“You’ve lived under me for two years?” That seemed egregious.

  “Why are you acting like that’s a problem? I didn’t choose it.”

  “So you just made me a breakup CD with songs you thought I’d like . . .”

  “Because I’ve heard every song that you like a thousand times. Yeah.” He took a bite of chicken and raw spinach and cottage cheese and . . . were those almonds? “And it worked,” he said. “Now, at least you’re listening to music that I like, too.”

  “You don’t like music like that . . .”

  He frowned at her. “What are you talking about? I made that CD.”

  “I’ve heard your music. It’s all people screaming over heavy bass.”

  He looked confused for a second and chewed quietly. “Ohhhh,” he finally said with his mouth full. “I listen to the Judgment Night soundtrack when I want to get pumped up for a test. That’s not all I listen to.”

  “That’s all I hear.”

  “Well, I normally wear headphones. Because I’m a good neighbor.”

  Summer looked at her food. She picked up her cheeseburger. “The thing I don’t understand, about your CD . . .” She looked up. “. . . is why the happy songs make me feel worse than the sad ones.”

  “Happy songs are the saddest thing to listen to when you’re unhappy,” the guy said matter-of-factly. “That’s just physics.”

  “That’s not physics.”

  “They break your heart because they make you think about the last time you were happy.” He took another bite. “Also, don’t argue with me about physics. I’m a physics major. What’s your major?”

  “Secondary education.”

  “Okay, I won’t argue with you about that.”

  Summer watched him eat his chicken and spinach and cottage cheese and almond slivers and . . . some little brown things that he sprinkled on his food from a Tupperware container; they looked like Grape-Nuts.

  When Summer woke up the next morning, someone had slid a CD under her door. She was half asleep, and for a minute she thought it was from Charlie, and her chest seized up a little bit. Charlie had never made her a mix CD.

  Then she realized that it was from the guy downstairs, and she felt like he really should have just left it outside. Sliding something under someone’s door was a little intimate.

  He’d written More Songs for Getting Over Dipshits on the case. Summer stared at it for a few seconds, tempted to sit down and listen right now, never mind her morning classes.

  She opened up the case and put the CD in the player, so that all she’d have to do when she got home was push play.

  Track 1 was the Barenaked Ladies. Summer thought the Barenaked Ladies were corny. The song made her cry.

  Track 2 was another corny song with some guy warbling over a harmonica. So corny: “Once I was a hunter, and I brought home fresh meat for you.”

  Summer lay on top of her comforter with her arms over her eyes, and felt like the song was pulling her heart out in pieces, through her toes and her fingertips.

  The thing about Charlie was—he was the first person who Summer had ever noticed across a crowded room, who noticed her back.

  She’d noticed lots of boys before. Crushed on them. Watched them.

  But they didn’t notice and crush and watch her back.

  Charlie did. They’d looked at each other across the auditorium, and there were . . . maybe not fireworks. Maybe not bells. But there was something.

  Summer was aware of him, and he was aware of her, and she was aware of him being aware of her.

  Maybe that happened to other girls all the time. It had never happened to Summer before.

  She wasn’t ugly—not really. But she was the sort of girl who really pretty girls liked to hang around with because they wouldn’t be a distraction. Summer wasn’t a distraction.

  She was a little short. She was a little fat. Her nose was a little big. Her best feature was probably her breasts, but she hated wearing anything that called attention to them—so they largely went unnoticed.

  The guys who liked Summer in high school had gotten to know her first. She had plenty of personality.

  But Summer didn’t have to wear Charlie down or grow on him. He just saw her. And liked her. And wanted to be close to her.

  How could something like that go wrong?

  It was the closest Summer had ever come to feeling magic.

  This new CD was one corny song after another. Paul McCartney! Paul McCartney and Wings!

  Summer was laid low by every one.

  None of them were skippable.

  She kept seeing the guy downstairs in the cafeteria, and he kept smiling at her like he had her number—and she supposed he did.

  He wore tank tops and T-shirts with the sleeves ripped off. Even though it was November. He carried that little container of brown stuff that he dumped on his food. He sat by himself.

  Where had he found all these sad songs? Did he collect them? Summer needed to start listening to something other than the college radio station and bands that Charlie liked.

  She was four days into the new CD when she stopped at the guy downstairs’s table again. He kicked a chair out for her.

  Summer sat down, letting her tray drop with a clatter that almost knocked over her chocolate milk.

  He grinned at her. “How’s it going?”

  “You know how it’s going,” she said, picking up her spoon. Summer had a bowl of chili and a side salad.

  The guy had two plates again—pork chops, with raw broccoli, more cottage cheese, almonds, again, and his Tupperware granola.

  He ate it all with a knife and a fork. His weight-lifting gloves were sitting next to his tray.

  “He wasn’t a dipshit,” Summer said.

  The guy glanced up at her. “Okay.” He went back to eating. “He really wasn’t. He isn’t.”

  The guy squinted one eye, like he disagreed with her.

  “You don’t even know him,” she said.

  “We live on the same floor.”

