Unless it was already in use, they always chose the last table along the back wall of the library, where they were least likely to draw annoyed looks if they talked. It was hidden behind the card catalogs and next to the emergency exit, with a small dusty window overlooking the back stairs and a utility building. Wyatt liked to spread out his books and notebooks and papers in heaps, but Ada opened only what she was working on, with everything else neatly stacked. The evening after Kim's visit, they sat at their usual spot, in their usual way. Ada was silent, except for her cough, which was getting worse.

"Is something wrong?" he asked.

"No."

"You didn't say anything when we took our break. Is something bothering you?"

"No."

"Yes it is. Tell me."

"I don't think we should be studying together."

"Why not?"

She didn't answer.

"Why not?" he repeated.

"It's not appropriate."

" 'Not appropriate'? What does that mean?"

"You're involved with someone, so you shouldn't be spending time with me."

"That's ridiculous. I told you I wasn't involved with her."

"I wasn't thinking, last night. She's your girlfriend. She has to be, if you're - together - the way you say."

"But - "

"You don't want a girlfriend. You have a girlfriend. Why do you spend so much time with me? We can't be together. You're with her. This isn't fair to her."

He threw his pencil on the table. "I told you she doesn't, I told you - no, forget it. Last night you say one thing, today you say something else. Make up your mind. What do you want?"

"I don't want anything."

"Then what are you saying?"

She closed her book and traced the title on the cover with her finger - Irrational Man. "I feel things, things I've never... I couldn't sleep last night. I don't want to feel like this. I can't describe it. I don't know. Maybe I'm jealous. It hurts." She stood and gathered her things. "I have to go."

"But I thought - wait!"

She disappeared before he could collect himself.

He thought about how she had acted, and the words she had used, especially "jealous" just now, and all the things she had been saying and doing recently, and whether any of them had changed since he'd met her. He thought about the expressions on her face, her smiles, her moods, and how she had looked at him, or not looked at him; about the ways she'd laughed with him, gestured, and asked him questions about himself. He replayed the movie of Ada. He had hope now of having a role.

The nearest public phone was in the Union. He called Kim and said he was coming over. He was barely in the door before he said, "This is over. All I want is Ada."

"We should have a last night together, like the other time. It's the right way to say goodbye. Remember? How it helped us? How it eased the sting?"

"It wouldn't work. It's different now than it was then. I may have to tell her how this ended, when it ended. I want to say - "

" 'Immediately'?"

"Yes."

"I'm not surprised," she said. "It was the way you looked at her." She kissed him. "I hope it works out. But if it doesn't, I'll be here. You know me." She winked. "I'm always available." She opened the door and gestured for him to go.

He knew all Ada's classes, and the next day he waited in the hallways, looking for her, being late for some of his own. She didn't appear. The day after that he did the same, and still didn't see her. That evening he called.

"Didn't you know?" Jackie said. "She's in the hospital. She has pneumonia."

Her face was as white as the pillow, her hair that flaming color, the only color in the bed. There was a cannister of oxygen next to her connected to tubes in her nose, and an I.V. connected to a tube in her arm. A thin hand lay on the covers, the other on her chest.

"You have a visitor," said the nurse, and excused herself.

Ada opened her eyes. "Wyatt. What are you doing here?"

"Why didn't you call me?"

"I wasn't sure you'd want to. I didn't want you see me like this... I can't talk much... I can't breathe very well... I'm glad you came."

He sat in the chair next to the bed. He leaned forward and grasped her fingers, without moving her hand.

She moved the hand to the edge of the bed, closer to him. "I'm tired," she said, and closed her eyes and started to doze again. She roused herself and said, "How rude of me."

"I can wait. Sleep if you need to."

"I'm - so tired." She looked at him. "I shouldn't have said that, in the library. It was - "

"I don't care. I just want you to get well."

She pressed his fingers between hers. "I'm exhausted. I don't have the energy to get well. That's the trouble with being ill."

"What about your classes? Do you want me to get the assignments? Do you need your books?"

"Yes. Thank you. And please tell the professors why I'm not there."

