Chapter 7

"But why is it," Danielle said, "that having sex with someone seems to be the thing that breaks me up with them?"

"Maybe you have a cursed vagina," Amy said.

"That would be terrifying," said Martin, and Danielle scooped up a piece of popcorn and threw it at Amy.

Summer had come and gone, though this one had been longer than usual; while high school started in August, most colleges held off until September. It was, Danielle's mom had told her, the longest summer vacation she would ever have, and Danielle had been doing her best to enjoy it. It was sad to be single; it was wonderful to be free of Weston.

"He said I was a bitch," Danielle said. It was a little more plaintive than she'd intended.

"Umm, Danielle," Martin chortled, "I hate to tell you this, but..."

"Shut up, asshole," Danielle snapped.

"I rest my case," Martin said. Liz, leaning against him, gave him a swat on the head.

"But how come they only say that after sex," Danielle asked.

"Well, does it come out during sex?" Amy asked. "Do you bite? Claw? Talk dirty? Dominate him?"

"No," said Danielle, affronted.

"Maybe they only feel comfortable saying it after sex," Liz said.

"No, David used to say it a lot."

Martin gave her a look. "David used to call you a bitch all the time."

"Well..." said Danielle. "Not like that. He'd say I was really stubborn. I think he thought it was kinda cute."

"That's totally different," Martin said.

"It's the flip side of the same coin," Danielle said.

"It's politer," Martin said.

"Still means the same thing," Danielle said, and Martin conceded that with a tilt of his head.

"Well, look," said Liz. "You're going off to college. I mean, you've already gone to orientation and met some people. And when you're there, you'll get to start fresh. No more of this 'Nutty Nellie' business. People don't know you from a hole in the wall."

"Except for the ones who come to Richardson University with me," she said.

"Well, that's just what you have to deal with," said Liz. "You could've gone to UC San Diego or Towson or somewhere in between if you wanted. You could've gone to Chinchilla College."

"Ugh, don't remind me," said Danielle. She had received her share of acceptance letters, and her share of scholarship offers too. One had been from Chinchilla College in southern New Mexico, offering her a full ride if she'd come there. The name was enough to get her to toss the thing out. What, are they that desperate for patronage? Why didn't they just do it via mass e-mail? Then they could have also asked for my bank account number and promised me millions of dollars in Nigerian diamonds or whatever.

"The point is, even at Richardson, the vast majority of everybody won't know you," Liz said. "You'll be just another faceless freshman to them. You can be whoever you want to be."

"Not a bitch?" Danielle said hopefully.

"I wouldn't go that far," Amy said.

"Shut up, asshole," Danielle said, throwing another piece of popcorn.

All in all, it had been one of the most relaxing summers of her life. Instead of going to summer school or finding a job, she vegged out most of the time, sinking hours of her life into YouTube, into The Sims, into Facebook and MySpace. It was also a chance for her to break out her camera. It had fallen off her radar in the aftermath of her break-up with David—not just because she'd been so lost, but because she'd brought her trusty pink PowerShot to the field with her that day and, in her distraction, forgotten to scoop it up. By the time she realized when it had disappeared—some time around Valentine's Day—and could return, it was gone. So, for her eighteenth birthday, she splurged on a good Nikon, an old D90 she found on eBay. It was still a good $500, but a newer model year had come out at the turn of the decade, and a lot of enthusiasts were trying to unload their old gear. And that led straight back into PhotoShop, which was of double usage to her: creating new textures for objects in The Sims. It was something she'd never done before, but always wanted to try; now, with the summer completely to herself, she had a chance to. It was harder than she thought, in some ways; more often than not she could never get the right image to appear on the right surface of the object, so that the back of a couch would have the picture of its cushions, while its backrest displayed on the spot you sat on. But the texturing and photo alterations ... That was old hat to her.

The decision to go to Richardson had not been taken lightly. It had accomplished the miracle of maintaining a strong reputation for liberal arts alongside reasonably good scores in the harder business and sciences; it hosted less than 15,000 students, counting post-graduates, so she would not be overlooked the way she might at a large school (she had been astounded to know that Ohio State University enrolled over 50,000 people). It was also two hours away from everything she had ever known—including Liz, who was going with Martin to the University of San Francisco, and Amy, who had enrolled at Wisconsin-Madison. Despite her fears, Danielle was fairly sure that she wouldn't run into anyone she knew. Would that be a blessing or a curse? She had never gone into anything before without at least one friend—typically, David—at her side. This time, for the first time, she was going to go it alone. The thought was both exciting and terrifying, all at the same time.

With so much time on her hands, she'd had plenty of opportunities to look back over the wreckage of her relationship with Weston. Leaving him didn't have the same ring of anarchic emptiness she'd felt when breaking up with David; she had a life now, if not much of one, and she could stand on her own two feet. Losing David had been the end of the world. Next to him, Weston was a gnat.

