So the little country girl from the Lost Province had become quite a campus presence, of sorts, in a remarkably short time, a mere six months…

Just then a cheer rose up from the crowd as Jojo, in a warm-up drill, made such an incredible leap that when he dunked the ball, slammed it, stuffed it, it was as if he had flown up and attacked the net from three feet above. A regular chorus of Go go Jojos followed.

Charlotte felt a hand on her forearm and turned. It was Treyshawn Diggs’s mom, Eugenia, who was sitting next to her. In that big, hearty voice of hers, she said, “Honey, what kind a diet you got that boy on? He is some kind a loa-ded—for—bear!”

Ripples of laughter and chuckles ran all through the immediate vicinity. Eugenia’s voice was too much for even the racket and the Go go Jojos of the fans.

Treyshawn’s twenty-seven-year-old sister, Clare, sitting on her mother’s other side, leaned forward laughing and said, “Yeah, Charlotte, don’t put so much go-go in the Jojo! That boy’s getting out of control!” More laughs and chuckles.

Charlotte smiled and blushed and blushed some more in an appropriate Little Me manner. She noticed heads turning about in her direction. She made a modest point of averting her eyes from them, but she couldn’t help but notice a head almost directly in front of her two rows below, a head with a thick stand of silver-gray hair combed straight back and trimmed to just above a crisp white collar, as it turned her way. It was the Dean of Dupont College, Mr. Lowdermilk, and his head was now twisted about, and his ruddy face was smiling at her rosy one, even though she had never even met him. Then, still smiling, he turned back and said something into the ear of a woman next to him, probably his wife, something no doubt along the lines of, “Don’t turn around, but two rows directly behind us is Jojo Johanssen’s girlfriend. They say she’s the reason he’s become the hottest athlete at Dupoint”…or words to that effect, Charlotte felt sure.

Honey, what kind a diet you got that boy on? Charlotte loved that, because it said not one but three things. It said, “You’re Jojo Johanssen’s girlfriend, you’ve got him so spellbound he’ll do whatever you say—and everybody knows that! Everybody knows who you are!”

And sure enough, barely a minute went by before Mrs. Lowdermilk, if that’s who she was, turned all the way around, pretending she was actually looking at something way up the cliff.

Charlotte allowed herself a quick panoramic survey of the stands…She wished they were here, although it was supremely unlikely—Bettina and Mimi. Next home game, she’d like for Jojo or Coach himself to get some tickets to them without their knowing where they came from. Charlotte no longer spoke to either one of them. If she happened to run into them in Edgerton, she—cut—them—dead. She would never forgive them, never, not even if the three of them should happen to live together in Edgerton for the next hundred years—for the way they betrayed her, the ghoulish glee she overheard in their conversation when they were sure her life had been destroyed. You snide, insidious—please, my two little snakes, kindly come take a look at me now…

Hoyt—he wouldn’t be here, either. He and his beloved “brothers” were forever watching that stupid SportsCenter…but it was funny, Hoyt never showed any true interest in any sport in particular. All those popped-vein, concussion-batty headbangers scampering across the plasma screen and striving for glory seemed to amuse him as much as anything else. She never heard him express any emotion whatsoever over a Dupont team winning or losing. Yeah, Hoyt was cool. They didn’t come any cooler…She didn’t hate him…He hadn’t betrayed her at all. Hoyt was what he was, the same way a cougar was a fast animal that stalked slower animals, and that was what a cougar was.

Ah, Hoyt. If only you would come take one last look at what you so cavalierly discarded, at what you once loved—and love her you did—I know it!—if only for an evening or a single hour or one brief instant.

She didn’t want Adam to see her as she was now. It would break his heart a little more, knowing that she could never love him in that way. A wave of fondness for him spread through her so suddenly, she experienced a sharp intake of breath.

“Are you okay, honey?”

It was Eugenia Diggs, who once again put her hand on Charlotte’s forearm.

“Oh, Eugenia”—looking at Treyshawn’s mother with a tender smile—“I’m fine. I just suddenly thought of something. Thank you, though.”

Well, if she had to disappoint Adam—and she did—she couldn’t have done it at a better moment. The moment his big story broke, he became what he had always wanted to be, a voice that made thousands—hundreds of thousands?—stand stock-still with wonder. It was no matrix, his great “scoop” about the Governor of California and Syrie Stieffbein and Hoyt and Vance and the big Wall Street firm, but it would do, for a twenty-two-year-old college senior. It had all turned out for the best.

Why, then, the uneasy feeling, the sometimes desperate feeling, that came over her now…and almost every day? If only she had someone to talk to about it…to assure her that she was a very lucky girl, after all…But there was—when she thought it through—only Jojo. Aside from him, she was as alone as on the day she arrived at Dupont. Jojo was sweet. It was touching, the way he constantly turned to her for help. But Jojo was not made for talks with anyone’s soul, not even his own.

She was Charlotte Simmons. Could she ever have that conversation with herself, the way Momma told her to? Mr. Starling put “soul” in quotes, which as much as said it was only a superstitious belief in the first place, an earlier, yet more primitive name for the ghost in the machine.

So why do you keep waiting deep in the back of my head, Momma, during my every conscious moment—waiting for me to have that conversation? Even if I were to pretend it were real, my “soul,” the way you think it is, what could I possibly say? All right, I’ll say, “I am Charlotte Simmons.” That should satisfy the “soul,” since it’s not there in the first place. So why do I keep hearing the ghost asking the same tired questions over and over, “Yes, but what does that mean? Who is she?” You can’t define a person who is unique, said Charlotte Simmons. It, the little ghost who wasn’t there, said, “Well, then, why don’t you mention some of the attributes that set her apart from every other girl at Dupont, some of the dreams, the ambitions? Wasn’t it Charlotte Simmons who wanted a life of the mind? Or was what she wanted all along was to be considered special and to be admired for that in itself, no matter how she achieved it?”

That was ridiculous—but she was spared responding to that dreary, tiresome query by the Charlies’ Children’s Alumni Band. The mauve blazers with yellow piping rose from their seats and struck up with an old, old song by the Beatles called “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” They played it as if John Philip Sousa had composed it as marching music for a military band with trumpets, tubas, a glockenspiel, and a big bass drum. The two teams had completed their warm-ups, and—bango!—the cheerleaders, the Chazzies, the acrobats, and the Zulj twins sprouted up from out of the floor, and all was loud music, merry madness, and oooooo’n’ahhhhhs. The Zulj boys were now juggling old-fashioned straightedge razors, blades unsheathed. If they didn’t catch every razor by its mother-of-pearl handle—ooooo…ahhhhhh—upwards of fourteen thousand basketball fans felt as if they themselves were about to lose their fingers. This was the circus’s last cavort before the game began.

The ghost in the machine kept prattling away, but there was no possibility of paying attention to it now. In no time the circus disappeared into the floor, the musicians sat down, and there beneath the LumeNex lights, on a gleaming rectangle of honey-colored hardwood, the game was on.