And now she was colder by the hour, more dead with every breath I took. I thought: That is the fear: I have lost something important, and I cannot find it, and I need it It is fear like if someone lost his glasses and went to the glasses store and they told him that the world had run out of glasses and he would just have to do withoutJust before eight in the morning, the Colonel announced to no one in particular, "I think there are bufriedos at lunch today."

"Yeah," I said. "Are you hungry?"

"God no. But she named them, you know. They were called fried burritos when we got here, and Alaska started calling them bufriedos, and then everyone did, and then finally Maureen officially changed the name." He paused.

"I don't know what to do, Miles."

"Yeah. I know."

"I finished memorizing the capitals," he said.

"Of the states?"

"No. That was fifth grade. Of the countries. Name a country."

"Canada," I said.

"Something hard."

"Urn. Uzbekistan?"

"Tashkent." He didn't even take a moment to think. It was just there, at the tip of his tongue, as if he'd been waiting for me to say "Uzbekistan" all along. "Let's smoke."

We walked to the bathroom and turned on the shower, and the Colonel pulled a pack of matches from his jeans and struck a match against the matchbook. It didn't light. Again, he tried and failed, and again, smacking at the matchbook with a crescendoing fury until he finally threw the matches to the ground and screamed, "GODDAMN IT!"

"It's okay," I said, reaching into my pocket for a lighter.

"No, Pudge, it's not," he said, throwing down his cigarette and standing up, suddenly pissed. "Goddamn it! God, how did this happen? How could she be so stupid! She just never thought anything through. So goddamned impulsive. Christ. It is not okay. I can't believe she was so stupid!"

"We should have stopped her," I said.

He reached into the stall to turn off the dribbling shower and then pounded an open palm against the tile wall.

"Yeah, I know we should have stopped her, damn it. I am shit sure keenly aware that we should have stopped her.

But we shouldn't have hadto. You had to watch her like a three-year-old.You do one thing wrong, and then she just dies. Christ! I'm losing it. I'm going on a walk."

"Okay," I answered, trying to keep my voice calm.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I feel so screwed up. I feel like I might die."

"You might," I said.

"Yeah. Yeah. I might. You never know. It's just. It's like. POOF.And you're gone."

I followed him into the room. He grabbed the almanac from his bunk, zipped his jacket, closed the door, and POOF.He was gone.

With morning came visitors. An hour after the Colonel left, resident stoner Hank Walsten dropped by to offer me some weed, which I graciously turned down. Hank hugged me and said, "At least it was instant. At least there wasn't any pain."

I knew he was only trying to help, but he didn't get it. There was pain. A dull endless pain in my gut that wouldn't go away even when I knelt on the stingingly frozen tile of the bathroom, dry-heaving.

And what is an "instant" death anyway? How long is an instant? Is it one second? Ten? The pain of those seconds must have been awful as her heart burst and her lungs collapsed and there was no air and no blood to her brain and only raw panic. What the hell is instant?Nothing is instant. Instant rice takes five minutes, instant pudding an hour. I doubt that an instant of blinding pain feelsparticularly instantaneous.

Was there time for her life to flash before her eyes? Was I there? Was Jake? And she promised, I remembered, she promised to be continued, but I knew, too, that she was driving north when she died, north toward Nashville, toward Jake. Maybe it hadn't meant anything to her, had been nothing more than another grand impulsivity. And as Hank stood in the doorway, I just looked past him, looking across the too-quiet dorm circle, wondering if it had mattered to her, and I can only tell myself that of course, yes, she had promised. To be continued.

Lara came next, her eyes heavy with swelling. "What happeened?" she asked me as I held her, standing on my tiptoes so I could place my chin on top of her head.

"I don't know," I said.

"Deed you see her that night?" she asked, speaking into my collarbone.

"She got drunk," I told her. "The Colonel and I went to sleep, and I guess she drove off campus." And that became the standard lie.

I felt Lara's fingers, wet with her tears, press against my palm, and before I could think better of it, I pulled my hand away. "I'm sorry," I said.