Then they were silent. She fell asleep and he let go her hand and walked to the window, opened the blinds and looked out. The sun was setting, only its top visible above the roof of a building. A wisp of steam curled from a vent pipe just to its right. He watched the steam fluttering above the pipe, watched it breaking up in the almost-still air, and daydreamed. It was dark when he heard her mumbling in her sleep and went back to the bed and touched her shoulder. She woke with a start.

"I was dreaming about my mother... I feel better." He helped her sit up and she pushed the call button and asked for soup, but it was too late. The kitchen was closed. The nurse made it clear that it was past time for him to go. He stooped and kissed Ada on the forehead. Her skin felt cold under his lips. She touched his cheek with the fingertips of one hand, and thanked him for visiting. He promised to come again the next day.

She was in the hospital most of a week. He attended her classes and took notes, but didn't tell her, knowing that she would ask for the notes and try to study instead of recuperating. He would give them to her when she had more energy. She usually had a textbook open on her lap when he visited, though she couldn't stay awake and concentrate.

When she was released he drove her to her dorm in a borrowed car. For the first time she let him in the room she shared with Jackie. Her half was like a monk's cell: desk, chair, bed, clock radio. The clothes in her closet were few and simple; no dresses, only jeans. There was a brick-and-board shelf with a few dozen books. The textbooks had the red stripe on their spines that meant someone had sold them back to the bookstore, to be re-sold more cheaply. A glass paperweight and an old teddy bear and a picture on the desk of a young Ada, a man and a woman, and a boy. That was all. The room was immaculate.

She tried to go to class the next day but had to turn back. When Wyatt called she told him that she was too weak. Even if she'd reached her first class, she wouldn't have been able to get back to her room.

He helped her with her assignments, brought food, and returned some books to the library for her. Late that evening he fell asleep on her floor. She woke him and offered to let him into her bed, fully clothed, but it was too narrow for the two of them, and he saw that Jackie was about to speak up. Men were allowed on the women's floors only during permitted hours, hours that he had already overstayed. In the morning he might not wake in time, and with all the girls getting ready for the day, he would either be discovered, or trapped in the room. And he needed Jackie's good will. He trudged home. It was so late and cold that no one else was about.

He continued to attend as many of her classes as he could, in addition to his own. In the evening he dodged the hall monitors and helped Ada study from his notes. Jackie was their guard, always checking whether the coast was clear; she liked him, because he was helping her friend.

When Ada resumed her normal schedule they studied together again, with greater intensity than before. They spent every evening and the weekends together. When they caught up, he didn't point it out. She was completely wrapped up in her classes. He was completely wrapped up in her.

The conversation in the library still hung over them. He knew that mentioning it would embarrass her, so he was silent. He limited his talk to safe subjects: classes, his band, weather, special events on campus, and an occasional question about how she was taking care of herself. There was time for the risky topic later, however much later it had to be.

So he waited. Even if she didn't open up, at least he would be seeing her every day. The signs were favorable. She was beginning to ask his advice about personal things. One day in April she said, "I'm thinking about going home."

"When?"

"At the end of the semester."

"I thought you were planning to stay in school year-round."

"I was."

"You mean you'd be leaving for good?"

"I don't know. Maybe. There doesn't seem to be anything for me here. I'm so different from everyone else. Most of them seem to want to have fun and do as little work as they can. Sometimes I'm ashamed of myself, because I'm scornful of them. I don't understand them. I don't understand this place. I don't belong here. The students are shallow." She looked away. "I shouldn't have said that."

"Remember what your father said?" he asked.

" 'Be patient'?"

He nodded. "Hasn't it gotten better?"

"I suppose."

"You are different, you come from a different place. You don't have to fit in. You're better than they are. Just remember what you came here for."

She looked dubious.

"Ada, stay. I think you want to."

"I don't know."

"You're meant to learn, more than anyone I've ever seen. You're a born student."

She looked at his eyes briefly, then shrugged and scratched her wrist.

"I would miss you," he said, "more than you know."

She looked at him, her pupils expanding until her irises were two narrow rings of almost-black between the black and the white. Her stare was too strong. He focused between her eyebrows so he would not have to see.

