I shut Bliss down before she can get carried away on that tide of self-congratulation. “We’ve still got to sneak in the dorms and deliver it to him.” She laughs, giving me this know-it-all grin, as if I’ve just questioned her ability to apply eyeliner or calculate the optimal flesh-to-dress ratio. “Trust me”— she smirks —“getting three girls into that dorm on a Friday night will be, like, the easiest thing we’ve ever done.” I almost want us to run into trouble, just to prove her wrong, but when we make it back across the ugly campus to Jason’s dorm building, the front door is propped open with a stack of textbooks, and the pimple-faced security guard doesn’t even look up from his handheld game as we walk in. “Told you so!” Bliss sings, flouncing ahead. I take in the gray walls and vending machines and feel a swell of disappointment. God, I hate this place. After everything, I still can’t believe I’m cursed to spend my college years here: a freshman in the crowd of thousands mooching between classes at an institution that doesn’t make any rankings except the lower reaches of the annual “party schools”
