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At least when she hugs me, she still smells like Melanie: hair conditioner and baby powder "God, you got skinny," she says "You’re supposed to gain your fresh hall food?"

"Yeah Hello, all-you-can-eat ice-cream bar That alone makes the tuition hile!"

I pull back Look at her again Everything is new Including the eyewear "You need glasses?"

"They’re fake Look, no lenses" She pokes through the air right to her eyes to demonstrate "It’s part of uys love it!" She pulls off her glasses, sweeps down her hair Laughs

"And no more blond hair"

"I want people to take rabs the handle of my suitcase "So, how’s ale, Melanie made fun of the fact it was five rew up in entyurban life She ht in Her school is in don Manhattan

"Alood! So ht, we have options: There’s a party at the dorht on Lafayette, or a friend of a friend invited us to a loft party in Greenpoint, where this awesoo to the last-minute tickets place in Times Square and see a Broadway show"

"I don’t care I’htest pang when I say that Even though it is technically true that I’ to see Melanie at ho in a few days anyway, but when my parents booked hts were too unreliable and expensive on a holiday weekend

When I iined six hours on a train, I al backdown the Tuesday before Thanksgiving to do soot the brilliant idea to take the cheap Chinatown bus to New York and catch a lift back hoet the bus back to Boston too

"A, I’ without seeing each other?"

I shake my head Not since we met

"Okay, so dorm party, Broadway show, club, or really kick-ass band in Brooklyn?"

What I really want to do is go back to her roo out like in the old days, but I suspect that if I suggested that, Melanie would accuseadventure averse The party in Brooklyn sounds the least appealing, and is probably what Melanie wants to do, so it’s probably what I should choose So I do

It’s like I picked the right answer on a test, the way her eyes light up "Excellent! So We’ll eat first, then go back and drop your stuff and get ready and trek out together Sound good?"

"Great!"

"We’re already in Chinatown, and my favorite Vietnah the twisty, crowded streets, full of red lanterns and paper uodas, I try to keep ns everywhere One of them will inevitably say double happiness Paris is more than three thousand miles away, but the memoriesOne pops up, I push it away But then another appears I never knohen one is going to jump out at me They are buried everywhere, like land o into a tiny restaurant, all fluorescent lights and Formica tables, and sit down at a corner table Melanie orders us so rolls and a chicken dish and tea and then she folds up her glasses and puts theinary lenses?) After she pours us each a cup of tea, she looks atbetter?"

It’s not so much a question as a coot back fro, cursing Wille a sleazy scoundrel just like she’d suspected all along On the flight ho looks at anyone on the plane who looked at ht-hour trip When, so ifhadn’t happened, if ht

"Yeah He did He got way laid By you! And then he got the hell out of Dodge"

"But what if" I’d begun

"Allyson, coirl, take a secret note from another, and God knohat happened on the train with those other girls; how you think he really got that stain on his jeans?"

I hadn’t even thought of that

She’d taken me into the tiny airplane bathrooe Then we’d flushed the coin he’d givenall those thousands of feet, sinking into the ocean below

"There, we’ve destroyed all evidence of him," she’d said

Well, almost I hadn’t told her about the photo on nethe took of the two of us I still haven’t deleted it, though I haven’t looked at it, not even once

When we got back home, Melanie was ready to put the trip behind her and turn her attention to our next chapter: college I understood I should’ve been excited too I just wasn’t Every day we schlepped to IKEA and Bed, Bath & Beyond, to American Apparel and J Creith our ; all I wanted to do was take naps on the display beds When Melanie left for school two days beforefor the pending separation from my best friend, but Melanie knew better, which was ed me and whispered into et over it"

So when Melanie asks me now if I’reat"

"Good" She claps her hands together and pulls out her phone She fires off a text "There’s a guy going tonight, a friend of my friend Trevor I think you’ll like him"

"Oh, no I don’t think so"

"You just said you’re over the Dutch dickwad"