“But if you were having an asthma attack, you wouldn’t be able to use the phone.”

“I could dial 911.” Conchita paused. “The truth is that my mom is kind of overprotective. When I first got here she would try calling me on the pay phone and either it would be busy, or no one would answer and she couldn’t leave a message. Anyway, I’ll put on the music in a second. I just have to call her really fast.”

She dialed, and after a moment, she said, “Hola, Mama.” Although I was taking Spanish, I didn’t understand anything after that except possibly-it was hard to know for sure-my own name. I thought about how much money it must have cost to furnish this room, and then I thought about how maybe it was a cultural thing, how even though her family didn’t have a lot, they were willing to pour what they did have into objects that were tangible and conspicuous. I had recently read an article about quinceañeras, and I thought that Conchita would probably have one when she turned fifteen. And maybe I’d even be invited and-because it would be fascinating and because it would happen far from Ault-I’d go. I could ask my parents for the plane ticket as a combination birthday and Christmas present.

When Conchita hung up, I said, “Do you talk to your mom every day?”

“Yeah, at least once. It’s really hard for her with me gone.”

I spoke to my own mother on Sundays, when the rates were lower, and we never spoke for long because I always seemed to call when she was starting dinner or putting my brothers to bed. Sometimes after I hung up the phone-even when other girls were waiting to use it, which was usually-I sat in the booth for a moment doing nothing. I thought about how my parents had not wanted me to go to boarding school, how my brothers had cried the day I left, and how quickly they appeared to have adjusted to my absence. I knew they missed me, but by now they seemed to find the fact that I didn’t live at home a lot less surprising than I did.

Conchita walked to the stereo. “As promised,” she said. “Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Mr. Bob Dylan.” As the sound of a guitar became audible, Conchita turned the volume knob clockwise. I heard a deep, soft voice crooning the song “Lay, Lady, Lay.” It wasn’t what I’d expected-it was softer, and twangier. Most surprising of all, it did sound like make-out music, or maybe sex music: Dylan was singing about a man with dirty clothes but clean hands, and about how a woman on a bed was the best thing the man had ever seen.

“I like it,” I said.

Conchita turned the volume down. “What?”

“I like it.”

“Oh. Me, too.” She turned it up again.

Why wait any longer for the world to begin? Dylan sang. Why wait any longer for the one you love, when he’s standing in front of you?

Out the window, the light was turning from the bright yellow of afternoon to the more muted shade of dusk. This was always the time of day I felt the saddest, when I most believed my life should be something other than what it was, and the music compounded the feeling-I found myself wishing I could exist inside the song, lying on white sheets while a shy man in dirty clothes approached me. I could love such a man, I thought; he’d be wearing a flannel shirt, and I would pull him to me, my arms tight around his back, the warmth of his skin coming through the fabric.

Then the song ended. I didn’t want to look up, to make eye contact with Conchita; I didn’t particularly want to be in the same room with her.

“Here’s another good one,” she said. “It’s called ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues.’ ”

The word homesick gave me hope, but the song was just clever chanting. It sounded political, and I wanted another song of longing. Conchita played a few more songs, switching CDs, sometimes cutting off the songs midway. By the end, the one I still liked the best was “Lay, Lady, Lay.” As I was leaving, Conchita said, “You can borrow the album.”

“That’s okay.”

“You’re welcome to.”

“I don’t have a CD player,” I said.

“Do your roommates? You room with Dede and Sin-Jun, right?”

She really had done her research.

“Dede has a stereo,” I said. “But we’re not good friends.”

I had my hand on the doorknob when she said, “Want to get dinner in town? The dining hall is having halibut, so I just thought if you’re not busy.”

If there was no formal dinner, you were allowed to leave campus, but I never did. The only time I went into town was on the weekend, when I borrowed Sin-Jun’s bike and rode to the grocery store to buy toothpaste or saltines.

“We could get pizza or go to that Chinese place,” Conchita said.

I’d never set foot in either restaurant. Somehow, the more time that passed without my going, the more I felt like going required an invitation; these places seemed to belong to other people, to juniors and seniors, or to rich students, or to students with friends. But here, in this moment, I’d received an invitation. Conchita liked me, I thought. She was kind. If I accepted her offer, I could do the things that other people did. “Let’s get pizza,” I said. “I’ll go get a bike and meet you back here.”

“Wait.”

I turned.

“I don’t have a bike,” she said.

“I don’t either. I’m borrowing Sin-Jun’s.”

She hesitated. “I mean I don’t know how to ride a bike.”

I blinked at her.

“I’ve walked before,” she said. “It doesn’t take that long.”

Outside her dorm, we headed out the campus gates and turned onto the two-lane road. “So you just never learned?” I said, and I hoped that she couldn’t tell how astonished I was. I had never heard of anyone over the age of five who didn’t know how to ride a bike.

“There wasn’t any special reason if that’s what you’re asking.”

“But when you were little, didn’t the kids in your neighborhood ride bikes?”

“I didn’t know the other kids that well.”

I thought of my own neighborhood, how gangs of children between the ages of eight and twelve would ride around, how I had done so myself. We’d go down to the park and back, and just before darkness, as the streetlights were flickering on and the hum of the cicadas was thickening, we’d pedal home, sweaty, with streaks of dirt on our faces.

“Do you wish you knew how?” I asked.

“I haven’t thought about it much.”

We both were quiet. Then I said, “I could teach you. At least I could try.”

She did not respond immediately, but I could feel a kind of happy nervousness come over her, a tentative excitement. I couldn’t see her face because we were side by side, but I sensed that she was smiling. “You don’t think it’s too late for me?” she asked.

“Definitely not. It’s one of those things where once you know how, you can’t believe you ever didn’t know. It would probably only take a few days.” I thought about how Conchita wouldn’t want other students to see. “We could use the road behind the infirmary,” I said. “We could do it in the morning, maybe, before chapel.”

My first target in Assassin was Devin Billinger, a boy in my class who had, at that time, no particular significance to me. In my mailbox, I found the slip of paper with my name and his name typed on it and, attached by a paper clip, the sheet of round orange stickers. All around me, other students were finding their assignments, talking noisily. It was the beginning of sixth period, and I left the mail room to walk to the dining hall for lunch. I was just outside the stairwell leading from the basement to the first floor when, amazingly, I came face-to-face with Devin himself. Like me, he was alone. We made eye contact and did not say hi, and he turned into the stairwell.

I was still holding the assignment sheet and the stickers. I peeled off a sticker with my index finger and thumb, keeping it affixed to my fingertip. Immediately, both my hands began to shake. I entered the stairwell. “Devin,” I said.