Joan was so pale that Tim once told her she looked like the moon with hair. Remembering the comment, she wore her black turtleneck to the party, as it rose high on her neck and like a sky without stars made her face all the more striking. She was a harvest moon and it was Tim she would harvest, sowing his embarrassment, reaping his humiliation. She was so Joan (as in Crawford) and he was so Tim (as in Tiny) that he deserved what he was going to get that night. If she had let him do what no other boy or man before had ever done inside her, then college truly was a place where he had come to learn.

Beth, who Joan had picked up on the way to the party, fidgeted on the passenger side of the car and said, "Don't you think this is mean? I mean, you know he's gonna be there. And you know he wants you back. So why go? There's a million parties."

Joan, who had recently started smoking because the risk seemed worth the pleasure of cooly blowing smoke, cooly blew smoke and said, "I'm not the kind of girl who needs to figure herself out."

"You are so Marcia Brady."

"Marcia Brady? I don't think so."

Watching the smoke, Joan remembered her line: "I will eat cancer, not the other way around." It was the best saying she had ever invented and she was saving it for the perfect occasion. It would be recorded in magazine articles and books as one of the all-time best quotes ever.

"Well, I think it's mean," Beth said. "Tim's a nice guy. And you shouldn't smoke."

"I will eat --" Joan started to say, but thought better of wasting the phrase on stupid Beth, who made Brady Bunch references.

"Eat what?" Beth said.

"Tim."

Joan parked the car and they climbed out and walked through the usual gathering of drunk fratboys and jocks howling at the moon. Joan was never their type because they were stupid and liked girls who were tan even in winter, women who would risk cancer to look a certain way: Stupid. They never harassed Joan the way they did Beth, who they now noticed. After she passed, they all high-fived each other. Beth rolled her eyes but loved the attention and would soon be talking to one of them, then later tell Joan he was "not the way he seems at all." Stupid.

Joan squeezed into the living room, every party the same, always the same jackets and hair styles and tennis shoes, all of which she ignored as she scoped radar-style for Tim's presence, which might be announced with one of his trademark beer belches: Stupid. Or worse, he would dance. Tim was the basis of one million stand-up comic routines: "You ever seen white people dance? They go like this and shit."

God: Stupid. Fuck. He had been inside her. And he did that like he danced.

Where was Beth? Still outside, no doubt lured by something clever like, "Hey," or "What's up?"

I am so Joan Crawford, Joan thought, and I don't need this shit.

And then she saw something impossible. She saw herself hand in hand with Tim. Tim and Joan stood in front of her, laughing. But what am I doing with him, Joan wondered, when I am right here by myself?

"Oh," Tim said, finally noticing her. After all, he had to look up at Joan in order to see her looking down at him.

Meanwhile, Tim's date stared at Joan.

Have you, Joan wanted to ask her, figured it out yet? Starting to get the idea why he picked you out of some crowd or asked you to dance or talked to you after class?

"Oh my God," the new one said.

"Pleased to meet me," Joan said, smiling at her.

"Do you two know each other?" the new one said.

"Know each other?" Joan said. "He --"

"Wait a minute," the new one said. "Is this the one you told me about? That stupid bitch who makes up quotes?"

Tim looked at the new one as if to say, "I can't talk at this particular moment."

Joan started away when she felt a tug on her sleeve.

"I just want you to know," the new one said, "that I think the things you say are stupid. And I think what you did to Tim is stupid. Tim is a nice guy."

"Did he," Joan said, "just happen to ever tell you that you look like the moon with hair?"

Then Tim was running after the new one, shouting, "But you're prettier than her."

Joan lit a cigarette and thought of cancer as Beth approached with one of the boys from outside: Stupid. It was all so incredibly stupid.