Dr. Burton didn't have any pictures in his apartment. He had photographs, but that's what they were: Photographs with a capital P, moody landscapes and still lifes from trips to Africa and Greece, trying to be Serious but ending up mostly dull. One showed a bunch of wooden pews strewn haphazardly around a stone courtyard outside a church. He'd written on the mat, in a deliberately tossed-off scrawl, Abandoned Pews, Zanzibar, 7/3/95, and he'd signed his name.

But there were no pictures of people. No family photos, no snapshots from vacations with friends, no wishful-thinking pictures of exes. Even the few other humans in the Photographs were only seen from behind, out of focus, or both. The whole house was like that. It was tastefully cluttered, the furniture precisely distressed, the books on the overflowing shelves obsessively curated (even the teetering, at first glance random, stacks on the floor were alpha-by-authored). Everything announced: this is the home of a (relatively) young, hip professor. But that's all it said. On the actual history or personality of the man who lived there, it remained silent.

She hadn't noticed the lack of pictures at first. At first she'd just been glad that he answered the phone, that he came and met her at the diner after she'd ridden around on the Black Line for an hour, trembling with rage at Kenya for her betrayal, her eyes watering and nose stinging from the pepper, both her head and her mind fuzzy. The only thing that kept her tethered to reality was the dense solidity of Kenya's Handbook, and she held it tight.

After three loops around campus on the bus, the driver finally made her get off downtown. She found a payphone outside McConnell's and thought about who she could call. The other Creatures were out, and Charlie was definitely out. She doubted Charlie would lift a finger to help anyway. Even Audrey was suspect. She dialed 411, and thankfully Jonas Burton was listed, and thankfully he was home, and thankfully he offered to let her stay the night at his house. She walked over to the diner and folded herself into one of their cramped booths and waited for him. When he showed up her bought her feta fries and a vanilla milkshake and listened and only spoke when he needed to, and when he did he said all the right things, all the things that Joanie needed to hear, and he drove her to his apartment in his Jetta. She had to slouch low in the seat, knees to her chest and her head almost on her shoulder. When she got out she caught her reflection, distorted and ghostly in the shiny black carapace of the car. The reflection wore a crown, barely visible in the glare from the floodlight shining down on the parking lot. "I see you," she heard it say. Dr. Burton's guest room was already made up for her. It was decorated with crude pictures of birds. He never said when she would have to leave.

The pictures in the living room gave her pause, but the couch was spacious and velvety, the right mix of soft and firm. You could sink in but not get stuck. The couch of an actual adult. Maybe the Photographs were just the decorations of an actual adult too. Maybe you grew out of the need to be surrounded by reminders of other people, the same way you grew out of being okay with sitting on scratchy, caved-in, foam-disgorging thrift-store death traps.

Joanie sat on the couch, leaned back into the welcoming cushion, and opened Kenya's Handbook. She searched the index for UNWG Student Handbook, Joanie McKittrick's.

The alien has Charlie's face, and you double-tap it even though the first shot kills it. Fuck. You.

It's Joanie's own fault, really, now that you've had some time to think about it. Exhibit A: she took all the goddamn gunpowder instead of maybe I don't know talking to her best friend about whatever was bothering her, which even if it was the real deal wasn't a great idea. Exhibit B: she ransacked your room and rifled through all your shit because she thought you – again, her best friend – took her stupid fucking Handbook. Which, again, if she'd bothered to talk to you about it like a human being, you could have told her that no, you didn't take it, because that's not how a best friend acts. And then Exhibit C: she flips out and takes your Handbook and runs screaming into the night just because you did something that wasn't ideal, exactly, but was done in her own best interests.

And now Charlie St. James, of all the fucking people, is telling you that you're a shitty friend and a shitty person in general.

You unload an entire digital clip into an alien's skull. Fuck you fuck you fuck you.

Some guy comes up and wants to play. Why not? You're shooting aliens together for five minutes before you glance at his face and realize that he's the guy you saw outside Charlie's office. The basic white guy with the incredible eyes. You remember a photograph you saw, from the Hubble telescope, of massive pillars of space dust, like gnarled grasping fingers. The birthplace of stars. That's what his eyes look like. The astronomers said that by the time the picture was taken, those pillars had already been destroyed. It took that long for the light to reach the lens.

"I'm Kenya," you say, before double-tapping another alien.

"Chet," he says. God, what an awful name. But his name isn't what interests you. You want someone's hands on you. You want to know that Charlie's wrong about you. This guy may not be your type – you doubt that he's anybody's type – but you want to see those eyes when they're fully open. When they can't look anywhere else. You want to see yourself in them, a star exploding into being.