  “That’s hardly intimate.”

  “I mean, I’ve seen him naked . . .”

  Summer made a face. “Don’t you guys have shower stalls?” “We have stalls,” the guy said, “but no curtains.”

  “That’s a real maintenance problem,” she said.

  He gave her a frank look. “I’ve hung out with your ex-boyfriend. He doesn’t rinse the sink after he brushes his teeth, and he never laughs at anyone else’s jokes. He’s kind of a dipshit, no offense.”

  “How can that be ‘no offense’? I dated him for fourteen months.”

  “I get it. He’s cute.”

  Charlie was cute. He had dark hair that brushed his collar and stayed perfectly tucked behind his ears. He had a pointy chin and prominent cheekbones. He looked like the cute, smart friend on a sitcom. He made Summer feel cuter and smarter. By association. “That’s not why we dated,” she said.

  “You don’t have to explain any of this to me.”

  “I know,” she said. “I just—I don’t like it when you call him that. Just because he didn’t laugh at your jokes . . .”

  “Did he ever laugh at yours?”

  Summer bit the inside of her cheek—so that she wouldn’t say something like “Maybe I’m not funny” just to win this argument.

  “What are you even eating?” she asked.

  “Protein,” the guy said, chewing.

  “What’s that stuff you carry around in your little container? Is it steroids? Or Grape-Nuts? Is it steroid Grape-Nuts?”

  He lowered his eyebrow, offended, but he still kind of laughed. “It’s hemp hearts.”

  “Is that legal?”

  “Yes, it’s legal. They’re good for you. Do you want to try some?”

  “No, thank you. I might run for office someday.”

  He laughed again. “I thought you were going to be a secondary school teacher.”

  “I can do both.”

  He shrugged again, agreeably.

  “Where are your friends?” she asked. When she used to see him at dinner, he’d be sitting with a big group of friends. All weird-looking. None as weird-looking as him.

  “On the other side of the cafeteria,” he said, “with the good soft serve. Where are yours?”

  “Do you know that guy who lives in our dorm, who looks, like, thirty-five, and like he might be training for the WWF?”

  “The World Wildlife Fund?” Michelle was on the stair machine next to Summer’s.

  Summer had started working out again most nights after dinner. But she still wasn’t working out very hard. She never worked out as hard as Michelle. Summer left her machine on manual and set the difficulty to three. She couldn’t get over thinking that, when it came to working out, it was the thought that counted.

  “No,” Summer said. “He’s, like, really tall and really big, and he’s always in gym clothes? And his hair is sweaty half the time?”

  “Is he a football player?” Michelle was panting. Her bangs were sticking to her forehead.

  “God no. Imagine a big nerd who’s built like a football player. You know—the loud guy. With hair on his shoulders.”

  “The one who closed the elevator on you?”

  “Yes!” Summer said, relieved.

  “Yeah, I know him!”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Oh,” Michelle panted. “I don’t know. He lives on Charlie’s floor, doesn’t he?”

  “Yeah,” Summer said.

  “Why do you need to know?”

  Because I missed my window to ask, Summer thought. “I just realized that I didn’t know his name.”

  “Huh.” Michelle was climbing the fake stairs very intensely. She didn’t ask any more questions.

  It would be very embarrassing to run into Charlie on his own floor.

  But he did live on the other end of the floor. And he’d already be at dinner by now; he had a routine.

  Summer walked quietly down the stairs (there was no reason to be quiet) and out onto the tenth floor. All the boys’ names were written on construction paper and taped to their doors. No one had to share a room in their dorm; it was their privilege as upperclassmen.

  She walked to room 1007. (Summer lived in 1107.) But there was no name on the door. Just a picture of a monster and some construction paper that said CTHULHU. She rolled her eyes.

  The door opened—Summer jumped back.

  “Summer,” the guy said. (How the hell did he know her name?)

  “Cthulhu,” she said.

  “What are you—” He glanced down the hall, toward Charlie’s room. Then he looked at Summer again, his eyebrows up in the middle, like he felt sorry for her.

  “There’s an elevator problem on my floor,” she lied.

  “Let me show you to ours,” he said, closing his door behind him.

  Summer walked with him down the hall.

  “Are you headed to dinner?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Me, too.”

  That was obvious—he was wearing his weight-lifting gloves.

  He didn’t suggest that they go together. But they didn’t really have any other polite options. They went through the north side of the cafeteria line together, and Summer watched him get two plates of sloppy joe mix, without any bread.

  “Are you going to put cottage cheese on that?” she asked.

  “I like cottage cheese.”

  “I like cottage cheese, too. But I don’t use it as a condiment.”

  “It has more protein than dressing,” he said, like that would clear things up for her.

  Summer got chicken nuggets and French fries and a side salad with ranch dressing.

  She followed him to a table and sat across from him. And watched him take off his gloves and sprinkle his hemp hearts.

  “What does someone do with a physics major?” she asked.

  “Physics.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  He grinned up at her. “You can go to grad school. Teach physics. Do research. Work for the government. Work in a hundred different industries.”

