Loner by Teddy Wayne

same dorm, we’d “studied” together; this was a perfectly ordinary next step. After you accepted, I’d be able to view your trove of photos and status updates, maybe learn something that would help me win you over—similar tactics had panned out in a number of romantic comedies I’d seen—or at least discover where you were spending your nights.
    I clicked.
    I didn’t use the site myself except for voyeurism. I was friends with my high school and Matthews confederacies, a smattering of relatives, and the people who sluttishly befriend everyone on it. To avoid advertising the paucity of my social connections, I had hidden my list of friends and prohibited anyone from posting on my wall.Before arriving at Harvard, I’d hoped I would acquire such a bounty of comrades here that I could make my social media presence more transparent, perhaps even add the popular kids from Hobart High to show them how far I’d come. Yet for now I wasn’t eager to be seen in pictures with the Matthews Marauders nor to affirm my relationship with Sara, whose profile photo was of her at her high school graduation, flanked by her deliriously proud parents, off-kilter mortarboard dwarfing her head.
    That night I studied with Sara after dinner at the Starbucks located in the Garage, the mini-mall in Harvard Square that seemed to cater to high school potheads. You hadn’t accepted my request yet. That was fine; maybe you were busy or took pleasure in leaving me in suspense. I tried to distract myself by reading even further ahead in the syllabus for my meeting with Samuelson.
    â€œWhy are you checking your phone every two minutes?” Sara asked. “What’s so important?”
    â€œI’m just nervous about this meeting tomorrow with Samuelson,” I said.
    She looked unimpressed.
    â€œHe’s probably the most important English professor here, which basically means the most important one in the country,” I added, and suggested we go home.
    â€œYou always sniff your jacket before you put it on,” she observed as we packed up.
    â€œDo I?”
    â€œYeah,” she said. “Every single time. Does it smell or something?”
    â€œJust routine, I suppose.”
    â€œI guess we’re both creatures of routine,” she said. “Or obses­sive-compulsion.”
    I shuddered to think of the routinized trajectory we were on. If the two of us continued carrying on the habits that constituted our relationship, who’s to say we wouldn’t end up getting married, moving to Cleveland to be closer to her parents, and siring threechildren to replicate our family structures as I sentenced myself to a lifetime of buying CVS-brand zinc and date nights in mini-mall Starbucks.
    While waiting to cross Mass Ave., cars whizzing past us, I had a sudden, unbidden image of pushing Sara into oncoming traffic.
    You weren’t home when we went to sleep, and you still hadn’t responded on Facebook by the next morning when I knocked on Samuelson’s office door in the Barker Center.
    â€œHello?” he said, apparently having forgotten who I was.
    â€œDavid Federman,” I reminded him. “Thank you for reading my essay on Ahab’s primal wound.”
    That sparked some recognition in his eyes. He picked through a stack of papers on the desk.
    â€œYes, here it is,” he said, adjusting his glasses and nodding. “That was wonderfullycogent. The peg leg as readerly misdirection in Ahab’s pursuit of the white whale. A red herring, so to speak.” Samuelson let out a scholarly chortle. He spoke in the same cadences in conversation as he did behind a lectern. “The analysis of the leg as a figure of castration is very nuanced; usually these things become somewhat over-the-top, especially from male critics. I’m teaching a seminar on Hawthorne next semester. Mostly graduate students, but I think it might interest you.”
    â€œThat