, peaceful energy that Lydia likes. He’s also the first gay guy she’s known in real life, though she would never tell him that.

Now, the three of them spend almost all their time together. Josh and Lucas call her the

Bro With Tits. It is the highest compliment they can offer.

She wonders sometimes if she should make more of an effort to get to know her other classmates, but it’s not that tempting. Most of the students at Crawford are, as Lucas puts it, richassholes. They’re the kind of people whose parents can afford to spend half a million dollars for their children to spend four years making 30mm films about pine trees.

Standing next to Lucas is Isabel, a sophomore girl who lives on the second floor of their dorm. Lydia has spoken to her a few times. She is so pretty. Under the street light, her hair looks like something out of a fairytale, like it might suddenly disappear.

“Hey,” she says.

“Hey.” Lydia is suspicious but she doesn’t want to sound like that. Are Isabel and Lucas friends now? Are they fucking? The thought makes Lydia’s stomach hurt.

“I’m fucking cold,” says Lucas.

“We all are,” says Josh. “If this is a fucking drill I’m going to shit myself.” “I don’t think it is,” offers Lydia. “I smelled burning.”

“Shit, really?”

“Yeah. Probably just someone tried to make popcorn or something.”

“That person must feel like an asshole,” says Lucas, lighting another cigarette. “Which they are. It’s cold as balls.”

“Why don’t we go for a walk?” Lydia suggests, pulling her coat tight across her body. “To stay warm?”

“That’s not a bad idea,” says Lucas.

“I have a flashlight on my keychain,” Isabel offers.

Josh shakes his head. “Haven’t any of you ever seen a horror movie?”

“Don’t be such a pussy,” says Lucas. “We’re going to freeze to death anyway.”“I think we should,” Lydia says, trying to smile like it’s no big deal, like she isn’t even a little bit afraid.

“You only think that because you’re a virgin,” says Josh. “The virgin always survives the horror movie. That’s like, film theory one-oh-one.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” Lydia answers, not looking at Lucas. She waits for him to laugh off Josh’s accusation, but he says nothing.

A few months ago, Lydia and Josh and Lucas went to a party on the south end of campus. Lucas and Lydia got bored around the same time and walked back to their dorm. They were both a little drunk. Josh had put a post-it note on the door to indicate that he was having sex, so they went back to Lydia’s room. Kristina, her roommate, was not there. They sat down on Lydia’s

bed, which wasn’t weird, because there was nowhere else to sit. Lucas used Lydia’s laptop to find a Jeff Buckley song he wanted her to hear. They listened in silence. He lay back on the bed, and Lydia lay beside him. She was shivering. He put his legs over her legs, like a blanket. She felt excited but safe – wasn’t that what everyone always wanted? She decided to kiss him.

Later, he would say he wasn’t really into it, but she knew he was lying, because a few seconds in, she had tried to pull away and he wouldn’t let her. He tasted of weed and Mr. Boston vodka. It was her first kiss. It could have been worse.

“You know,” Josh says, thoughtfully, “People say the woods on campus are haunted. You don’t need to go on a field trip to get your asses kicked by ghosts.”

“Really?” Lydia is relieved at the possibility of changing the subject. “Yeah, there was a girl who was murdered there. True story.”

“Don’t scare the kids,” interrupts Isabel.Lucas leans forward, “Wait, he’s not bullshitting?”

“No, it’s true,” Isabel sighs. “Her name was Sara Morgan.” “That sounds familiar,” Lucas says.

“Yeah, it was a kind of big deal when it happened, like, twenty years ago. People always go crazy when pretty white girls die.”

Isabel herself is a pretty white girl, but Lydia isn’t sure if she should point this out. “It’s fucked up,” Isabel continues, her spine straightening as if she’s giving a lecture.

“One of my professors taught her. She said Sara Morgan was the most talented student she ever had. Her boyfriend killed her for, like, no reason. He took her through the woods, to the river, and then he cut her throat. It’s fucked.”

