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could register it.”
    I shook my head, skeptical of anything I had done to bring him out of his usual shell.
    “Maybe he  was just trying to avoid being bored. Sometimes that’s the reason I do things that make other people think I like them and want to be with them.”
    She looked at me askance.
    “What, you think he didn’t want to be with you?”
    “I heard you on the phone and heard how hard it was for Marcus to get him to come along.”
    “Forget that. It wouldn’t have mattered who was with us. He’d be that way even if it was Venus herself.”
    “It’s all right. I had fun.”
    Uncharacteristically, I dove into my schoolwork the remainder of the week, and only when Marcus called Lynette or she talked about something they were going to do together did I stop to think about Larry. Actually, I thought about him a great deal at night after we put out the lights and lowered our heads to our pillows. I saw his smile, heard his poems, felt his hand.
    What’s wrong with you, Megan Hudson? I asked myself. Why are you behaving like a teenager girl who’s having her first crush?
    Maybe it was because this was the first real crush I had, I thought.
    On Friday morning the phone rang in our room just after Lynette had left for her class. I had an extra hour before my first class began.
    It was Larry Ward.
    “Hi,” he said. “I was hoping to catch you before you went to your morning classes.”
    “How did you know when that would be?” I asked.
    He was silent a moment. It was obvious he had gotten my schedule from Marcus who had gotten it from Lynette. Sneaky Lynette, I thought, but fondly. She knew he was planning on calling me after all, but acted dumb all week.
    “I asked the dean,” he finally replied and I laughed. “Maybe you’ll think this is out of line,” he continued, “but there is a jazz concert and a poetry reading tonight at a club I frequent, and I was wondering if you would like to go along. It’s kind of different, but it’s not boring,” he added quickly. “There are some great characters there and the music –ˮ
    “It’s not out of my line,” I told him. Again he laughed. I heard how nervous he was. “Sure,” I said. “I’d like to go. Where is it?”
    He gave me the address.
    “I don’t have a car or I’d – ˮ
    “I do. Do you want me to pick you up?”
    “Um . . .”
    “It’s a simple yes or no,” I said and then added, “so forget maybe.”
    He laughed.
    “Sure. I’ll be finished at the library about eight tonight. I can meet you – ˮ
    “Outside the library them,” I said quickly, making it clear I didn’t expect him to go to some clandestine place where no one we knew would see him get into my car.
    “Okay,” he said. “Thanks. Oh,” he added.
    “Yes?”
    “Don’t be late for class.”
    I laughed and hung up. Even I, when I looked at myself in the mirror, saw the radical change in my face. There was a brightness and an excitement I my eyes that had been dormant too long. I even went at my schoolwork and lectures with more enthusiasm. It was truly as if I had been injected with a shot of what the French call joie de vivre. The sun was brighter, the sky bluer, the breeze warmer and softer, and all the birds more melodic. I felt like a butterfly emerging and I longed to try my wings.
    Lynette kept coy. She asked me nothing and I teased her by not telling her a thing as well. When she saw me start to dress that night, I could see she was full of curiosity. Did I have another date with one of the fraternity boys or had I agreed to do something with Larry?
    “Where you going?” she finally asked.
    “Nowhere special.”
    “You don’t doll up like that for nowhere special, girl. I’ve been your roommate long enough to tell.”
    “Oh, really? Well if you must know, I’ve been asked to go to a jazz club.”
    “Jazz? You?”
    “I like all music.”
    “Suer, you know jazz. Name one jazz musician, one jazz singer. Go on,” she ordered, her hands on her