"We're soul mates. The way it's supposed to be. And now I've lost him. Because I screw up everything in my life. My mother's right about me."

An hour later, he called. "I apologize. I told you, I'm not used to being so close to anyone. I have to learn how." When she was silent, unsure what to say, he went on, "Don't you want to teach me?"

"I don't know," she said, but her voice was already softening. "You made me feel worthless today."

"You aren't worthless to me. You're precious. Don't you know that?"

"Not when you treat me that way."

"I said I'm sorry. I don't want to push you away."

"Don't you?" She knew she was already forgiving him, but she could not resist making him plead a little more. "You did a real good job."

"I want to bring you closer. But I need to learn how. I'm serious, Melissa. Will you teach me?"

She stayed silent a minute, hoping that the suspense was building. "I'll try."

"HE APOLOGIZED," she told Emily. "He told me I'm precious to him."

"He should apologize. Are you going to see him again?"

"Of course," Melissa said. "Where would I ever again find a guy so sexy and he makes a fuss over me? Besides, if I break up with him, I'll probably never have another orgasm in my life."

"I don't know." Emily was rubbing antiseptic ointment into her belly button, where her new ring had given her an infection. "I think it's like riding a bike. Once you learn how to do it, your body remembers."

"I think it's chemistry, Em."

"Yeah, then I've had chemistry with some real losers, believe me. Guys you wouldn't want to spend an evening doing your laundry with."

Melissa was reading her botany assignment when her conscience began to pinch. Hadn't she done the very thing to Billy, not to mention to Merilee and her mother, that had made her so angry with Blake? Hadn't she laid down the law with Fern just last week about not touching her dresser? She was extremely private and possessive about her things. She could not endure having anyone casually poke through her desk or dresser top, even if there was nothing available that might embarrass or reveal her. She was fiercely protective of anything remotely personal. Why couldn't she accept that in Blake? Because of the sex: after feeling so intimate, everything should be open to the other. But maybe in a real adult relationship, there were always off-limits areas.

She had the urge to call him and apologize in turn, but she decided that would be way too neurotic. She would be extra nice to him tomorrow. Still, she felt better, for she understood and truly forgave him. They were more alike than she had realized. Knowing that turned a bad thing into a good thing. She hadn't lost him after all. It was just a little bump in the road. He cared enough for her to apologize, prideful as he was.

She lay in bed that night trying to decide what she should call him to herself-her boyfriend, her lover, her mate? What was her secret word for him? Blake was such a strange name. She must ask him about it. She didn't think there was another Blake on campus, whereas there was even another Melissa in her government class. And another in this dorm. Emilys flourished by the dozen. She had always envied Merilee her name that nobody else had, even though to Emily she made fun of it as cobbled together from her mother's name and her father's middle name, Lee. He claimed to be a collateral descendant of the general. Dick's father kept elaborate genealogies of the Dickinson family. If Dick said he was related to Robert E. Lee, no doubt he was. She had always detested the Civil War. It had far too many battles, and she had been dragged to various battlefields, where her father posed for photo opportunities with his children-herself in every picture on the far end, her more photogenic siblings flanking Dick. They hardly ever got to see much-just arrangements for the photo op, though sometimes when the photographer or the newsmen were setting up, she and Billy got to run around and jump in old trenches or climb embankments and run down.

THAT WEEKEND Blake said he had to go to New York. "I'm seeing this dude who has a program I need."

They were in Mocon having breakfast. She had spent the night with him for the first time-in his room. He had insisted that happen to make up for how he had behaved.

"Can't he just send it to you?"

"I need to see him to get it. It wouldn't be cool for him to send it to me."

"Is it like a hacker thing?"

"Something like. Want some more coffee?"

"What does it do?"

"What it's supposed to, I hope." He got himself more black coffee and hers regular, with skim milk and saccharin.

She liked his remembering how she took her coffee, but she didn't like not seeing him all weekend. "You aren't going to tell me?"

"It's on a need-to-know basis, babes. When you need to know, I'll show you. But I promise, you'll like what it does."

"Blake, I like what you do. I'll miss you. Can't I go along?"

"Not this time. This is kind of a delicate negotiation." He finished his coffee quickly. "Some other time we'll go together."

She had the sense she might be pushing him too hard. He was a prickly guy, ready to pull back into his shell. After all, it was just one weekend, and it wasn't like he was going to see another girl. At least she didn't think so. "You said you wanted me to teach you to be close."