Josh taps absentmindedly at his phone for a few seconds. “Shit!” he exclaims. “Doesn’t she look like Lydia?”

He holds the picture up next to Lydia’s face. “Holy shit,” says Lucas, “She really does.” “Let me see.”

It’s a picture taken at prom or a birthday party: a smiling girl, dangly earrings, brown hair piled on top of her head. Last month, Lucas pointed out the resemblance between Lydia and a certain porn star. Another dark-haired girl, naked except for a pair of fishnet stockings, a man walking her on a leash, like a dog.

“I’m flattered,” Lydia says. She hands Josh’s phone back to him. He taps at it some more.

“Oh, weird.” Josh is tapping at his phone again. “He didn’t even go to prison.”“The boyfriend?” Lydia asks. “Yeah. Wasn’t convicted.”

“That’s fucked,” says Josh. “It’s fucked either way. Either he did it, and he got away with it, which is bullshit. Or he didn’t do it, and now everyone knows him as the guy who killed that girl, and his life is, like, ruined.”

“I don’t know that his life is ruined,” Isabel says, evenly. “Someone told me he works at a health food store in Albany.”

Lucas shrugs. “Maybe that’s an inspirational story. Stop worrying so much about finals, you know. That guy killed a lady, and he turned out just fine.”

“Are we done talking about depressing shit?” Lydia asks, suddenly irritable. “I’m going for a walk. You can come with me or not.”

They come with her. They don’t go into the woods. Instead, they wander down the main road, toward the part of campus with the prettiest buildings, made of dark brick and covered over with vines. It was photographs of these buildings that convinced Lydia to come here. In the brochure, it looked like something from a story book. At night, it just looks old.

Safely out of the sight of R.A.s and firefighters, Josh lights a joint. He passes it to Lydia. She hasn’t smoked in a few weeks and it goes straight to her head, making her feel soft and perfect.

After half an hour, the return to Cottage B. Isabel says goodnight, giving each of them a hug. Josh and Lucas go to their room. Rummaging around the pockets of her coat, Lydia realizes she has forgotten her key. She knocks on the door several times, but Kristina must be fast

asleep.She walks down the hall to Josh and Lucas’s room. Lucas opens the door. “I forgot my key,” she tells him. “And I can’t get Kristina to wake up.”

“Oh shit,” he says. Peering past him, Lydia can see that Josh is already in bed. “You can stay here. If that’s not weird.”

“Can I? I don’t know where else to do. “ “Of course,” he yawns.

He turns off the light. He strips down to his boxers. Lydia hesitates, and then takes off her jeans, leaving on her t-shirt and underwear. The bed is small, but they are barely touching. Lydia presses her body close to the wall. Lucas passes out almost immediately.

Her heart is beating so fast she’s afraid it will disturb him. She dreams about fish with wings. Of the dead girl in the forest, red roses blooming from her mouth. Mostly, she dreams of Lucas, not moving, not speaking, just there.

A week later they go to a party on the south end of campus. It’s a birthday for a guy they only kind of know, someone Josh hooked up with in the fall. It doesn’t really matter. Lydia gets dressed and puts on makeup, goes to Josh and Lucas’s room to drink.

They do a few shots of Fleischmann’s, washed down with Pepsi. Lydia’s stomach and face are warm but her head is clear. Around ten p.m., they head over to the party.

“You’re going to be cold,” says Lucas, pointing to Lydia’s bare legs.

“Liquid jacket,” she replies, pouring herself one last shot. “Anyway, we won’t be outside for long.”It’s not a very good party. There are too many people, and the music is too loud—some kind of industrial noise pop so abrasive that Lydia secretly believes everyone else is only pretending to like it. There is a girl planting a kiss on a poster of Chairman Mao. There is a boy cutting lines of something on a copy of Mrs. Dalloway. Everyone is talking at the same time.

She looks around for Lucas but can’t find him. Josh is under the awning outside, smoking.

