Read Loner for Free Online

meandering the Internet of you, looking at the photo and cycling through the same information. (“ ‘It’s a wonderful opportunity for students to think about the world outside themselves,’ said junior Veronica Wells, representing Hungary.”)
    The September breeze carried boisterous shrieks and distant music up to my open window. The Matthews Marauders were in the Yard, attending the Ice Cream Bash. (As with the A Cappella Jam, a number of social happenings attached an overblown noun that leached them of any allure: the Foreign Students Fete, the Hillel Gala.) I didn’t have it in me to go to yet another cornpone event, especially when you were unlikely to be present.
    An e-mail pipped into my in-box among the deluge of university mass mailings. It was from Daniel Hallman, a charter member of my high school cafeteria table. He was reporting on his first week at the University of Wisconsin, where, he claimed, he’d gotten “wastedor high” every night and had received “blow jobs from three girls, though not at the same time . . . yet.”
    His tone was unrecognizable, nothing like the Daniel of the previous four years, who once in a while threw in a sly remark at lunch, who had never, to my knowledge, had a real conversation with a girl outside of class. Though he was evidently a new man now, flush with alcohol in his bloodstream and treatable venereal diseases, to engage with him, albeit electronically, would be to return to that cafeteria table, an even more desperate seat than my current one in Annenberg.
    Yet he was the one having the quintessential college experience, drunkenly bed-hopping, while I had locked myself up in sober solitary confinement. I thought of my childhood bedroom, the years in which no one other than family members and cleaning ladies had set foot inside it. It occurred to me that, had I not been assigned a roommate, I could die on my twin mattress and it might take weeks until someone investigated.
    My phone buzzed.
    â€œSo he does know how to use that expensive device we bought him,” my mother said after I picked up.
    â€œSorry for not calling back.” I could hear NPR in the background. “You’re in the car?”
    â€œWe’re going out for Chinese. I didn’t feel like cooking.” She lowered the radio. “So? How are you? How’s Harvard?”
    â€œIt’s okay,” I said. “Classes haven’t started yet.”
    â€œAnd your roommate? What’s he like?”
    â€œHe’s fine. I don’t think we’re going to be best friends or anything.”
    â€œNo?” She sounded disappointed. To my father: “Green light.” Back to me: “Well, it takes time to get to know some people. I’m sure once classes begin you’ll make a few friends.”
    â€œI have friends already,” I said. “There’s a bunch of us in the dorm that eat together every meal and hang out. The Matthews Marauders.”
    â€œReally?” she asked. “That’s great. What about that nice girl we met moving in?”
    â€œSara,” I said. “She’s in the group, too. We talked awhile the other night.”
    â€œOh, good. I liked her.”
    We both waited for the other to say something.
    â€œBut things are okay?” she asked.
    â€œYeah.” My voice cracked. I took a drink of water from a stolen Annenberg cup. “Really good, actually. I even have a nickname everyone calls me. David Defiant.”
    â€œAnna, put your phone on silent,” she chided. “Sorry, what did you say? They call you David Definite? Why’s that?”
    â€œDefi—it’s a long story.”
    â€œYou’ll have to tell it to me sometime,” she said. “Listen, we just got to the restaurant, but I’m glad to hear you’re enjoying yourself.”
    â€œI should go, too.”
    â€œOh? What’re you doing tonight?”
    The bass from