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tomorrow? I’ve made a schedule for myself.” Emma pointed to a laminated, color-coordinated sheet of paper dangling off the futon. “But I am still really stressed out. I don’t know if I should take EC 10 or not. My dad says I should. He thinks every educated person should know the fundamental principles of economics. I mean, I think I agree with that to an extent. And I decided to opt out of Math 55 so I could have more bandwidth for other things. But I just don’t know. What if I go into environmental law? I don’t want people to think I am just motivated by money. I have a lot of principles that really do motivate me and I really want that to come across on my CV.”
    “I don’t think courses end up on your résumé,” said Penelope.
    “Of course not, Penelope,” said Emma. “God.”
    Emma busied herself with the course book for a while. Penelope stood there awkwardly, staring at Lan’s door, which she had decorated with a large KEEP OUT sign.
    “What are you doing for required courses?” Emma said abruptly.
    “I don’t know. Maybe a music class,” said Penelope.
    Emma sputtered. “I would really get my sciences out of the way.”
    “Yeah, I should probably do that,” said Penelope.
    “I e-mailed the professor for EC 10 but he hasn’t e-mailed me back. Can you believe it? God, what the hell else are they doing? I think I need to call my dad,” said Emma, who then made a shooing motion with her hands. Penelope did as she was told and went into their bedroom closing the door behind her. She got into bed with her shoes still on.
    The one thing that Penelope found quite surprising about college was how often she was alone. At home she was constantly being pestered by her mother or eating at McDonald’s with her depressing friends. Here she did everything by herself and she couldn’t seem to stop. At dinner tonight, for example, she sat next to a kid who had recently bought a genetically engineered apple at a food festival. It was orange. Penelope liked him, but when she asked him to hang out later that night, he said he would be busy looking at the apple’s skin under a microscope. Now she had forgotten his name so she could never look him up, even if she wanted to.
    Maybe she would think about joining the chorus. She always did feel a spiritual kinship with Whitney Houston.

3.
A Death on the Nile
    Penelope found shopping for classes to be an oddly pleasant experience. She was alone in that. Emma woke up simultaneously crying and screaming at her father (who was apparently in Russia) on a technologically advanced international cell phone that she used only in emergencies. Lan didn’t shop for classes. As she told Penelope when she walked in on her in the bathroom that morning, each class sounded sort of interesting until you actually went to it. Then you would realize that you would rather be watching a light show.
    For the first time in a week, Penelope was in the company of other people for a sustained period of time. This was invigorating, even if she didn’t talk to any of them. She got to see all the other students, striding with purpose from class to class, the good-looking ones wearing pants with embroidered lobsters on them, the bad-looking ones wearing rollerblades. All of them, it seemed, had printed out a laminated schedule of the classes they were set to attend. Many of them were taking copious notes on their laptops, even though the subject of the class was usually something like “Welcome to Class” and Penelope felt she could remember that pretty well without writing it down.
    In every class she visited, including the English class where the professor discussed at length whether Shakespeare was handsome or not and the class about Bach’s extremely boring yet mobile life, she saw Ted. She even saw him in Counting People, and she thought he was good at math. This was strange to Penelope for many reasons, but mostly because Ted had studiously avoided her since the ice cream social.