“Where’d Lucas go?” she tries to sound casual. “With some girl,” Josh exhales.

“Oh. Good for him.” She takes a few drags of Josh’s cigarette and heads back inside. Lydia feels like she’s been kicked in the stomach but still she manages to talk to some

people, first to a very drunk girl named Hannah, who tells her she has beautiful eyes, and then to Aaron, a boy she vaguely knows. He was in her history class last semester, but he dropped it after the first week.  He is wearing a t-shirt that has Brad Pitt holding up a bar of soap that says Fight Club.

“I like your shirt,” she lies.

“Thanks,” he says. “Love that movie.” “Me too.”

The careful way he looks at her, as if she is a celebrity, or a ghost, interests and unsettles her.

The room really is loud, so he puts his hand on the small of her back and steers her toward the hallway. They talk more, about easy, stupid things. He kisses her. He sticks histongue between her lips and moves it in circles. It’s unpleasant, but who knows, maybe this is just how people kiss. Lydia is willing to defer to his expertise.

They walk to Cottage B, sharing a cigarette. He smokes a kind that starts tasting like mint half way through. They talk about where they’re from, what they’re thinking of majoring in, all the normal stuff. The night is cold and clear. It takes about fifteen minutes for them to get to her room.

Her desk is a mess and she is pretty sure she left a pair of dirty underwear on the floor by her bed, so she doesn’t turn on the light. He kisses her against the door. She hears the sound of her skull against the wood.

“Ow,” she says, dully. They move toward the bed.

He is on top of her, his eyes half open, pushing up her dress. Her roommate Kristina’s dress, actually, which she borrowed without asking—black with tiny white polka dots. Kristina is away this weekend, visiting her sister at Colgate.

“Uh, not tonight,” she says, pulling the dress back down.

“Not tonight?” He is now sliding his hand up her thigh, playing with the hem of her underwear.

“No, not tonight.”

His eyes are completely closed.

“I’m a virgin,” she says. Embarrassed, desperate. “Really?” He opens his eyes. “That’s surprising.” She wonders if she should be offended. “It is?” “You just need to relax.”“I am relaxed,” she says, stupidly.

“Good,” he says, and sticks his finger inside of her.

Her yelp is quiet and high pitched, like a child who has stubbed her toe. “I said, relax.”

He puts his hands around her throat. “Just chill,” she hears him say.

There is no way for her to know how long it takes Aaron to finish whatever he is doing. It feels like hours, it feels like just a second, it feels like it couldn’t have happened at all. She rolls over onto her side. She doesn’t want him to see her gasp for air.

She can hear him zipping up his pants, putting on his shoes.

“No offense or anything,” he says. “But you should probably shave your pubes.” She doesn’t say anything.

“Have a good night. I’ll see you around, yeah?”

Lydia has been waiting for the sound of the closing door to cry, but instead, she falls asleep, in Kristina’s pretty dress.

She wakes up starving. It’s 10 a.m. and the cafeteria isn’t open until noon, though Lydia doubts she could walk there, given how painful it was to go to the bathroom and pee. Kristina doesn’t get back until Monday morning. Lydia can’t imagine trying to talk about what happened in a text or a phone call. Again, she expects to cry.She takes a shower and washes her hair with shampoo that smells like strawberries. She gets dressed in the most comfortable clothes she owns: silk stockings, a gift from her mother, and a light blue cotton dress with long sleeves. She puts her hair in two braids.

There’s no way she can make it to the cafeteria. The idea of seeing Aaron there, drinking coffee and piling a plate high with french toast sticks, makes her want to stab herself. Instead, she buys a pop tart from the vending machine and warms it up in the communal kitchen’s microwave.

As usual on the weekends, the sink is full of dishes, around which flies buzz ominously. An entire shaker of Mrs. Dash has been spilled across the counter. The garbage can has been knocked over, and an assortment of empty chip bags, paper towels, half-eaten bowls of ramen, and condom wrappers are displayed on the floor. Lydia manages to get her pop tart and herself out of there without gagging.

