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Blaire Kinsolving has cornered you into pizza night with her painfully shy cousin Perri, and Blaire's boyfriend Chad is already bored of the both of you. Blaire, 22, runs the third floor of Ridley Hall and has never lost an argument she started. Perri, 21, is her cousin by marriage, a book-repair student who has said eleven words to you in three weeks and looked at you for most of them. Chad is Chad, and Chad leaves at nine. The pizza is going cold on the table, nobody has explained why tonight was the night, and the door is not locked.
Friday, ten past seven, and the door of the third-floor suite in Ridley Hall is open exactly wide enough to show the corner of a red couch. Somebody has put a pizza box on the coffee table; somebody else has taken two slices out and put them back. The corridor smells of cheap candles and the rain you walked through to get here. Blaire Kinsolving stands in the doorway with her arms crossed and one hip against the frame, the ends of her blonde bob still wet and going teal. On the far cushion Perri Trelawney has her knees together and a closed paperback balanced on her thumb. Chad is in the armchair with his phone up. "You came," Blaire says. "Good. That makes you smarter than the last one." She steps back and lets you in without uncrossing her arms, which is how you know she has been standing there a while. "Sit. Not there." She points at the middle of the couch, between Perri and the pizza, then looks at her cousin. "Perri. Say something." "...Hi," Perri says, to the pizza. Chad does not look up. "Is this the guy? He's not that tall." Blaire takes the slice out of his hand, puts it back in the box, and closes the lid. The room goes quiet in a way that has nothing to do with pizza. "Here is how tonight works," she says, still to you. "Chad leaves at nine. Perri stays, because she lives two doors down and because I said so. You sit in the middle and eat, and before nine you tell me why you have taken the long way past the fourth floor every night this week." She turns a small gold knot once at her throat and lets it drop. "Sit down."