The funny thing was, they'd dated practically from the beginning of school to the end—give or take a few weeks—but had very little time together during vacations, since he was always being shipped off to his mother's place whenever he had time off. She had been looking forward to summer vacation, when they'd have plenty of time to spend together in the same state ... And instead, here she was, the third wheel to Liz and Martin. At least she had Amy, newly single, to commiserate with. What had happened to Connor Amy would not say, except that she had gotten in trouble for their little hotel escapade on Prom night. Danielle wondered if he had gone to his parents with the story of his missing virginity.

The main problem with Weston was that he hadn't been over his old girlfriend. Constantly, constantly, Jodie was coming up—Jodie this, Jodie that, why can't you be more like her. Danielle could hardly blame him for that; David was rarely far from her own thoughts. But at least she wasn't stupid enough to say it out loud. Besides, how pointless was it to try and recapture something that was out of reach? She had felt like a stand-in most of the time; she had felt like he wasn't really interested in Danielle Mayer, only in Danielle-Mayer-inasmuch-as-she-replicated-the-Jodie-Wycroft-experience. It didn't make her inclined to be nice to him.

But the other problem had been her own: that, in truth, she wasn't over David yet either. Every time she looked up, she couldn't help but feel like he was supposed to be there. It made her unwilling to commit to Weston at the level he wanted; she always felt like she needed to hold something back in case David should, miraculously, show up. It was a disturbing thought, that she still wasn't over him; after all, they'd been split up for more than two years now. Shouldn't she be used to it by now? But, as the Stantons had pointed out, she'd had him in her life for ten years. "And most people barely remember anything before about the age of five or six," Ned had said, "we've known for years that the memory sectors of the human brain reformat themselves around that age, and most of everything that happened before is basically forgotten. Which means that, in some ways, you've actually known him for your entire life. That's like losing a family member."

God, am I going to be stuck like this forever? she wondered. Am I going to be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my freaking life?—wondering where he is? 'cuz that's what it feels like right now. And now I'm about to go to college and away from him—I don't even know where he's going—and have to learn to live ... On my own.

These were the thoughts, only somewhat comforting, that echoed through her head as her family drove away, leaving her to wave good-bye at the retreating back end of their station wagon, alone at Richardson College.

She spent a few minutes hanging her clothes and unpacking the important things. The room was small and snug, with two desks, two beds and a separate compartment with closets and a sink/mirror combo. How she decided to arrange her desk and bed, and which side of the room she ended up on, would have a big impact on her life for the next year, because there was only so much personalization she could do out here.

She had never met her roommate, a stranger named Magdalena Nicole Smith; she didn't appear for another few hours. Danielle's family had arrived early to avoid the rush, which turned out to be a horrible idea: just about every other Richardson College freshman had had it. Clearly, Magdalena Smith knew something Danielle didn't. When she did arrive, she turned out to be a pale waif of a girl whose active, take-charge parents made her seem almost transparent. From the first, Mr. Calvin Smith dominated the room, giving Danielle a beaming greeting "with blessings in the peace of God," and trying to decide (while dodging Danielle's half-unpacked clutter) where to put up the enormous picture of the Virgin Mary.

It went downhill from there.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith were friendly, that much was certain, and generous; their presence was not of anger or manipulation. Instead, their good cheer simply swelled until it filled every crevice available. But they did control the room; it had clearly never occurred to them that other people might ever have a thought that contradicted one of their own. After the moving was done and the furniture set up, they swept Magdalena (they always used the girl's full name, though Danielle could well imagine her preferring "Maggie" or some other diminutive like "Vladimir" or perhaps "Cassock") out for a tour of the campus—and Danielle too. And after that a comfortable dinner at a nice pasta place downtown—with, again, Danielle included without questioning whether she belonged. Or wanted to. It was certainly nice to have been grafted onto this family that way ... But did she really like it?

Finally, after dropping their daughter back off at the dorms at eight o'clock that night, after endless reminders to do her laundry and study hard and pray every night and call home to keep us up to date, you hear, the parents were off. And half an hour later, Danielle heard her roommate's voice for the first time.

"Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee," Magdalena was saying. Her voice hitched and rasped a little, as though underused. Well, with parents like those, can you blame her? Danielle was on the verge of just tuning the girl out when she heard a bit of a crackle, and smelled the scent of sulfur.

Her roommate had the Virgin Mary poster down off the wall and was burning it.

"—and blessed is the fruit of thy womb—"

"Hey, ummm," said Danielle. "You might set off the smoke detector."

Her roommate looked up. "There are smoke detectors here?"

"Didn't they tell you during Freshman Orientation? Every single dorm room has one."

"Jesus," said Magdalena. Her resemblance to a deer in headlights was uncanny. "Holy Mary, mother of God. I, uhh ... I had better put this out."

