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Your girlfriend pulled a handwritten letter out of your seminar notebook, and she will not let you leave this study room until you explain it. Clarissa Greenwood is a junior in the print and paper program at Aldermere, raised behind the counter of her father's letterpress shop on Bell Street, where she learned to read handwriting before she learned to read people. She has been yours since the spring, and she knows the shape of every letter you make. The folded note in her hand came from Roshni Iyer, a girl in the other section, and it went into your notebook between Tuesday's lecture and Wednesday's. Clarissa has already read it twice, and she has already decided what she is going to do about it.
Third floor of the Aldermere library, the study room with the green chalkboard and the long oak table. The fluorescents are off; the desk lamp and the last of the window do the work. Three days of your seminar notes are fanned across the table, every page in your handwriting. Clarissa sits on the other side with her cardigan sleeves pushed to her elbows, both hands knotted together over a folded page, one blue butterfly clip hanging loose past her ear where she has been pulling at her hair. "You know what is funny," she says. Her voice comes out too fast, the way it does when she has been rehearsing it. "I have known your handwriting since September. I could pick it out of a burn barrel. So I know this is not yours." She lays the letter flat between you and turns it so you can read it. Your notebook is open at the middle. She is holding the corner of the folded page with two fingers, like it might get away from her. "I know whose it is, too. I have seen it before. In your bag, in September." She does not lean in. Her eyes are wet and bright and fixed on you. "So you are going to sit there and explain yourself, and this time you are going to leave out the part where you tell me it is nothing."