She eats sitting at her desk. Kristina’s side of the room is a mess. Almost every article of clothing she owns strewn out across the bed and floor. All her drawers open, the potted plant on her dresser tipped over. Lydia remembers reading in some magazine that because the bed is usually the largest object in the room, making it makes the whole space seem cleaner.

She replaces her blue floral sheets with the pink floral sheets, which are stored in a plastic container above her closet. She pulls her duvet tight and smooths it over. For a moment, she admires her work. Then she opens up her desk, finds the Benadryl, pops four in her mouth, and crawls into bed.

When she wakes it is dark out, and Josh has texted her twice.

Isabel got us some vodka!!!!!Come thru come thruuuuuu brooooooo

Lydia texts back. Her room or yours?

Her phone pings almost immediately. Hers. 223

Isabel opens the door wearing pajama pants and a satiny red robe. “Nice to see you. Come on in!”

“Thanks.”

“I like your dress,” says Isabel. “It kind of looks like a hospital gown, but in a really cute way.” Josh is sitting on the edge of the bed. He gives Lydia a hug. She sits next to him and immediately flops down on the bed. Lydia wants to ask where Lucas is but decides against it.

“Want a drink?” Josh asks.

“Yup.” Lydia props herself up to take a swig of vodka. It’s a nicer brand than what she’s used to, but it still burns her throat.

“L’chaim,” says Josh, looking concerned. “Everything OK?” “I lost my virginity,” she says, still staring at the poster.

“No way.”

“High five!” says Isabel, leaning over.

“A toast to Lydia,” says Josh. “Congratulations, a thousand times over.” Lydia laughs. “Thanks, you guys.”

“Are you sore?” asks Isabel. “A little bit.”

“Don’t worry. It goes away.” “Good to know.”“How do you feel?” Josh asks.

“Uh. Fine. It’s not that big of a deal to me.”

This is true. She’s not religious. The concept of virginity has always seemed a little bit ridiculous to her. She hasn’t lost anything. Nothing is missing, because nothing has been taken. What she feels is more like being kicked in the chest, again, and again, and again.

Lydia’s life goes on without her in it. She attends her classes. Instead of taking notes, she stares out the window and draws pictures of the trees in her notebook. She buys more Benadryl from the campus store. She writes essays about Bartholomew de las Casas and the Marquis de Sade. She hangs out with her friends, but not often, claiming that she has work to do. She sleeps sometimes for twelve or thirteen hours a day. Kristina asks if she has mono.

At the beginning of March, she lets Kristina dye her hair, a pretty henna red. They do it in the largest of the Cottage B bathrooms, over the slightly grimy sink. Kristina’s hands spreading the dye across her skull is the first time anyone’s touched Lydia in weeks.

While the dye sets, Kristina smokes out of the open window and complains about her boyfriend, a junior named Derek who is almost definitely cheating on her.

“I’m scared to say anything, because what if I’m just being insecure? But I’m scared not to say anything, because I don’t want him to think I don’t notice, that I’m like, stupid. I don’t want him to think he can take advantage of me. You know?”

Lydia nods. “Yeah, I know.”

Kristina exhales slowly. “So, have you and Lucas hooked up yet?” Lydia shakes her head.“It’s just a matter of time. He’s crazy about you, I know it. It’s just that he really values you as a friend, that’s all.”

Lydia smiles. Kristina is probably making shit up, trying to be nice, but still. It’s not impossible.

Kristina borrows a blow-dryer from Molly so that they won’t have to wait too long to see how it turns out. When it’s done, Kristina grins broadly.

“You look great. It’s like, transformative.”

And it’s true that when Lydia looks at herself in the mirror, for a moment her reflection is genuinely unrecognizable. The red makes her skin paler and her eyes brighter. She’s lost weight, too, and even in the dull fluorescence of the bathroom her cheekbones are more pronounced than before.

