He won’t put it away in a drawer. He can’t imagine hiding it under slippery stacks of magazines, stained clothes, unread books. He coils the thin chain through his fingertips, tips the pendant through the tepid sunlight that filters through his dorm room window. It’s a foreign, inscrutable thing. A silver hexagon etched with unintelligible script. He thinks it’s old, maybe even ancient. Maybe he could get money for it. But no, he won’t part with it for something as prosaic as bills and coins. It isn’t a transaction. Its value can’t be translated. Oh well, it’s not like it matters if he just keeps it. What is it, really, just some girl’s costume jewelry, and why would she wear it to a frat party if it were really so precious. But the hard push of desire in his stomach worries him a little. I’ve got to get ahold of myself, he thinks. A true man is no dark cave of instinct, no blind follower of fevers in the blood. No, he must work the self like clay, shaping, chiseling, until whatever light there is breaks his unremarkable surface.

He tucks it in the pocket of his jeans and goes back to the room where the girl lies sleeping. She’s splayed on the hard bed, bone-white fingers dangling, her open mouth reminding him of a movie he once saw, some slasher pic with squelching gore, screams, a cliched, almost tender ending. Eyeballs skitter under near-transparent lids. He can smell her—hot skin, body odor, remnants of citrusy perfume. He doesn’t know who drugged her. It happens every party. Someone plans, purchases the off-white powder, laughs up his sleeve, lurks at tables until girls leave drinks unattended. One of his brothers. That’s what they call each other. Brothers. The body on the bed shifts and mumbles. Part of him wants no part of this. But part of him thinks his arms might be strong enough to lift her into the sunlight, lay her down in the soft bright grass, and maybe then she’d awaken, and see first thing the contours of his face, his diffident smile, and maybe there in her gaze his own true worth would be revealed.

But she’s probably only the packaging of possibility. He leaves the room, closing the door behind him. A false lead, a red herring. He makes coffee in his room and drinks it looking out the window. Red and orange autumn leaves, a green quad, students scurrying over crisscrossing paths. A hardy bright-eyed squirrel racing up a tree trunk. His roommate comes in behind him, glistening from the shower, a towel around his waist. His name is Leo and he likes to smoke weed and sing old punk songs, comb his hair with some flowery oil that causes the black wave to rise, curl, slope back again to his olive-skinned forehead.

I was looking for you, says Leo. Where the hell did you go?

You mean last night?

What else? You disappeared. Short and Hanson got some blow and Peter brought his PS5 and Madden into the lounge. We were at it all night, man, what a blast.

I got, he says, well, I got held up.

What the fuck does that mean. Held up where? It was fucking Saturday night, man.

Yes, he says, I know. And today is Sunday.

Leo nods and grins as if he’s said something profound. That’s right, he says. Remember Jesus. Maybe you want to go make your confession.

I’m not catholic.

Me neither buddy. But sometimes the soul has need. You know what I mean.

I really don’t.

Fine, fine, says Leo, waving his big hand through the humid air. I’m not trying to get on your case, man. Whatever you get into is cool with me. We’re brothers, right?

That’s right. Brothers.

Leo pantomimes a guitar riff, sprays deodorant into his pits. He puts on a shiny blue shirt and ripped jeans, gulps some coffee, grabs his bag and leaves. He can be seen toiling across the quad, as single-minded as an ant, his bag slamming rhythmically into his skinny legs. Without him the room settles, releases disturbance. He doesn’t hate Leo, he’s pretty sure, but he’s noticed that as the years continue, other people rub against his thoughts like sandpaper. I don’t have anyone, he thinks, that I can talk to, and and then there is ice in his throat, and he presses the pendant against his neck, right where the pulse jumps, goes silent, jumps again.

The door opens. He doesn’t recognize her at first. Such a wide, humming distance between a body on a bed and the girl who stands in the doorway, fixing him with eyes that are smart and hard, like a bird’s. She’s put on her wrinkled, dusty clothes, but her feet are still bare. He sees she’s painted her toes iridescent blue. Seashell blue. The blue of a cartoon sky.

Oh sure, she says. Go ahead and stare. I guess everybody knows. I guess I’m the hot topic in this hellhole this morning. Her voice crackles like an old radio, alternating between hatred and despair. He stares, stupidly, trying to reduce her into a solvable equation.

No, he says, finally. I didn’t mean anything. I mean, no, we haven’t. Nobody’s said.

I suppose none of you mean it. I suppose you were drunk and if you weren’t you were about to be. And if not you were only boys being boys, couldn’t help it, could you, it’s just in your nature, in your fucking genes and your fucking DNA. Right?

