It was about as cramped as a powder room could be. She carefully locked the door and took a seat on the toilet, only to find that her excretory and egestive systems had shut down, totally. She got up. She would bathe as best she could manage. She took off her blouse and her bra. There she was in the mirror…a wretched, panicked little half-naked creature…She had forgotten to bring a washcloth. She wet one end of the towel in the tiny basin, tried to use the squirt-by-squirt soap dispenser on the wall to lather it, creating a mess mainly, and washed her armpits—

Someone was trying to open the door—only to find it locked—

Charlotte tried to speed up her primitive toilette. She needed to lower her shorts and panties, but the room was so small that if she bent over, her bottom pressed into the wall. So she stood up straight and tried to wriggle her clothes off straight down—

The doorknob began turning again, this time several times, in…an accusatory way? An ostentatious groan of a sigh came from the other side of the door.

From just outside the door a girl’s voice said, “Anybody in there?” Not very nicely, either.

Thoroughly frazzled, Charlotte said, “Not yet!”

The voice said, “Not yet?”

“I mean I’m not through yet!”

Long pause. Then the voice said, “How obvious is that?”

But she had to brush her teeth! Had to!…Finally she managed to squeeze some toothpaste onto her toothbrush. She began furiously brushing her teeth.

The voice from the other side said, “Are you really brushing your teeth in there?”

That did it. Charlotte snapped. “Shut up!” she cried. “Leave me alone! Stop sniffing at the door!”

Silence…prolonged silence…It was hard to believe, but the voice had shut up. Nevertheless, Charlotte hurried. The whole thing was too much. How long could she use a powder room as her bathroom? Maybe if she got up really early every day and brought a washcloth…

She emerged from the powder room carrying a toilet kit and a wet towel. Standing back four or five feet was a small angry girl, arms crossed over her chest. She stared sullenly at the towel and the toilet kit. She had a wide face, olive skin, a grim visage, and a mane of very long, very thick dark hair parted down the middle. As Charlotte rushed past her, the girl muttered, “Why don’t you, like, move in?”

At long last, Charlotte sat propped up against the pillow on her bed, at peace, reading a paperback of a novel Miss Pennington had recommended, Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton. As the pages went by, Ethan and Mattie’s unrequited passion became more and more poignant. Involuntarily, Charlotte found herself pulling her knees up closer to her chest and wanting to close her bathrobe more protectively about her pajamas. Poor Ethan! Poor Mattie! You just wanted to help them, tell them what they could do. It’s all right for you to embrace—to declare your love—to leave that frigid little New England town where you’re trapped!

So absorbed was she that she was only faintly aware of how the noise level was rising out in the hall. Even though the door was closed, every now and then she could hear a girl shriek, and sometimes two or more girls shriek, and these were not the shrieks of girls happy to see each other after a long time, but girls expressing their hilarity, genuine or otherwise, over something stupid and juvenile some boy was doing. But these were considerations merely drifting along the margins of Ethan Frome.

Soon she felt terribly tired, however, overwhelmingly tired. She got up, pulled the shades down, turned the lights off, took off her bathrobe, and slipped under the covers. She thought she would go to sleep immediately, but the noise—the activity—in the hallway kept intensifying. Well…everybody was no doubt as wound up and excited as she was, and not everybody bottled it up the way she did. She thought she heard a boy cry out, “Not her—you’ll get awfuck’s disease!” But it couldn’t have been that, because it wasn’t followed by any shrieks or juvenile laughs. Then things quieted down a bit. She heard a little scampering, some sort of scraping on a wall somewhere, but by and by, as she lay there with her eyes shut, the sounds began to float beyond the reach of analysis. For a moment she could see Beverly’s peach fingernails framed by the tan of her fingers, but it meant…nothing. It dissolved into an eyelid movie, and she fell asleep.

She woke up with a start. A shaft of light shot across the counterpane on her bed. Heavy, syncopated thumps on a bass drum, a grunting voice—rap? What time was it? She propped herself up on one elbow and looked toward the door. As soon as she did—

“Whaaazzup, dude?”

Silhouetted in the doorway was the gangling frame of a boy in a floppy T-shirt and baggy pants. He had a long neck and a mass of curly hair that popped out above his ears. In his hand, up near his head, was the unmistakable silhouette of a bottle of beer.

“Wake you up?”

“Yes—” She was so shocked and disoriented that it came out like a dying sigh.

“Courtesy call, dude. Time to chill.” He tilted the bottle up and took a long swallow. “Ah, ah, ah.”

Groggily, “I’m—trying to sleep.”

“ ’S all right,” said the boy. “Needn’pologize. Zits happen.” He smiled goofily and said, “Oohoooo, oohoooo.”

Charlotte remained on one elbow, staring. What’s he doing! The heavy bass thuds—it was rap. Someone down the hall was playing a CD, very loudly. She could barely find her voice. Imploringly, “What—time is it?”

The boy lifted his other wrist up near his face. It was all so eerie, because he was in silhouette, with just a highlight here and there. “It says here…lemme see…it says…time to chill.”

Down the hall, a tremendous crash, followed by a boy yelling, “Well, you sure fucked that, dawg!” Raucous laughs. The rap music pounded on.

The boy’s curly head turned to look, then turned back. “Barbarians,” he said. “Exterminate the brutes. Look—uhhhh, needn’t stand on ceremony—”

With a burst of anger Charlotte pushed herself upward in bed with both arms. “I told you! I’m trying to sleep!”

“Okay!” said the boy, pulling his head back and holding his palms out in front of his chest in a gesture of mock defensiveness. “Whoa! Skooz!” He walked backward with a mock stagger. “I wasn’t even here! That wasn’t me!” He disappeared down the hall, going, “Oohoooo…oohoooo…”

Charlotte got up and shut the door. Her heart was pounding away inside her rib cage. Could she lock the door some way? But even if she could, Beverly hadn’t come in yet. She turned on the light. It was ten minutes after one. She got back into bed and lay on her back with her heart still pounding, listening to the noise. No alcohol in Little Yard. That boy was absolutely drunk! The third drunk boy she had seen with her own eyes since the R.A.’s solemn pronouncement, and it sounded like there were many more. She had the terrible fear that she wasn’t going to be able to get to sleep at all.

An hour or more must have gone by. The ruckus finally began to subside. Where on earth was Beverly? Charlotte stared at the ceiling, she stared at the windows, she lay on this side, she lay on that side. Dupont. She thought of Miss Pennington. She thought of Channing and Regina…Channing and his strong, even features. Regina was Channing’s girlfriend. Laurie said they had gone all the way. Oh, Channing, Channing, Channing. How much more time passed, she didn’t know, because she fell asleep at last, thinking of Channing Reeves’s strong, even features.