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you.” She leers at me. “He’s very cute,” she says. “Very. Very. Cute. He’s going home this weekend, but he’ll call you Monday, he said. So you can talk before Thanksgiving break.” She segues in her mind-boggling fashion to some tidbit of dorm gossip, and I do my usual “mm-hmm, mm-hmm,” all the while having a complete and total anxiety attack.
    He knows Josh, I think. How could he not know him? They live in the same house together. Shit. For all I know, the two of them are talking about me right this minute.
    Josh: You’re interviewing Emma Hammond?
    Gabe: I’m doing a story on her for the IDS . You know, about her family winning all that money. Do you know her?
    Josh: (Shrug.) I went to high school with her.
    Gabe: Yeah? What’s she like?
    Josh: Guffaw.
    “He’ll like you,” Tiffany says. “Gabe. Why wouldn’t he like you? He told Matt he really wants to meet you.”
    “He wants to meet the story ,” I say. “Not me.”
    Which makes me feel pissed off at him. Totally irrational, since we’ve never even met. Nonetheless, I get so worked up over the whole thing that I act like a spoiled brat when he calls on Monday. “I really don’t see why you want to interview me,” I say. “ I didn’t win anything.”
    “Come on,” he says cheerfully. “Matt told me about the psychology goose. That’s definitely a story people on campus would want to hear. So can we meet? Go get coffee?”
    I don’t want to be in the Indiana Daily Student , I hate coffee, I’m unfit for civilized company. But Tiff will be crushed if I don’t go. And, okay. While I’m over the idea of love at first sight, part of me wants the illusion of having a coffee date with a fraternity guy. “Yeah, okay, I guess,” I say, against my better judgment.
    Tiff is positively beatific when she hears we’re having coffee on Wednesday afternoon. “I just knew it would work out,” she says. “My God. What should you wear ?”
    Before I can argue that it doesn’t really matter what I wear—it’s an interview for the IDS, for God’s sake, it’s not like he asked me to the prom—she opens my closet and stands there, tapping one foot, staring at my clothes with a pensive expression. Even with the addition of my LOTTO CASH purchases, there aren’t many options. Jeans and cargo pants, shirts and sweaters. There’s the one skirt my mom made me bring, black wool, its Nordstrom tags still attached. Tiff plucks it from the rod.
    “You can wear this with black tights,” she says. “And your black Doc Martens. That’ll be cool.” She rummages some more and finds a stretchy gray and black striped rib-knit top I bought last summer in a hopeful mode.
    “I’m not wearing that,” I say. “It makes me look fat.”
    “Emma, you’re not fat. Here, try it on and you’ll see.”
    Actually, it doesn’t look as bad as I thought it would. It’s just that I’m used to baggy clothes, and this sweater makes me feel—exposed. The skirt looks decent, too. And the clunky Docs have a slimming effect on my legs, which makes me hate them less than usual.
    But I just shrug when Tiff says, “See? I told you.”
    She gives me a crash course in makeup, or tries to. But I stab myself with the mascara wand three times and make such a mess of the eye shadow that she says she’d better do my makeup herself for the actual date.
    “It’s not a date,” I remind her.
    “What ever ,” she says. Oblivious.

Six
    “I feel like Barbie,” I say, when Tiffany’s dressing me on the actual day I’m going to meet Gabe Parker for coffee. “All I need is a pair of those teensy weensy spike heels.”
    “Ha,” Tiff says. “You would kill yourself on any spike heels. Even I am not that hopeful about your feminine potential.”
    “Hey!” I say.
    Tiff raises an eyebrow. “Focus, Emma,” she says.
    The “date,” as she persists in calling it, is still three hours away. But we both have class in an hour, so she’s getting me ready now. It won’t