I suppose that’s supposed to be sarcasm, he says. His mouth is ashy with stale coffee. He wishes he’d showered. His skin feels greasy, flimsy, like old, yellowing paper

Whatever, fuck all of you. I just want my necklace back.

What necklace, he says. His fingers curve around it, hidden in his pocket. It’s warm, feels alive, feels like it might be thinking, hatching plans. She chews her lip with small white teeth and mutters something he can’t make out. She strides forward into his room, violating the bubble he’s created, bringing all of her loud smells with her. At first she’s tall, almost triumphant. Then there’s a dipping flutter in a shoulder, a slight teetering, a precarious lean. Her mouth turns down at the corners and her hand moves like a starfish at her side, fingers curling through the empty air. She shatters, sort of, like a wineglass thrown to the floor, and collapses onto the bottom bunk—Leo’s. She’s going to cry, he thinks, and he fears it like an avalanche or a hurricane, but at the same time he can’t stop watching, consuming whatever this is, whatever it turns out to be.

But she doesn’t cry. She only stretches her legs across the faded quilt. She takes up the whole bed with her messy body, that collection of knees and elbows and blue-tipped toes. She keeps staring with the hard bright eyes, vivid in the small face, the tiny white teeth flashing in the sunlight.

I expect you’d like to get me out of here, she says.

No, no. I didn’t—

But I’m not leaving. Not until I get my necklace. If you don’t have it one of the other motherfuckers in this stinking house does. So start looking.

Wait, he says, just wait a minute. Before you jump to conclusions.

What in the everloving fuck is that supposed to mean. Last night I had it. This morning I don’t. Ipso facto. So give it back. Now.

Tell me about it, he says. Tell me what it is. So I know what I’m looking for. She looks at him. He tries to smile, but only manages to soften the muscles in his face, which ache and burn. The coffee boils in his stomach, gurgling, in its own secret language. There is a space in which absolutely nothing happens, and he’s worried they’ll slip over the edge they’ve danced beside for however long it’s been. Then she signs and rakes her hand through her hair, which isn’t quite curly, isn’t quite straight, seems to flicker with potential energy.

It’s only something I found in a pawn shop, she says. When I saw it I wanted it. It has letters on it, I can’t read them, but they must be universal, you know, to be important enough to be etched on the pendant. Like they mean something regardless of time or place. It’s a strange shape, suspended on a silver chain. I’m not superstitious but it’s lucky. Why am I telling you all this.

But if you can’t read it, he says, how do you know.

Know what?

That it’s so—universal. That it says something. I mean, it could be a grocery list.

Oh, she says, and her mouth drops like stone falling. Oh, damn. You have it. That’s what you’re messing with in your pocket. And here I’ve been sitting here telling you. I can’t believe this. This can’t really be happening. Then she does cry. It’s entirely silent. Rivers of tears run and drip from her chin. Snot leaks from her nostrils. He’s utterly done in by this point, he’s only a mote in her vast dark eyes, a star seen through the wrong end of a telescope. She’s so pretty, he thinks, she’s perfect, she’s what anybody would look for and hold onto tight. He crosses the room and kneels before her. He takes the necklace from his pocket and gently untangles one of her cold, clenched fists. He fingers take awhile to close around it. As if she can’t quite believe it’s real. She sniffles, wipes her face with the back of her hand.

You know what I think, he asks her.

What.

I think it’s Hebrew. Either Hebrew or Greek. I’m pretty sure I saw both in one of my Gen Eds last year. It was a class about death. How different cultures through time understand it, what they predict for the afterlife. Angels or reincarnation or just closing your eyes and being obliterated, buried in cold ground and forgotten. It was a good class. I’ll remember it, I think.

Hebrew, she says. So maybe if I know that I can decipher it. And by the way, nobody believes you’re just obliterated.

Oh, he says, lots of people do. Millions, throughout millennia. The immortal soul is pretty niche, really. And are you sure you want to.

Want what?

Know what it means. Because if you don’t it could be anything. You could make it be whatever you need in each moment. Because there might be lots of times when you need it. Need something to show you the path ahead.

She thinks for a few seconds and opens her palm. The sunlight is strong, now, a burgeoning golden rush. The silver glitters and the letters are alive, surely, they won’t stop moving in his gaze, they’re shifting, eager snakes, scurrying rodents, deer, cars, lightning on black summer nights. His vision blurs, some side effect, maybe, or maybe there are some tears, warm against his skin. His fingers close over hers and they sit there in the dusty light, thinking separate thoughts, each a foreign language to the other, as the morning shifts into afternoon, as the irrevocable damage that has been done settles into their bodies like animals in dens. And they don’t get up for awhile.