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girls talk about what they’d do if they suddenly became millionaires. Clothes, cars, swimming pools, fabulous houses. One of them says she would drop everything and go straight to Cancun.
    “That’s what my parents are doing,” I say. “Well, St. Maarten. Same difference. Sun. Beach. Total self-indulgence. They leave Saturday morning; they’ll be there till the day before Thanksgiving. They’re probably packing even as we speak.”
    “And you’re not going with them?” the girl asks.
    “Duh. School ,” I say.
    She laughs. “Like you really have to worry about that anymore.”
    “Yeah,” I say. “That’s the great thing about money, you know? If you have enough of it there’s nothing in the whole wide world you have to worry about.”
    “No kidding.” She sighs with envy.
    Well, I think. So much for college being a place fraught with irony.
    By the end of the week, I’m in a bad funk. Thanks to the combination of Tiff’s big mouth, plus the CONGRATULATION$ EMMA! on our door, everyone in our dorm and half the people on campus know what happened to me. “Hey, you’re the millionaire!” perfect strangers say in the lounge or dining hall. Or bathroom, for that matter. Or walking through Ballantine Hall.
    Worse, people start hitting me up for money. Not for themselves, nobody’s quite as crass as that, but for a thousand and one good causes. Welfare mothers, migrant workers, innocent men on death row need my help. There are Afghan women trapped in burkhas, starving children in Darfur. Great white whales are nearly extinct; rain forests are dying.
    People I’ve never met—and some I have—accost me on my way to class, petition me by phone or e-mail, stuff flyers in my mailbox, slide them underneath my door. Some are polite, even apologetic; some try to lay a guilt trip on me; some are rude, some pathetic. Once, in a study carrel at the library, I’m startled by a pale, earnest girl who thrusts a photograph of baby seals being clubbed before me and bursts into tears. Not the worst strategy, since I write a check for fifty dollars, just to make her go away.
    After another whole week of this kind of crap, it gets so that every time I approach our room and see CONGRATULATION$ EMMA on our door, I feel sick at heart. The Friday before Thanksgiving break, I snap. I walk right past our room, on through the hall, down the stairs, and drive to the mall, where I buy the tackiest door-sized Thanksgiving turkey decoration I can find. I could buy two CDs for what I pay for it. But then I could buy two CDs and the door decoration if I felt like it. Or twelve CDs and the decoration. Or twelve CDs and the decoration and a yacht.
    In any case, stealthily, guilt-ridden, I dismantle Tiffany’s tribute and install the turkey in its place. I stack the green letters and the magazine pictures neatly, fold the money toilet paper, and put it all on her desk. Who knows what incarnation we’ll see them in next?
    I should study. Instead, I put Alanis Morissette on the stereo and throw myself on the bed in a funk that deepens considerably when Tiffany bursts into the room like a character from It’s a Wonderful Life .
    “It’s fabulous,” she says. “It’s so perfect! Our door. Oh, Emma, I was so stressed out walking back from my history test. It was a total bitch, and I’m dreading the final. It made me so happy when I saw the turkey on our door! In no time, my mom and I will be baking pumpkin pies together. Matt and I will do nothing but hang out every day. Seeing that silly turkey just put everything right in its place!”
    She plunks down on the bed beside me, hugs me despite my fetal position. “Emma, I mean it, you’re the best. And guess what!” she rattles on. “This friend of Matt’s, Gabe Parker—well, his fraternity brother really. Anyway. He’s a journalism major and when Matt told him about you guys winning the lottery, he said it would make a cool story for the Daily Student . So he’s going to call