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You shouldn’t hang out with that asshole.” They taped my legs together, from ankles to thighs. I looked like a silver mummy. I said, “Please guys, don’t,” just before they taped my mouth shut. Then they picked me up and hurled me into the water.
    Sinking. Sinking, but instead of feeling panic or anything else, I realized that “Please guys, don’t” were terrible last words. But then the great miracle of the human species—our buoyancy—came through, and as I felt myself floating toward the surface,I twisted and turned as best I could so that the warm night air hit my nose first, and I breathed. I wasn’t dead and wasn’t going to die.
    Well,
I thought,
that wasn’t so bad.
    But there was still the small matter of getting to shore before the sun rose. First, to determine my position vis-à-vis the shoreline. If I tilted my head too much, I felt my whole body start to roll, and on the long list of unpleasant ways to die, “facedown in soaking-wet white boxers” is pretty high up there. So instead I rolled my eyes and craned my neck back, my eyes almost underwater, until I saw that the shore—not ten feet away—was directly behind my head. I began to swim, an armless silver mermaid, using only my hips to generate motion, until finally my ass scraped against the lake’s mucky bottom. I turned then and used my hips and waist to roll three times, until I came ashore near a ratty green towel. They’d left me a towel. How thoughtful.
    The water had seeped under the duct tape and loosened the adhesive’s grip on my skin, but the tape was wrapped around me three layers deep in places, which necessitated wiggling like a fish out of water. Finally it loosened enough for me to slip my left hand up and out against my chest and rip the tape off.
    I wrapped myself in the sandy towel. I didn’t want to go back to my room and see Chip, because I had no idea what Kevin had meant—maybe if I went back to the room, they’d be waiting for me and they’d get me for real; maybe I needed to show them, “Okay. Got your message. He’s just my roommate, not my friend.” And anyway, I didn’t feel terribly friendly toward the Colonel.
Have a good time
, he’d said.
Yeah
, I thought.
I had a ball
.
    So I went to Alaska’s room. I didn’t know what time it was, but I could see a faint light underneath her door. I knocked softly.
    “Yeah,” she said, and I came in, wet and sandy and wearing only a towel and soaking boxers. This was not, obviously, how you wantthe world’s hottest girl to see you, but I figured she could explain to me what had just happened.
    She put down a book and got out of bed with a sheet wrapped around her shoulders. For a moment, she looked concerned. She looked like the girl I met yesterday, the girl who said I was cute and bubbled over with energy and silliness and intelligence. And then she laughed.
    “Guess you went for a swim, huh?” And she said it with such casual malice that I felt that everyone had known, and I wondered why the whole damn school agreed in advance to possibly drown Miles Halter. But Alaska
liked
the Colonel, and in the confusion of the moment, I just looked at her blankly, unsure even of what to ask.
    “Give me a break,” she said. “Come on. You know what? There are people with real problems. I’ve got real problems. Mommy ain’t here, so buck up, big guy.”
    I left without saying a word to her and went to my room, slamming the door behind me, waking the Colonel, and stomping into the bathroom. I got in the shower to wash the algae and the lake off me, but the ridiculous faucet of a showerhead failed spectacularly, and how could Alaska and Kevin and those other guys already dislike me? After I finished the shower, I dried off and went into the room to find some clothes.
    “So,” he said. “What took you so long? Get lost on your way home?”
    “They said it was because of you,” I said, and my voice betrayed a hint of annoyance. “They said I shouldn’t