  “That’s a lot of options.”

  “There’s a real demand for people who fundamentally understand how the world works.”

  “That seems like an overstatement,” she said.

  He shrugged. “Why do you want to teach high school?”

  “I want to teach middle school.”

  “Why?”

  “Because middle school is terrible.”

  “You’re a sadist?”

  “No. I think I could be a good field medic.” She dragged a French fry through her ranch dressing. “Middle-school kids are such a mess—they’re so emotional, they can’t help it.”

  He stopped his chewing and crunching to smile at her.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” she said.

  He shrugged and kept chewing.

  Summer tried to change the subject. “Charlie is a German major.”

  The guy chewed.

  “He’s also studying Russian.”

  He took another bite.

  “Does he honestly not rinse the sink after he brushes his teeth?”

  “Not once,” the guy said.

  “I was really in love with him,” she said.

  The guy didn’t even nod.

  “What’s your name, anyway?”

  He looked up at her, surprised. “You don’t know my name?”

  “How would I?”

  He swallowed and took a drink of iced tea. “It’s Benji.”

  “Benji? Like the dog?”

  “That’s a deep cut, but yeah.”

  “Benji,” she said, examining him. He had dark brown hair—wavy and coarse-looking. The kind of coarse that’s sort of shiny, like wire, and won’t lie flat. It was big hair, even though it was short. He had a big head. His skin was ruddy. He must shave every morning . . . the scruff on his chin never turned into a beard. “How do you know so much about music?” she asked.

  “I’m a good listener.”

  Summer started listening to the two CDs he’d given her back-to-back. There was a nice progression to them.

  She didn’t cry anymore, at any of the songs. But they still made her feel like she was paging through her relationship with Charlie from beginning to end.

  She listened to the CDs, quietly, at night when she couldn’t sleep.

  Summer hated sleeping alone now that she knew what it was like to sleep next to someone else. Would there be years of this now? Forever of this?

  Is this how everyone felt when they fell out of love? Was the world full of hollowed-out people? Was almost everyone in mourning, all of the time?

  She ate dinner with Benji that week whenever they happened to be at the cafeteria at the same time.

  He was very opinionated.

  Charlie had also been very opinionated.

  The difference was—Benji didn’t seem to care whether Summer agreed with him. He didn’t even seem to care whether Summer liked him. That was a real relief. Summer still felt too miserable and broken to be polite.

  The only other person she’d been talking to lately was Michelle, when they worked out. It was generally okay. People expected you to be rude when you were out of breath.

  Summer was headed down to dinner one night when the elevator stopped at Charlie’s floor. Her heart stopped, too.

  Then started.

  It was Benji and his friends. She could hear him before the doors even opened. He smiled at her but didn’t say anything. Was Benji embarrassed to talk to her in front of his friends? (That was a troubling thought!) They were all bullshitting about some movie or TV show or something. They were doing voices. Benji was the loudest. And the tallest. He was his own crowd.

  Summer broke off from them when the elevator opened, but they still ended up at the cafeteria line at the same time. When the line split, north and south, Benji grabbed a tray and got in line behind her.

  Summer shot him a wry look. He wry-ed her right back.

  There was fried chicken for dinner. He got two plates. She already knew he was going to be disgusting and peel off the skin.

  Summer got macaroni and cheese.

  They sat down together, and Benji took off his weight-lifting gloves and dropped them by his tray.

  He peeled the skin off his chicken and made a gross pile of it, then dumped a bowl of greens and cottage cheese on top of the chicken.

  “Everything you eat must taste the same,” she said.

  “No.”

  “It must all taste like cottage cheese and spinach.”

  “Every sandwich doesn’t taste like bread.” He glanced up at her. “Is my dinner bothering you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it imposing on your dinner somehow?”

  “Visually, yes. Conceptually.”

  “Minimally, at best. How’re you doing, Summer?”

  “You know how I’m doing.”

  He still had ears. He knew she was still swimming in a sea of misery—he’d written the soundtrack.

  Someone sat down next to Summer. She looked up. It was one of Benji’s weird friends. Three more sat down.

  “South side’s closed,” one of them said. “Somebody threw up in the salad bar.”

  More people were filing in from the south side, looking for tables. Summer saw Michelle and their friends from the eleventh floor.

  She saw Charlie.

  And Charlie saw her.

  And everyone else in the room sort of faded away—it was just like it used to be, when she and Charlie first met. He nodded his head at her. Summer nodded back. And then he walked by. Summer could hear the piano part from “Silent All These Years” in the back of her head.

  Charlie sat down at a table with Michelle and the rest of them.

  He was sitting with Summer’s friends, and Summer was sitting at a table full of the weirdest guys from the tenth floor, which was the weirdest floor in Schramm Hall. Weird people were drawn together.

  Summer stood up. She wasn’t hungry. She’d never played piano, but she thought that if she sat down at one right now, she’d be able to play the first fourteen notes of “Silent All These Years” on her very first try.

  Benji caught up with her at the elevator.

  Summer tried to close the doors on him, but he was already in.