Read Pamela Dean for Free Online Page A

jocks," she said.
    "What a blessing for them," said Molly sourly.
    "Well?" said Christina to Janet.
    "Well, what?"
    "Did she act like—"
    "How the hell should I know?" Janet snapped, and immediately felt guilty. She was reacting not to what Christina had said or almost said about Wolfe, but to the fact that neither Molly nor Peg had liked it. She added more temperately, "She tried to get me to change my major to Classics. That's all." Was that what had put her back up? No, surely not; Melinda Wolfe had been perfectly impersonal: she had just seemed to know too much and to be using it to push her notions of what Janet should do. None of this would enlighten Tina. Janet said, "Peg, I wanted to ask you—"
    "Speaking of which," said Peg, very softly, "coming in the door this very minute are five wonderful reasons to be a Classics major. Don't stare at them, Janet, wait till they come around the corner."
    Janet heard a crowd of boys pass, laughing, and obediently waited until they shoved their trays around the corner and began helping themselves to milk or soda and making obscene comments about the remaining tapioca pudding. She had intended to glance up casually, but she found herself staring. Two blonds, two with dark hair, one redhead. If anybody had asked her, she would have said they were in Theater, not Classics. They had beautiful voices, and a presence that warmed and lit the dingy hall as if all the lights had been repaired instantaneously. Janet looked up, but the dead lights were still dead and the flickering ones still pulsing.
    She looked at the five boys more carefully. They had a full complement of long hair, beards, and mustaches; but she thought of the theater again, of historical drama. They were far too tidy to be her contemporaries. But they wore jeans and T-shirts, or muslin smocks with embroidery, or unironed sports shirts, just like anybody else. They talked like other college students, if those jokes over the tapioca were any example.
    They removed themselves and their trays to the next room, where they could smoke.
    And that took care of that, thought Janet, half displeased and half relieved.
    "Too skinny," said Molly, stacking four empty bowls and looking thoughtfully at the rest.
    "Can you introduce me?" said Christina.
    "Sure you don't want to major in Classics?" said Peg to Janet.
    "What is this obsession?" demanded Janet. "Sharon says she's a Geo major because there are more men than women, and now you—"
    "Hah," said Peg. "When Sharon was eleven, she had a rock collection so huge she had to sleep in the basement. She just likes shocking the young."

    "What about you?" said Molly, also sounding rather irate.
    "I just thought, Wolfe had provided the intellectual bait, and I'd provide some other sort," said Peg, peaceably. "Just doing my share for my department. Every teacher in it is wonderful, really." She looked at Christina. "If you take Latin, you'll meet two of the boys," she said. "They're really into Greek, but you've got to have two terms of Latin for the major, and they're running out of time."
    "I guess it'd be a change from math and science," said Christina. "Which two?"
    "Thomas Lane," said Peg, "that's the tall blond one. And Jack Nikopoulos, that's the tall one with dark hair."
    "Both the tall ones! How can I resist? Who were the other three?"
    "The short one with the curly dark hair was Nicholas Tooley. He's just a freshman, but I know he's going to take Latin."
    "How?"
    "He lives down the hall from Sharon's boyfriend. The redhead's Robert Benfield and the short blond one is Robert Armin. Benfield is Rob and Armin is Robin.
    Benfield plays tennis. Armin's great love seems to be beer, but he must do something besides drink because he's the only freshman in the history of the department to be exempted out of all the beginning courses. They let him go straight to Aristophanes."
    She turned to Janet.
    "What did you start to ask me, Jan, before the boys came in?"
    "Something about your