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for her for spending Thursdays with Alice Whittington, but she would expect Stella to find someone whose notes she could copy. And the only person Stella could even remotely imagine asking was Luke Morgan.
    He was the only male student in her
Psychology of Gender
class; the upper level psychology classes were filled primarily with women, and this made him a great favorite with both the professor and the other students.
    “Tell us what you think from a male perspective, Mr. Morgan,” Professor Dillard would say when explaining some controversy over cultural and psycho-biological influences. He’d been in Stella’s
Serial Killers in History
class in the fall, but he’d let his hair grow out over the Christmas holidays and now it fell in soft brown waves around his face. When asked a question, he would always pause thoughtfully before replying in a deep, melodic voice, and everyone in the class would turn their heads to listen.
    Last Tuesday he had answered one of Professor Dillard’s questions in a way that made the whole class laugh. Turning to look at him, Stella had found his eyes fixed intently on her. He was sitting a row behind her, they were separated by a group of giggling sorority girls, but he had stared at Stella in such a frank, steady manner that even the sorority girls had turned around to look at her. Stella quickly dipped her head, letting her hair drop around her face like a curtain.
    Afterwards, she sat quietly while the rest of the class filed out. He was not the sort she was usually attracted to; he seemed too clean-cut and sincere and his eyes were kind. She had the feeling, sitting there, that he would be waiting for her when she went out, and this thought caused a flutter of dread, but also nervous anticipation, in the pit of her stomach.
    She thought of the way he had stared at her, jaunty, appreciative, as if the comment he had made, and the laughter it caused, had been a gift for her. It was pleasant to picture him waiting, perhaps as nervous as she was, pretending to hunt for something in his backpack while listening for the sound of her footsteps.
    But when she finally gathered her courage and her backpack and walked out, hopeful and wary, the hallway was empty.
    That morning as they walked around the house, Alice told her a story about going on the train from Sweet Briar to New York during the nineteen-thirties.
    “You couldn’t tell me anything when I was young,” Alice said. “I thought I knew it all. I went to college at Sweet Briar. Have you ever heard of it? When I asked one of the other caregivers she said,
Never heard of it.
”
    “I’ve heard of it,” Stella said firmly.
    “Do you go to college?”
    “Yes. UTC. I’m putting myself through.”
    “Very commendable,” Alice said.
    She slid the walker out in front of her in a steady, rhythmic manner. She was quiet for the next lap and Stella was afraid she’d forgotten about the story.
    “So you went up on the train from Sweet Briar?” she said, prompting Alice. She had come to enjoy Alice’s stories, the unpredictability of them, the humorous overtones, the glimpses of Alice as a young woman, strong and determined and fearless.
    “What?”
    “The train.”
    “What train?”
    “The one that you took from Sweet Briar to New York. You were telling me about a trip you made in the nineteen-thirties.”
    “Oh yes,” Alice said. “Anyway, I was going up on the train with my friend, Clarice, up to New York. Several of my school friends were from the city and I used to go up there a lot on the weekends. Oh, they were wild, those Yankee girls. It was shocking the things we could get up to without proper chaperones. Their parents mostly let us alone to do as we pleased and I wasn’t used to all that freedom. Anyway, we left Sweet Briar in the morning and by mid-afternoon I was hungry. But when we got to the dining car there weren’t any open tables. A porter came up to us and said, ‘That lady over there said you could share