“Lucas is going to freak out when he sees you,” says Kristina. “Shut up,” Lydia says.

That night, when she goes to see Lucas and Josh, Aaron is in their room, sitting at Josh’s desk. The chair is turned toward the center of the room, and he is talking to Isabel, who is nodding enthusiastically.

How does it feel? If she could put it into words, maybe she wouldn’t have panicked like that, turning on her heel, slamming the door behind her. She hears herself sobbing before she can feel it. Kristina is in their room, watching Grey’s Anatomy with some other girls. Lydia doesn’t want them to see her like this. To her relief, the back porch of Cottage B is empty. She sits there for a while, crying, dragging her nails along the soft wood.

“Hey, dude.”It’s Lucas. He sits down beside her. “What’s going on?”

Even if she wanted to tell him, she couldn’t. Her mouth feels as if it is full of spiders. “Is it that guy Aaron?”

She nods.

“He’s gone now. He just stopped by to get weed from Josh.” She nods again.

“He’s kind of an asshole, right?” Lucas asks, carefully. “Kind of.”

“Josh said you hooked up with him.” She says nothing.

“Was he a dick to you, or something?” “Something like that.”

“You know,” he says. “Guys are just like that, sometimes. Believe me. It’s not personal.” She hears herself laugh. It’s a horrible, hollow sound. He looks at her in surprise.

“He hurt me,” she says. “Like, physically?”

Yes, you idiot, she wants to say.

“Shit,” says Lucas. “Shit.  Shit. Why didn’t you call us? We’re just down the hall. We would have helped you.”

“I know.” “Jesus, Lydia.”He puts his arm around her shoulders. It’s a tender, dad-like gesture. A month ago, it would have made her heart grind to a halt.

“I’m thinking I should tell someone,” she says, finally. “Like who?”

“I don’t know.”

She thinks of Paula, her R.A., a skinny, enthusiastic Sociology major who writes inspirational quotes on a small whiteboard on her door. When it rains, look for rainbows. When it’s dark, look for stars!

“The police, maybe?” she suggests, quietly.

Lucas shakes his head. “No, don’t do that. You could really fuck up his life, like for real. I mean, he’s a fucking scumbag, but you don’t want to do that, do you?”

He pulls her body close to his.

“I’m so sorry, Lydia. This is so shitty.”

They stay like that for a while. Lydia thinks that if she doesn’t even want Lucas to touch her, she must be in big trouble.

She thinks about the night they kissed, about walking with him from the party. They were so new to campus, they got a little lost, taking the long way to Cottage B. At one point, Lydia started singing, and Lucas had joined her, before dissolving into laughter.

“I mean, I can’t sing,” said Lucas, “But you really can’t sing.”

She had laughed, too, so hard that her face hurt. Now, when she thinks about her months-younger self, that drunk, singing girl, she wants to kill her.

“I have to go,” she tells Lucas, leaving him on the porch.She goes into her room and grabs her flashlight, a going away present from her father. She thinks of her parents, eating dinner, watching the History Channel.

“Is everything OK?” asks Kristina. Lydia doesn’t answer.

She walks for an hour, maybe more. Even her bones are cold. The woods are dark and vast, but it’s the silence that chastens her, like an empty cathedral. Just to the river, she promises herself. She will only walk until she sees water, and then she will go home. Apologize to Lucas. Take a shower, brush her hair, go to bed. In the morning, she will figure out the rest. Her ankles and knees are beginning to ache. The sound of water rushing over rocks startles her. She tries to remember the details from Isabel’s story. Sara Morgan, the ghost in the woods.

Was she killed at night, or during the day? Had she gone into the woods together, or had he followed her? Did she see the knife? Was there time, before she died, for her to be afraid? Lydia wants to say: If you’re here, you can tell me. I’m on your side.

Under the glow of the flashlight, the water looks like molten silver.