"Close, but not standing on my foot."

She had to back off. Sometimes she had the sense about him that she was out of her depth, that she didn't have the skills and experience necessary to get her way with him. A more sophisticated girl would know what to do. But her experience with boys, even her years of dealing with Billy, was limited and useless in this context. Emily would have known how to handle Blake.

He grinned suddenly. "Don't look like I just killed your puppy. It's only computer stuff. You know I'm into that. Aren't there any computer junkies in your family?"

"We all use them, but no. Rich-that's my older brother, Richard Junior, while Dad is Dick and he's Rich-he's into politics. Merilee is into law. And Billy-he's usually into trouble. Alison is my mother's pet computer nerd."

"Alison? Another sister?"

"She's my mother's assistant. Like secretary, scheduler, errand runner, spy on us kids, sycophant, yes-woman, whatever it takes."

"Your mom isn't computer savvy?"

"She uses one, sure. She gets about a hundred e-mail messages a day. But Alison puts programs on and takes them off and all that stuff. When something's wrong, she can usually fix it."

"A hundred messages a day? You're exaggerating."

"Not by much, believe me."

"Does she send you e-mail?"

"Every Friday she e-mails us kids."

"Why don't you show me? I'm curious. If it isn't too personal."

"There's hardly anything personal about it, believe me. Sure, you can read one if you want to. I usually erase them after I answer them."

"That's no problem. I can retrieve them. But next time, don't."

"How come you're so curious about my mother?"

"I want to know everything about you. Your family's been a big deal in your life. I want to understand them so I can understand you better. You're a complex creature, babes. Did you know Melissa means 'bee'?"

"Yeah. I never thought it was sexy or anything. Like busy as a bee."

"Well, you stay busy while I'm gone. Be good."

"I have to be good. You're the one going to New York."

"Business, little honeybee, a program I want, I need, I got to have."

"TWO STEPS FORWARD and one step back," she said to Emily. "Looks like the movies for us this Saturday night."

"Why couldn't he take you along?"

"I don't think he wanted to. He's been a loner, you know. He hitchhiked all around Europe by himself."

"He's a funny dude," Emily said, but she sounded rather happy about the weekend. "We can go with the guys-" That was what Emily called the little group she had been hanging with. "I might be interested in Kurt."

"I thought he and Amy were an item."

"No longer. Her old boyfriend's coming from Cornell next weekend. We'll all go. It'll be great."

Melissa didn't think it would be so great, but she wasn't going to say that and hurt Emily's feelings. Emily had been out of sorts about the amount of time Melissa was spending with Blake, so she wanted to compensate. Melissa wasn't crazy about "the guys," but she could hardly complain if Emily had found people to hang with. She'd stop feeling guilty about Em and they'd have a good time together. After all, she'd existed for almost her whole life before she met Blake. But that was just existing. Now she was fully alive. She could handle the guys better than she had last time. She had her own boyfriend now. She felt more confident, and she knew she exuded something, because Ronnie had been friendlier of late-before she had treated Melissa as an appendage of Emily-and so had Carol, whom Emily always referred to as Queen of the Hall. Carol had won a beauty contest in high school and been homecoming queen. She was bucking for something here. Now she actually said "Hey" when they passed in the hall. Melissa had more confidence in herself, and it must show.

She also put time aside for Fern, who had taken up serious Frisbee and was also playing soccer with other first-year women. "You know, Fern, it's not like we're trying to build resumes. In high school we all had to accumulate these lists of activities and accomplishments. So long as you keep your grades up, they won't take your scholarship away."

"You told me to go out for sports to make friends."

She was embarrassed. She gave Fern advice freely and forgot it five minutes later. She had to be more careful with Fern-there was a fragility to her that contrasted with her athleticism and physical strength. Fern was thin but wiry. She exercised with free weights four mornings a week. "Is it working?"

Fern bowed her long neck. "I think so...." She looked up after a moment. "Whitney doesn't like me. She calls me Fern Bar and Weed."

"Buttercup? Ignore her, Fern. She's an idiot."

"She's been talking about you and Blake. I heard her. She doesn't think enough of me to lower her voice when she's being vicious. She says you're slumming and that you couldn't get a white boyfriend."

She wished Fern wouldn't repeat the nasties she heard, but Fern was only doing it to show she was on Melissa's side-and when had Melissa begun to have a side? Whitney could just choke on her own malice. "I have exactly the boyfriend I want, thank you very much. I think she's jealous."