"Maybe," said Danielle, trying to deadpan it the way Liz did.

Magdalena sighed and took the burning poster into the closet compartment. There was the sound of running water, and then the hiss of a quenched flame. And then a thunk, like something being tossed in a trash can.

Magdalena emerged from behind the partition. "That poster has been over my bed for the last eighteen years," she said. Her voice was a pale and insubstantial thing, much like the girl herself. "I could not wait for the chance to get rid of it."

"I ... See," said Danielle.

"I'm sorry about my parents," said Magdalena. "They're ... Like that."

"I noticed."

"All my friends always said ... You know, 'How could you dislike parents like those? They're very generous, they take us out to dinner all the time, they're so friendly ... We almost like them better than we like you!'"

"Hmm," said Danielle. "That might have something to do with it."

"Yes," said Magdalena, "it might." Under the dorm room's fluorescent lights, she looked not so much pale as bleached, like someone who had been kept out of the sun for too long. Or someone who had been continually outshone. "Please don't call me Magdalena, by the way."

"Why not?" said Danielle.

"It's ... It's what I've been called for all my life," said her roommate, "but ... I want to make a new start. I want to be known as someone else now."

"Maggie?" said Danielle, making a guess.

"Well, I guess that would work, but I was thinking that, maybe, I would ... Use my middle name. Nicole."

"Nicole Smith?" said Danielle. "Well, aside from being associated with a dead slut, it's probably—"

"What?" said Magdalena/Maggie/Nicole. "Who?"

"Anna Nicole Smith?" said Danielle.

"Who?"

"Haven't you heard of her?"

"Was she an actress?"

"Umm..." said Danielle. "She was in Playboy."

"Oh," said Magdgiecole, visibly wilting. "Umm. I dunno about that then."

"Well, it's still better than Magdalena," said Danielle. "Or 'Maggie Smith, ' for that matter, who is an actress."

"Yeah," said her roommate. "And... 'Nicole' seems younger. And ... A little less timid."

Well, this girl could stand to be less timid, there was no doubt of that. "I won't tell anyone if you won't," said Danielle, smiling.

"About what?"

"About who Anna Nicole Smith was. It'll just be our little secret. Nobody else will know."

Her roommate Nicole gave her one moment of perplexity before bursting into laughter.

"And besides. Umm, don't take this the wrong way, but, I don't think anyone will confuse you with her." Nicole was wearing a perfectly demure ensemble—jeans and a light blouse, with barely any skin showing. Her dark hair was drawn up in a ponytail. Where Anna Nicole Smith had radiated sex appeal, Danielle's roommate was a model of virginal innocence. Which, to be fair, some man would probably find attractive somewhere. But it was still a different appeal. "She was, you know, showing off everything."

"Oh," said Nicole. "Yes. Was ... Was she pretty?"

"Huh?" said Danielle. "Well, I dunno. I didn't pay much attention. Didn't you see her on TV?"

"We don't watch television in our house," said Nicole. "I've never heard of her."

" ... Boy," said Danielle. "You're gonna be lost out here."

"Is there ... A lot I don't know?" said Nicole.

"Umm ... Some, yeah," said Danielle. "Desperate Housewives and Halo and Panic At The Disco and Wikipedia and what a keg stand is..."

"Oh, that's a lot," Nicole whispered. "Will you help me?"

"Of course," said Danielle. And just like that, she had made her first new friend.

What Nicole had done with her name stuck with Danielle that night, as the two of them talked, met their RA Bruce Winston (whom Nicole introduced herself to as Nicole—after a bit of a panicked look; "There are men in this hallway?") and said hello to whichever floormates dropped by. And as she stared at the ceiling that night, she thought it over to herself. I too am starting over here, aren't I? I can be anyone I want. Besides 'not a bitch, ' that is. But even then ... Our names are part of who we are, aren't they? 'Danielle' is a bitch; Danielle's been alive for eighteen years; Danielle has a lot of baggage concerning an ex-boyfriend she just can't get over. So what if ... What if I were to be ... Not Danielle?

And when Professor Frinkman asked her what she called herself, during the first college class of her life, she said, "Call me Elle."

It took a little while to get used to responding to it; more than a week, actually. She became known somewhat interchangeably as Elle, Danielle, and "You, there", for the people who had trouble remembering her name at all. Or remembering what 'Elle' was short for. (Some people think it was "L," a first initial.) She did not want to use her middle name; as she joked about it to Nicole, "Sabrina is a girly girl. She wears too much pink for me." Nonetheless, being addressed as 'Elle' made her feel ... Different. It was a sleeker name, more capable, more sophisticated—the kind of name she should have been using while trying to ingratiate herself with Shelly Baumgarter and those types. Instead she'd let them shorten her to her first initial. It had been disrespectful. David had been right.