Turn 10 of 26

You ignore the girl and remember that your friends are in your class. The noise stops as you say yes to Ruth with your lisp and messed up speech. Ruth giggles while snorting in happiness to your answer. You giggle right back while doing the same snort. You two walk to the dining hall and you see Ruth get fried, unhealthy food with lots of deserts. You get almost the exact same food as her.

"Yeth," you say, and the girl's voice across the quad stops mid-word, the sound of your name dying in the air. You don't turn around. Your friends are in your class. That's who your friends are. The thought closes over the gap like water over a stone, smooth and complete, and you don't feel the loss because there is nothing left there to lose it.

Ruth giggles — and snorts, a loud honking snort through her nose, delighted.

"Yeth! I thit next to you!" You giggle back and the snort comes out of you too, unplanned, a honk of pure happiness you have never once made in your life, and it feels good. It feels like belonging. Your throat flushes warm with it.

The dining hall is loud and bright and full of ordinary students eating salads and poke bowls and things with quinoa. Ruth walks the line like she has a standing order. Fried chicken, glistening. Fries in a wet pile. A pool of gravy, mac and cheese from the comfort station, and then dessert — two of everything, brownies, soft-serve drowning in chocolate sauce, a slab of sheet cake with a fork already stuck in the tray. The tray bows under it.

You take the tray beside hers and your hands reach for the same things. Fried chicken. Fries. Gravy. Mac and cheese. Then the desserts, and you take two of those as well, because Ruth took two, and somewhere in you a voice that used to count almonds in a handful stays very quiet. You're a growing academic. You need the fuel for study. The reasoning arrives fully formed, like everything else today, and you carry both trays to the table at the far wall.

The whole class is there. Thirty girls, heavyset and pale and freckled, ginger pigtails and taped glasses, all eating versions of the same tray. Megan waves you over. There's one empty seat — yours, between Ruth and Priya — and the moment you sit, the conversation closes over you like a warm blanket: compilers, problem six, which of the girls has the hardest braces appointment next week. They compare elastics. They show each other their rubber-band colors.

"Try the brownie," Ruth lisps, pushing the tray toward you, and twenty-nine pairs of glasses turn to watch you take the first bite. It's rich and heavy and good, and the table smiles around you, thirty mouths full of braces, waiting to see if you'll have another.