Buttercup had a nasty streak that reminded Melissa of girls who had picked on her in grade school, the vicious pretty girls who ran the cliques. They bullied her because she was too tall, too chunky. And because they could. She had been bitterly unhappy then. She would have done anything to be accepted by them, but nothing she did made a difference. God, how unhappy she had been for years. She had suffered a recurring dream where she had gone into the woods with her family, then got lost. Instead of searching for her and finding her, they left her there, as if they had forgotten she existed. They abandoned her like Hansel and Gretel; they left her in the woods and the rest of them returned home without her. She would wake frightened and cold. That nightmare had felt so real; in a way it was.

* CHAPTER SEVEN *.

Melissa sat on his bed, with its spread imitated from a Navaho blanket. "Of course I missed you. I don't see why I couldn't go along."

"I don't know how far I can trust you." He was leaning on the edge of his desk, his hands clasped behind his head.

"That's an awful thing to say. Why wouldn't you trust me?"

"First, we haven't known each other that long. Second, you're the daughter of privilege and power. How do I know where your allegiance lies? With me or with them? Third, I doubt if you've ever chosen to break the law in your life, for a reason bigger than the pressure of your high school peer group to smoke a little dope or drink some beer."

Her eyes stung. "How can you say those things? How can you say I'm precious to you and then that you don't trust me?"

"Should I trust you?"

"Yes, you should trust me. I care about you."

"Do you love me?"

"You haven't said you love me."

"I asked you a question."

She felt humiliated. How could she say she loved him when he hadn't said it first? But he wouldn't unless she did, she was sure of that. He was too proud. Suppose she said it, and then he said he didn't. She would die. She would sink into the floor and keep sinking through the next floor and the basement into the mud beneath the dormitory.

"Silence means you don't."

She was sure that if she didn't say that she loved him, she would lose him right then and there. It was a test. "Yes, I love you."

"What do you mean by that?"

She felt stymied. "What people mean. I'm in love with you."

"But I don't know if it came to somebody else, say in your family, if you'd put me first. That's what I mean by trust. That we're a real couple with each other, bonded, mated. Then we mean that we're real before all else to each other."

"Do you feel that way about me?"

"Would I bother if I didn't? I despise dating. I hate the way guys in this dorm talk about girls. Do they put out, don't they. Are they like super-models or just dogs. It's a sick game. I'm not playing."

"I know what you mean." She wanted to touch him, to hold him, but she could not seem to move. "I don't want that either. I never did. I feel like you're something better, something purer and more intense and far more real than any of the guys here."

"From the first time we were together," he said slowly, coming toward her now and placing his hands on either side of her face, "I've felt there was something special in you. That's why I tell you you're precious. I want us to love each other from our spines, from the core of our being."

"I want that too." She had to convince him. "I never felt anything before you touched me the first time. I wasn't alive. I wasn't real."

He pulled her against him, hard against him, and just held her. When they were together, she felt as if she soared onto another level of being. Everything mundane and trivial filtered away. She did not worry about her classes, she did not worry if Rosemary was going to bug her about not having a major, she didn't care if Merilee was smarter and prettier, she didn't mind that Whitney said to her couldn't she get someone to introduce her to a white boy? Even Ronnie said she understood that some girls just liked it down and dirty. None of that mattered. Only his intense fierce eyes focused on her, making her real, making her burn with a mix of desire and aching love for him. No one in her family had ever felt this way, she knew it. They had accommodations and successes and failures and agendas, but none of them ever knew passion that consumed them to a fine point of painful light. She grasped him back, and for moments that felt forever they just held each other hard and tight, clutching, bound together as if they were alone in a vast cold darkness, alone on an asteroid in the hostile night of space.

EMILY WENT OUT Friday night with a guy from their French class instead of her usual crowd.

"What are you going to see?"

"I forgot to ask. Do I care? I just want to find somebody who's worth hooking up with. Do you think he's cute?"

Actually, until he had stopped Emily after class, Melissa had never noticed him. He was pretty average in all ways, height, weight, with light brown hair and owl glasses. He did have a good French accent, but she couldn't say she had ever thought about him twice. But loyally she said, "Really, yes."

Emily turned to look at her. "So Blake's coming over here? How did you arrange that with Fern?"

"Actually she has a game tonight. Soccer."