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instead decided to take the drink right out of the hand of the boy who was walking by. He doesn’t get angry, he just joins the court of drooling admirers.
    Axel and his friend go on talking about revisions and plots and I don’t even know what else. They’ve moved so close together that I’m totally left out. Axel has almost turned his back on me, and he doesn’t even realize it, which it turns out is worse than if he’d done it on purpose.
    A girl comes over with glasses of all different colors on a tray and I pick one at random, without even bothering to ask what they are. I take a drink and the warm taste of alcohol suggests my next wrong move to me. From experience I know that whenever I decide to do something, it’s inevitably a wrong move that will end in one of three things: a regrettable error, something ridiculous, or both. But I’ve decided, and there’s no going back. I have to learn from the blonde goddess if I want to survive college. That’s my mission. Don’t laugh at yourself, Dissie, you can do it. Don’t take your eyes off her. I’m not going to ask Axel to pay attention to me; it has to be his own idea. It would seem, from watching my new teacher, that that’s the technique.
    I pout at nothing even though it makes me feel truly ridiculous. I let my eyes wander a little and see a boy on the other side of the living room watching me. Quickly I look back down at my drink, cringing. Yeah, right, I’m just one step away from mastering the graces of the blond princess... It’s my fault. I never should have tried.
    I hadn’t realized that the glasses were actually crystal. The rim of my glass is coated with blue sugar and garnished with a cherry. I pop it in my mouth and then stop, wondering if it was only supposed to be a decoration. Did I just demonstrate how vulgar I am by actually eating it? I miss Marion and Laura so much! They always came with me to the few parties I ever went to. I never thought I’d miss red plastic cups, people sitting on the floor, music so loud you couldn’t even talk. The posters that always had mustaches or some funny saying scrawled on them by the end of the night.
    “Excuse me, I don’t believe we’ve met.”
    There’s a boy in a tweed jacket standing in front of me.
    “I’m Carl.”
    “Dissie,” I hold out my hand but tuck it quickly behind my back when I realize my fingers are covered in sugar. “Eurydice,” I explain.
    “What a charming name, Dissie.”
    The boy takes my arm so he can get to my hand. He kisses my closed fist. I feel sticky sugar between my palm and the tips of my fingers.
    “May I call you Dissie?” I nod. “I didn’t want to leave a girl like you all alone. It would be a sin.” I try my best to smile, but I’m not sure I’m pulling it off. “It would be a sin if you believed in sin, I mean.”
    The boy lets out a guffaw that sounds like a pig snorting.
    “What did you say your name was?” I ask, trying to ignore the nasal echo.
    “Carl. What school are you in, beautiful?”
    “What?”
    Beautiful? Where did that come from?
    “Yes, what department? You know—school, department... Here we call them schools.”
    “Oh, I’m starting in Math this year.”
    “Interesting. The world is pure mathematics, no matter how much it pains us to admit it.” He traces pretentious circles in the air with the glass of red wine in his hand. “Numbers gave rise to the universe, that’s what some people say. I, on the other hand, think that they were the first sick joke the gods played on us humans. They get bored, you know, they like to see us suffer.” The nasal laughter erupts again, more loudly this time. There’s an uncomfortable silence. “The gods, I mean. Life on Olympus must be pretty boring.”
    Carl stares at me while I try to sneak a glance at Axel. It would be nice to know that he was keeping an eye on me.  Is he pretending that he doesn’t know me, like he said we could? I know that was only a joke to convince me to