She appeared at his door that Saturday morning with a picnic hamper and no books. "I borrowed this," she said. "Look." She opened the hamper. Two small plates, bowls, cutlery, small wineglasses. She had packed cheese, bread, and wine.

"Wine?" he asked. "I thought you didn't drink."

"It's for you. Jackie gave it to me last night and I know you like it, so I thought of you, and having a picnic. I may try it."

"The ground's a little damp," he said. "We'll need something to sit on." He went to the bedroom and folded the Army blanket, and put his wallet and pocket knife in his jeans. "Ready. Just let me lock the door."

She had a spot in mind, on the hill between the campanile and the football stadium, surrounded on three sides by bushes. They weren't the first to use the place. The grass was littered with cigarette butts and joints and a beer bottle. She picked everything up and put it in a pile. "Is this marijuana?" she asked, holding up a roach.

He nodded. "And that's beer." He pointed at the bottle. She laughed. He didn't point out the used condom half-hidden under one of the bushes.

She wore a green long-sleeved shirt with narrow red stripes widely spaced. The cuffs were rolled to her elbows, and the white of her arms was flawless. He helped her spread the blanket, mentally inventorying what he admired about her: her desire to learn everything; her focus on what was outside herself, at the exclusion of herself; the determination she showed in everything she did; above all, her unaffectedness: the transparency, the ingenuousness of her posture and behavior and speech and face. He loved that face - the abstracted moods, the eagerness when she understood something new, the radiance when she smiled.

She sat on the blanket. "I have to tell you something but I don't know how," she said.

"You can tell me anything."

She took the food from the basket. "I don't know how I would have gotten through this semester without you, after I was ill. Or last semester. I was completely lost at first. Especially the math. I never had much math. It wasn't just the studying. You taught me how everything works, the semesters and the tests and the way - I don't know how to describe it."

"The game? The way school is set up?"

"Yes. The way everything works. You rescued me. I can never repay you. But it's more than that. It's been like making a best friend. I always wanted a best friend."

"I did too."

"You don't mean that. You know everyone. You have your band. Everyone likes your music. All those people who come up to you and talk to you, all the time. You belong."

"That's not the same. There was something missing. I didn't even know it. Remember the first time I ran into you at Strong Hall?" he asked.

"Yes."

"That wasn't an accident," he said. "I knew you'd be there. I was waiting for you. I wanted to see you. More than wanted. Needed. I didn't know why. I just knew I had to talk to you again."

"Oh!" She looked away, then down into the picnic basket. Silence. "I don't know how to open the wine."

She didn't look up from the basket and he couldn't see her face. When would he learn to stop before he said too much? Her ears had turned red. She was wearing earrings. It was the first time he had seen her wear jewelry of any kind. "It's okay," he said. "My knife has a corkscrew."

The cork broke into pieces, some of it falling into the wine. She talked about the wine, how odd it tasted, but she had never drunk it before. She wondered why people liked it.

"It's an acquired taste," he said. "Most of the best things are."

She had a second glass while they talked and ate, and then a third. He matched her, so she wouldn't drink the bottle by herself. She was drinking without paying attention to what she was doing. Her behavior was unusual, her movements rapid and largely without purpose. Her hands shook when she broke the bread.

"It's my birthday," she said. "Not today. Yesterday."

"Happy nineteenth."

"Eighteenth," she said. "I came here a year early."

"You should have said something. I would have bought you a present, or taken you to dinner."

"I don't care. I'd rather not, actually. This is better, although I almost didn't - I almost not did this."

"Why?"

"We only study. I thought - I thought you might not want to picnic with me. You have other people for, you know, the other things."

"I don't need anyone to study with. I never have. Don't you know that? Studying is just an excuse to spend time with you."

She rubbed one eye.

"Is something wrong?"

"There's something in my eye."

"Let me see."

"No no. It's gone now. It was nothing." She faced him and blinked. She opened the picnic basket and looked inside, then closed it again. "Wyatt, how do you know what you feel?"

"Know what I feel? How couldn't I? It's the closest thing to me."