Joanie should have put the book down there. Kenya didn't take her Handbook; she knew it, even if she didn't want to admit it. But that was the danger of reading someone else's Handbook. Once you got a taste, you didn't want to stop.

You leave the guns hanging by their cables. He lets you lead. He follows you up to the women's bathroom on the third floor, the one that's always empty. As soon as the door closes you turn and push him against it and kiss him but there's nothing there, he doesn't know what to do and his hands are pushing on your shoulders, he's pushing you away, and this was a mistake, this was the worst mistake you could make, this was so stupid, and he's trying to say something and he's pushing you away. You can't even look at him.

"Wait," he says. "I don't..." he doesn't even know what he doesn't. His hands are still on your shoulders, but just the palms. The fingers don't know what they want to do. "Okay," he says. "Okay."

His fingers curve around your shoulders, holding them, firm but not hard. "Okay," he says, and he leans in, and just before his eyes close and his lips touch yours, you see it. You see everything.

So Kenya found herself a guy. Callooh callay. That would be just perfect, wouldn't it. She betrays you, and her reward is a few minutes of grunting and pounding with some guy, some dude who couldn't even make it through rush week, some human pair of cargo shorts whose only sexual experience is a limo squeezer on prom night. Hope it was worth it.

Joanie flipped to the next mention of her handbook listed in the index.

You're only tempted once. You've known Joanie for a few weeks now, long enough to know that true friendship is on the horizon, though you haven't reached it yet. You've finally found an equal, you believe, and you feel pulled to her as if by a current, and you know that soon you will stop fighting it and let it take you.

But she's become obsessed with something. Maybe "obsessed" is too strong. But that's what you want to call it. Her Handbook has told her about a boy. "The boy in the tunnel." You gather, from the older Lady Ambassadors, that this is de rigueur for the Handbook; every UNWG student, save perhaps the very lonely and unlucky, has an assortment of Boys and/or Girls in his or her index. You need only turn to your own Handbook's index for confirmation (c.f. "The boy with the starry eyes," p. 268). But there's something about this particular Boy that's rattled Joanie. She won't tell you exactly what it is. You tell her to rip out the pages. Play it safe. And she says maybe she will, but you know she doesn't.

Your opportunity comes on a Thursday night. Joanie's meeting her high school friend Audrey for coffee. Before she leaves she's fidgety and flustered. She doesn't really want to go, you surmise. She's already pulling away from Audrey. She is Joanie's past, and you are her future. Joanie spends so much delaying her exit that when she finally does leave she rushes out without her Handbook.

It sits in the exact center of her bed, dark and purple, the gold foil on the cover catching light from your computer's screensaver, twinkling like distant stars. You would swear that the Handbook is sinking into the bed, like those 3D charts showing the way a star or a black hole bends gravity toward itself. Or like that 3D Simpsons episode, which is where you learned about that idea in the first place. Her Handbook is drawing you in.

You want to fling yourself at her bed, tear open the book and find out everything about this "boy in the tunnel." You could do it, and she would never know. But Joanie's going to be your best friend. She isn't yet. But she will be. If you don't learn all her secrets now. If you don't betray her here first. There will be plenty of time for betrayals later.

Joanie flipped more pages, heat rising in her neck. "You should have read it," she said. "Saved us all some trouble."

Something hard presses into your thigh. Before you can say anything, Chet already knows the dumb joke you're going to make. "That is my Handbook in my pocket," he says. "But I am happy to see you."

The widow's walk at McHolden Hall has become your spot. It's public – you can hear the street preacher in front of McConnell's as clear as if he was ranting away right in front of you, and a squirrel skitters in the branches of the magnolias just on the other side of the railing, pausing occasionally to watch you and Chet – but also private. You've never seen another person on the ghost-townish third floor of McHolden, though all the office doors are adorned with fresh-looking nametags for their ostensible occupants. Up here you are exposed in a way that you are amazed to discover you find thrilling, but hidden away in a private world of your own. The squirrel watches, working its mouth around an arboreal morsel, but he is not a prurient or unwelcome audience. His gaze is pure.

