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practice being social.”
    I stared at her in disbelief. “Do you think I am, um, socially
challenged?”
I asked carefully.
    She shook her head emphatically.
“I
don’t, sweetie. But
you
do. At least, tonightyou do. So maybe you need a little … what’s that they call it—ah, cognate behavior therapy!” She raised a finger triumphantly.
    Her father was a celebrity shrink, I knew. But that didn’t mean his training had rubbed off on Charlie.
    “You know, when you deliberately behave in a certain way and then, soon enough, your brain follows.” She smiled.
    “I’m not sure that’s the exact scientific definition of the term, Charlie,” I replied. The last thing I wanted was to be her social case study.
    She shrugged. “There must be
someone
here you’re willing to chat with.”
    I scanned the immediate vicinity. “There,” I said, nodding my head toward a perky brunette standing a few feet away. “She’s in our dorm. I think her name is Shelley. We were on line together at the yogurt shop the other day.”
    Charlie wagged a finger at me impatiently. “Dear, y’all are missing the point. You’re not gonna talk to some girl from our dorm. You can do that any old day. Tonight, you’re going to work on your flirt. Which means that you have to go upto some guy—
any
guy—and strike up a conversation.”
    That sounded suspiciously easy. “Just walk up to any old guy, and say anything?”
    “Uh-huh.” She nodded in the affirmative. “Anything you want. It doesn’t even matter if he runs screaming in the opposite direction—”
    “Thanks, Charlie—”
    “Which he
won’t”
she continued loudly, cutting me off. “But it doesn’t matter, anyway. ’Cause what we’re going for here is practice. You need to get out of the Drew zone.”
    “It’s not the worst idea you’ve ever had,” I conceded.
    “Awesome!” she said brightly, scampering off.
    Alone, I suddenly felt a lot less sure of myself than I had only moments before.
Focus, Claudia. All you have to say is “hi”
I reminded myself. I took a deep breath and turned to the boy on my left. He held my gaze for a moment. I frantically brain-stormed a few openers:
Have you got a light?: What’s your sign?: Do you know where the bathroom is?
and rejected each on its ownlack of singular merit
(I don’t smoke; way too cheesy; slightly gross).
By the time I had come up with one, he was gone.
    I shoved my way into the common room to find a few stocky boys in
South Park
T-shirts playing a game that involved cups of beer and ping-pong balls. They had obviously been at it for a while, and they seemed like they could be good candidates for my mission. I crossed my arms and leaned against the wall, feeling like a groupie.
    After one more round of what looked like people trying to slam ping-pong balls into half-filled cups of beer with paddles (soggy, drunken variation on a carnival game?), a tall, lanky boy with dark hair was proclaimed the winner. “VICTORY SHOT!” he shouted, raising his arms above his head exuberantly and ushering his teammates through the doorway toward what I presumed was the kitchen.
    I ran to the bathroom to regroup for a moment. I waited in line briefly. When I was up I locked the door and collapsed against it from the inside. What was wrong with me?This was a party, for pete’s sake, not a job interview. There was no reason to freak out. Okay, so, maybe it had been a while since I’d been in a party-type environment without Drew surgically attached to my arm. Back in high school we had a system worked out where we separated at parties so that we could mingle with our friends, but we always checked in every half hour or so. Who would I check in with tonight?
    Then again, that was a large part of why we had decided to break up. We needed to take some time to figure out who we were.
    Apparently, I was a socially inept barf machine with stained jeans.
    I stood and splashed some cold water on my face. My hair was behaving and,