She shook her head, so abbreviated it was little more than a tremor. "Maybe there's something wrong with me, then. Maybe I'm different... I don't know what's happening to me. I don't know what I'm feeling. I don't know what to do or how to act, or how to start..."

He moved next to her.

She rubbed her thumb along the knuckles of his hand, the one near her on the blanket, then rested her hand on top of his. "I just don't know. When you were eighteen, were you confused?"

"I still am. It doesn't bother me. Confusion is good. You're not alive if you're not confused."

"There's no hope, then. I'll always feel this way."

"No. You - "

"Never mind. I meant something else. Something different. I used the wrong words." Pause. "At least you know what you... Why isn't anything simple?" She pressed her fingers to her temples. "This is what happens when I have the influenza. My head spins. Is it the wine?"

"Yes."

"I'd like to lie down."

On the walk back to his place she was stumbling and he hovered close to her, to make sure she didn't trip. When they arrived, she sent him out for aspirin.

She wasn't in the living room when he returned. He called her name. She answered quietly from the bedroom, "In here". He stepped in the door and turned on the light. She was in bed, under the covers. He started to ask whether she was ill again but stopped when he saw her clothes on the chair, neatly folded, panties and bra partly visible under her shirt and jeans.

"Don't talk," she whispered. "This is the hardest thing I've ever done."

He closed the door and turned off the light. After a long moment of not moving, his mind blank with astonishment, he thought that she would misinterpret his delay as lack of desire. He had enough desire, too many desires, and too strong. Some of them conflicted, but he didn't want her to know that: she had nerved herself to make the first move, and he couldn't let her think he didn't want her. She had astonished him, there were a thousand possibilities now, except one - it wasn't possible to look at her. The moment was too charged, and everything between them was about to change, regardless of what he did. He sat on the edge of the bed, obliquely to her, and opened his mouth to speak, but nothing emerged. The English language had left him. He was sitting next to the girl he had dreamed of for months, and he was unable to begin. For the first time in his life, he was unable to act.

"Please," she said.

He set the bottle of aspirin on the floor and began untying his shoes.

She kissed inexpertly, nervously. She ran her hands over his shoulders and arms. His penis couldn't enter her fully. He pushed, and the hymen yielded, but not much. He worked slowly, stretching it, trying from different angles. Not seeming to breathe, her eyes closed, her hands on his shoulder blades, she didn't move. She was almost dry, probably from fear, and he wanted to help her, but if he withdrew and used a hand, or his mouth, to ready her, he would embarrass her. Having begun, he had to keep going. She expected him to. When she tore, and he plunged in, her face clenched and she cried out. He pulled most of the way out, and looked, and saw her blood on his penis.

The sex was the worst he had ever had, even painful at first. When it was over, he regretted it. He'd never waited, except for this girl, but they should have waited even longer than they had. He would hurt her now, without meaning to, without knowing how he was hurting her, or even that he was. Or she would get pregnant. Something was sure to go wrong; she was too vulnerable, too inexperienced. She pressed her face to his chest, and he wrapped an arm around her, wondering what to say, to help. The finality of this stunned him. They were on the way now, on a road without exits, and no idea of their destination. There was no map.

"This was a mistake," she mumbled.

"No it wasn't," he said. He thought it was, but that she needed to hear the lie.

"It's terrible, I can't stop thinking about you and her. Kim. Isn't she, aren't you - ah," she gasped for a breath, and wept, her tears against his skin. "I never thought anything could hurt like this, it's a knife in my heart."

"I broke up with her after that night you met her, the night we were studying. I broke up with her the very next night."

"Why?" She looked up at his face.

"It was over. She doesn't matter. You're the one I want. Don't you know? Haven't you figured this out? I love you. I think about you all the time. I can't stop thinking about you, every minute."

She pressed her face against his chest, weeping again.

"Why are you still crying?"

"These are the other kind of tears," she sobbed.

Then he laughed, at first slowly, but the laughter grew until he couldn't breathe. He wanted to explain, but there was no air. His lungs wouldn't operate.

She sat up, staring at him and clutching the sheet above her breasts, tears still streaming from her eyes, her mouth agape. With a great effort he reached for her hand and held it, as he lay roaring with relief and joy.