When you are finished you pull Chet's arm around you and wrap yourselves in the blanket. Over the railing and through the branches of the trees you see the bruised purple of the oncoming night, the same color as the Handbook. Chet's cargo shorts

"I knew it," said Joanie.

are within arm's reach, if you were willing to disentangle your arm from Chet's and send it forth from the comfort of the blanket. A corner of his Handbook peeks out of the cargo pocket. You neve got around to reading about "The boy with the starry eyes" – there were other Boys, and the team, and the Creatures, and Joanie – but now you'd like to know. You'd like to know a little bit more – just a little bit – about what's going on here. About how long this might last. You wonder if this, like all college relationships in your experience, is like those photographs from the Hubble telescope: pictures of things that are already dead.

And you could find that out, and more, if Joanie hadn't taken your Handbook. But Chet's is right there, and it probably has those answers, and more besides. Does he wonder why this secluded balcony has become your spot, and not your dorm room? He's not the first white guy you've dated, but he may be the whitest – and you're willing to bet you're the first black girl he's dated. (Is "date" the right word for what you're doing?) You know you're not supposed to read somebody else's Handbook, and you normally wouldn't, but these are special circumstances. Joanie has deprived you of the information that is your right as a UNWG student.

You pull down the blanket and reach for the book, Chet's fingers sliding on your forearm. "What are you doing?" he says.

"Do you mind?" you say, though you've already pulled the book out of the pocket.

"Don't," he says, but you've already found what you're looking for in the index. "The girl in the arcade."

"You and Kenya lay cocooned in a blanket on the cool wood floor of the widow's walk," you read, "looking across the magnolia-studded West Campus quad through the rotted, white-painted slats of the railing. Strands of her hair, thick and black, are splayed across your face, but you make no effort to brush them off. Between the hair and the slats you see the world as a zoetropic image, frames of frozen action between bands of darkness. You can see your time with Kenya like this, the moments when you're together like movie stills, the dark bands the times you're apart. Spin it fast enough and the stills become one long continuous moment, with no beginning or end, just perpetual middle."

"This isn't bad," you say. "This is good."

"Please don't read it," he says. He could reach for the book, but he doesn't. If he reached for it, you would stop, even though you could keep it, if you wanted to. His hand stays where it landed, tracing the ridge of your Adonis belt.

"You want to keep that wheel spinning, to stay in that middle, to keep the whole thing from crashing like it did with Holly. When that stopped spinning, fire consumed the frames and left nothing but ash."

"Who's Holly?" you ask.

"It doesn't matter," Chet says. Still he doesn't reach for the book.

"Already you see the wheel going wobbly. Kenya wants to read your Handbook. 'Do you mind?' she says, as she's already turning to the index.

"'Don't,' you say. You could try to take it from her, but what's the point? It is written. The same thing happened with Holly. Back then you didn't know any better. You couldn't help yourself. You were so grateful, so gleeful. You thought you had unlocked the secret code of the universe. She rested her head on your shoulder, her hair spilling down your chest like lava, and you took turns reading from her Handbook. That wasn't the end, but it also wasn't the beginning it should have been. So keep your hand on Kenya's hip. Hold on while you still can."

You flip through the pages, looking for more about this Holly. This is why you need your own Handbook. You have to know if you're just a waystation for this guy. A checkmark on a scavenger hunt. Something exotic to tide him over while he pines for his true red-haired love.

You find it: "The girl in the lobby."

"'You yell at Chet to stop,' you say, and Holly yells 'Stop!' and you say 'Here, you read it, then,' and you hand the book to Holly, and she says '"Chet says 'Here, you read it, then,' and hands the book to you." I can't do this,' and she throws the book across the room, but you pick it up and read '"You throw the book across the room but Chet picks it up and reads 'You throw the book across the room but Chet picks it up,'"' and you want to stop but you can't stop; you have to know how it ends."

You put the book down. You don't want to know how it ends. Not yet. You withdraw your hand back into the blanket and place it on top of Chet's and bring it up to your chest.

Above you the squirrel is still watching, still worrying his acorn. You imagine what he sees, two bodies wrapped in a blanket like a two-headed chrysalis. If he wonders what will emerge, there's no way of knowing.

Joanie shut the Handbook at the sound of a key entering the front door lock. Her head hurt – she no longer knew whose story she was reading. She slid the book under a couch cushion as Dr. Burton entered the apartment. It was better not to be seen with somebody else's Handbook.

"How was your day?" he said, dropping a stack of notebooks and papers on the coffee table. The messenger bag slung over his shoulder was loaded with even more books and papers, so full the zipper wasn't even closed. He hoisted it off his shoulder and dropped it on the floor next to the table.

The sharp purple corner of a Handbook poked out of a thicket of blue exam books.

"Good," Joanie said, as every alarm in her head went off at once.