strange room, she knew she wanted him there. When Elizabeth had seen her pull it out earlier that day, she’d made a face and said, “Oh Cleo, really?” And so Cleo had hidden it behind the pillow so no one else could see it and so Elizabeth wouldn’t make any more comments.
And now Monica was walking right over to it, leaning over and plucking Bunny Nubby out from behind the pillow, dropping it on the bed and then running out of the room. Cleo stood there. She felt dizzy. What was Monica going to do? Announce to the hall that she had a baby blanket with her? Wasn’t this sort of behavior supposed to be done with? Wasn’t this the kind of thing that girls in junior high did to each other? Bunny Nubby was lying crumpled on the bed, and Cleo was just about to go and rescue him, put him in her drawer or somewhere safe, when Monica came running back in the room, breathing hard and holding her own matching bunny blanket.
“Look,” she said. She sounded delighted and held her blanket next to Bunny Nubby. “Twins!”
FROM THAT POINT ON, Cleo and Monica were always together. Most people they met assumed the two had known each other before they’d gotten to Bucknell, that they’d gone to high school together or had been friends for a long time. Their names were almost always said together, Monica and Cleo, like they were some sort of celebrity couple. Cleo loved this. She’d had friends before, but never a best friend. She was always the girl that was the addition to the group, the peripheral friend that was nice to have there but wasn’t missed if she wasn’t; and while she was fond of her high school friends, she didn’t miss them all that much.
Monica’s roommate, a girl named Sumi Minderschmidt, had never shown up. A week into the semester, Monica found out that Sumi had decided to go to Villanova instead. “Poor Sumes,” Monica said. “Confused until the very end.”
They loved Sumi’s name, and would often say things to each other like, “You know who loves Lucky Charms? Sumi Minderschmidt,” or “Who do you think you are? A Minderschmidt?”
Cleo was in heaven. She and Monica had inside jokes that could make them double over with laughter, make everyone else look at them with jealousy. They were a pair, a team. And so, a few days after they found out that Sumi wouldn’t be joining them, Monica blurted out, “You should just move in here.” She said it quickly, like she was professing her love for Cleo and was afraid she was going to be rebuffed.
“Okay!” Cleo said. She was delighted. She’d been thinking the same thing, but hadn’t wanted to be the one to bring it up. It was Monica’s room, and she thought maybe she would want it all to herself, but Cleo was so sick of Grace and her spandex dance outfits, and the way she slept with an eye mask and a noise machine set to “Babbling Brook” that made Cleo have to pee. If Cleo ever left the room while Grace was sleeping, she’d hear about it the next day. “You woke me up,” Grace would say. “We can’t have that happen. I just really need my rest for dancing.”
And so the girls got permission from the RA, a senior named Colleen, who was never there much anyway, and moved all of Cleo’s things into Monica’s room. They were perfect together as roommates. They ate pretzels dipped in peanut butter and talked seriously about which famous person they would choose to be their boyfriend. “It can’t just be about looks,” Monica would always say. “It has to be about their personality, too.”
Monica’s Boston accent was surprising and harsh, and at first Cleo found herself reaching out her hand and placing it on Monica’s arm, as if that could somehow soften the edge of her words. But soon she got used to it, the way that she could hear Monica talking loudly down the hall, the way her voice was sort of like a chicken squawk. Cleo found that she started to like the way it sounded, and she sometimes used the word wicked herself, when the situation called for it.
They made up dance routines in their room, after drinking vodka mixed with orange guava juice that they carried back from the dining hall in huge cups. They accompanied each other to parties of upper-classmen, where they were