The house I’m watching is quiet, all the rooms dark except for one at the front, lit by the murky glow of a television set. I reach into my bag for my copy of Clarissa, the book I’d grabbed from my room that morning, the one I’d be reading if I hadn’t deferred admission to Williams, had taken ENGL 379, The Novel of Manners, which I’d registered for back in July. As soon as I haul the one-thousand-five-hundred-page tome onto my lap, though, I realize I might as well have left it on the table next to the bed I never sleep in. It isn’t pitch-black in the car, but it’s pretty close. And I can’t turn on the overhead light without making myself conspicuous. Guess I’ll just play Candy Crush Saga on my cell until the juice runs out or I pass out like every other night this week. And then I remember: I have a flashlight stored in the car for emergencies. I pop open the glove compartment. A flashlight doesn’t tumble out. Something else does, though. Chandler’s student literary magazine of which I was one time editor in chief, The Rag and Bone Shop Quarterly, known on campus as The Rag.
